The Reading the Rainbow podcast emerged from the book club’s pandemic-era Zoom meetings. Staff realized that a streaming podcast would let participants “listen anytime, anywhere,” said Jamie Hansell, manager of William H. & Marion C. Alexander Family Library in Hummelstown.

Except for a hibernation period from January through April, the podcast drops twice monthly. Library staff collectively decide on a book to feature. Then comes the reading, outlining, talking points, recording, producing, and editing needed for an engaging, professional podcast.

“It’s fun to listen to people talk about a book they get excited about,” Hansell said.

Podcast hosts – Library staff who identify as LGBTQ+ — zero in on the LGBTQ+ aspects and literary merits of each edition’s selections, as well as other burning issues such as inclusion and misogyny.

T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, a retelling of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” inspires a look at the use of nonbinary pronouns, the presence of older characters, and “the sense of foreboding that Poe and Kingfisher do so well.”

This fall, watch for a special podcast with author Curtis Chin, sharing his hot-off-the-presses memoir, Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant. Chin’s book, coming this October, opens a window into growing up Asian American in Detroit and coming out as gay in his working-class, immigrant community.

“It’s very exciting,” Hansell said. “He had reached out to us to see if we’re interested, and we said, ‘Yes, of course!”

The podcast’s first author visit came in Episode 19 from Michael Ausiello, with his funny and heartbreaking memoir, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies. Made into a 2022 movie starring Jim Parsons, “Spoiler Alert” shares the author’s life with his husband, a native of Millersburg who died from a rare form of cancer. Seeing the local connection, the librarian at the Johnson Memorial Library in Millersburg extended the invitation to Ausiello. “Listen with a box of tissues at the ready,” advises the intro to Episode 19.

“It was a little bit more bittersweet because Michael was talking about the memories of his husband, but he was so wonderful to speak to,” Hansell said. “He was a wonderful guest, and we have high hopes for the Curtis Chin interview, too.”

Reading the Rainbow podcast launched, in part, to counter a trend, prevalent in TV and film, of gay characters “getting killed off,” Hansell said. One of the most-listened-to podcasts featured Cemetery Boys, which Hansell calls “a sweet, very cute YA novel about a trans boy helping the ghost of a boy he went to school with, and they fall in love.”

“We intentionally choose books that depict LGBTQ people not solely or mainly through gender,” she said. “It’s about seeing people who are whole in their own right. This focuses on the joy the community can experience – getting to see happy endings, getting to see people fall in love and not be relegated to background characters.”

Reading the Rainbow podcast is an offshoot of The Library’s popular Reading the Rainbow Book Club, where participants discuss LGBTQ+ books by LGBTQ+ authors. Meeting at an offsite coffee shop on the second Saturday of every month, 11 a.m. to noon, the club offers adult readers the chance to share their thoughts on some remarkable reads.

Book Club member Kristin Johnson finds herself reading books she wouldn’t have read otherwise, but “they’re so well vetted that they end up being a great book.”

The selections, such as A Taste of Gold and Iron, a fantasy loosely based on the historical Ottoman Empire, stretch well beyond LGBTQ+ themes.

“Some of what we talked about was relating back to modern-day issues, politics – our modern age of anxiety and mental health care and how it was addressed in this book based in the far past,” she said. “It’s a neat, insightful discussion.”

Even for those who aren’t in the LGBTQ+ community, Johnson adds, “Reading a variety of things can expand your horizon and open your eyes to other groups you may not be so familiar with.”

Dani Watkins said they registered for Reading the Rainbow club on a whim “because I thought it would be fun, and it definitely is!!”

“I love having the opportunity to talk about a book genre I love reading while recommending that book to people who are listening to the podcast,” they said. “I also think it’s really important for the community to have these types of podcasts out there while promoting books and talking about different issues in a healthy way.”

 The best part, of course, is reading all these newly discovered books. The Library buys extra copies of its Reading the Rainbow books for borrowing. When the club discussion ends, titles remain available for checkout, while excess copies are shared with the community at events and book giveaways.

• Reading the Rainbow Club: Second Saturday of the month, 11 a.m. to noon. For featured books and locations, visit dcls.org/eventscalendar.
• Reading the Rainbow podcast: Available on most podcast streaming platforms.