Rae Garringer (they/them) is a writer, oral historian, and audio producer who grew up on a sheep farm in southeastern West Virginia, and now lives a few counties away on traditional S’atsoyaha (Yuchi) and Šaawanwaki (Shawnee) lands.

Rae is the founder of Country Queers – an ongoing, multimedia, community-based oral history project and podcast documenting rural and small town LGBTQIA2S+ experiences since 2013. They completed a BA at Hampshire College in 2007 and a MA in Folklore at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2017. Rae is a proud alumni of The STAY Project, former contributing editor to Scalawag Magazine, and former Public Affairs Director at Appalshop’s WMMT 88.7fm. Rae is a senior Civic Media Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab and a member of the National Council of Elder’s collaborative oral history and podcast team.

Rae is the author and editor of COUNTRY QUEERS: A Love Letter forthcoming from Haymarket Books, Fall 2024 and the editor of a collection of essays and poems titled To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans & Two Spirit Writers in Appalachia forthcoming from the University Press of Kentucky, Spring 2025.

When not working with stories Rae spends a lot of time failing at keeping goats in fences, two-stepping around their trailer, and swimming in the river. They are a hermit introvert who is resolutely committed to rural people and places, most especially the central Appalachian region.