A New Chapter: High Queerdness Revives Calgary’s Queer Lending Library and Launches Inclusive Workshops
Rooted in queer creativity and resistance, High Queerdness is a new nonprofit from members of Pansy Club and Kaffeeklatsch that’s bringing back a beloved community resource: a lending library devoted to rare, radical, and underrepresented books and zines. First sparked in 2020 by a donation from Liam O’Neill Gordon and nurtured by volunteers, the collection grew from two shelves at the old Kaffeeklatsch storefront into boxes of materials — now digitized and relaunched with fresh branding by Flora Bews (@CatMilkRemedies). With more than 700 titles catalogued and a curatorial approach that shelves by ideas rather than rigid labels, the library invites discovery, re-imagination, and access to conversations often missing from mainstream stacks.
To mark the relaunch, High Queerdness is hosting a free/PWYC workshop series at Pansy Club at Bell’s Café: Bookbinding (Oct 22), Poetry Collage Club (Oct 29), and a Zine Publishing Panel + Party (Nov 5) featuring Jess Arcand and Kenn Enns from the REVERIE team alongside members of Big Kitty, Volatile Sex Pill, and Rat. The goal is simple and urgent: link reading to authorship, give people practical skills to publish, and build a living archive together— centering 2SLGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities while welcoming anyone ready to learn, make, and share. We caught up with Kaffeeklatsch founder Jessica McCarrel to learn more about the history of High Queerdness and what to expect on their upcoming event calendar.
REVERIE: Can you start by introducing what High Queerdness is and how it came together?
McCarrel: Our first project, the High Queerdness Lending Library, is a curatorial project that centres marginalized perspectives and organizes the archive in new ways that invite discovery and re-imagination. The name references Erik Davis’s High Weirdness (MIT Press, 2019), a wink toward esoterica, radical imagination, and DIY culture.
Built by many hands and sustained by volunteers, the Library began in 2020, when Liam O’Neill Gordon donated hundreds of rare, radical, and underrepresented books and zines. It started with two shelves tucked inside the old Kaffeeklatsch storefront, where visitors could borrow books catalogued on handwritten index cards. Within months, the shelves overflowed with a staff-maintained, community-driven collection, thanks to contributions from a University of Calgary professor and Shelf Life Books. When the storefront closed in 2022, the collection went into storage. By then, the catalogue had grown into boxes upon boxes of books!
In 2024, Kiera Russell connected with Jessica McCarrel (Kaffeeklatsch) to digitize the catalogue and host our first workshops. By early 2025, we incorporated as a nonprofit with a board of Jessica McCarrel, Cal Gibbens (Pansy Club), and Liam O’Neill Gordon. With branding by Flora and support from the City of Calgary, we relaunched the lending program and workshops at our temporary home inside Pansy Club events at Bell’s Café.
REVERIE: Why was it important to bring back a lending library, and what will readers find there?
McCarrel: Because so much of what shapes queer life isn’t on mainstream shelves. High Queerdness is “queer” in both senses: it centres 2SLGBTQ+ perspectives, and it embraces the weird, the non-conforming, the work that sits outside dominant narratives. We keep finding titles you couldn’t easily access at public libraries or bookstores; sometimes not even online. Bringing the Library back restores access to that missing conversation, allowing people to borrow obscure, esoteric works often absent from mainstream catalogues or priced out of reach.
Today our LibraryThing catalogue tops 700+ titles, anchored by Liam O’Neill Gordon’s original donations. Expect activism and anarchism; DIY and zines; music histories; art and film theory; as well as political and social theory told from marginalized positions. Imagine having access to books on how Haudenosaunee political structures influenced early American feminists; memoirs tracing illness across bodies and culture; graphic works engaging Ana Mendieta; and studies of how cinema frames “forbidden” sexualities and desire.
The Lending Library isn’t a replacement for the public library. It’s a curatorial project that invites readers to encounter ideas in new relations, where the methods of curating and cataloguing are reconfigured into interconnected assemblages to create a distinctive reading experience that makes space for new channels of meaning. In other words, we shelve by research interests and ideas, not rigid binary labels.
To borrow, we first add you as a patron. Then you can browse the catalogue at librarycat.org/lib/HighQueerdness and sign out books. In TinyCat, search by keyword, or by title from our LibraryThing catalogue, and easily place a book on hold with your patron account. Loans can be picked up and returned at any High Queerdness event or Pansy Club at Bell’s Café. We’re currently in a beta phase as we refine the system.
REVERIE: Why structure the relaunch around a workshop series? What can people expect?
McCarrel: Our workshops activate practice as a curatorial path from reading to making. We wanted to engage our community through approachable entry points into bookmaking and publishing by giving people the skills to make and publish their own work. We chose bookbinding to demystify bookmaking and to provide skills (and confidence) that participants can carry into their own practice.
We also wanted to highlight the DIY aspect of zines. You can make one, add to the collection, and see it circulate, giving agency and empowering our community to self-publish and share ideas and dissent. It links reading to authorship as participants scan new work into our living archive.
Assemblage collage works like a low-pressure writers’ room that jump-starts poetry and prose. We developed it as an accessible way to brainstorm and build a writing practice that is engaging for both curious and experienced writers.
Many of us do our research on computers and phones now, so it was important to re-establish the attraction of going to a physical library for research. The point is agency: through these workshops we are building the relationships and support that make publishing both an artistic practice and a community practice.
REVERIE: Each event is centred on accessibility and community care. How do you create safe, playful, welcoming spaces for 2SLGBTQ+ and BIPOC folks?
McCarrel: We’re led by and for 2SLGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities, with care-focused, anti-racist, and accessible practices guiding everything we do.
We start with care as the design principle: low-barrier access, materials supplied, clear info about what to expect, and an open invitation to share access needs in advance or on arrival. We greet with names and pronouns, model consent, and credit makers when work enters the living archive.
Place matters too. Hosting at Pansy Club at Bell’s Café, where a rainbow flag hangs in the window and queer and trans staff welcome guests, reinforces the values that guide High Queerdness. Our goal is a space that’s safe, playful, and genuinely welcoming: we centre 2SLGBTQ+ and BIPOC folks while welcoming allies and newcomers.
REVERIE: How do you see High Queerdness evolving beyond this first series?
McCarrel: This is phase one of relaunching the High Queerdness Lending Library as a community-led cultural space with year-round access and programming. We aim to expand the ways we organize intersectionally. We will keep running workshops and are inviting new facilitators to reach out as we grow the collection and activate the catalogue through reading groups, research nights, and hands-on sessions that connect literature, poetry, zines, history, politics, and cultural theory to life here.
Next: secure funding, expand the archive, find a permanent venue, and sustain ongoing public programs: monthly queer reading groups, zine-making nights, artist/author talks, and seasonal off-site gatherings (imagine a Queer Book Fest under the Central Library’s outdoor canopy).
We’ll continue to digitize and credit community work in a living archive, and build partnerships with allied organizations to keep access Free/PWYC. As Denise Clarke (One Yellow Rabbit; Order of Canada) puts it: learn your artistic and cultural lexicon—do the research. High Queerdness aims to be the place that makes that possible: a welcoming studio-library where people go deeper, develop their practice, and make culture together.
REVERIE: How can people get involved—by attending, donating, or contributing?
McCarrel: Start simple: come to a workshop. Follow us on Instagram @HighQueerdness for dates and sign-ups, and browse the catalogue at librarycat.org/lib/HighQueerdness.
Visitors with a specific inquiry in mind are encouraged to send a message ahead of time, to allow us to pull materials. We’re also working on identifying gaps in our collection and seeking book donations to help fill them. If you have books you would like to donate please email Kiera at highqueerdness@gmail.com with subject “Book/Zine Donation” and include title, author, and publisher. We’ll coordinate drop-off.
If you have an idea for a workshop and would like to host it, please contact the same email with subject “Workshop Proposal” and 4–6 lines: title, what participants do/learn, materials, access considerations, and preferred dates.
Sliding-scale donations at events help keep access Free/PWYC. For sponsorships or in-kind support, email Jessica at highqueerdness@gmail.com.