Last year I did a wonderful public event at Town Hall here in Seattle. The Queer Medieval was a collaboration between Humanities Washington, Seattle University, various medievalists, and the local queer community and allies. The whole thing was splendid.

And now, one year later, there’s a nifty article by María and Sarah, two of my collaborators, published in the open access journal of the International Arthurian Society,¹ discussing the event in context of

an enduring and crucial question about history. How do we recover the voices of those throughout history who have not been in positions of power and who, therefore, have been either left out of records or only represented in partial or stigmatizing ways? Additionally, how do we include those whose stories have not been told? Could contemporary fiction set in historical times play a role in recovering those voices and stories, challenging notions of who belonged in the past and, consequently, who belongs in the present and in the future?

I am an accidental medievalist—I got snared by the Early Medieval through story not scholarship, and now I’m trying to turn that equation back on itself: to use fiction (such as Hild, Menewood, and Spear) informed by scholarship to change public notions of the Early Medieval in order to change a few things about the present and therefore influence the future. I’m trying to do it one reader at a time, and this article looks at one aspect of what I’m doing and whether/how/to what extent I’m being successful.

I hope you enjoy it—and I’d love to hear your thoughts.

1. “Queer Medieval Outing with Nicola Griffith: A Public Humanities Event,” María Bullón-Fernández and Sarah Faulkner. The So What. 26 June 2025. ↩︎