QT Library

Imagine: a quietly majestic, lusciously colorful, resplendently book-and-plant-filled, naturally-lit, immaculately-vibed open space for queer and trans people of all ages–including youth, families, and elders–and all the folks they love. Now imagine that space isn’t a dream, but a real place–one that celebrates queer stories, fosters connection, and helps young people see themselves reflected in the pages they turn. Today In the Den, Sara and special guest Jake Stepansky are stepping into that space — the QT Library, a community-built sanctuary of belonging in Boston.

Special Guest: Jake Stepansky

Jake Stepansky (he/any) is a culture and care worker based in Brooklyn, NY.

He is the co-founder and board president of the QT Library – a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working to bring a brick-and-mortar LGBTQIA+ library and substance-free community space to Boston. Jake is the Producer of Festival Presentations for the Under the Radar Festival, and works with private clients as a professional organizer and decluttering coach. Jake honed his skills as an arts worker and educator at Forklift Danceworks, Marty Pottenger’s Art At Work, Pomegranate Arts, the Office for the Arts at Harvard, and more. Find him on Instagram at @jakebookplantsky.

Links from the Show: 

• QT Library: https://www.qtlibrary.org/ 
• Under the Radar: https://utrfest.org/ 
• Find Jake on IG: https://www.instagram.com/jakebookplantsky 
• Join Mama Dragons today: www.mamadragons.org 

In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at www.mamadragons.org.  

Transcript

SARA: Hi everyone. Welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. A podcast and community to support, educate, and empower parents on the journey of raising happy and healthy LGBTQ+ humans. I’m your host, Sara LaWall. I’m a Mama Dragon myself and an advocate for our queer community. And I’m so glad to be part of this wild and wonderful parenting journey with all of you. Thanks for joining us. We’re so glad you’re here.

Imagine a quietly majestic, lusciously colorful, resplendently book-and-plant-filled, naturally lit, immaculately vibed open space for queer and trans people of all ages, including youth, families, and elders and all the folks they love. Now imagine that space isn't a dream, but real. One that celebrates queer stories, fosters connection, and helps young people see themselves reflected in the pages they turn. Today, we are stepping into that space. The QT Library, a community-built sanctuary of belonging in Boston, Massachusetts. Our guest today is Jake Stepansky, one of the visionaries behind this vibrant project, a space that's as much about joy and imagination as it is about advocacy and care. Jake, welcome to In the Den. It is so good to have you with us.

 JAKE: Thank you so much for having me, I told you before this call that I might cry, and I'm already a little emotional from that introduction. Thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here.

 SARA: You did tell me that, and I felt myself tearing up while I was reading that intro. Those words are the words that are on your website. I pulled them directly from your website, and they're just stunning. They're a gorgeous invitation into what I think we all hope could be possible for our queer beloveds. Can you tell us more about how that vision for this quietly majestic, lusciously colorful, plant-filled, book-filled space came into being?

JAKE: I sure can. Um, and I think it's an interesting thing is that, like, I can talk about this as it relates to me, the person who “had the idea” but I also have to talk about how all of the people who have come together to make it possible have shaped that vision. For me, in 2022, I was at a job that was not feeding my soul, particularly, a lot. And I knew that I wanted to do something for a community that had lifted me up and cared for me for many years, my queer and trans community. And at the time, the television show Heartstopper had just come out. I don't know if you're familiar, I assume that you are. And for me, someone who was raised on fairly limited queer television, queer movies, queer media, I was taken to the moon and back by that show. I fell in love with it, and I found myself doing this thing that I would always do, where I would take a friend and I would say, you have to sit with me and watch the first three episodes of Heartstopper. And we are going to cry together, and it's going to be so beautiful. And, oh my goodness, and I just was doing this over and over again. And then I had this moment where I was like, if I could spend the rest of my life showing people Heartstopper, or showing people the thing that was going to be Heartstopper for them, I would be so happy. And then because I am a ridiculous human being, I was like, what job would I have to have to make that possible. And then I was like, obviously I would have to be the gay librarian at the gay library. Obviously.

SARA: Obviously.

JAKE: I reached out to my friend Carina. I think I texted her and I said, “Do you want to get waffles and talk about building a gay library?” She said, “That sounds wild, I'm in.” We brought on a couple of other folks onto the project right away, the founding team of Emily Talley, Madison Deming, Carina and myself. And then for about 9 months we dreamed, and we schemed, and we asked everyone that we knew about libraries and queer advocacy and how to sort of meld the two. And then we basically announced to the world that we were doing this. And I can speak further on a lot of things that are sort of tangled up in what I'm saying. But really what it is to say is we announced to the world that we were doing this. And we announced it as an invitation to people who are interested in supporting any sort of form of queer connection, and specifically queer connection around library sciences, books, community programming, and we said, like, do you want to get involved? And the response was truly bananas. We were sort of inundated with folks from truly every walk of life. We had people who were like, I'm a student, and it would kill if my first job was at this library. And we were like, “Well, it doesn't exist yet, but.” And then we had elders and we had community leaders from across the sector who were like, “This sounds incredible, how can I bring my organization into a partnership with you all?” It's been a wild ride, and so we are in the thick of the process of building this library. And it is the great joy and honor of my life that I get to help steward this incredible team.

SARA: So tell us a little bit more about where you are now. Where do things sit now? Because I know you had some really rapid interest. You got a lot of books donated. Do you have space?

JAKE: That's a great question. So the answer is yes and no. The thing that –  okay, the first thing that I'll say that was true is that we were so silly –  and I say that with a lot of love to our former selves – but when we started this project and it was just the four of us, it was maybe June 2022. And we were like, okay, how long could it possibly take to start a library, two years? I don't know. So we were like, alright, June 2024, we're going to be open. We're going to have a space. It's going to be full of 5,000 books. And we're going to have a million-dollar budget. And it's going to be so incredible. That has not happened. And I actually think that is a mark of a truth about this project, which is that we really are trying to go at the pace that we are able to, what we call an ethical pace, a pace that's sustainable for our team. And we do deeply believe that this work is important and urgent in its way. But it is also not work that only can exist in one form, which is to say that we always say that the QT library has existed for 3 years, and it exists as much in the interactions between a volunteer and a patron who sees us at a tabling event or someone who comes to a program that we put on with a partner organization. It is somebody who decides they want to donate a book or $100. It is every single interaction that comes together to build what we always say is like we're building a community around the creation of the library.

 SARA: That's beautiful.

JAKE: That's my, like, very, like, wafty-wafty answer. My actual concrete answer is that we have a physical processing space slash office that is not open to the public. But if I showed you a picture of it, you would be like, oh my god, that's going to be a library someday. The thing about this space is that it's inside of a sort of a WeWork-style space, which is to say that it's not open to the public. And it won't be that space for us, but it has functioned as an office, a gathering place. We have a team of incredible librarians who essentially, I would actually say librarians and folks who have learned library sciences through working with us, who essentially descend on that space every couple of weekends and process our almost 3,000 physical books. There's sort of incredibly robust library processes that have been developed over the last two and a half years. We've built our own bespoke catalog, which is to say that we're not using the Dewey Decimal System. We're using our very own cataloging system that we built. And it's a cataloging system that is – what's the word –  there's a lot of queer-specific and trans-specific language that allows for incredible searchability. So you can say, I'm looking for an Asian American author who's writing about the trans experience and parenthood. And we can say, okay, here are the three books in our collection that align with those super-specific parameters. So we are building out our cataloging infrastructure. We are literally physically processing every single book, which means taking the book, having someone read it and understand what's in it so that it can be cataloged properly, creating a barcode, sticking the barcode sticker on the inside cover. Covering it with a plastic wrap that needs to be shrink-wrapped in a specific way. And then my favorite piece is that we try and do this thing where we are essentially writing little letters to a future reader where queer folks can open up a book and see a little note from someone that says, like, “Hey, I loved this book, and it was really instrumental to me in my coming out process.” And so we're trying to do that for a lot of the books, too.

 SARA: Wow.

JAKE: All of that is to say that we are in the sexy, unglamorous phase of building the collections so that someday, when someone hands us the keys to a public-facing space, we can get right to it.

 SARA: Got it. So at the moment, the collection is not publicly accessible.

 JAKE: Correct..

SARA: But it sounds like you're doing some really cool work getting it ready. And what a beautiful way to learn library sciences on the fly, then by doing it the way you're doing it with these amazing queer authors and subject matter and in community. I love that this has become a way to build community. Tell us a little bit about what you do offer the community in terms of connection and programming while you're building the library. 

JAKE: I'm going to give a slightly provocative answer to that question.

SARA: Please do.

JAKE: So the short answer is, like, the base way that folks who are not involved with the QT library can get involved is by coming to one of our programs. We have weekly virtual programming and monthly or bi-monthly, um, in-person programming that we do with community partners all across Boston. And that programming is just like any library's programming, except queer. So it's, you can come see an author talk by a queer author. We have one coming up with Michael Waters, who wrote The Other Olympians, which was just awarded the Lambda Literary Prize for Nonfiction. We do, let's say we have a very popular sapphic sci-fi and fantasy book club. We have a queer horror book club, a transient adult book club, we have essentially a lot of book clubs. We have a later-in-life affinity group where folks who are wrestling with their gender identity or sexuality later in life can just be in community in a sort of confidential space. So all that is to say that the simple answer is, there's programs. There's lots and lots of ways to go to a program and to sort of receive something from the QT library. We also table a ton. We're sort of a very present presence in lots of community events, especially around Pride season. That said, I really, really, really think of the QT library as, above anything else, a seed of possibility. And what I mean by that is that I, with maybe delusional confidence, have basically approached every conversation I've ever had about the QT library with someone else and I've been like, “This is the greatest idea in the world. Nobody has ever come up with a better idea in the world. It would make your life so much richer and better if you wanted to be a part of it.” And so, the thing that I always think is really, really important to remember is that as we are in this moment where fascism is on the rise, things feel dark and heavy and our queer and trans siblings in particular are being targeted all around the country and the world there's a lot of people who are like, “God, I wish I could do something. I wish I had some way that I could make an impact. But I just don't know how.” And that is what I have found is the most beautiful thing about the library. It is a way for people to sort of get involved in queer organizing, queer advocacy, whatever you want to call it. It is a way to contribute and feel like you have some sort of role to play in the great fight against all of the awful. And I'll just sort of name that I think people often hear about a library and they're like, “Oh, so the things that you must be thinking and talking about all the time are books and catalog numbers and how to shelve things.” And I would say that, actually, organizationally, the things that we're mostly talking about are how to care for people, how to invite people in in a way that feels accessible. We have a lot of folks who come in and they're like, “Okay, I'm a professional fundraiser and everyone expects me to come in and do fundraising work. But what I would really love to do is cover books.” Or vice versa, we have librarians who are like, “I've never asked for money before. I've never run a social media campaign.” And we're like, “Awesome, let's plug you into the thing that you care about so that you're excited to come back every week, and make  this thing happen.

SARA: That is great.

JAKE: So, yeah, I'll just say, that's the work.

SARA: That's lovely. Now, you're based in Boston, and so as I was reading about you, I was just really curious, because Boston is a massive city with a robust queer community. I've been to Boston during Pride, and it is hours and hours and hours and hours long. And I come from a small city, and in the Pacific Northwest, where our pride is not ours and hours and hours long –  our parade, anyway – and so I just was curious did this, something like this not exist already in the community?

JAKE: That's a great question, and I'm going to actually answer it sort of, like, on a larger scale than Boston, and then I'll talk about Boston specifically. So on a larger scale than Boston, I think the thing that I often remember or try to remember, is that when we think about resources for a  community, sometimes, we are very limited in the ways that we think about what resources are for a community. And the thing that I would sort of name is that I actually think my spicy take is that every community should have a library. And there are, in many cases specific libraries or specialized libraries that tend to the needs of a different community here, there, or the other. But I think in Boston in particular, what we see is that there are a couple of, sort of, related truths. The first is that Boston's queer social scene in many ways has been relegated to nightlife. It's bars, it's clubs. I think that is, like, a truth around the country, nightlife, and alcohol-soaked spaces. This is speaking as a person who loves to go out to a bar or a club, but there's a way to which queer social community building has been sort of relegated to those spaces.

SARA: Yeah. 

JAKE: So, in one sense, the library is just another option. Sometimes you want to go to the bar or the club, and sometimes you want to sit with a cup of coffee or a glass of tea –  a glass of tea, a cup of tea?  –  and enjoy a book, and be in community. The other thing I would say is that Boston is a really geographically fractured city. It is very much a hub-and-spoke city. There's downtown. Like, it's very hard to get from one place in Boston via public transportation without sort of going through downtown or having a car, which is also not ideal in Boston's winding streets. All of that is to say that it's a very hub-and-spoke city, and also it's expensive. Space is at a premium. And so what we found in our early research was that there were a lot of  organizations that were servicing queer and trans folks, that they existed as an Instagram page or they existed as a Facebook group. And they were doing really brilliant work to bring together queer folks who wanted to do puzzles, or queer folks who wanted to do arts and crafts. They exist. But, because of the limitations of space in the city, they were meeting at someone's apartment, or they were renting a space in the Democracy Center, or another space that was sort of not consistently accessible. That, plus I have this thing about libraries where I think libraries are especially important community spaces, because they have an aesthetic footprint. They essentially, you know what a library feels like, or it should feel like. You know the way that a librarian should relate to a patron. There's a lot of warmth and generosity and care inherent in the role of a librarian. You know that a library has cozy seating and warm lighting, and isn't unpleasant, ideally. And so I'd say, my big swing pitch about the library is that I actually think that we are sort of filling in the role that an LGBTQ center would play and that often does in other cities. But with this particular sort of aesthetic feeling and bent that makes it warm and welcoming from the jump. We are going to be a place where other organizations can host their programming just as much as we're hosting our own.

SARA: Lovely. That makes a whole lot of sense. And I was reading and didn't realize that something unique about your library is that you are one of the few non-archival libraries in the whole country. And it took me a minute to kind of think about that. Tell us a little bit about why that is unique.

JAKE: Well, that's a great question.

SARA: Because there are a lot of archival libraries that exist. Like, organizations are collecting material and stories and sort of, like, preserving history in a particular way through their own libraries.

JAKE: 100%, yeah. I think the first thing I'll say is this project is born out of a deep love from me and many of my friends of public libraries as we knew them growing up. And it comes out of the memories of going – here’s an interesting through-line. I remember going to the public library when I was in my early teens, or even when I was 10 or whatever. And knowing that I was gay, like I knew, and knowing that I wanted to read a gay book and not being able to find basically anything on the shelves. That memory has stuck with me and I feel like I am healed every time I go into a public library in Boston or in New York, or a bookstore, and I see queer books on the shelves. So all of that is to say that that's the starting point is a love of public libraries as public resources of books that people check out regularly and want to check out. The second thing I would say is archiving work is very specific, hard, incredible work that I don't have a background in at all and that no one on our team does. And in fact, there are other organizations that have been dedicating their entire life's work to that archival project. And I think one thing that became very clear to us as we were doing some of the initial planning on this project, was we have to figure out our exact lane, and really try and walk and stay in that lane. Not from a, not stepping on anyone's toes perspective, but from a why wouldn't we link hands and work together on the various things that are strengths for us. So we know the folks at the History Project, which is the LGBTQ Archival Project organization who have been around for, like, 20-something years. And we were like, they're doing that. So anytime someone comes to us and is like, I have some photographs to give you, we’re like, “Give them to the archives. They're amazing.” And just to sort of add a thought to that because I love shouting out our besties at the Queer Liberation Library, a lot of folks often ask, “Do you have a digital collection?” I'm sure, you know, it's important here to have an accessible collection, to have audiobooks, to have a digital collection. And the Queer Liberation Library is, I would say, a parallel, but also incredibly different organization because that organization is based all around the country, and they are exclusively digital. And they're up and running, you could go right now to – I don't know, it's like queerliberationLibrary.com or something like that – and you could sign up for a membership and get access to digital copies of books and audiobooks. And all that is to say there was a moment where we were like, we could spend a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of money on having audiobooks, or we could say, “These are our partners. They're the best. They're amazing. And if you want audiobooks that are queer, go. They will also cost you $0, and they are delightful partners, and they've sort of been on this library-building journey for a long time.”

SARA: Well, that's great, and thank you for naming them, too, for our listeners, to be able to go and check them out. You know, as you're talking about the aesthetic and the feeling of a library, and those memories that so many of us carry about visiting libraries as young people with our  schools or after-school programs. And then also, coupled with this time where we are in, where books and content are being questioned and banned and shelved. And I'm just trying to imagine the feeling of what it will be like to walk into a space where there are thousands of books that are only about queer themes, topics, and authors, and not two shelves in what might be your typical mid-sized town library. I'm sure Boston has a few more shelves than that. But here in my city, it's a few shelves, and that's great, that's a lot given who we are. But just the feeling of just being surrounded by that much content that is curated just for that experience is a pretty extraordinary vision.

JAKE: Well, thanks. And I would also just add, I think it has been such an eye-opening experience  even for me, a person who was like, “Uh, I know all the queer books. Like, I know them all. I've been along for the ride. I know all the books, I've read all the good ones. Avoid this one, re, re, re.” And then I get into our, we have a weekly – we have a lot of, as I said, we have a lot of avenues for being in community with one another. We have a weekly sort of,  we call it our Monday meeting every Monday that we meet and talk about all things library. We have a big Discord server where folks talk about work, but also about books and life and all sorts of things. But I feel like I very, very quickly realized that I don't know anything. Like I don't even know a third of the queer books that are out there. I know my very specific niche of I particularly love queer young adult, like I feel like I have a whole thing about I think adults should be reading young adult fiction because it heals the child inside of you, blabaty, blah, blah, blah. But more importantly, just to say that there are so many queer books out there. And that vastness of story and that vastness of possibility, it’s just – I don't know, as a student of lifelong learning I think I cannot recommend expanding your horizons enough.

SARA: Do you have a couple recommendations of, perhaps, books you love, but also ones you've discovered along the way?

JAKE: That's a great question.

SARA: Like, if I were going ask you, what is your favorite recommendation for queer youth looking for a really good book. Where would you send them?

JAKE: Oh my god. Okay. That's so hard. I'm going to give you,  I'm just going do the shortest version of a handful of them. 

SARA: Great.

JAKE: I really cannot recommend enough The Magic Fish by Trung le Nguyen who so generously came to one of our book clubs early on and was like, “I just want to show up when they're talking about my book.”  And we were like, “We all love you!” The Magic Fish, absolutely incredible. For middle grade readers, I really, really love and cried a lot at Thanks a Lot, Universe by Chad Lucas. Obviously the Heartstopper books are incredible. I wouldn't be doing my early-queer-reader self justice, if I didn't shout out Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin and How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones. And then this one's like, this is very personal and silly. Two things. One, I have feelings about the Love, Simon movie. I feel like a lot of people have feelings about the Love, Simon movie. But the Love, Simon book, I read it like, picked it up at 11.30 PM when I was, I don't know, I must have been like 22 or something whenever it came out and I read it in 4 hours. I thought I was going to read a page and fall asleep. So I just think what Becky Albertalli did with that book, it's stunning, and it's gorgeous.And I just want to give a shout out to an ally who had a really important role in my life which is – I was a devoted, devoted, and remained a devoted Lightning Thief, Percy Jackson, Rick Riordan reader – and the moment in The House of Hades where a character comes out, was very, very important and moving and meaningful to me not only because it was like, “Oh my gosh, there's queerness, which he has sort of really continued to explore in his work ever since that publication. But what was really, really, what I really loved about that moment in The House of Hades is that he points to a lot of places in previous books around that time where he sort of flagged that this was a queer character. And it was a moment for me of putting your gay character into a book doesn't have to be an afterthought. And in fact, for some people, it actually isn't. That's, what a beautiful thing. So shout out to the House of Hades by Rick Riordan.  

SARA: I know Rick Riordan is a fan, is beloved by many, many of the queer beloveds in my life but just so many people generally speaking. So it's really great to know that authors like that are also being thoughtful and intentional about including a diversity of experience and characters in their books. You know, it's interesting, we had Brian Selznick on the podcast recently, who is the author of, among other things, The Invention of Hugo Cabre, but I was asking him about queerness in his books. And he said he never really thought about it until somebody asked him about it. Like, up until one of his more recent books, his books weren't particularly obvious queer themes in them. And he said, “But, you know, then when I had a friend who was like, hey, Brian, of course they're queer books! And they're reflective of your bringing this experience, your own experience, into them. How could they not be?” But we just talked about how, even queer authors who aren't maybe intentionally creating what we might think as obvious queer worlds, often are writing about experiences of feeling of finding belonging and figuring out who they are, and feeling outcast, and all of that, which are just sort of deeply inspiring themes to queer folks. So it's just interesting to just think through all of those possibilities in terms of what makes a queer book.

 JAKE: Yeah, and I think it's really interesting I had someone early on in the process – when the library wasn't really a fully formed idea, or it was maybe a year old –  who is a straight, cisgender woman. And she was basically, like, “Well, could I go there? Like, would I be allowed in?”  And I was like, “I don't know. Are you going to be an asshole?” And she was like, “Well, no.” And I was like, “Shh, then come in! I don't care! We're not in the business of excluding people here.” We have some thoughtful considerations, for example, that we've built around curating our collection. We have a very clear curatorial policy. But broadly, I often say – I'm going to get in trouble, maybe, with my library curation team – but it doesn't matter. I always say, like, it's queer and trans authors or it's queer and trans characters or content. Or we also include a good handful of books that I think you would describe as books that we think are important for queer and trans people to have more centralized, thoughtful access to. So there's a lot of books in there about racial justice, and about other sort of social justice related issues, about disability. It's not specifically a queer book or a queer author, but it is in that sort of pantheon of thinking about how to make the world a more inclusive and warm and welcoming place. And why would we say this book doesn't belong. It's a very different thing than someone being like, “Well, I think Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens should be in there.” And I'm like, “Okay, what's the case? Make the case to me.” Anyway, again, I'm going to get in trouble with my library team, but . . .

SARA: Oh, I hope not.

JAKE: . . . that openness is really important to us.

SARA: It does make me curious, you've said you've created for yourselves, and I bet that was an interesting evolution to start to learn, “Oh, well, what is our curatorial lane? How are we going to say yes and no to books?” Have you ever had those make-me-the-case conversations as the team? I'm going to give you a bad answer, which is that the answer is probably yes. But the great gift of the library is that I haven't been involved in any of them. We have a team. We have a whole team of people. We have a lot of teams, and they meet all the time. But our collections team has been, there's 80-plus people in some way, tagged just in the collections team, who have in some way  plugged in at some point. And what's crazy is we have people who are current library sciences students. We have people who are current school librarians or public librarians. We have people who are catalog, professional catalogers, and have been doing this for 20, 30, 40 years. The range is really wide. And they come together. And they have 6 different sub-teams within the collections team. And they talk about things that I don't understand. So the answer is almost certainly absolutely yes. When I… I'm laughing because this is so absurd, but when I started the library with my three friends, I think I opened a Google spreadsheet and I called it “The Book Map”. And it was all the books that I thought maybe should be in our library. And I, like, you know, I scraped the Lambda Literary winners for the last 5 years, and the Boston Public Library had a list of the top 25 queer books, or whatever. And I was like, “This'll be enough.” And now I mean, I can't show our listeners this. But, like, the spreadsheets are bananas. There are so many complex considerations that are being asked of every book. It's really special. And I don't have anything to do with it.

SARA: That's awesome. Well, it has me curious, how are you constructed? You have a collections team, what other teams do you have that are working on the project? What is behind the scenes?

JAKE: I'm so glad you asked. This is my favorite question to answer. So, we have a structure that is, we used to call it non-hierarchical. That's not the most accurate word anymore. Just because we've sort of moved towards language that's like shared leadership or collective leadership. But essentially, the way that we exist is that we have 6 different working teams. The 6 teams are Collections, Communications, Community, Programming, Operations, and Fundraising. Those 6 teams each have 1 to 2, we call them “Q teams” because we are silly. We call them “Q teams”. Each one has one to two Q-Team leads and those Q-Team leads sort of track what's going on in those teams. We also have a leadership team, which is comprised of a handful of folks who have director-level positions, but we always are sort of very clear when we talk about how the organization is structured, that it's not a top-down organization by any means. The function of the leadership team is to support the Q Team leads to do their work in a way that is sustainable and feels good for all involved, and to sort of mediate or make larger bird's-eye picture, bird's-eye view decisions about the organization. And then we have an incredible board who sort of exists in the traditional nonprofit board space,  where they are some of the most wonderful folks I've ever met. But they're sort of at a bit of a remove by design, so that they can make some of the bigger, harder decisions about finances, or this or that. The other thing I would just add is that within the work of those six teams, everyone’s like, “So what do you do?” And I'm like, “Okay, well you've been to a library? What's in a library? There's books, and there's chairs, and there's tables, and there's shelves, and there's a bathroom that has to work. And there are staff who need to be paid. And so pretty much anything that you can imagine that is needed to make a library possible. We've got someone thinking about it, at the very least, and working on it probably. So the collections team thinks about all the books, all the ways that books circulate. They're developing a circulation policy, a catalog that exists, but I can't show it to you because it's a secret. We have, which I also think will be a really wonderful resource someday, because it'll be a publicly available catalog that folks can just search. And then we have teams that are working to build programs and deploy those programs out in the world. We have a whole team that is responsible for connecting us with community partners and finding ways to just sort of engage the communities all around us at every scale. I used to have, I mean, I truly used to have a spreadsheet of like 400 queer organizations in Boston. And we would one by one, email them and say, “Hi, we're the QT Library. We think you're awesome. Do you want to get coffee?” Because I think if I had to like, besides the books, say what the thing is, we are really seeking to be a real important hub for queer life and joy in Boston. And so, it's actually the work for us to have coffee with the Queer Chess Group. Say, “Hey, Queer Chess Group, what are the challenges that you face? Like, what would be helpful to you?” And then we can be like, “Oh my god, we talked to the queer Muslims of Boston, and they're having similar challenges. And it would be so great if you two talked to each other.” Or, “Oh my gosh, you have a woodworker on your team? How incredible would it be if we commissioned them to build a bookshelf for our books in our library that's going to exist someday?” We're sort of playing this endless game of community coordination and it's pretty incredible.

SARA: That does sound incredible. I appreciate that thoughtfulness around the organizing structure in trying to really think about how to do it differently and not sort of replicate the structures and hierarchies that we have seen do a lot of harm in our society. And so to want to create that community and serve the queer community, and then also be really clear, like we can't do it the same way so we need to do it differently is really inspiring. And the story of connecting with other groups is also like, what a beautiful roadmap just to building community in any community. Because I think, I was going to ask you one question is, as people are listening to you and saying, “Oh, we need that where I live.” What advice would you have to offer them?

JAKE: Oh, wow. OK. Well, a couple of thoughts. The first is that I always say that we essentially have lied a library into existence, which sounds bad. But I promise it's not, because here's what happened. I was like, “Hmm, we should have a library.” And then I went to someone, and I was like, “We're building a library. It's going to be incredible.” And that person was like “Here, oh my God, I have this book, like, this is my favorite queer book, I would love for this to be in the library.” And we would be like, “Okay, can we have your copy?” And they would be like, “Yes, absolutely, I'll buy a copy for the library.” And then you go to the second person, and the second person's like, “What are you doing?” And you're like, “I'm building a library. And we have one book. And we're ready for a second.” It's just lying. But it's really good, fun, important lying, and it's lying with a purpose. I know that's a silly way to frame.

SARA: You are speaking into the future. I'm going to create different language.

JAKE: There it is. We are speaking something into existence. That's truly what it is. We're speaking something into existence. And it requires confidence that you are doing good. But it just requires that you do. I think that's one of the things that I found, there's a lot of people who feel really stuck. There's a lot of people who feel really, like it's really bad, I can't do anything. And I think, and even more so, they're like, a big thing would be really hard, because I couldn't get it perfect, and therefore why even bother trying? And we have not been perfect. But we just have been like, we have a goal, and we're trying to get there. And that, like, sheer force of determination I don't want to say the downside, but the downside is that it's slow. It's a slow process, and it takes – every meeting takes a little longer than you want it to. And there's not a lot of room for “urgency” urgency. But I think this is work that is the work of a lifetime, and I also think, even if fascism was defeated and we were in a world where that sort of level of urgency wasn't so present, like, I would still want this to exist. So, I have to even while getting horrifying Instagram notifications that someone I know has been kidnapped by ICE. While that is happening, and that feels so top of mind and urgent, it is still also just as important to be building out for the world that you want to live in. And I want to live in a world with queer libraries and all kinds of libraries.

SARA: That's beautiful.

JAKE: And the other thing I would just say is, one, it is my dream to have, like, build a toolkit. I'm speaking that into existence. My dream, people ask like, “Oh, do you want to scale up in Boston once you have a space, and you'll have, like, an even bigger space?” I'm like, “No. I want to have a toolkit where we say, these are all the things that we did.” So that's coming someday, this toolkit that we would then use to have QT libraries in cities all around the country. But in lieu of that, I will just say that, if you couldn't tell from how much I've been giggling on this call, I love talking about this so much. So we have a general inbox, hello@qtlibrary.org. If you email that inbox, someone will get back to you and be like, “Uh, I would love to tell you all about how we did this.” So, please reach out. We might take a moment to respond but there are people who are already doing this work who are so excited to talk about it, and would do so any chance they got.

SARA: Well, it's really clear by talking to you in terms of how you have brought this vision to life and continue to bring it to life that doing so joyfully and delightfully, and the confidence. I mean, that's what you said, the confidence is, like this is what we're doing as if it already exists, rather than wondering is it possible, or how could we, or am I biting off more than I can chew? It just sort of sounds like you've just invited people to come along on this journey that you have said, “This is possible, let's do it.”

JAKE: And I would say also, just like, it’s also about really reading the room and not being afraid to pause. I mean, we would have meetings where we were like, “This is so hopeless, and we're all like being slammed by our day jobs, and we're just so tired.” And I would be like, “Okay, so this meeting where we were supposed to talk about website logistics, and the logo, and blah blah blah. What if we just talked about our lives a little bit?” Or, like, in my most Jake Stepansky moments, I would, like, pull out a guitar and sing a song, because I'm so ridiculous. But it's things like that. Or we had one – several of our original founding members are poets, and so they would, every once in a while, they would be like, “I wrote a poem, can I read it?” And we would be like, “Yes, please. We need this poem.”  It has to be a process that you want to keep coming back to.

SARA: Yeah, and tending to your own lives is also as important as tending to the vision. And maybe is the same as, in a way, really. And that's, I think you've already spoken to it, a beautiful example of what this moment that we're in really asks of us is to remember the big, audacious goal, and also to remember our own small worlds and where we can have impact on ourselves and others. And that all of it matters together. They're not in competition with each other, let's say.

JAKE: Amen.

SARA: When you imagine the future for queer and trans youth? Let's imagine the library is thriving.

JAKE: Thank God.

SARA: The library is thriving, let's just put that in the future. But when you imagine the future for queer and trans youth, for all of us who love them, what gives you hope? What do you imagine? Speak that future into being.

JAKE: I think, I mean, I'm gonna get really personal because I don't really know how to do anything else. But I think one thing that was really true about my coming-out process was that it was, there was so much secrecy. There was so much of a feeling of, if you let this slip about yourself there will be consequences and your life will never be the same and it will turn on its head. And, like, yes, that is shame. I can talk at length about how there's shame in that. But really it was the sense of, I mean, I even remember things like having to limit who saw my Facebook posts even if I just was posting something innocuous because someone might think it would be gay. And they would make an assumption. And they would say it in a public way. And then my parents would find out, and this, and that, and the other. And so when I imagine a rich and resplendent future for queer and trans people. It's one where you don't feel like you have to hide. And I'm going to let that be poetic and be done.

SARA: That’s great. And with a QT library in every city.

JAKE: And with a QT, of course. And with –  I don't know, this is my other thing I'm going to get on my soapbox for 30 seconds –  which is just to say that the other thing that I always say, kind of related and kind of unrelated to the library is, to solve any problem, you have to solve every problem. And what I mean by that is, yeah when you're having trouble getting people to show up for a weekly meeting for the library. Right? That's a problem. Yeah, you can be like, alright, I'm going to fix the meeting structure, or I'm going to send out a better invitation. That''s important, but also, in theory, people aren't showing up because they're tired, because they work hard at a job that pays them not enough. And they have to take care of their parent who is sick and needs, and they're spending all their days, like, on the phone with health insurance companies that are fighting them. And also the cost of cereal is really high. There's so many interlocking problems that make it hard for someone to show up at a weekly library organizing check-in meeting. And so my vision for the future is one where the problems have all been solved because I can't just be like, and the gay people are happy.

SARA: Right.

JAKE: Because that doesn't solve it. Do you know what I mean? Like, all the problems still are there until they're not

SARA: Yeah, wow. That is a really beautiful example, and one that I can really hear that you all are trying to live into, and live out in the work that you're doing creating the library to remember all of that, which is, it's so beautiful, and so important. Do you have a timeline for the physical space of your library?

JAKE: I'm hesitant to say it, because everything is about speaking it into existence. And also, I don't know if you know, but it's really rough out there. And nothing is consistent. And everyone is tired. So every time we're like, this is the date, then the universe happens. I would love –  this is just speaking from the I – to open a pop-up version of the space by which I mean a sort of scaled-back version of what the ultimate dream space is which we would live in for about 6 to 8 months as a sort of proof of concept, a thing to make it really visible and tangible, and also, frankly, landlords look at our bank account, and they're like, “We would totally host you for 6 to 8 months. We don't know how we feel about giving you the minimum lease, which is a 5-year lease.” Because we have money, but we don't have boatloads and boatloads of money. All of  that is to say that I would love to open in Pride season time next year in a pop-up space. And I think it's doable. Do I think it's, like, 100%? No. But I have, I don't know, as it gets worse, I also feel more I know exactly what I'm doing. And I just have to keep pressing on, and they start to balance each other out a little bit. So, a year.

SARA: That sounds like a great, hopeful  vision for what could be, and what  perfect timing . . .

JAKE: Right.

SARA: . . . to debut something for the public. Are there any other dreams or projects on the horizon that you all are excited about or looking forward to?

JAKE: Oh my gosh. I think the big one, of course, is opening in some sort of a physical space. If only because everything we've done has been like breadcrumbing, right? Like this year, we're doing a slightly bigger end-of-year gathering than we did last year, and we're hoping to raise a little bit more money than we did last year. And actually, this was a huge year of book. We got, like 2,000 books or something this year of our three. But, I mean, things that come to mind, we're starting a project at some point to add zines to our collection because queer people love zines And that is the number one thing we hear, and so we have a sort of that's an evolving endeavor. I think that's, the short answer is, like, we're working on the thing that we are working on and that is opening in a physical space. And I think we're just continuing to come into more clarity about who we are as an organization and how that manifests. So like, we threw our own pride event this year. That was a really important thing, and we sort of placed it alongside Pride as an alternative that was a little bit more sensory-friendly and relaxing, and, like, not overwhelming like Pride is. But it was still a beautiful outdoor picnic celebration. Like, coming to that, as opposed to what we had previously done, which was just go to Pride and be a part of Pride. Yeah, I'd say that's really important. I'm really excited to start compensating some people for their labor, if only because I think we're approaching a place where that feels sustainably doable, and from the start valuing our people as much as we're able to has been core to the work. And we haven't been in a place financially where we can do so, and I think we're, like, moving towards that. And I want to go viral on TikTok, just once.

SARA: That's a great vision.

JAKE: That’s all.

SARA: We'll be ready. We'll be ready for the viral TikTok, for sharing it widely.

JAKE: That's right.

SARA: I'm just so delighted to know that you exist and that this vision is out there. There is something about it that just also, in speaking to you, I see it on your face, just feels really joyful  in a moment in time where we really need some joy, and where things can feel really despairing. And so I can't wait to hear more and see more about how the future unfolds for the library. You all, our listeners, can find out more about QT Library on their website, and we'll make sure to put a link to the website in the show notes where you can find out how you can donate and some of their Book clubs, which are virtual, so there's a lot of opportunities for participation across the country or across the globe, wherever you're located. Thank you so much for your time, Jake. But before I let you go, we have some final questions that we like to ask all of our guests at the end of every episode. 

JAKE: Okay, hit me. Let's do it.

SARA: So the first question has to do with the Mama Dragon's name, which came out of a sense of fierceness, and this idea of fierce protection for our queer kids. So we like to ask our guests, other than what we've just spent the last hour talking about, what is it you are fierce about?

JAKE: Oh my God. Okay. Well, I have a deep and profound love for cooking, and Samin Nosrat in particular. I really am a deep lover of and champion of music and theater. I work in theater as my day job, that's a whole other can of worms. I listen to music religiously. I fiercely champion  Heather Christian, who is an artist and writer who I adore, and who just won a MacArthur Genius Grant today.

SARA: Wow.

JAKE: I had one that was amazing, and I can't remember it. Fiercely being the person that you – Oh, I remember what I was gonna say. I got it. And the final thing that I'm fierce about is I have this strange side job that I do every once in a while. I essentially am sort of like if you combined the Queer Eye team with Marie Kondo. And so I go into people's homes and I sit with them, and I help them make decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, and how to make decisions that allow them to live their best life. And one thing that I am really fierce about that I gently encourage all of my clients is it's really important to live your life instead of letting your life live you. And that's all I have to say on the matter.

SARA: That’s lovely. The last question, and there might be some overlap here. It sounds like you named some things already. But the last question we like to ask is, what is bringing you joy right now in these times in which we have both named it is so important to find and connect with the joy in our lives?

JAKE: The easy answer is my partner of many years, who has been a rock, even though we've both been, it's such a strange thing to be both, nose to the grindstone while also trying to build a life together that is outside of capitalism and outside of the grind. But I’d said my partner gives me tremendous joy.  And I'm doing –  this is really, I think indicative of who I am as a person. I have been doing this project for the last 2 years where I've been listening in chronological download order to every song that I have ever liked or favorited on Apple Music since I was 12, or whenever I got my iTunes account. Essentially tracing my life through the songs that I liked and just listening to them and, like, reliving them. So I'm currently in June 2020 and listening to the songs that I was listening to at the height of the toughness of the pandemic. So, that project has been really giving me a ton of joy.

SARA: That sounds delightful and fascinating, that retrospective. Well, Jake, thanks so much for your time today and the conversation. But more importantly, thank you for this beautiful vision that you are stewarding in the world. And I personally can't wait to come to Boston and see it.

JAKE: Well, thanks, we can't wait to have you, and thanks for all that you do. I know I told you that I cried when I heard about all of your work. But it's very real, and I'm just so, so grateful that folks like the Mama Dragons are out there fighting for queer and trans youth, because it is cliche to say more important now than ever, but my god, is it more important now than ever.

SARA: Thank you. We appreciate that. Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. Did you know that Mama Dragons offers an eLearning program called Parachute? This is an interactive learning platform where you can learn more about how to affirm, support, and celebrate the LGBTQ+ people in your life. Learn more at Mamadragons.org/parachute or find the link in the episode show notes under links.

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