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Building community and celebrating queer joy: author Kimm Topping and poet Leah Juliett
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Author Kimm Topping, Ed.M., is an educator, writer, and historian dedicated to preserving LGBTQIA+ history. Their first book, Generation Queer, is a nonfiction YA highlighting the stories of LGBTQIA+ youth activists (and was published and edited by Stacy Whitman, who is also the owner of The Curious Cat Bookshop!).
As founder of Lavender Education, a national program promoting LGBTQIA+ history and youth leadership, Kimm leads impactful workshops, professional development, and historic walking tours.
In this episode of The Curious Cat Bookshop Podcast, Kimm was in conversation with Leah Juliett (they/them), an award-winning writer, speaker, LGBTQ+ advocate, and organizer from Connecticut. Technical note: there are some audio issues in this episode; watching with the captions on is recommended.
Buy Generation Queer from us at https://curiouscatbookshop.com/book/9781643795201.
Kimm lectures at Harvard Graduate School of Education, specializing in gender, sexuality, and equity. Their historic tours of Cambridge and New York City spotlight queer and feminist activism from the 1970s to the 1990s, and their widely recognized publication series, Mapping Feminist Cambridge, is available through the Cambridge Women’s Commission. Their work has been recognized by the 2025 Curve Power List and the 2023 Inaugural In-Service Award from the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition.
Leah is a survivor of image-based sexual abuse and child sexual exploitation, and a lived experience expert on technology-facilitated gender-based violence. In 2016, Leah founded and led The March Against Revenge Porn across the Brooklyn Bridge, which garnered global support and moved the needle on cultural conversations around internet abuse.
In 2023, Leah testified before the White House Gender Policy Council on recommendations to support survivors of image-based sexual abuse, which helped lead to the federal funding of a national hotline for victims. In early 2024, Leah spoke at the United States Senate following the landmark Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Big Tech accountability. For Leah's work, they have been named a L'Oreal Paris Woman of Worth, Glamour College Woman of the Year, Advocate Champion of Pride, George H.W. Bush Point of Light, and GLAAD Rising Star. Leah’s writing and work leading social justice movements has been featured globally on CNN, BBC, NBC, TED, Teen Vogue, Bloomberg, MSNBC, and Pink News.
Leah champions LGBTQ-inclusive Internet protections and survivor-centered justice.
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Chapters
1. Why LGBTQ+ spaces are so important (00:00:00)
2. Stacy Whitman introduces the episode (00:00:35)
3. Welcome and introductions (00:02:03)
4. Kimm Topping reads from Generation Queer (including Stacy reading the missing bits that got cut off) (00:03:10)
5. Leah discusses Generation Queer's importance in documentation of young LGBTQ+ people's history (00:06:21)
6. Kimm discusses "possibility models" and their own experiences that led to creating this book, starting the first GSA in their school (00:06:39)
7. Leah's similar experiences (00:08:22)
8. Centering queer & trans youth as complex people; how Kimm approach ed building trust in the storytelling process (00:08:51)
9. Balancing challenges and hope (00:11:48)
10. What does the phrase "generation queer" mean, especially in the context of who has come before this generation? (00:12:25)
11. Building collective liberation together (00:15:03)
12. Humanizing an "advocate"/love and joy (00:15:47)
13. Responsibility of the author (00:19:07)
14. Deciding which historical stories to share (00:21:59)
15. Conversations that Kimm hopes will be sparked by this book (00:27:05)
16. Rapid-fire questions (00:31:07)
17. More about Leah Juliett's book of poetry (00:36:15)
18. What is sustaining to these activists/writers in their work (00:36:50)
19. Design and illustration choices in the book by Sheila Smallwood (designer) and Anshika Khullar (illustrator) (00:38:18)
20. A snapshot in time (00:39:39)
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