When Justin Torres was a young reader growing up in Baldwinsville, he was puzzled by the lack of queer authors and stories about the queer community. 

Now 44, Torres has written a National Book Award-winning novel, Blackouts, and a bestseller We the Animals, that have brought queer stories to the forefront. Torres has become the author he wished to read when he was younger. 

“The whole project of Blackouts reflects what’s been going on with me for the last couple of decades, which is this desire to look, to find things, to find History, and also bump up against absence, and things that have been intentionally erased from history or distorted or that you just can’t find,” Torres said. 

Torres will be returning home to the Syracuse area on Tuesday for the Friends of Central Library lecture series. It will occur at the Oncenter Crouse Hinds Theater, 411 Montgomery Street at 7:30pm.

The lecture series is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. It will run once each month from September through November and start again next year. Over the last three decades, the series has welcomed 175 authors to Syracuse. 

While Torres was growing up in Baldwinsville, he found refuge in art — particularly in writing and reading. 

Torres was born to an Afro-Puerto Rican father and an Irish-Italian mother from Brooklyn, he said. His identity as a queer man and a man of color made him stand out in the predominantly white suburb. He struggled with bullies as he grew up. 

“For the little queer boy that I was, it [Baldswinville] was not an easy place to grow up at all,” he said. “There was no representation of queer people at all in the media. The only time I ever heard people talk about gay men using really derogatory terms, and in the context of the AIDS crisis.”

Drawing, painting, and writing became his outlets.

Torres fostered a strong bond with his English teacher Laura Iodice, who he still talks to. Iodice showed Torres the compassion he needed at the time. She brought him books to read when he had to stay at inpatient facilities in Syracuse as he struggled with his mental health. 

“She was just brilliant. She saw that I was hyper-literate and loved reading and writing and that I wanted to engage with art and literature,” Torres said. “I was in a self-destructive place, and she went above and beyond. She really was somebody who was not gonna let me fall.”

After graduating from high school, Torres went to several colleges before dropping out of each of them, including New York University and SUNY Purchase College.  

But going to college in New York City allowed him to meet other people who introduced him to queer authors. 

Torres read stories like City of God and My Body is Paper by Gil Quadros; Dorothy Allison’s Bastard out of Carolina and Kiss of the Spider Woman by Manuel Puig. 

“I knew that I was queer, and I knew that I wanted to read everything I could possibly get my hands [on]. All of the authors that I mentioned are queer authors, and I think that it was something that I was searching for,” Torres said. “Something that I felt had been withheld from me, which was this idea of queer history and queer inheritance and queer lineage. I wanted to know everything about my people.”

Eventually, he earned a master’s degree in fine arts from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa. 

He used the lessons he learned there about writing and publishing to work toward his first book. Torres later enrolled in the Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Unlike his younger cohort members, Torres was certain about the novel he had started writing before entering the program.

Torres’ first book We the Animals went on to become a national bestseller. 

His latest book Blackouts has multiple references and storytelling elements from authors like Jaime Manrique and Dorothy Allison. The novel is about the experience of searching for history through literature, Torres said.

Through these authors and stories, Torres has been able to develop a greater understanding of himself. 

“Literature, in a way, can be a service. [It] kind of provokes a desire to know more,” Torres said. “Even if it’s not providing all the answers, it can give you a sense of where to look.”

To purchase tickets for the event, click here.

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Yolanda Stewart was raised in the Bronx, New York City. Before choosing a career path in journalism she found a voice in writing plays, short stories, and a myriad of other creative outlets. She is a 2022...