Though I've picked up longtime Oregonian journalist Casey Parks's memoir, Diary of a Misfit, half a dozen times at the library, I haven't read it yet—but it's not because I'm not interested. Rather, the book seems like something to savor and sit with, and I'm saving it for a time when I can give it my undivided attention. Parks now writes for the Washington Post, where she's covered abortion access, the US military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, and more; in Diary of a Misfit, she takes a similarly investigative tack, sharing her own story of coming out in the aughts in a rural Louisiana town alongside her research on small-town Louisiana singer Roy Hudgins, who was AFAB but lived as a man. Parks will kick off the Oregon Humanities 2023–2024 Consider This series on fear and belonging with this talk, which aims to explore "how attitudes about gender affect where people seem to fit in." by Lindsay Costello