Meet Our Spring 2025 Collections Intern!

We are thrilled to welcome Natalie Warren to the Faulkner Morgan Archive team as our Spring 2025 Collections Intern! Natalie is an emerging archivist with a deep passion for LGBTQ history. In her role, she’ll focus on processing new collections, helping us ensure that vital pieces of our shared history are preserved for future generations.

To help you get to know Natalie a little better, we sat down for a fun and insightful Q&A session. Here's what she had to say:

Q: How did you first hear about the Faulkner Morgan Archive?

A: I came across FMA’s booth at the 2021 Lexington Pride festival and took a button – I’ve kept up with the work that FMA does in the community, from art shows to film screenings, and hoped to contribute to their valuable mission for a long while. 

Q: What inspired you to apply for this internship?

A: As an archivist, my work is frequently confined to the so-called “big men” whose lives historians choose to preserve in archival record. I wanted to work with the FMA because I am interested not just in the marginalized stories that serve as subjects of FMA’s collections, but also the way in which these stories are collected. Items are brought into the archive not by formal membership of an institution or through financial influence, but by the grassroots desire to hold on to and share the lives and stories that make up our community, our place. I look forward to expanding my understanding of archival work and its transformational potential. 

Q: What excites you most about working with the Faulkner Morgan Archive?

A: As always, but especially in this case, I look forward to those effervescent moments where I find a piece of marginalia, a dog-eared page, or an inscription on the back of a photo that brings that item to life and forges a connection to creator, even if their name is unknown. The facts of the artifacts exist on one level – who produced them and why – but there is an intangible joy and curiosity inspired by seeing the little traces of humanity in the things we leave behind. These small details with such an emotional impact encapsulate the power that archival work has to connect us to our past and help us understand ourselves. I believe this connection is sorely needed for queer Kentuckians, to find solace in the shared joys and struggles of those who came before us. 

Q: Can you share one of your favorite moments from LGBTQ history?

A: I love the print culture of the 1970s and 80s. I love the tenacity that a few freaks and geeks had to look at censorship of queer and radical voices and say, “Well, I guess we’ll just have to make our own!” The product of this culture is a proliferance of newsletters and newspapers, magazines, and other collective publications which are rich historical sources for anyone interested in the daily life and concerns of queer people in the past. To me, they also serve as models for community building and organizing in times when mainstream avenues of communication are closed to marginalized people. What I like most about these kinds of sources is that they illustrate the way that, although there may be a few stand-out figures and moments that represent rapid change, so much of the work is done through connecting with your friends and neighbors. 

Q: Lastly, who is the queer icon you admire the most?

A: Ask me this question each day of the week and you’d probably get a different answer every time! There are so many folks I admire in different ways. Right now, I’m really interested in the work of tatiana de la tierra, whose “For the Hard Ones: A Lesbian Phenomenology / Para las duras: Una fenomenologia lesbiana” I discovered in a used book store recently. It’s a fun and passionate collection of poetry as well as a monument to the life of de la tierra. Her work and life, to me, exemplify what it means to live on the outside of the binary, in the margins, forging your own way of life and refusing outside definition. I’m not quite done with “Para las duras” yet though – no spoilers!

Stay tuned for updates on Natalie’s work this spring as she dives into the incredible stories and collections that make up the heart of the Faulkner Morgan Archive. Welcome to the team, Natalie!