The Faulkner Morgan Archive and The History Project invite you to explore the Kentucky-Massachusetts LGBTQ connection with CD Collins.

CD Collins is a writer and spoken-word artist. She is the frontwoman and songwriter/storyteller in the band Rockabetty, a group influenced by country, bluegrass, blues, and jazz. This event will include a performance piece by CD, a joint interview with Joan Ilacqua, Executive Director of The History Project, and Jon Coleman, Executive Director of Faulkner Morgan Archive, and an opportunity for the audience to ask questions.

RSVP on Eventbrite, link to the Zoom will be sent out the day of the event. Email info@historyproject.org with any questions. For security purposes, Zoom meetings require an authenticated Zoom account, so please be sure to register with Zoom prior to the event.

This event is free and open to the public, any donations made will be split between The History Project and the Faulkner Morgan Archive. Thank you for your support!

About the Speakers and Organizations

CD Collins has published a collection of short stories, Blue Land (Polyho Press), a collection of poetry, Self Portrait With Severed Head (Ibbetson Street Press), and a novel, Afterheat (Empty City Press). As one of the originators of the resurgence of spoken word with live music in Boston in the early 1990’s, Collins’ work is represented in five compact discs. Her first album, Kentucky Stories, won Best Spoken-Word album at the Boston Poetry Awards.

She holds a B.A. and an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Kentucky, where she studied with author and environmentalist Wendell Berry. She pursued graduate studies at Harvard University Extension in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she studied under author Pamela Painter, who encouraged her to submit her stories for publication and became Collins’ mentor.

Collins’ current projects include a limited-edition book centered on her hometown, Mt. Sterling, Kentucky, titled The Big Little Town, and her sixth compact disc of spoken word with music, titled Camargo Rain.

The Faulkner Morgan Archive collects, preserves, and promotes the lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer history of Kentucky. Founded in 2014, we are dedicated to telling Kentucky’s LGBTQ story. In a few short years, we have shared this story from New York to San Francisco and throughout the Commonwealth, co-sponsoring Kentucky’s first historic marker to LGBTQ history, mounting exhibits, and giving frequent talks.

The Faulkner Morgan Archive currently houses 15,000 items and more than 250 hours of recorded interviews. Our collections span 200 years of history, representing individuals, events, and institutions across Kentucky’s diverse LGBTQ spectrum, creating a rich resource for activists, scholars, artists, and museums.

The History Project: Documenting LGBTQ Boston is the only organization focused exclusively on documenting and preserving the history of New England’s LGBTQ communities and sharing that history with LGBTQ individuals, organizations, allies, and the public. Founded in 1980, The History Project maintains one of the largest independent LGBTQ archives in the nation, which includes more than 200 collections from organizations and individuals encompassing more than one million documents.

Collections range from the records of early Gay Liberation organizations and photographs of pre-Stonewall Boston to objects such as T-shirts and buttons and materials documenting the marriage equality movement. These documents and artifacts are processed and made available to researchers by a dedicated group of volunteers from the community who donate hundreds of hours of time annually to the organization.