Pride in Horror Month Closing Message

30 Jun

Well, here we are at the end of another Pride Month. We hope you’ve enjoyed the content this year, and hope you’ve found time to be part of Pride this month in any way, shape or form, whether that’s as an ally or part of the community, attending your local Pride or other events, or maybe just supporting others where you could. For me, I went to watch the parade in Cardiff, found what we thought was a good spot, got shoved out of the way by the rest of the crowd, could barely move, and ended up missing a lot of it! But, on the plus side, I did go to Big Queer Picnic, and that was great fun. (And the photos I did see from the parade itself made it look bloody amazing!) Definitely hoping I can return to that next year, and I feel so incredibly lucky we have an event like that to counter the more corporate, big Pride event.

On a personal note, tomorrow Sand, Salt, Blood is out in the world. You can buy it direct from Sliced Up Press or have a look at their website for other places you can pick up a copy. I'm so proud of this - it's raising money for RNLI, and although I didn't set out to make a specifically queer anthology, it has ended up kind of queer.

I don’t think my position in general has changed since my Welcome message at the start of the month, but I want to reiterate it’s important to keep supporting each other, throughout the whole year. Keep uplifting and boosting one another. Keep the spirit of Pride going. That said, I mentioned in my message that it wasn’t too late to send us anything you wanted showcased, and a reminder that it’s never too late to send us anything you want showcased. We’re dedicated to promoting margenalised voices year round, so if you have something you want to share, please go ahead and do so!

We need support, too. Hosting fees have increased, and with, well, everything right now, we can’t afford the fees on our own as we have done in previous years. If you want to help us, please consider donating to our Ko-Fi or buying a ticket for our first event, which will take place tomorrow. And if you can’t donate/buy tickets for any reason (or, of course, simply don’t want to!), we’d really appreciate any boosts on our Tweets about it.

There are other ways you can get involved with us, too. We’re always open to new contributors and you can read more about that under Join Our Team. We also have a special contributors list, which we use to keep friends of DHR updated on our events, general goings on with the website, and more. Just reach out if you’d be interested in being added. You can also appear as a guest on Esbat: A Bookish Podcast, and we have a handy form set up for anyone who is interested.

And of course, if you have an idea for an article, listacle, have a review you want hosted/reprinted on the site, or even want help with promo/a spotlight feature, our door is always and forever open. For anything DHR related, you can contact me (Elle) at dhrfeatures(at)gmail(dot)com. We love hearing from our readers, and we love hosting various features throughout the year.

With that said, have you seen some of the absolutely fantastic content we received this year for Pride? As a queer owned site with a majority queer team, it really warms our hearts when people reach out with various ideas for Pride, and May and June tend to be so busy for us! See below for a list of everything we hosted this year.

Remember, support LGBTQIA+ folks throughout the year. Read diversely, consume different content highlighting different voices, boost works you’ve enjoyed, and keep fighting. We’re a community, and despite the absolute bullshit we’re all facing (for some members of the community, pretty damn relentlessly!) we’re still here to uplift, help and support one another, in any way we can. So take care of yourself, and take care of one another.

Love,

Elle