Rae Garringer
GRANTEE
Rae Garringer is a writer, oral historian, and audio producer who grew up on a sheep farm in southern West Virginia, and now lives a few counties away on traditional S’atsoyaha (Yuchi) lands.
Garringer is the founder of Country Queers, a multimedia oral history project documenting rural and small-town LGBTQIA2+ experiences since 2013. Garringer received a bachelor's degree from Hampshire College and a master's in folklore and American studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
They were the public affairs director at Appalshop's community radio station WMMT-FM in eastern Kentucky from 2017 to 2020.
Garringer is a senior Civic Media fellow at the University of Southern California's Annenberg Innovation Lab, which is a part of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism. They are currently at work on two books: Country Queers: The Story of a DIY Oral History Project, for fall 2024 publication from Haymarket Books, and To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer and Trans Writers on Identity, Home, and Belonging in Appalachia, for spring 2025 publication from the University Press of Kentucky.