Hello!

I don’t know who I was fooling by bringing this book to school with me and being like, “I am not gay.”

Today we meet Haley Steinhilber and we’re talking about the queer book that saved their life: Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden.

Haley Steinhilber is a public historian and host of Q4Q: The Queer Personals Podcast.

In Annie On My Mind, when Liza Winthrop meets Annie Kenyon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she knows there is something special between them. But Liza never knew falling in love could be so wonderful . . . or so confusing. The 25th Anniversary Edition features a full-length interview with the author. Ms. Garden answers such revealing questions as how she knew she was gay, why she wrote the book, censorship, and the book’s impact on readers – then and now.

Connect with Haley

Listen to Q4Q: The Queer Personals Podcast
Buy the Queer Seeking Queer Coloring Book: womenandchildrenfirst.com/product/queer-seeking-queer
instagram: @queerpersonalspodcast
email: q4qpodcast@gmail.com

Our Bookshop

Visit our Bookshop for  new releases, current bestsellers, banned books, critically acclaimed LGBTQ books, or peruse the books featured on our podcasts: bookshop.org/shop/thisqueerbook

Buy your own copy of Annie On My Mind here: https://bookshop.org/a/82376/9780374400118

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Credits

Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, K Jason Bryan and David Rephan, Bob Bush, Natalie Cruz, Jonathan Fried, Paul Kaefer, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Stephen D., Terry D., Stephen Flamm, Ida Göteburg, Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.
Creative and Accounting support provided by: Gordy Erickson

Quatrefoil Library

Quatrefoil has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

Transcript

This transcript is auto-generated by our recording platform Riverside.fm. This transcript may not include episode narration and contains the original interview between J.P. Der Boghossian and today’s guests. Any time-stamps do not correspond to the released audio file and tend not to be fully generated throughout the entire interview. It is approximately 85% accurate and will include spelling and grammatical errors. For any quotation purposes, we strongly recommend referencing the audio.

J.P. Der Boghossian (00:06.742)
Okay, Haley, would you like to introduce yourself?

Haley Steinhilber (00:14.453)
Hi, my name is Haley Steinhilber. I use they them pronouns and I am a public historian archivist and the podcast host of Q for Q, the Queer Personals podcast, where a guest host and I read and swipe left or right on personal ads from the past depending on themes curated by myself. I also have an adult coloring book which was recently published called Queer Seeking Queer.

with pictures of me and my two co -authors slash illustrators. We thought through what each personal ad author might look like and now people can color them in. But it is 18 plus.

J.P. Der Boghossian (00:56.544)
my gosh, I have so many follow -up questions to each of these. So public historian and archivist. So what is your, do you have like a specialization of an area that you focus in on or?

Haley Steinhilber (01:01.924)
public is.

Haley Steinhilber (01:10.304)
Yeah, I mean, I am of… I like to say that I’m a public historian mostly of local, place -based history. It’s mostly… That also kind of ties into my podcast hostiness. I think it’s really important to have the intersection of archives and queer history and different methods of…

I don’t know if consuming is the right way, but learning of our history and the fact that the moment that we’re living in is not that unique. The desires, the weird kinks you have, I don’t know if, I’m not sure if we can go into kinks, I don’t know what your podcast is. But all of the weird things that you’re into, you’re not the first one. There is so much history of like,

horniness or like love or yearning like yeah

J.P. Der Boghossian (02:13.82)
I love that. And so for the podcast, how do you find the personals?

Haley Steinhilber (02:22.79)
well, so through different digital archives, most of the stuff that I find is available online for free, either through my library card, my public library card, like someone, another like crusader of queer history will be scanning and digitizing things online. like JD Doyle of the…

What is it? Houston or houstonlgbt .com I think will scan. He lives in Texas. He scans a lot of different Texas publications and has like partnerships around different archives and museums around his area. They’ll send him stuff to digitize and that’s just like what he does in his free time through I think his charity. But anyway, it’s really interesting. I started it during the pandemic.

the podcast itself because I was bored, just graduated from my master’s program, had no prospects for a job and was like, okay, well, I guess I remember going through all these publications during research and I never really got to look that hard at the personal ads. And so that’s kind of where that all came from.

J.P. Der Boghossian (03:49.038)
Are these queer specific publications or do you find them in a variety of different like queer and non -queer publications, the personals?

Haley Steinhilber (03:58.377)
To save my sanity, I usually am looking at specifically queer publications. These can be like one -offs. are some that have only like ran for like two years and then like were shut down or like the collective like just exploded like exploded like probably emotionally and whatever they were doing or just died out. But

Some magazines and newspapers are still around or have evolved. one of the co -authors of this queer personals or queer seeking queer coloring book, Dan, he runs the at long lost personals page on Instagram. He does all.

Like he does queer and straight, so like he’ll send me some of his gay ads from like straight papers or like swingers magazines for example. Because he has a lot of swinger stuff, he just has more money to throw around than I do, loves eBay. So.

Haley Steinhilber (05:05.9)
And that’s really helpful.

J.P. Der Boghossian (05:05.986)
Wait, so for the folks who only know Grindr and Tinder, what’s a personal?

Haley Steinhilber (05:16.28)
this is a fun question. What is a personal? Well, it is…

sort of like an app profile, but you don’t have any pictures. Or maybe you do have a picture, but you’ve paid some money to put this picture into the newspaper where anyone can see it. can’t toggle by different subjects or people that you’re looking for or gender. You can, you just put this ad out here where you describe yourself.

your interests, what you like, what you’re looking for, and what you’re not looking for. And then you wait for a few weeks, maybe a month, for people to write into your PO box. Or into the, like to reply via voicemail, where they’ll be routed into your phone. And then eventually you’ll send some letters back and forth.

maybe set up a phone call or you have a new pen pal who lives all across the country and you’re trying to figure out where to meet in the middle to hook up. But it can be anything from like friendship. I’m looking like for other lesbian mothers because I don’t know any other women in the area. Or I’m looking for

Someone to hook up with in my car in the middle of New Jersey. I’ve seen that too. Or misconnections and whatnot. And a lot of people, not a lot of people, but Lex is an app that is very similar to what personal ads used to look like and it’s off of, like that came from, the concept of it came from personal ads.

Haley Steinhilber (07:25.836)
specifically on our backs, which is the Lesbian Erotica magazine, which has some pretty fun personal ads, because, yeah, lesbians can really get it, like they know how to yearn.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:39.37)
Haha

Haley Steinhilber (07:43.224)
Lesbians know how to yearn, they know how to really paint a picture. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (07:52.814)
Wow. And then the coloring book came from…

Haley Steinhilber (07:59.01)
The coloring book was so through my podcast and like my Instagram and Twitter slash X The I met Dan of long lost personals and I also met a gal named Alexis Macaluso like they both came on my podcast with different shows like to talk about different things because Alexis was an illustrator who did

Bye.

Haley Steinhilber (08:32.364)
Alexis was an illustrator who did like put out an entire comic book about Craigslist personals. So we did a whole Craigslist personal episode featuring different things from her book as like a publicity stunt for her. And then Dan was just like, I saw your social media profile and I…

And I think we were just connecting, we were just sending personal ads back and forth, and I was like, do you just want to do an episode about personal ads? like, yes. And we did. And he found some really early ones, like 1920s, 1950s, he had a whole thing, he was like, I think these are personal ads that are definitely, they’re gay coded, and this is why. And so that was really cool, and because he does.

all of these like personal ads he can go in through like with a fine -tooth comb and then I don’t have to do that which is helpful. Crowdsourcing. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (09:40.76)
Wow. Well, thank you for sharing a little bit about your background. I’m really looking forward to putting that together in a fun collage, audio collage. Would you also be able to provide me like a clip from your show? Because I can include this off the beginning so people can get a flavor of it. You don’t have to do that right now. But if you’d like to do that, I’d love to feature a clip from it. So when I talk to people on the podcast,

Haley Steinhilber (09:49.803)
Excellent.

Haley Steinhilber (10:00.248)
Okay, I’m just.

Haley Steinhilber (10:06.158)
would love to.

J.P. Der Boghossian (10:11.118)
They find that the book that saved their life was answering a question for them. That sometimes they didn’t even realize they were asking that question. And sometimes they were very much asking that question and looking right for the book. What do you feel, and without getting into like what the book is about yet, what do you feel the question Annie on my mind was answering for you? What was that question?

Haley Steinhilber (10:37.846)
Yeah, I think that question was one, am I going to be okay? And two, like, are there other people who feel the same way that I do? And I knew somewhat, yes, like I did grow up with the internet. I was on Tumblr, but I just hadn’t seen it in the print. so I…

Haley Steinhilber (11:06.124)
I think having like a whole story about something that I was going through similarly was really helpful.

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:16.92)
Wonderful. Thank you. So, Hayley, what is the queer book that saved your life?

Haley Steinhilber (11:23.556)
Well, the queer book that saved my life is Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden and the copy that I have was reprinted in 2007 and includes an interview with the author.

J.P. Der Boghossian (11:42.158)
I love that. I love that. So first, for folks, and I do want to talk about that interview, for folks who haven’t read it yet, how would you describe it to them?

Haley Steinhilber (11:52.844)
Yeah, so Annie on My Mind is a coming -of -age story of two teenage girls living in separate neighborhoods, boroughs, islands of New York City. Liza Winthrop lives in Brooklyn and Annie Kenyon in Manhattan. So they meet in the endless galleries within the Met by chance encounter that blossoms into a friendship and eventually a flirtation and a courtship.

sprinkled in amongst the love story, which is told from the perspective of Liza. Her anxieties about being a poor role model are her anxieties about being a poor role model slash class president in her private school Foster Academy and ruining her future of attending MIT, becoming an architect, disappointing her parents and her whole community. And but also like just

trying to find love and understand her sexuality.

J.P. Der Boghossian (12:56.75)
think you just won the award for the best description summary on our podcast of the book. love that. So I want to hear more about, I’m a physical book person. I can’t do eBooks. I’ve tried, I can’t do it. Having a tablet or whatever in my hands is not the same as the physical book. So walk me through what that was like for you finding this book as a physical queer book for you.

Haley Steinhilber (13:27.826)
boy, am I excited to tell you this story? Because it was really just… and I think I explained this somewhat in Instagram, which you can cut this out. But, I remember stumbling across this book, Annie on My Mind, by chance, at the Northwest Indiana Barnes and Nobles. I think I had written down a whole list of authors that I knew wrote

gay books just in case I could find them and I was looking, you know, alphabetically because again, Tumblr, think I was like, this is what it looks like, this is who it’s by, this is the title. And so through that with I knew Nancy Garden, I knew her name, and so I think I saw it and it must have been sometime in like 2008 or 2009 because that’s when I was out to myself.

J.P. Der Boghossian (14:01.233)
wow.

J.P. Der Boghossian (14:26.434)
Mm -hmm.

Haley Steinhilber (14:27.395)
And so, yeah, not probably not more than a year I’ve came I’m sorry It probably had not been more than a year that I had come out to myself So I would have been like 13 or 14 years old And I knew that there were others like me in the world, but I was too afraid to approach them in real life Like what if someone saw me and thought I was also gay? And

J.P. Der Boghossian (14:53.23)
Mmm.

Haley Steinhilber (14:56.374)
Yeah, because I was also like in love and hooking up with my best friend at the time, but I didn’t know like how to put all of these big emotions that I was feeling. I didn’t know where they belonged. didn’t know. Yeah, again, like is am I going to be OK? Is this like my one chance at true love? And so maybe.

this story in some ways was helpful, maybe not, but it was one of the first, like, yeah, it was one of these first physical paperback books that was like so much more real. And it was like one of the books about queerness or girls loving each other that was…

Haley Steinhilber (15:46.724)
I just felt like very historical. I mean, it was written in the 80s. It’s set in the 80s. I thought that was like as a history person, even at like 13, 14, I was like, that’s old. But I mean, it was just kind of like very interesting to see how the trajectory. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (15:58.489)
Hahaha

J.P. Der Boghossian (16:06.51)
But for you, old was a good thing.

So it wasn’t like the story was dated. was like, wow, this is amazing that folks have been experiencing this for a while now. I mean, a while now being a few decades.

Haley Steinhilber (16:19.01)
Yeah. Yeah, I was like, wow, in the 80s they existed. But then also this like interview with Nancy Garden, she was talking about growing up in the 1950s as like a queer kid. And I was like, whoa, it goes back that far. so like that whole interview definitely also, maybe even in more ways than just the story, like the fact that they were together really…

was impactful. I don’t know.

J.P. Der Boghossian (16:53.582)
where did I want to go with that? So, my gosh, there’s so many things that I want to, that I want to ask you about. You’re reading this at 13 or 14. You’re out to yourself. You’re kind of hooking up with a friend. I don’t know if you thought of them as a, like a girlfriend or partner. what then was Annie on my mind empowering you to

do or say in the world? How is your life different after reading both the book and this interview with Nancy Gardner, the author?

Haley Steinhilber (17:31.844)
Yeah, I think… Well, it’s funny because I… Hmm. For some reason, I thought, and I’m like, can’t, like, people can’t see it because it’s not that kind of format, but this cover has like two girls very close together. They’re holding hands, they’re holding rings. It’s like the reprint from 2007 by, I guess, Ali Smith.

I don’t know who I was fooling by bringing this book to school with me and being like, I am not gay. This is, I’m just reading an interesting fiction, thing of fiction and like one, like I just don’t know why I thought that like, like the back, even if I put the back on it, it just says LGBT. So in some ways, I guess I was able to have some kind of cognitive dissonance of like,

I’m carrying this around, maybe this is also somewhat like a flagging. Like it helped me one flag. Maybe there’s another person in my high school that is also would recognize this and talk to me, even though that sounds horrifying.

J.P. Der Boghossian (18:49.794)
Wait, why is that horrifying? Like you found it scary at the time or?

Haley Steinhilber (18:51.456)
it’s like, yeah, maybe that’s scary that like someone would come and talk to me. Spoiler alert, they did not. But it was just so like, in that way, it was like even like a physical flagging device. But it was also just, yeah, having this perspective of a kind of like type A personality girl, like first person.

story. Like I was one of those like dreamy book kids that like to like, that you’d read the book and then you’d be so saturated in like how this person was thinking that like, I’m like, I am now embodying like the the strength or like the like nervousness even though like of of Liza and her love for Annie who’s kind of like this

J.P. Der Boghossian (19:36.718)
Hmm.

Haley Steinhilber (19:49.73)
very like ethereal, like loves, she’s a singer, she has all these like performances with choir, she’s very like whimsical and like Liza’s definitely one of like the more serious in that part of that relationship. And so just like, yeah, I don’t know. It’s.

just like trying to like conceptualize myself within like different, not even like stereotypes, because they’re not stereotypes, but like it is like putting myself into like, like I am another, like I am not the first person, like this is someone else. I’m not sure if I’m saying this exactly as I want to, but it was just helpful to know that

Haley Steinhilber (20:45.516)
There were gay, queer girl love stories where in the end, even though it wasn’t the most satisfying, beautiful happy ending, they were both okay. There was hope at the end.

Yeah, not to give out so many, yeah, very important. And not to just like give spoilers, so I’m not trying to spoil anything for everybody.

J.P. Der Boghossian (21:03.846)
It’s so important.

J.P. Der Boghossian (21:14.83)
And I think, no, think that, I mean, that’s important because there’s this weird queer backlash against stories like Heartstopper where it’s like, you know, it’s not realistic. And I think that’s such an internalized, I’m not quite sure what that is, that like all of our stories have to be tragic and end in, you know, disaster or, you know, that’s the reality of queer life. so…

I love when authors, and now Nancy, back in the 80s is putting together an ending that isn’t a disaster, I guess is what we’ll say there. You found out, I don’t know if it’s in the interview, but you found out that it was banned, it was a banned book, and it was even a book that had been burned.

Haley Steinhilber (21:54.189)
Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (22:07.264)
So, you here you’re finding this book, it’s a physical paper copy, it’s having this huge impact on you. What was that like then? And then you’re like, wow, it was happening in the 80s, but what was that like to find out that it had been banned and in one instance in Kansas City, burned?

Haley Steinhilber (22:27.672)
Yeah, I think I’m not really sure where I was like, wow, that’s really cool, like badass. And the fact is, I think, and I just returned to Nancy’s interview yesterday about how there wasn’t a lot of backlash at first, and then someone donated a ton of copies to Kansas in the 90s, and they like.

They were really frustrated. so people, like the school board came out and families, not families, parents came out and they were angry about this book. That it’s just a little bit of a love story without a bad ending. But I think it was just kind of…

Haley Steinhilber (23:25.218)
I don’t know, in some ways I was definitely…

Haley Steinhilber (23:32.196)
felt empowered by the fact that I was like, I have this book and I’m in the Midwest and even though that is a little bit scary, it’s, I don’t know, I felt very connected, again, through history and even now rereading this and thinking about all of the book bands that are happening now in some similar states, just…

J.P. Der Boghossian (23:57.368)
Mm -hmm.

Haley Steinhilber (24:01.74)
Yeah, like the… this argument, these… the backlash just continues to happen and I don’t know, it’s still very… I don’t think at the time I was thinking like, it’s very important that this book exists. I mean, but it is… yeah, somewhat of a… sorry.

Haley Steinhilber (24:30.71)
Yeah, I was like, I knew it was important, I knew it was significant to myself, and now looking back I’m like, even more significant, even more, like, I’m glad that, like, authors are still taking these risks and putting out stories because there are still children living in those, like, queer teens and kids living in those states who need access to these books so that they know that they’re not alone.

J.P. Der Boghossian (24:58.862)
So was sort of a talisman.

I don’t know if that’s the right word, but.

Haley Steinhilber (25:07.916)
Yeah. I’m like thinking, this is my emotional support book. Yes, yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (25:14.274)
Yeah, yeah, I’ve had quite a few of those. The book that I would talk about if I were on the show, I used to carry it around with me. Even if I wasn’t currently reading it, it would be in my backpack and I would take it around one of those, the messenger bags. I had a messenger bag and it was like always there. And if I was feeling something, I’d just like look at it. I was still there or hold it.

Haley Steinhilber (25:41.432)
No.

J.P. Der Boghossian (25:41.794)
There’s just something about physical books that you can do that with. Yes, I mean, if they’re on a Kindle or whatever, you can do that too, but there’s just something about having it as a physical book that allows you to do that. Talk to me about the older couple that’s in the book and the, I guess, advice or the wisdom, the realities that they impart to Liza and Annie.

Haley Steinhilber (26:09.206)
Yeah, so the…

Haley Steinhilber (26:13.508)
To the older couple, who you don’t realize is a couple at first, they are two teachers at Liza’s school who Liza’s very close with. One, of course, is the English teacher, Ms. Widmore. And then I forget who Ms. Stevenson, I think she may have taught art, but I’m not quite sure.

Haley Steinhilber (26:43.138)
doesn’t necessarily matter, but so the two very trusted adults in her school and at one point they go out of town together, they live together, which no one knew until like part way through, but they ask Liza to cat sit for them, which is such a stereotype.

And like, didn’t, again, realize that at the time I was like, this seems normal. You hire your students to come cat sit for you in this apartment that you live in with one of your other teachers, your teacher friend, your roommate. And so of course, because this is the first time that Liza and Annie will have any time alone, home alone, they…

J.P. Der Boghossian (27:16.043)
Hahaha.

Haley Steinhilber (27:30.604)
like she invites Annie over to help her take care of the cats where they can like kind of just like imagine what life will be like and then they realize that only one of the bedrooms seems to be occupied and lived in and the other one is definitely just a guest room and they’re like my god they’re like us my god and then I believe they just continue to have a little love nest and then

At one point, one of the teachers and a student come and find them at this house there. I don’t remember if it’s because they were looking for one of the teachers or if they knew one of the students was, that Liza was watching the cats, but her friend comes and catches her and Annie.

kissing or having fun times, sexy times. And she’s horrified, so I think she calls one of the other teachers. so then it becomes this whole affair where…

Not only are the young couple also like in trouble for all of the… just in trouble for being in love, but… Sorry, I’m gonna… I like had a burp. not only were the young couple in trouble for being in love, it then called into question whether the teachers were…

influencing them and that’s why they’re gay and all of that. And I think so at the end Liza is like talking to one of the teachers, Ms. Stevenson, and just saying like I’m so sorry like I didn’t like I can’t believe I put you guys into in this position because both of the teachers were fired in order

J.P. Der Boghossian (29:17.336)
you

Haley Steinhilber (29:43.662)
for the school to save face, but also because it was kind of a bargaining chip. think Liza didn’t end up getting expelled, so it didn’t go on her record for MIT. But both of them, Ms. Stevenson and Ms. Woodmore, were like, forget our jobs. The worst thing that could happen to us is being separated from each other.

or to be so worn down, so guilt -ridden and torn apart that we couldn’t stay together. Anything else is just bad. And like the end, maybe not even the end of, it’s not the end of the book, but I have it highlighted here as like a little baby. think this is one of, I don’t remember when I did this, but I also have it like dog ear marked. I have all of like those areas. Like don’t.

And I had, actually wrote this down in like 800 different journals because that’s who I was as a person. It’s, don’t let ignorance win, let love. And like, I think that was one of the quotes that really stuck with me. That one and I think another one where it’s like, like the thing by Pluto or one of like where men and women.

were separated by the gods or like humans were separated from their soulmates by the gods as punishment and so some of them were like men and men pairs some of them are girl and girl pairs it’s very like gender binary but it was very helpful for me at the time to be like like this is something also from the past that like folklore uh…esque so

Yeah, both of those. But, and I think even maybe the English teacher was the one who showed her that picture, that, that, or painted that picture, painted that narrative within Liza’s mind space.

J.P. Der Boghossian (31:53.134)
So you’re sharing a couple of quotes that were really influential for you. Did you find that there were particular words that you are quotes like that that were impactful in terms of your coming out story, like how you chose to come out to people?

Haley Steinhilber (32:16.22)
Not really. Mostly because my coming out story was somewhat fraught in other…

Like, eventually, I mean, much like in Annie on My Mind, it came to a head at my school. had… Yeah, I just, I ended up having to come out to my parents by being forced to through like a guidance counselor. And while they took it well, it was not an ideal situation. And…

J.P. Der Boghossian (32:56.472)
guidance counselor was forcing you?

Haley Steinhilber (32:58.648)
There was like a ton of other things, like I mean it was, and I mean we cut this out because I don’t know, it’s not. But like, it was like I was also like very very depressed so she was like, why are you depressed? And as a person who can’t lie I was like, well because of all this stuff, like I want to die because of my friend and whatnot. But…

J.P. Der Boghossian (33:04.183)
no, yeah.

Haley Steinhilber (33:28.502)
Okay, let me think. Resuming, resuming recording.

Haley Steinhilber (33:39.02)
I think in some ways while this book did save my life in a lot of ways, it did also make me believe that I only had one chance at this like perfect gay, like lesbian partnership. Like you met your person in high school and like that was it. And even I think in Nancy, even in the interview and maybe if like

had the interview.

Had Nancy had a different trajectory of her own life, maybe I would have realized that, like you can date multiple people. You don’t just have to latch onto this one person. But because Nancy also married her high school sweetheart and then like they got married in 2004, I was like, you just white knuckle it and grow with this person.

J.P. Der Boghossian (34:29.87)
Hmm.

Haley Steinhilber (34:39.638)
and that’s your person. And it took me a while to realize that that was not the case. And it’s also because I had no other versions of queer representation other than, I guess, the internet.

And that, so like I think growing into an adult definitely helped. Not a kind of moving away from parents and into like a college sphere where other queer people actually existed. Because there wasn’t really a lot like I think in my high school maybe there was one person a grade ahead of me and then there was another person like three years below me.

J.P. Der Boghossian (35:04.885)
Hahaha

Haley Steinhilber (35:27.948)
which is like too much for high school, but I’m like thinking about the people ahead of me and then below me and I think like there was a freshman when I was a senior and that was about it and like you can’t date the freshman but I mean you can but there’s like this there’s weirdness they yeah so it yeah in some ways this is both a

A blessing and a curse.

J.P. Der Boghossian (35:59.584)
No, that makes sense. That makes sense. I never would have thought of it that way, but totally, when you’re finding that book and then it becomes sort of your whole world, it’s not necessarily the reality, it’s reflecting part of your own reality. Speaking of reality, so you were really taken partly because of the idea that it was taking place in the 80s, and then you have this interview from Nancy, this…

talking about her own story from the 50s, did you find this book then reinforcing your idea that you wanted to get into history as a career pathway?

Haley Steinhilber (36:40.046)
I don’t think I realized it at the time how much of an impact this had on me in terms of history, but it definitely, the fact that they meet in the Met, that they go to the Cloisters, they’re doing all of these things that are like very, I mean very one, like on the one hand, very like New York City, which I had never been to. So I was like, whoa, New York. And like.

J.P. Der Boghossian (37:07.81)
haha

Haley Steinhilber (37:10.434)
Yeah. On the other hand, like, just yeah, like very like, in museums, like a very place -based fiction, that really snagged me because I was like, I must visit the Met one day. I really also like enjoyed the nights and like they talk about like at the beginning, like they get all like giggly around like the medieval nights.

and get kind of yelled at by the guard. And I’m like, I don’t know. So all of that.

Haley Steinhilber (37:51.65)
I don’t know, like it was just, so like one of the first times, or maybe, like within like one of the like second time I visited New York. like I had not been to the Met until like maybe this last year, but it was just the cloisters and I was like, I’m right, I’m where they are in the cloisters. Like this is that scene. And then like the, I thought that the temple of Dender,

J.P. Der Boghossian (38:15.246)
Haley Steinhilber (38:22.624)
That’s at the Met like I haven’t been to the actual big Met yet Because I was thinking it would be at this place and I was like, man, it’s not here Maybe I got it wrong and I did and I did but I had like the book with me because I was like I got to reread it because of the the Met Yeah, and this this book went everywhere with me so it like Definitely like went to any like history

things like museums, all this stuff because it was just, yeah, on my mind. Annie was on my mind.

J.P. Der Boghossian (38:57.994)
I love…

J.P. Der Boghossian (39:05.046)
I find that absolutely, I’m relating to that on multiple levels, but I absolutely find that incredible that you got to go to the Met and you had the book there and you were reflecting on that space. Did you?

J.P. Der Boghossian (39:28.3)
I don’t wanna phrase this.

J.P. Der Boghossian (39:32.598)
Over time then, because you were saying that the book was reflective of reality, but that it also kind of puts you in this idea of like, I can only have like, this is the type of relationship that you need to have. How do you find it now influencing your take on queer relationships, particularly in light of the fact that you run a podcast that’s all about personals?

Haley Steinhilber (39:59.148)
Yeah. Well, I think…

I mean now with all the experience of the 30 years that I have had, I can see…

that this book, this, Nancy was not intending this to be like the only story that people read. But she was one of the first queer authors to have like a, a, or maybe even like a young adult author, I should say, to write a lesbian book where no one dies or is married to a man at the end.

So she was already doing a lot.

Haley Steinhilber (40:54.648)
I don’t know, just thinking about all of the various bits of advice that she sprinkled in throughout here of let love win, they don’t understand having, even though it was very heavy on monogamy and staying with this person for the rest of your life or not wanting to be separated from them.

I don’t know, I think it –

Haley Steinhilber (41:34.638)
Hmm.

I don’t know, I just, I keep going back to like, was like…

Haley Steinhilber (41:43.169)
Nice to see.

Haley Steinhilber (41:48.994)
like, couples be like, together. I think there is also like a whole lot of different other factors of like how much Twilight was impacting my weird sense of codependency and how much, like my parents were divorced around the same time as well. So I think all of that to say I put a lot on this book and it was helpful in a lot of ways and it’s

Definitely.

Yeah, I don’t know. Like, I think it was just…

J.P. Der Boghossian (42:26.454)
It’s nice to know that for me, if I don’t want to project, I’m thinking about my own experience too. When you find those stories of longevity in a queer relationship, how nice to know that it’s not fleeting, right? Particularly when you’re by yourself, you don’t know anybody, your own experiences are fleeting, right? They’re not, you know, long -term, you know, relationships or whatever. And so to find something that is

Haley Steinhilber (42:41.624)
Mm -hmm.

J.P. Der Boghossian (42:56.642)
you know, lasts for, you know, decades. I think that that’s, there’s something to that. There’s really something to that in terms of…

J.P. Der Boghossian (43:07.534)
What’s the word I’m looking for?

J.P. Der Boghossian (43:11.672)
Solace? Comfort?

Haley Steinhilber (43:13.902)
Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (43:16.718)
belonging? I’m not quite sure.

Haley Steinhilber (43:18.488)
Yeah, belonging and like having that family, like the sound family of it all.

And in a way, yeah, like the two couples, or at least for Liza and Annie, it was very important that they had these older, like, I mean, just by fact of like them giving them space in their house, not that they had intended for them to use it that way, but like, they definitely like, it was like sort of like a mentorship in some of ways. And like a lot of times, like, I don’t know if we really get that kind of like intergenerational.

interaction as much, unless people are really looking for it.

J.P. Der Boghossian (43:57.39)
Mm -mm.

Haley Steinhilber (44:06.443)
Also

thinking about like, yeah, the history of it all. these, I think this is why like connecting it back to personal ads. Like.

That was really the only way you could find people if you didn’t meet them in real life. Like at a bar or club or at school or at work and you’re already like trying to like flag and like not.

put yourself too out there.

Haley Steinhilber (44:41.128)
Annie and Liza met by chance in a museum. Who’s to say they couldn’t have put something in a person? People put personal ads out there because they’re like, I feel like I’m the only one. Please help. I need some letters from someone to prove that I’m not alone. And that person probably chanced upon the gay paper somewhere else while they were traveling or someone brought it back.

J.P. Der Boghossian (44:48.184)
Hmm?

Haley Steinhilber (45:07.982)
they knew someone who had access to it. It’s just really interesting.

Haley Steinhilber (45:14.776)
I think, and here’s where I’m gonna go back to one of your other episodes, particularly Stars in My Pocket, like Grains of Sand, with Robin Jeffery, because she…

Haley Steinhilber (45:31.436)
no, I think you both talked about the phrase of like, no person is an island, but we all like start out that way and how it like is sort of changing a little bit by the internet and you can kind of escape from like, from like the reality that you’re in through the internet and through other relationships that are not around you, but.

J.P. Der Boghossian (45:35.672)
Mm

Haley Steinhilber (45:58.21)
in a lot of places that’s not true still.

certainly in Indiana in the early tooth or mid to the aughts 2010s or whatever I was at like I just didn’t know that it was even out there like just like you don’t really It feels like some sometimes you like kind of have blinders on and you’re just like and I hope that that changes like I hope that it seems like that’s somewhat changing with like tik -tok and more

things but it also is becoming in some ways even harder for connection if you’re only connecting with people online but anyway all that is a whole different conversation this book is great I don’t know

J.P. Der Boghossian (46:48.302)
It is great. If you were to recommend it to someone to read, if you were going to like buy them a copy and hand it to them, what would you want them to take away from it and their experience of reading it?

Haley Steinhilber (47:02.316)
Hmm, if I were to give this…

Haley Steinhilber (47:09.292)
I think, especially if I was giving this to another adult or maybe a person who is newly coming out,

Haley Steinhilber (47:22.124)
I just want them to take away the fact that this book… I’d almost want to have a syllabus, you know? be like, okay, so read Well of Loneliness, read Ruby Fruit Jungle, and then read Annie on My Mind, and then you’ll have some context to how this book ended up and why it’s so good.

Haley Steinhilber (47:48.193)
and

Yeah, I think that’s where I would be like, I’d be like, hey, this is a book that I really enjoy. And what I want you to take away from it is the different pieces of who I am as a person is from this book. But if I were to give this to a random stranger.

That’s a different story. I would probably, yeah, want it to be within the context of a syllabus. Like, this is where this fits in historically, this is why this feels good. And also, if I’m giving it to a New Yorker, they’re probably gonna be really excited because they mention a ton of places in here, so.

J.P. Der Boghossian (48:30.968)
I love that. Thank you. Thank you very much. We’re at an hour mark, so I want to be mindful of your time. Lou, and it’s been absolutely lovely, Haley. I’m so glad that we had this time together. By way of a final question, what is next in life for Haley?

Haley Steinhilber (48:48.836)
What is next in life for Hayley? Well, I am going to attempt to record my own next season of episodes.

J.P. Der Boghossian (49:01.91)
Oooh!

Haley Steinhilber (49:05.572)
trying to get up the stamina to just do a whole bunch of recordings and then post them out. So maybe within the next five months, I will have new episodes out of Q for Q, but right now there’s I think maybe 25 for anybody. Other than that, I’m probably just gonna…

J.P. Der Boghossian (49:26.145)
Wow.

Haley Steinhilber (49:34.094)
buy a car and live my life. That’s what’s like specifically right? And like this week to like the next month, next I’m gonna buy a car and then I’m gonna go to the Met. Yeah. Maybe.

J.P. Der Boghossian (49:42.048)
Are you gonna buy a car and then go to the Met?

J.P. Der Boghossian (49:48.078)
If folks want to connect with you, how should they go about doing that? What would be the best way to do that?

Haley Steinhilber (49:55.852)
Yeah, please connect with me at Queer Personals podcast on Instagram. yeah, I mean, you can reach me via DM, like if you wanna try to direct message me or comment on a thing and I will like, yeah, I’m always happy to chat about queer history, specifically personal ads, but all forms of it.

Haley Steinhilber (50:23.82)
Yeah, I used to have an ex, it’s not as active. If you reach out to me on there, I don’t get the notifications. But you can also email me at q4qpodcast at gmail .com. And I do check that fairly recently, recently, fairly often. Yeah.

J.P. Der Boghossian (50:42.392)
Wonderful. Perfect. Okay. Well, I’m gonna click stop recording. Please don’t go anywhere.

Haley Steinhilber (50:50.488)
will not.