Guest Post: Euro Pride Con 2017 with Marc Fleischhauer

Hi Everyone :)

Lisa, thank you so much for letting me write a bit about Euro Pride Con and what it means to me.

My name is Marc Fleischhauer and I am one of the owners of the LGBTQ+ Review Blog ‘Rainbow Gold Reviews’ and one of the organizers of the LGBTQ+ Literature Meet ‘Euro Pride Con’. I’m a 26 years old student from Munich, Germany and consider myself gay (though bi-curious) and have been with my asexual partner for almost 6 years in a happy and monogamous relationship.

Diversity is very important for me. From the very beginning, we have always started Euro Pride Con with a diversity panel. It is very different, depending on which panelists are taking on this big topic, but I have always learned a lot. We all are so very different and our community is more rich and colorful for it.

It is important that we accept and keep learning from each other, because it is our biggest strength.

I recently listened to a gay romance audiobook, where a naive young man fell in love with a guy he really didn’t know anything about and who lured him into a different country. He was 18 years old and left his difficult home, with parents who didn’t understand him and wanted to run his life. However, the man he had fallen for was not who he pretended to be, and the young man was all alone in a strange place. That was until a stranger helped him.

I must admit, I was unsure if that was realistic. Would someone really offer food, drinks, clothes and even a flight back, if the young man needed it? At times we seem to live in a world where that hardly seems possible.

Just a week after I read the book, though, an author was experiencing the same kind of thing. There was a young man who was lured into a different country and found himself alone at the airport. The author helped the young man and asked his Facebook friends to help as well. Within a short time people in our wonderful community came together to give him a place to stay and a return ticket home if needed.

Just a few days later, a few authors banded together, trying to get another young man out of a bad situation and started a gofundme campaign.

This community is more than authors, bloggers and readers. We help each other and we believe in the same values like equality and love. At our best we support each other, celebrate our diversity and listen to each other to understand a different point of view.

Sure, there are times every now and again, when there is drama in our community, but it is usually because people at different sides of an issue want to be helpful and supportive in their own way and misunderstand each other. It happens. It does not change however, that at our core there is a kind of love and acceptance that is hard to find anywhere else.

That is why I thought we needed an LGBTQ+ Literature convention on the European mainland. It is not just an opportunity to meet authors, readers, bloggers and publishers from all over Europe and the world, it is an unforgettable experience that for me was life altering. The friendships I have formed in this community and the support I was able to give and received is truly special. I love the books I read and learning more about how they were written and all the important themes in them and everything to with my favorite genre. But it is the people who make the experience of attending a convention like this truly special.

Euro Pride Con is a safe space, where everyone is accepted the way they are. Especially in a world with so much hatred and uncertainty right now that is very important!

Our third annual Euro Pride Con will be held at the Hotel Berlin in Berlin, Germany on June 24/25. Dani, the other organizers Tim, Tanja, Isa and I don’t earn any money organizing the event, but we are very happy to create a platform for like-minded people to meet and talk about books.

We hope to see many of you in Berlin and are so happy that more than 80% of our tickets have already been claimed. If you want to secure your ticket, but can’t pay the full ticket price right now, we can send you an invoice that can be paid in several installments.

Click HERE to check out our website with more info about the event and our growing attendee list with audiobook narrator Greg Tremblay and authors like Abi Roux, TJ Klune, Maris Black, K.C. Wells, Mia Kerick, Amelia Faulkner, Ana J. Phoenix, L.A. Witt, Shannon West, Chris Ethan, Teodora Kostova, Meraki P. Lyhne, Reg Dixon, Blaine D. Arden, Osiris and Beryll Brackhaus, T.J. Masters, Casey Ashwood, E. Davies, Feliz Faber, Hans Hirschi, Helena Stone, Julie Bozza, JP Kenwood, Monika De Giorgi, Phetra H. Novak and Max Vos as well as many other wonderful attendees.

Thank you for taking the time to read my post. I hope you get the chance to experience this or one of the other amazing LGBT Literature Events.

Marc Fleischhauer

To find out more about Euro Pride Con and stay up to date on the event, follow them on Twitter, like them on Facebook, join the Facebook Group, check out their Facebook Event Page, visit the Website, or drop them an Email