#64: Expert Interview with Bryce Summers, Author of Queer Sense [Podcast]

Personal Branding for the LGBTQ Professional

Links mentioned in today's episode:

Sci Fi Horror Books | Gay Fiction Novels

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A short bio about Bryce Summers: Bryce Bentley Summers is a psychologist, fiction novelist, and founder of Queer Sense theory. Bryce has authored the young adult dark fantasy Amen to Rot series, which includes the final piece, Nyte God which pits a group of teen heroes against alien invaders. The Zombie Squad is a teen supernatural thriller where four teens find themselves in New Orleans during a zombie apocalypse. The Zombie Squad recently received RUNNER-UP in the New York Book Festival in the unpublished manuscript category.

Rotville is the newest novel, a sci-fi thriller that follows Dylan, a genetic engineered human who breaks out of prison and from the clutches of a cruel director and finds himself inside a quarantine city filled with deadly mutants.

Fresh Meat is s supernatural suspense with multicultural and gay themes. This novel received Honorable-Mention in the San Francisco and New York Book Festivals. This novel parallels the institution of American slavery with the man-versus-punk political system that defines modern day prisons.

Queer Sense examines how people form attitudes toward sexual orientation, for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered, as well as those who are not. The unique aspects ofQueer Sense are the influence of three factors that all occur within the ecological model: 1) exposure to social models whether they are a person (MSNBC commentator Rachel Maddow or your parent for example), or institution, like the Republican Party; 2) connections – also known as attachments – we make to these social models; and 3) the language we use with these social models. Would you prefer to read the transcript than listen to the podcast? No problem! Read the transcript below. AUDIO TITLE: Episode #64 – Bryce Bentley Summers Interview Jenn T Grace: So I want to start off by asking you just a little bit more about I guess either your personal past, or your professional past, just basically what has brought you to the point where you are in your career right now as you're kind of in the throes of launching this book, and really kind of what brought you from before to the current. If you just want to kind of share anything that you feel is of interest and we'll kind of take it from there. Bryce Summers: Oh sure. Well I had gotten my Master's degree in Psychology around 2002, and when I had done that I had- I was in a residence studying lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender kind of issues, but I had never quite pursued that. And then fast forward several years later, 2006 I started my PhD program, and I was very- I was definitely- I was wanting to pursue a research in this area. And I looked at different things to do research on, and in the end collaborating with my advisor, we decided to look at attitudes towards- heterosexual attitudes towards lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people. And from that I did my dissertation on that, it was a very niche kind of project that was- had done pretty simple, quick. Simple quick, I mean it was like three years. But that branched out though into me looking more about how do people- how do we all form attitudes, you know whether we're heterosexual, or whether we're gay, or transgender; how do we all just form attitudes in general? How does this come to be? And so then I started- that's when I just started doing more writing on myself to try to kind of bring out some of these answers, and that kind of really helped as flushing out the idea that there's, you know ecological- we're all in the ecological place in society. So you know, I live in Dallas, Texas, and someone might live in Boston, Massachusetts, and all these cultures shape our attitudes by the churches we see, and the people we see.