A Celebration of Queer Love: A Guest Post by Hannah Murphy Winter and Billie Winter
Through incredible profiles and interviews paired with stunning photographs, Queer Power Couples is as much an exploration of queer love as it is a celebration. In the exclusive essay below, Hannah Murphy Winter and Billie Winter reveal their favorite fictional queer couples and explain the questions that led them to writing their book.
Hardcover $29.95
Queer Power Couples: On Love and Possibility
Queer Power Couples: On Love and Possibility
By
Hannah Murphy Winter
Photographer
Billie Winter
In Stock Online
Hardcover $29.95
“Emotionally packed, visual exploration of queer love”
—Queerty
“Emotionally packed, visual exploration of queer love”
—Queerty
In an interview with Mike Hadreas, the founder of the band Perfume Genius, he told me that he felt like there weren’t enough “maps” for what queer lives could look like. “It wasn’t just about being queer. It was about being queer and weird. Or queer and dramatic. Or queer and creative. Because if there was any map, it was ‘How to Assimilate.’ Or ‘How to Be Gay but Seem Straight.’”
The interview was for our book, Queer Power Couples: On Love and Possibility, a celebration of queer love, power, and excellence through 14 couples across industries, identities, and generations. In nearly every interview for the book, I asked couples what they thought of Mike’s metaphor—that queer people didn’t have enough “maps.” To my delight, everyone seemed to have their own version of the metaphor—like we’d all invented our own language before we were able to talk to one another. Heron Greenesmith, an LGBTQ policy expert, called it “remaking yourself in the dark.”
Everyone in our book helped create “maps” for the queer people that came after them, and in many cases, they created vibrant, queer characters in books, television, and film. So in honor of our book’s release, here are our favorite fictional queer couples, inspired by the work of the couples in the book:
- Morgan and Keltie from The Girl from the Sea by Molly Knox Ostertag
We all love queer, fantasy love story, and fifteen-year-old Morgan speaks to the baby, closeted kid inside all of us, finally meeting the person who drags you out of the closet. “I always thought that for stories to be interesting, the characters couldn’t get what they wanted,” Molly’s partner ND told us. “They had to be put through the ringer, and the payoff had to be at the very end.
And it had to be bittersweet. I just assumed that’s what made a compelling narrative, especially when it came to romance. And Molly has really changed my mind about that. Molly’s stories are always focused on the existence of characters. It’s creating drama out of the connections between people and their own inner life.”
- Netossa and Spinarella from Netflix’s She-Ra: Princesses of Power, created by ND Stevenson
Look, we all love a will-they-or-won’t-they romance, and main characters Adora and Catra gave us every ounce of that, and more. But we also love to see happy, settled-down queer romance — and that, in the She-Ra universe, is Netossa and Spinnerella. (Fun fact: ND is also the voice of Spinerrella.) “I do not like incorporating homophobia into the stories that I tell,” ND told us. “Stories about homophobia can quickly get very painful in a way that’s not always rewarding.” Instead, he tells more universal stories that evoke those same feelings—‟two people fighting for something that is not a given, something that other people don’t want for them or are trying actively to keep them away from.”
- Moose and the Sentient Train from The Terraformers by Annalee Newitz
As a non-binary writer and journalist Annalee Newitz is always looking for new ways to imagine gender and sexuality in their work, and in The Terraformers — which takes place millenia in our future — that includes Moose, the cat with human-level intelligence that works as an investigative journalist, and the sentient train that Moose falls in love with. “I really like to just always try to be taking it to the next step,” Annalee told us. “Now we have nonbinary identity. Now we can all be trans. All right, so when do we all get to be friends with moose? When do we get to have a conversation with the trees?”
- Emily Dickinson and Susan Dickinson
Okay I know Emily and Susan aren’t fictional, but hear me out. For those not in the know, Emily Dickinson had a long-time love affair with her sister-in-law, Susan — a romance that Martha Nell Smith discovered when she realized that many of Emily Dickinson’s letters had been doctors after her death to conceal the affair. “Everybody told me, ‘Don’t bother with her [sister-in-law].
She’s not important.’” Martha told us. “[But] I noticed that when she’s writing about Susan, there were eraser marks and cutouts of some words…And so that’s how I figured out that someone had come along and tried to erase it.” Since Martha’s discovery, Emily and Susan have starred in several incredible fictionalizations of their romance, including the Apple+ TV show, Dickinson, and Wild Nights with Emily, a film that directly credits Martha’s work for their script.