By A. Faulkner
What is your role in the GLBTRT?
Up to now, a silent member just happy to pay my membership fee and support the RT.
What does the GLBTRT mean to you?
Represents important voices in our profession + Stonewall Awards!
Are you involved in ALA in other ways?
2017 Newbery Committee (ALSC), member of YALSA and AASL
What professional work do you perform?
District School Library Media Specialist (K-12) in Middletown OH
What would you like to share about your personal life?
I’m a middle-aged, straight, Midwestern white woman who despises injustice.
What are you most proud of?
PFLAG Dayton (OH) named an award in my honor for my work with the Safe Schools and Rainbow Reading programs. I also received an Intellectual Freedom award from Ohio’s school librarian association (OELMA) for successfully defending a challenge against Todd Parr’s The Family Book.
Who inspires you?
My husband (also an educator and injustice fighter) and my students
What are your goals? (Professional and/or personal.)
ALL students will feel welcome and safe in my libraries. AND they will find stories and information that validate and challenge them.
What do you think (or predict) is the future of libraries?
Gathering places for thinkers.
In what direction would you like the GLBTRT to move in the future?
Not exactly sure about its past and present (except for the growing prominence of the Stonewall Awards and Rainbow lists), so I’ll pass on this one.
If you could be transported into the fictional world of any book, where would you go?
Wonderland, for technicolor absurdity that KNOWS it’s absurd
What would be the title of your autobiography?
Words are Worth It
If you could only choose one song to play every time you entered a room for the rest of your life, what would it be?
I love this question and have actually thought about this. Music is very mood-specific, but if I had to tattoo one to a dramatic entrance (not sure when that would be, but the song would be ready), it would be the opening 35 seconds of Rage Against the Machine’s “Bulls on Parade.” For daily use, “Simple Life,” by the Weepies or “Every Day is Exactly the Same,” by Nine Inch Nails.
If you could have a dinner party with 5 culturally or historically significant figures, living or dead, who would you invite?
Daniel Pinkwater, Mary Oliver, JK Rowling, Nikki Giovanni, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama
What is the meaning of life?
None of us is alone — make sure everybody knows it.
(My husband said this is pretty much a Thich Nhat Hanh saying – “We are here to awaken from the illusion of separateness.”)
