Written by Elliott Johnston

Peter Vielehr is hosting a book club to strengthen the Fort Collins queer community.

Peter Vielehr, dressed as “Dixanne Harlot,” gets ready to host “Under The Covers,” a drag show held at Bas Bleu Theatre earlier this year. The show launched the Fortitude program, which is geared towards Northern Colorado gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning men.

The Fort Collins progressive community has some catching up to do when it comes to discussing queer issues. We can talk environmentalism, we can talk bikes, we can talk farmers markets while drinking home-brewed beer while riding a bike, but when it comes to GLBT issues, we don’t really talk. While non-profits like Lamda and Northern Colorado AIDS Project do important educational outreach in the community, Peter Vielehr, a Health Educator at NCAP and a facilitator of a new book group called Queer Reads, says that being queer-identified in Fort Collins isn’t so easy to be, even in our more (supposedly) open-minded settings.  

Queer Reads, which meets on the first Wednesday of each month at the Lamda Community Center, is designed to get people talking. The first meeting was held at the beginning of March, where Written on The Body by Jeanette Winterson, an experimental text questioning gender boundaries, was analyzed.

Vielehr is selecting books and leading discussion for the first three sessions, and then the group will vote on what to read for the rest of the year.  Matter Daily recently spoke to Vielehr about why Queer Reads is important for Fort Collins, why the word queer is appropriate, and what allies can do to make the Fort Collins queer community feel more accepted.

Matter Daily: Talk about how Queer Reads got started.

Peter Vielehr: Yeah, so the book club was an offshoot of a few of us talking about what’s missing in our community, and stuff that we would want to do and be a apart of. A book club is exactly that, because there are not enough spaces in town to actually get together with other queer people and talk about queer issues. And not in a bar, which is where most of that happens. I really wanted to a place where you have intelligent discussions around reading, because that’s something that a lot of us like to do.