Milo Todd
Instructor Statement
We asked Milo to tell us a little bit about his teaching philosophy and what excites him about leading the Novel Immersive for LGBTQ+ Writers:
"Being in an all-queer writing workshop space was a life-changing experience for me. In the summer of 2019, I attended the Lambda Literary Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ+ Writers. For one week, approximately sixty queer writers across countries, races, backgrounds, and genres traveled to Otis College in Los Angeles for the same goal: to be understood.
It was the closest I’d ever experienced magic in the real world. It was a fundamental joy I didn’t realize I was missing, to be able to relax my shoulders, my jaw, to remove my tongue from the roof of my mouth. For one week, I felt like I got to be a person.
After returning home to Boston, I realized opportunity for a professional-level, queer-only literary space was nearly nonexistent outside of this retreat. While I knew I couldn’t create the same physical, in-person components as Lambda Literary, I knew I could at least create space where the layers of socio-cultural burden were stripped away from workshop and craft, providing opportunity for queer writers to finally stop explaining themselves so they could finally start writing.
Since 2019, I’ve been observing, listening, and planning. What I’ve come up with is, I feel, a program that not only serves the majority of the queer novel writing community, but additionally serves an untapped space in most creative writing programs.
I firmly believe in creating learning environments where students feel safe sharing their work, feedback, worries, and goals. The publishing world is a difficult place at the best of times, starting with the individual workshop experience, and I believe information and community support can break down gatekeeping and help queer writers succeed in their goals.
I saw what these experiences did for me. Now I want to do what I can to bring them to others."
About the Instructor
Milo Todd (he/him) is a writer, editor, and educator represented by Michael Nardullo of LGR Literary. He instructs the 9-month Novel Immersive for LGBTQ+ Writers. His fiction focuses on trans and queer history, with additional works on the trans experience and the trans body. His fiction has appeared in SLICE Magazine, Hare’s Paw Literary Journal, Response Magazine, Foglifter Journal, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart (Foglifter Press), and Emerge: The 2019 Lambda Fellows Anthology (Lambda Literary Press). His other works have appeared on Writer Unboxed, Dead Darlings, GrubWrites, and Everyday Feminism, among others. Milo was selected as a 2020 Pitch Wars Mentee and a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow in Fiction for his novel Downhead. He was additionally selected for the 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop and received a 2021 Monson Arts residency. He’s received artist fellowships from Lambda Literary and the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Milo is Managing Fiction Editor for Foglifter Journal and a former Fiction Reader for Split Lip Magazine. He’s an instructor at GrubStreet, where he teaches courses on fiction, the novel, and trans and nonbinary representation in literature. He is an alum of GrubStreet’s Novel Incubator Program, where he received a Pechet Fellowship for his novel The Falcon of Doves. He has been on the selection committees for the Lambda Literary Awards, the Novel Incubator Program, and the Bisexual Book Awards. Milo is a speaker on writing, inclusion, and the queer and trans experience. He has presented at the Boston Book Festival, The Muse & The Marketplace, First Event, OutWrite DC, GrubStreet’s LGBTQ+ Writers’ Weekend, the Editorial Freelancers Association, and more. He curates Writing Beyond Binaries, a panel series celebrating trans and nonbinary writers’ experiences in various stages of their careers; and runs The Queer Writer, a curated newsletter and advice column for LGBTQ+ readers and writers.