Episode 205: Linda Riley

Coming Out Pod

Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Comedy, Mental Health

4.9 • 584 Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2022

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're capping off a fantastic Pride Month with the publisher of DIVA, the world's largest LGBTQIA+ magazine for female-identifying and non-binary people! DIVA has been around since 1994, but Linda Riley became the title's first ever lesbian owner in 2015. She shares the story of how she came out to her mother at fifteen and was offered the choice of "psychiatry" (aka electroshock therapy), or leaving home. Linda promptly left home and school, and what followed were years of her finding and building her queer community; not only in her native London, but also in San Francisco during the AIDS crisis. She describes how activism was intertwined with queer social life in the '80s, and how she ultimately ended up in the magazine industry. Plus, Linda talks trans allyship, founding Lesbian Visibility Week, and her Twitter beef with JK Rowling!

Follow DIVA on Twitter and Instagram at @divamagazine, and follow Linda individually on Instagram at @diversityriley, and on Twitter at @lindariley8 (where you can help her fight any future Twitter battles!). Also, as Linda mentioned, DIVA will soon be changing over to a new URL, but for now, check them out and subscribe at https://divamag.co.uk/!

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everybody. Hi. Welcome to Coming out with Lauren and Nicole. We are a weekly podcast where we have queer folks on from all walks of life. They tell us the tales of how they came out to friends, family, and the world at large. Because who doesn't love a coming out story?
0:22.9	Today we're very stoked to have the publisher of Diva Magazine,
0:30.5	the largest title.
0:32.9	That's a very British way of saying magazine.
0:35.8	I love it.
0:36.7	The largest LGBTQIA plus female identifying and
0:43.0	non-binary title in the world. That's amazing. Linda Riley, thank you so much for joining us today.
0:53.7	Yeah. Hi.
0:54.3	My pleasure to be here.
0:56.1	So, Linda and I actually met at QFX.
1:02.1	And it was great.
1:03.4	We got to talking and we like immediately jumped into politics and things too, which of course all of you all of you all know out there.
1:09.6	I'm a big, big nerd about.
1:13.1	And immediately I was like, Linda, come on the podcast. And so I'm very excited to be closing
1:20.2	out Pride Month with Linda. And for the folks at home, Linda, if you would just, yeah, tell, I mean, I'm sure most people know what Diva is,
1:30.0	but if you would just talk a little bit about Diva, Diva's mission, and yeah, your involvement,
1:37.3	how long you've been with the title? Yeah, sure. So Diva was first published in 1994.
1:47.8	I've only been the publisher since 2015.
1:52.8	Basically, it was owned by another title called Gay Times, which is quite a big type,
1:57.7	or in Europe.
1:58.4	I'm not sure how big it is in the USA.
2:00.5	This is the first time that a lesbian owned the magazine, so that was a very exciting time,
	...

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