July 29, 2017
Sasha Velour (’13) is the most recent winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, season 9! And we all send her the biggest congratulations! Her thesis project back in 2013, Stonewall, is a graphic novel about the 1969 Stonewall Riots.
On June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay club in New York, and the patrons and other sympathizer rioted in a series of spontaneous, violent demonstrations. Considered a turning in the history of LGBT rights, Sasha uses multiple protagonists in a variety of historical styles to navigate the complicated and elusive story.
In 2015, she and her partner, Johnny, started Velour: The Drag Magazine, published twice yearly. It is now in it’s third issue. It has featured some CCS alum and faculty over the years including Jon Chad and Laurel Lynn Leake. She also runs NIGHTGOWNS, a monthly drag show in New York. A video of each show is posted online, for free!
The first issue of Velour was under the title Vym.
A year after she graduated, Sasha was reviewed by Rob Clough on his blog High-Low, reviewing the aptly named Sasha Velour, a collection of “a number of stories about his drag alter-ego,” and the first issue of Vym. Clough says Sasha “is one of the smartest cartoonists to emerge from CCS and certainly one of its most ambitious.”
Sample page from Stonewall by Sasha Velour
Post by Angela Boyle.
Tags: Alumni, Cartoon Studies, cartoonist, drag, Library, RuPaul's Drag Race, Sasha Velour, Thesis, winner
