• Bayswater councillor Elli Petersen-Pik with locals Carl Gopalkrishnan, Nat Latter, Emery Wishart, Kaya Ortiz, Pride WA CEO Choon Tan, and Cougar Morrison gearing up for Stories of Pride.

MEMBERS of Bayswater’s LGBTI+ community are sharing their personal stories of pride in a Q&A session this weekend.

It’s part of Bayswater council’s first foray into Pride month, part of an effort to make the town more inclusive and safe for LGBTI+ folks.

There’ll be stories from:

• Nat Latter, who runs Rabble Books & Games which has sought to showcase storytelling from the margins with shelves dedicated to LGBTI+ fiction, Noongar books, and kids stories by First Nations authors. Ms Latter tells the story of setting up the Maylands business as a safe space for the LGBTI+ community;

• Carl Gopalkrishnan, a visual artist and policy consultant who’s worked to bring together multicultural community leaders and faith leaders with the LGBTI+ community. Mr Gopalkrishnan currently chairs a working group investigating how LGBTI+ people are targeted by the far right for both abuse and recruitment, and how some multicultural LGBTI+ people experience racism from within their own local LGBTI+ communities;

• Cougar Morrison, Maylands’ own ‘gender illusionist’, a drag star, singer and comedian. Morrison’s presented to grownups as a TEDTalk presenter and to kids as a host of Drag Queen Story Hour at local libraries;

• Emery Wishart, who’ll share his story of grappling with his identity as a teenager, the difficult search for self-acceptance, and how finding the queer community helped him embrace being trans;

• Kaya Ortiz, an emerging writer and poet who’ll talk about her experience of marrying a young man, later realising she was queer, navigating it together, meeting her current partner and accepting her sexuality.

The storytelling and Q&A session is on Greenslade Lane behind Rabble on November 13 at 4.30pm, it’s free and all ages but register a spot by searching Stories of Pride on eventbrite.