Hey there,

🕯️ Vigils for nonbinary teen Nex Benedict have been taking place across the country. In Oklahoma City, mourners gathered by the hundreds Saturday night to remember and honor the 16-year-old. The crowd roared as LGBTQ+ activists demanded the removal of State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters, who continues to say there are only two genders. On Friday, police released a video of an interview a police officer had with Nex and their grandmother at the hospital after an altercation at school that day. A day later, Nex was dead. 🕯️

We pulled together some resources that people can use to support transgender and nonbinary youth. ❤️

📚 A new children's book looks to help kids understand and embrace gender differences and thrive in their own skin. Hooray for She, He, Ze, and They! by Lindz Amer comes out Tuesday. “It’s about making [conversations about gender] fun and making it affirming and making it something that’s like celebrating the joy of our shared humanity,” they told The Advocate. 📚

🎭 In August of 1862, Lyons Wakeman, a 19-year-old from upstate New York, enlisted in the Union Army. Wakeman went on to fight gallantly in action against the Confederates in Louisiana before, like so many Civil War soldiers, dying from disease rather than a bullet. But Wakeman differed from the other soldiers in one key respect: Wakeman was assigned female at birth and lived most of her life under the name Sarah Rosetta Wakeman. Now Wakeman’s story is coming to the stage, as she’s the focus of a musical play, with the working title of The Rosetta Project, that creator Jenn Grinels hopes to take to Broadway. Read our interview with Grinels here. 🎭

Onward and upward,

Alex Cooper