This cultural rhetorics project asserts that story is theory, and surfaces self-storying as an embodied, theory-building process. I undertook phased interviews with three queer creative writers, holding space for their stories in order to witness, interact with and to learn from the ways in which queer authors discuss and approach relationships with one another through storying and composing. This desire to learn from other queer-identified community stakeholders led to the emergence of a story-theory, through which a narrative thread of failure, survival and agency emerged. I articulate a reorientation and reframing of guiding concepts of community, composition and embodiment within queer spaces as (intra)community, (de)composition, and the (anti)body. An important impetus for this project was a desire to address the future of Queer in the academy. I utilize tools and theories from queer theory and cultural rhetorics not only to build, but to show spaces in which these conceptual frames can inform future, positive shifts. I do so to provide my own insights and to offer tools to continue the work Queer in the academy and to bridge the space between academic Queer and non-academic queer. I utilize cultural rhetorics to continue the work of what I see as one of Queer's primary purposes: to subvert, to disrupt and to re-imagine the ways in which the queer community and Queer can thrive and effect systemic change.
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