The Power of a Shared Story

UNC Asheville Faculty, Students and Alumni Participate in Queer Girl Literary Reading

By UNC Asheville

November 11^th, 2021

Something special happens when you share your story with others.

That’s what the UNC Asheville students, alumni, and faculty who presented their work in the Queer Girls Literary Reading have discovered. Professor of English Lori Horvitz, who founded the Queer Girls Literary Reading in 2009, invites students and alumni to join other local authors in sharing their writing at the annual event, which this year took place at Rabbit Rabbit in downtown Asheville.

“It's really important for queer women to share their stories, and to feel seen and represented, and for other queer women to see them,” said Horvitz. While Asheville and UNC Asheville are generally recognized as queer friendly places, Horvitz said, she still has students who identify as queer, and struggle with accepting their identity.

“Events like the Queer Girls Literary Reading shows students that, hey, you can be happy, you can be creative, you can be accepted and empowered.”

Makayla Towns, a junior mass communication major and creative writing minor, was so excited to be offered the opportunity to present her work to the community in the Queer Girls Literary Reading that she immediately said yes, even though she was nervous to share her work in front of others.

“The week before I was just so nervous and had an awful time of practicing and preparing for it,” Towns said. “But once I got there, everyone was very supportive and sweet.”

“When she got into it, she forgot about the crowd and forgot about being nervous,” Horvitz said. “Her last poem was amazing, and it had the whole crowd just enraptured.”

Arden Stockdell-Giesler, a senior creative writing major and editor of UNC Asheville’s Headwaters creative journal, was also invited to join the reading. Like Towns, Stockdell-Giesler was excited to share her work with a community of queer women. It meant a lot to her, she said, to have “a space dedicated specifically to queer women who write, and it's a safe space. And it's not like, ‘Oh and we throw in one queer woman to be tokenized.’”

Instead, Stockdell-Giesler said, the event put queer women in the front and center. “To be able to have a space where [queerness] can be celebrated and also normalized, and seen as just a way of life, and getting to experience art that resonates with you—it’s rare.”

Both students said they benefited from the opportunity to share their stories with older adults in the queer community, and to learn from their diverse experiences.

“I hadn't seen so many queer woman, especially older queer women, in one place before. So that was very cool,” Towns said. “I think it's just the fact that I knew that they would understand the poems, even if we had different experiences. There's still that feeling of what it's like to be a queer woman that I think every queer woman experiences. I think that made the poems much easier to share.”

“It was so cool to hear everybody's different voices that were so present in the writing,” Stockdell-Giesler said. “There were these different experiences that all varied, obviously, because different human beings have different experiences. But they all had the one thread of commonality of queer identities and navigating that. It emotional seeing so many queer people in one space.”

Arden Stockdell-Giesler. Photo by Kristin Shelly.

Mandy Gardner, who graduated from UNC Asheville in 2012, has regularly participated in the Queer Girls Literary Reading since the inaugural event in 2009.

“It was really an honor to be able to actually write about my real experience, and the ways that my perspective shaped by my identity as a queer person, and to read in front of an audience,” said Gardner, who joined UNC Asheville as a non-traditional student after attending the University’s Biannual Queer Conference, and seeing the administration’s support of the event. Now a senior content writer and brand journalist at JB Media Group in Asheville, Gardner said she’s appreciated sharing her work with others who are at various stages in their own writing development, from first-time readers to published authors. It’s been especially meaningful to share her work with other queer women who relate to her own experiences that she addresses in her writing.

“You know, growing up queer in the ‘80s and ‘90s in South Carolina, I just thought that I was going die alone. There was no positive cultural representation that I had seen of what it meant to be a queer woman,” Gardner said. Her favorite experience at the Queer Girls Literary Reading was sharing an essay about her disastrous first crush in high school—a painful experience at the time, but one she was able to find the joy and humor in through writing, and through sharing with the Queer Girls Literary Reading.

“Getting to read that in front of a crowd of queer people and allies, and to share in the laughter around that moment and also the joy, that was just one of the fondest performance experiences I've had in my life.”

Gardner wasn’t sure what career her creative writing major at UNC Asheville would lead to, but a campus career fair just before graduation connected her to JB Media Group, where she landed an internship. Now, in addition to her own writing, her professional writing includes everything from blog posts for clients about impact investing to research papers and website landing pages.

“I am passionate about liberal arts education now, because you do have that ability to see across disciplines, and come up with innovative ideas based on that,” Gardner said. “And that that's very much how my brain works, making those leaps connecting things and creating something new out of it.”

Horvitz said she sees a great benefit to bringing students, alumni, and other members of the community together for these readings—especially for her students. "We have fantastic students at UNCA, and I’m grateful for their participation in this event," Horvitz said. "UNCA has a strong and supportive queer community, and students are finding it here."

Button Label

Finding Her Place in the Big Cheese

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

Read

MAHEC Internship Prepares UNC Asheville Students for Careers in Medicine

The Power of a Shared Story

UNC Asheville Faculty, Students and Alumni Participate in Queer Girl Literary Reading

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

January 26^th, 2026

Senior Chemistry Student Adam Wold Powers Meaningful Change in Sustainability Research

December 2^nd, 2025

An epic journey from UNC Asheville to the prestigious Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program

2025 Alumni-Owned Holiday Gift Guide

How UNC Asheville helped Shannon Herlihy transform a passion for food systems, health, and justice into a career supporting small-scale cheesemakers around the world

January 26th, 2026

Senior Chemistry Student Adam Wold Powers Meaningful Change in Sustainability Research

December 2nd, 2025

An epic journey from UNC Asheville to the prestigious Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program

2025 Alumni-Owned Holiday Gift Guide

January 26^th, 2026

December 2^nd, 2025