To celebrate the October 2025 release of our book Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food with Recipes (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2025) and the May 1-3, 2026 conference, we will be hosting a series of in-person and online events about queer food. Please stay posted as more events will be posted within the coming months!
2025
- June 26, 2025: Queers at the Table: Coming Together, in collaboration with the Museum of Food and Drink (MOFAD), 6-9 PM ET (ticketed, in-person event): get tickets here!
Queers at the Table: Coming Together will feature a panel with queer food historians Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum, joined by writers, artists, activists, and food industry professionals Isabel Barbosa, Ericka Mabrie, and Rani Som. We’ll be showcasing and celebrating queer forms in its multiplicity, along with food, drinks, and a lively panel. Ticket includes access to Flavor: The World to Your Brain from 6 to 7 PM, bites made by Pri Aguilar, and drinks.
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- September 9, 2025: Queers at the Table: Eating, Talking, and Writing, in collaboration with Oxford Food Symposium (free, virtual event)
Special guests include Taylor Hartson, Joshua Lopez, Mihael B. Peralta, in addition to co-editors Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias.
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- September 23, 2025: Queer Food as Queer and Trans Joy, in collaboration with Queer & Joyful Worldmaking Lab and Queer Joy Lab, 6:00-7:30 PM ET (free, virtual event)
Get a link for this free, virtual event: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/1424903818679?aff=oddtdtcreator
Queer food nourishes queer and trans joy. Join contributors to Queers at the Table, Tara Madison Avery, Rani Som, Aino Pihlak, and Tobi Abdul, alongside Queers at the Table editors Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias, as they discuss queer food and queer and trans joy. How does food nourish queer and trans joy? How have the contributors celebrated queer and trans joy through their essays, comics, and recipes in Queers at the Table? The conversation will be facilitated by JJ Wright of the Queer Joy Lab and Casey Burkholder of the Queer & Joyful Worldmaking Lab.
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- September 30, 2025: New Books on Queer Food, in collaboration with Queer History Month McGill, 6:00-7:30 PM ET (free, virtual event)
Get the link for this free, virtual event here:
This event will consist of a roundtable discussion about queer food, publishing, and the speakers' recently released books! This discussion will be followed by a period of audience Q and A.
Over the past year, there have been 5 new books published/ soon to be published on queer food. Historian Rachel Hope Cleves’ Lustful Appetites (2025) historicizes queer food across centuries. Kyla Wazana Tompkins’ Deviant Matter: Ferment, Intoxicants, Jelly, Rot (2024) uses the lenses of fermentation, intoxification, gelatinousness, and putrefaction to theorize how the modern state seeks to manage “deviant populations.” John Birdsall’s What is Queer Food (2025) examines how modern queer identity is shaped by food cultures and Erik Piepenburg’s Dining Out (2025) shares the history of gay restaurants. With 38 contributors, Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias co-edited the anthology, Queers at the Table (coming out in October 2025) on queer food that brings together scholars, journalists, cartoonists, recipe developers, chefs, farmers, and cooks discussing queer food within the themes of ecology, farming, health, care, community, and history. These books join the release of the independent press, Combo Press's, small print runs of three anthology volumes of Queer, Earth, Food (2022, 2023, 2024), another anthology Playing in the Dirt: A Gathering of Stories, Arts, and Writing by Queer Midwestern Farmers (2024), and the queer food memoir Squelch (2024).
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- October 9, 2025: Book Launch Party Canada: Bringing Queers to the Table, in collaboration with (and at) L'Euguélionne Feminist Bookstore in Montreal, 6:00-8:00 PM ET (free, in-person event)
Join us at L'Euguélionne Feminist Bookstore to celebrate the launch of Queers at the Table. The event will consist of a reading, snacks, and a Q&A period. Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Tristian Lee, Danielle Kydd, and Lauren McGowan, in addition to co-editor Alex D. Ketchum.
This event is part of a series of events celebrating the topic of queer food, the release of Queers at the Table, and the upcoming second Queer Food Conference (www.queerfoodconference.com) from May 1-3, 2026. Learn about our upcoming events at queerfoodconference.com under the additional events tab.
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- October 15, 2025: Minneapolis, MN, in-person event (more details to come!)
- November 2, 2025: Cooking the Queers at the Table Book with the Drawn and Quarterly Cookbook Club, in collaboration with Drawn and Quarterly Bookstore in Montreal (free, in-person event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Tristian Lee, Danielle Kydd, and Lauren McGowan, in addition to co-editor Alex D. Ketchum.
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- November 5, 2025: Book Launch Party USA: Queers at the Table, in collaboration with All She Wrote Books of Somerville, Massachusetts, 6:30- 8:00 PM ET (free, in-person event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Danielle Rousseau and Jo Michael Rezes, in addition to co-editors Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum.
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- November 7, 2025: Queers at the Table in NYC! in collaboration with Archestratus Bookstore of Brooklyn, NY (free, in-person event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors K Greene, Ericka Mabrie, and Rani Som, in addition to co-editors Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum.
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- November 9, 2025: Queer Soup Night in Brooklyn
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Rani Bishakh Som and Isabel Barbosa, in addition to co-editors Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum.
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- December 1, 2025: Queer Food and HIV/AIDS: A World AIDS Day Event in collaboration with AIDS Community Care Montreal, 12:00-1:30 PM ET (free, virtual event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Elena Kalodner-Martin, Jo Michael Rezes, Isabel Barbosa, Dave Davenport, in addition to co-editors Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias. Additional special guests include journalist Jon Kauffman and Crystal Harrison of AIDS Community Care Montreal.
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2026
- January 6, 2026: in collaboration with Sinister Wisdom
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Diana Farin Molina, Ashley R. Guillory, Marie-Louise Friedland, and Bonnie J. Morris, in addition to co-editors Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias.
- February 9, 2026: Comics Arts on Queer Food, in collaboration with Prism Comics: the non-profit LGBTQIA+ Comics Organization, 6:00-7:30 PM ET (free, virtual event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors John Macy, bailey macabre, Leah Spears, Blue Delliquanti, Nicole J. Georges, in addition to co-editors Megan J. Elias and Alex D. Ketchum. Tara Madison Avery (also a contributor to Queers at the Table) and Ted Abenheim of Prism Comics will be there!
- February 10, 2026: Queer Food All Year, in collaboration with James Beard Foundation and Queer Food Foundation, 2 PM (free, virtual event)
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Cori DaCosta, Vanessa Parish, Kareem Queeman, in addition to co-editors Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias.
- March (exact date TBD): Sharing our Work: Queer Food and Publishing with Clare Lagomarsino of Combo Press and Branches
- March 17, 2026: Queer Food Access, in collaboration with Community Food Centres Canada: Indigneous Network, including Raymond Johnson-Brown, 12- 1:30 PM ET (free, virtual event)
- April 1, 2026: Queer and Trans Farming: From Seed to Field, with La Ferme aux Champs qui Chantent
Special guests include Queers at the Table contributors Chris Keeve and farmer Jenna Jacobs of La Ferme aux Champs qui Chantent.
- April 11, 2026: Vernissage for the Montréal Queer Food and Drink History Exhibit at the Archives gaies du Québec (free, in person at the AGQ)
Special guests include co-curators Alex D. Ketchum and Al Dervisevic, walking tour co-curator Kerrilee Corrimer, and more!
- May 1-3, 2026: Queer Food Conference!
_____ PREVIOUS ADDITIONAL EVENTS_____
These past events accompanied the first edition of the Queer Food Conference on April 27-April 28, 2024.
On March 13, 2024 we partnered with the Oxford Food Symposium's Kitchen Table Series. Sign up to join us at this free, virtual event: https://www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk/event/kitchen-table-mar-2024
After the conference activities wrapped up on the Saturday evening of the 2024 conference, participants could us at an after hours, A Queer Wine Night Out, curated by Marie-Louise Friedland. The event was in-person only at Wild Child in Somerville and requires separate 10$ registration: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/queer-food-conference-mixer-tickets-830580607957?aff=oddtdtcreator.
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After the 2024 conference wrapped up on Sunday evening, participants had dinner at the High Street Hall with the Big Queer Food Fest!
That event required a separate ticket. https://bigqueerfoodfest.com/pages/boston
Out and proud chefs and brands from across New England and beyond are serving up a delicious array of bites and cocktails. Music and entertainment will keep the party going all evening long! This evening coincides with the end of the first-ever Queer Food Conference, creating a powerful synergy between food, celebration, and education.
Chefs include Tiffani Fasion, Kareem Queeman, Karen Akunowicsz, Tatiana Rosana, Robert Gonzalez, Michele Ragussis, and more!
