KHÔRA's Pride Issue 🏳️🌈 | Holding Hands: Three Essays by Ed Wolf
I worked in the typesetting division of George Litho with seven other gay men when I began the Shanti AIDS Volunteer Training in San Francisco in 1983. Ron was one of the department’s proofreaders...
In this edition:
Holding Hands: Three Essays by Ed Wolf
Issue 52 Pride Issue Highlights
Call for Submissions | Special Summer Editions: HEAT and FLASH
Welcome to KHÔRA’s Pride Issue, a celebration of queer life.
Pull back the curtain on this issue here.
Holding Hands: Three Essays by Ed Wolf
Dynasty
I worked in the typesetting division of George Litho with seven other gay men when I began the Shanti AIDS Volunteer Training in San Francisco in 1983. Ron was one of the department’s proofreaders, and we’d gone to dinner a few times, went to the movies, once rode bikes the entire length of Golden Gate Park, all the way out to Ocean Beach. He came from a small town in the Midwest and had a biting sense of humor that was really fun and I enjoyed doing things with him.
Ron lived in a great apartment overlooking the Panhandle of the park, and he invited me over to have dinner with some of his friends to watch Dynasty. He’d memorized all the nasty things Alexis and Krystal had ever said to one another, and was always looking forward to their next catfight. I was surprised, when I arrived, to find the table set for only the two of us, and he said something about his friends having to cancel. He was an excellent cook and had me in stitches as he described what he’d gone through buying the chicken we were eating.
When it was time for Dynasty to start, we moved into the living room. I sat on one end of the couch and he the other. Alexis and Krystal were in rare form, threatening each other like tacky drag queens, and I laughed as Ron repeated every word and gesture. He got up during the commercial break, came back with a plate of cookies and, sitting down next to me, handed me one of his homemade snickerdoodles. Dynasty returned and as we were watching, Ron moved closer to me until his leg pressed up against mine. He held up the plate of cookies, asking if I’d like another, and as I reached for it, leaned in to kiss me. I pulled back and he said sorry and I said it was fine and he said he was lonely and then laid his head on my shoulder….
Continue Holding Hands: Three Essays.
Ed Wolf was born in New York, the oldest of ten children, and grew up in North Miami Florida. He worked in the HIV/AIDS field from 1983 to 2022, and is featured in the award-winning documentary “We Were Here.” He is currently at work on a memoir, which tells the story of growing up as a queer kid in Florida, attending the University of South Florida in the late 60s, life in New York’s Greenwich Village at the beginning of gay liberation, and the early days of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco. He has written numerous segments of his memoir during Corporeal Writing’s virtual hours and is very grateful for everyone who keeps that program alive and well!
Issue 52 Pride Special Issue Highlights
This summer, we’re returning to a favorite seasonal series: three themed Summer Special Editions, each shaped around a single word. There are two remaining calls:
🔥 JULY — HEAT
We’re looking for feverish, sweat-soaked, summer-scorched writing and art that simmer and ignite. Longing, pressure, combustion. Emotional heat. Erotic heat. Literal heat. Climate heat. Kink. We want to feel the burn.
Deadline: Monday, June 29, 2026
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⚡ AUGUST — FLASH
Send us your shortest writing—fiction, micro-essays, poetry, fragments, dispatches. We’re talking itty-bitty, under 500 words. This is open to writers only, but we do encourage you to include links to your own artwork if you’re multi-talented like that.
Deadline: Monday, August 10, 2026
How it works:
Submissions for this series are open now and close August 7, 2026.
We welcome emerging and established voices—poetry, short prose (maximum 2K), hybrid forms, visual art, and unclassifiable experiments.
Submit up to 3 pieces per theme.
In your note, please mention the name of the issue the work is intended for: Pride, Heat, Flash.
Word count of 2K or under for Pride and Heat, maximum 500 words for Flash.
Previously unpublished work only, please. Simultaneous submissions are fine—just keep us in the loop if your piece has been accepted by another publication when we reach out.
We have a strict no-AI policy for all submissions.
If you love what you’re reading, please subscribe, restack, post and share, and KHÔRA will be back soon.
🏳️🌈 Happy Pride!
Leigh
Leigh Hopkins
Editor and Curator, KHÔRA
Leigh Hopkins is the Editor and Curator of KHÔRA and the Founder and Director of Viva Institute, an educational platform advancing creativity, consciousness, and collective repair.
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