Amanda Wray

Oral History Activist | Digital Media Creator | Educator

Blue Ridge Pride LGBTQIA+ Archive launched in 2019 as an oral history and physical artifacts repository for LGBTQ+ voices who have lived some or all of their lives in the South. Through personal storytelling (i.e., oral history), our archive intends to reduce LGBTQ+ stigma by showing LGBTQ+ diversity, broadening positive representation, and humanizing individual experiences. This is a collaboration between UNC Asheville Special Collections and Blue Ridge Pride. To date, we've transcribed 106 oral histories (interviewing many participants more than once), conducted an oral history training workshop each year in a different WNC county, and created a variety of educational media (K-12 lesson plans, youtube videos, historical walking tour, social media, and more). 

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Our Lives. Our Stories. Our Way.

 

Access all our oral histories here.

Experience our YouTube channel here.

View our print archives here (digitization in process). 

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Thanks to the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer from the Louie B. Nunn Center at the University of Kentucky for helping to make our oral histories keyword searchable and more user accessible. Images donated by oral historians and Starr Sariego.

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