Drag Story Hour, which will celebrate 10 years of fabulous wigs and picture books this December, has launched a book club, Queer Visitors, for LGBTQ+ adults and allies. Starting in September, Queer Visitors will present monthly Zoom sessions, each emceed by a drag performer with VIP guests. Readers will gather in indie bookstores and other locations to screen the session and discuss a book, and venues also can invite drag queens and kings to attend in person, in cooperation with DSH.

“Think of Oprah’s Book Club, but gay,” said Jonathan Hamilt, DSH communications director and cofounder.

Besides story hours for children, DSH hosts drag bingo, diversity and inclusion seminars, and events such as drag karaoke at the American Booksellers Association’s summer Children’s Institute. Queer Visitors is its first venture into book clubs for older queer readers, taking place at an hour amenable to day jobs and family life. “It’s Drag Story Hour for adults, essentially,” Hamilt said. The initiative appeals to “people who are sober, or don’t want to be at the nightclub at 2 a.m. You can build community and experience drag in a fun way, for adults.”

Queer Visitors’ inaugural selections, from September through December, features four fantasy classics. First up is L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, to be discussed via Zoom by drag performer Nana Tuckit and special guest Tori Calamito, creator of the Oz Vlog on TikTok and Instagram. The Oz theme continues with Baum’s The Marvelous Land of Oz in October, Ozma of Oz in November, and Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz in December.

DSH lists Queer Visitors picks on Bookshop.org and also encourages ordering from independent bookstores.

DSH purposefully looked to the fantasy genre to kick off Queer Visitors. “As an elder millennial, Harry Potter was a big cornerstone of people's identities,” Hamilt said. “Now, that may not be the case,” because author J.K. Rowling’s views on the trans community have split the fan community. Hamilt and DSH wanted to spotlight queer content with “worldbuilding that adults can nerd out with,” so they decided to start with Baum’s stories, well known for their genderfluid, genderless, and camp characters.

“Come January, we want to start working with contemporary books,” including novels and nonfiction, Hamilt said. DSH plans to coordinate book club picks with author tours, book signings, and other interactive events that benefit local communities and the publishing industry.

Bookstores can begin joining Queer Visitors in time for fall. One early adopter is Golden Hour Books, in Newburgh, N.Y., which will launch the book club with a September 19 soirée. Golden Hour, established in 2023, recently moved to a new bricks-and-mortar location with a courtyard in Newburgh’s Wireworks building.

“We have a contemporary fiction book club, and many selections have been LGBTQ+ titles,” said Golden Hour owner Angie Venezia, a former publicity director at Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. “This couldn’t tie in more perfectly.” Venezia focuses on community-driven programming where people can mingle. “It’s exciting that we can collaborate” with Queer Visitors, she said, and she hopes to involve other local startups and small businesses on “block-party-style events.”

Casual, in-person meetups align with DSH’s vision too. “It’s such a different world right now,” because social media and AI are so distracting, Hamilt said, so adults are “finding new ways to connect in these flex spaces,” by reading together, attending performances that encourage interaction, and sharing food and drinks.

“I do think the queer book club will bring people together,” Hamilt said, adding that Wicked: For Good premiers November 21 and could motivate participants to read the OG series. Queer Visitors is meant as a space to forge new connections, Hamilt said, so even “if you’re maybe not the most extroverted person, at least everyone is queer or an ally, and you can always talk about The Wizard of Oz.”