Thank you to CanvasRebel for supporting my words.

Posted on by aimeeherman

Below is an interview with CanvasRebel, promoters of artists and creatives:

Meet Aimee Herman

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aimee Herman. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aimee below.

Aimee, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Do you feel you or your work has ever been misunderstood or mischaracterized? If so, tell us the story and how/why it happened and if there are any interesting learnings or insights you took from the experience?

I am learning that how I am perceived–or misperceived–has become the fuel to my writing. We are born into boxes. These boxes determine how we are treated in life. When you start to feel like the boxes are too tight, too inflexible, life can become itchy. Imagine walking down the street and everyone keeps calling you by the wrong name. But I am ______. Much of my writing considers, interrogates, reflects on my gender, my body, this building of bones and blood and inconsistencies. I walk out of the house and because of my hair or because my box doesn’t coincide with others’ perceptions, I am mislabeled, mischaracterized. Sometimes this keeps me inside. Makes me not want to even try to go out. So I write it out. I write out the invisibility. I write, hoping one day someone will read my words and feel more understood, or feel like they can stretch out their box too. We have never really lived in a binary world; we just thought we did or pretended we did. So when people exist who challenge that or who are just trying to breathe within a space outside of that, people get uncomfortable. My writing has always allowed me that space to be myself: the misfit, the weirdo, the nonbinary person just trying to find a way to exist amidst all these boxes.

Aimee, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I started writing when I fell in love with Emily Dickinson and thought that maybe I could be a poet too. All of my English teachers were the ones who made me feel like I could, who made me feel like I could exist, who made me feel like I could exist within my own squiggly lines. That led me onto many stages, searching for other creatives, finding inspiration amongst the community I started collecting.

My identity as a writer is very much weaved into my identity as a teacher. I can spend all day telling you about my failures, but being a teacher is truly the one thing I feel most proud of. I enjoy being in spaces with other writers, (trying to) inspire them to keep exhaling their stories and poetics on pages. I’ve facilitated workshops for all ages, including memoir, poetry, spaces specifically for queer and trans folks, for kids, and I currently host a free workshop the last Sunday of every month in Boulder before an open mic, which I host.

I’m not sure there is anything that sets me apart from others. That’s the thing, right? We need to be sharing our stories more, so we see more of the connections we have with one another. I’ve got traumas and bad decisions and regrets. But I also have been in love many times and have met people who have changed my life and I just want to exist in a place where we can all have basic humans rights that allow us to feel alive, safe, celebrated and understood.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Being a creative person comes with a lot of rejection. That is just part of the process. Luckily, I had quite a lot of practice with this earlier in life. The thing is, we are often taught that rejection is bad, that we should feel ashamed of it. Because rejection is somehow attached to failure. Earlier in my years of submitting my writing–back when I would mail in my work with a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope), I would collect all of my rejection letters. And there were many. I had a green folder that was bursting with “no-thank-yous” but that folder reminded me how often I took risks with my writing. It took awhile before I received my first “yes” and all those “nos” beforehand allowed me to truly savor that acceptance.

I still have those days (and months) where I feel like maybe I am just not good enough as a writer, maybe I should just give up. But then I read a book that lights up my insides or I hear someone read a poem that reminds me why I fell in love with poetry all those years ago.

Being resilient is an important ingredient to being a creative person. Not giving up. Being persistent. Being your biggest fan. Not allowing those rejections to determine your worth.

I am still learning this every day.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

Here is why I write. Here is why I perform my work on stages. There have been many times in my life when I didn’t want to exist anymore. Being a queer person (especially when I was younger) taught me that I was less than others. That my life wasn’t as meaningful as others. I’ve been hospitalized many times for trying to end my life. When I was younger, I didn’t know any older queer people. I didn’t even realize then how valuable that would have been. Now, I am (ahem) a queer elder. While I still have some difficult days, what often keeps me here is showing my students (many of which are queer and trans) that they can survive this life too. My poetry on the page is more honest than I am in person. I write about my top surgery, about the bruises on my body that still haunt me, about falling in love, about what it was to come out, about making it through to the other side.

I want other queer and trans people to know that the laws that try to hold us down will never be stronger than we are.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Photos by: Trae Durica Ani Meier Nathan Venzara

TRANSforming Gender Conference

Posted on by aimeeherman

I will be facilitating a writing workshop on Saturday, March 16th at CU Boulder for their annual TRANSforming Gender Conference.

The TRANSforming Gender Conference (TGC) raises awareness about issues and identities in the trans community. Each year, we bring our community together and offer talks, trainings and forums on a wide variety of topics, including: parent and family Q&A, intersex 101, queering biology, transgender youth advocacy, medical transition and education for mental health providers. The conference is free to attend for all students, faculty, staff and community members.


Location: Koelbel Building Room 102 Session 1: 9:30-10:45 a.m.
Trans and Queer Memoir: Everyone has a story to tell. Join author and educator Aimee Herman through various writing prompts and explore the poetics and narratives within.

Let’s Talk about Sex

Posted on by aimeeherman

Thank you to the phenomenal writing and reporting of Lauren Hill from Boulder Weekly and for amplifying queer, poetic events and sex positive spaces. Check out Hill’s great article:

https://boulderweekly.com/entertainment/lets-talk-about-sex/

Let’s talk about sex

Out Boulder County looks to embolden Boulder’s queer community through erotic poetry and spoken word

By Lauren Hill

 February 5, 2024

As an artist, poet and educator whose work meditates on the body and sexual experiences, Aimee Herman has never shied away from constructive discomfort. 

“I’ve been writing about sex since before I really understood what it could do to a body,” Herman says. “I grew up and we didn’t really talk about it.”

Their artistry developed in New York City as they began integrating themself into a queer, sex-positive community. This vital support system encouraged them to indulge in and share their expressions of sexuality that had consumed their curiosity for as long as they could remember.

“I didn’t know how the audience was going to take it — I went to an open mic, and I read [my poetry] and I loved seeing people’s reactions to how unapologetically sexy it was,” Herman says. “I like surprising people and making them uncomfortable — not in a way that makes people want to leave the room, but in wanting people to question and interrogate themselves.”

This celebration of sexuality is exactly what Herman hopes to import to the local queer community in Boulder, which they fondly describe as “hungry.” Herman relocated here a year after lockdown in search of cleaner air, a slower, more sustainable way of life and a queer community like the ones that had served as a pillar for support and camaraderie throughout their entire life. 

“I want more,” Herman says. “I want every space that I’m in to be inundated with queer people. Because I spent so much of my life looking for people who looked like me, and felt like me, as I’m getting older, that’s what I yearn for. I don’t want to have to wait for the month of June to see queer folks.”

“I spent so much of my life looking for people who looked like me, and felt like me — as I’m getting older, that’s what I yearn for,” says poet and educator Aimee Herman, organizer of the upcoming Queer Erotic Poetry event at Junkyard Social Club on Feb. 10. Credit: Zita Zenda

‘Poetry is political’

Herman got involved with Out Boulder County, the local nonprofit whose advocacy work has bolstered Boulder’s queer scene since 1994, as the host of a monthly open mic series and events like a queer circus for Pride Month. As they brainstormed ideas for Valentine’s Day, Herman recognized an opportunity to inject a little erotica into Boulder’s lexicon, which they saw as a gap in community programming.

“Frankly, I couldn’t find any [events] celebrating sex-positive spaces,” Herman says. “I’m sure they exist. I just haven’t found any.”

Bruce Parker, deputy director of Out Boulder County, says there haven’t been any events specifically focused on erotica since he’s been with the organization, but there were no reservations about the benefit of hosting an event like this one.

“‘Erotic’ can mean love; it can mean empowering each other; it can mean sex; it can mean desire; it can mean all of those things,” Parker says. “So, making a space for that, and to celebrate queer romance and queer love and queer desire and queer sex, is really important and happens for straight people in a lot of ways that we don’t even think about.”

For Jona Fine, a local artist participating in the reading, erotic art is about celebrating their identity through uncompromising acts of self-expression and visibility.

“In some ways, all poetry is political,” Fine says. “Being queer and being trans, my poetry is a lot about my experience with my body. For me, it’s important to document and keep a record of those experiences because I think they are not often talked about.”

‘It’s nice to have somebody make you feel turned on’

Beyond visibility, this kind of artistic expression is about ownership. For a community often subjected to both physical and legislative attacks, taking the reins of one’s own story and acting as its sole arbiter in a supportive space can be empowering.

“Erotic art strengthens the community because it creates more spaces and opportunities for people to talk about their sexual experience without being sexualized,” Fine says. “That’s what’s incredibly powerful about being an artist and being a writer — you get to control the narrative and take ownership of it. You get to have that space to talk about your body and experiences. It’s totally yours.”

At the end of the night, Herman hopes every member of the audience is roused to take ownership of their own bodies and stories and emerge from discomfort to make some erotic art of their own.

“Anytime I’m in creative spaces, and especially when I’m hosting, my hope is that whoever is in the audience feels like, ‘Oh, maybe I can write my story down too,’ or ‘This inspires me to create,’” Herman says. “To me, that’s the best part of creating these spaces — encouraging people to get their own words out.”

Though the poetry’s politics are never absent, the evening’s overtones are lighthearted. Herman says it’s about providing a comfortable space for folks in the community to have a bit of sexy fun with each other. 

“It’s just an evening of words that turn people on,” Herman says. “This is a rough world to live in, so it’s nice to just go out, spend a couple bucks and have somebody make you feel turned on in some kind of way.” 


ON THE BILL: Queer Erotic Poetry. 8 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 10, Junkyard Social Club, 2525 Frontier Ave. Suite A, Boulder. $15

Thank you to South Broadway Press

Posted on by aimeeherman

When I walk into a space of writers (which–if you are paying close enough attention–is really every space), I tell them: write down your story. Your stories. Get it down…even if you feel like others are telling similar tales.

I remind myself this as well. My memories are still climbing their way out after being pushed down. But I am working on digging them out. As we all need to do, sometimes.

Thank you to South Broadway Press for accepting my poems and reminding me to keep writing.