PRIDE 2026: Chapbook
Pride is more than celebration. It is memory. Resistance. Defiance. Love. Survival. And the radical decision to remain visible in a world that still asks too many people to disappear.
PRIDE 2026: Chapbook is a poetic journey through identity, belonging, courage, loss, desire, and the complicated beauty of becoming exactly who you are.
Through five acts and the closing piece, “Still Here,” LJ Bechtel, The Unexpected Poet explores Pride beyond the rainbow-colored surface. These poems look backward at the people who fought for visibility, inward at the battles we rarely speak about, and forward toward a future where authenticity requires neither permission nor apology.
At times celebratory, at times confrontational, and always deeply human, PRIDE 2026 honors the contradictions within queer experience: joy beside grief, confidence beside uncertainty, chosen family beside loneliness, progress beside resistance.
This is not simply poetry about being LGBTQ+.
It is poetry about being human when someone else believes they should get to define what your humanity looks like.
For those who marched before us.
For those finding the courage to step forward now.
For those still searching for the words to name themselves.
For those who love without apology.
And especially for those who were told they should be quieter, smaller, different, or invisible.
We are still here.
And that may be the most rebellious poem of all.
LJ Bechtel, The Unexpected Poet