Love Unites Us

Join us for the kickoff event for OutWrite Book Festival 2016! At 6:30pm on Friday August 5th, we will be hosting a launch for the new book, "Love Unites Us: Winning the Freedom to Marry in America", edited by Kevin M. Cathcart and Leslie J. Gabel-Brett. Contributing authors will discuss their roles in and reflections on the two-decade movement for the freedom to marry, and also discuss the importance of storytelling and narrative in the struggle for justice. Leslie J. Gabel-Brett, Director of Education and Public Affairs, Lambda Legal; co-editor Kevin M. Cathcart, Executive Director of Lambda Legal from 1972-2016; co-editor Suzanne B. Goldberg, Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law at Columbia Law School; co-counsel, Lawrence v. Texas Jennifer C. Pizer, Director of National Law and Policy Project, Lambda Legal; formerly Marriage Project Director A panel to follow will discus the direction of future LGBT activism post-marriage equality. Panelists: Author and Attorney Michael Nava, Professor and Author Laz Lima, NCTE Storytelling Advocate and Author Rebecca Kling and Jim Obergefell, lead plaintfiff of the groundbreaking Obergefell v. Hodges decision and co-author of LOVE WINS. Rebecca Kling is the Community Storytelling Advocate at the National Center for Transgender Equality, where she elevates the stories of transgender people and their allies. By working with a diverse range of spokespeople, she brings the wide range of transgender people’s lives and experiences into the policy advocacy and public education work of the transgender movement. Prior to moving to Washington, D.C., Rebecca was a lifelong Chicagoan. She studied Performance Studies and Computer Science at Northwestern University and worked as a touring educator and performance artist prior to joining the NCTE team. Rebecca was named as one to the inaugural Trans 100 list in 2013 and served as Co-Director for The Trans 100 in 2015. Michael Angel Nava is an American attorney and writer. He has worked on the staff for the California Supreme Court, and ran for a Superior Court position in 2010. He authored a seven-volume mystery series featuring Henry Rios, an openly gay protagonist who is a criminal defense lawyer. His novels have received six Lambda Literary Awards and critical acclaim in the GLBT and Latino communities. Lázaro Lima is a Research Fellow at American University's Center for Latin American and Latino Studies. He holds the E. Claiborne Robins Distinguished Chair in the Liberal Arts at the University of Richmond where he is a professor of American Studies and Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies. Lima's writing, research, and films focus on the political emergence of Latino forms of civic personhood, and the attendant institutional, juridical and cultural industries that enable Latino democratic legibility and participation to emerge in civil society. Lima is the author of "The Latino Body: Crisis Identities in American Literary and Cultural Memory" (NYU Press, 2007), "Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing" (University of Wisconsin Press, 2011), "Trevor Young: The Aesthetics of Displacement" (Museum Arts Press, 2013), "Sonia Sotomayor: An American Life After Multiculturalism" (forthcoming from the University of Houston/Arte Público Press) and, most recently, the documentary Las mujeres: Latina Lives, American Dreams (Deronda Productions, NM: 2016).