A memoir · Now available

Surviving Queer

by Rian Kochel

A blistering, fiercely funny memoir about surviving the closet in rural Montana, reclaiming your history, and breaking the cycles of family trauma.

Hear Rian read from the book.

Review copy or interview → Buy on Amazon

Press, podcasters, and reviewers: excerpts and author interviews available on request.

The conversation · 22 min

Hear the conversation this book starts.

Two hosts dig into Surviving Queer: the closet, rural Montana, family trauma, and the humor it takes to get through all three.

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22:19

An AI-generated audio companion, made with Google NotebookLM from the text of the book.

About the Author

Rian Kochel was that kid you went to high school with whose locker always looked like a bomb went off in it. Since then, he has lived a thousand different lives—all of them as messy and multifarious as that locker he left behind.

This is his first book, but his personal essays have appeared in The Sun Magazine and HuffPost.

Cover of Surviving Queer: A Memoir by Rian Kochel, showing a red anatomical heart with a stitched scar on a black background

About the book

Surviving Queer

A Memoir

by Rian Kochel

A beautiful, blistering, and fiercely funny testament to surviving the closet, reclaiming your history, and breaking the cycles of family trauma.

Surviving Queer is an unforgettable, raw, and poetic memoir—a love letter to every lost, lonely queer kid who has been forced to hide from their truth in order to feel safe. It carries an urgent message of indelible hope—a plea for them to hold onto their truth, carry it forward, and use it as the foundation for their future.

Review copy or interview → Buy on Amazon

Press, podcasters, and reviewers: excerpts and author interviews available on request.