Queeroots is an informational hub created by a member of the University of Tampa's staff and a member of the University's faculty, coming together to better connect the Tampa Bay/St Pete LGBTQIA+ community. During a time of anxiety and fear within queer communities, particularly in Florida, aim to take root and help our community grow and remain connected. We want this website to serve two purposes: recognize local queer-run spaces, and connect those spaces and their people together in grassroots effort to resist oppression and celebrate expression.
We have created this website with the following categories in mind:
Visitors can also navigate over to the "further reading" portion of the site, which informs audiences of the historical impact of grassroots organizations, and offers several key queer theorists and heroes in the Gay Rights movement, local and national.
About the Authors
Lena Malpeli is a master’s student at the University of Tampa, working in the Department of Communication. She graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Tampa in 2025, where she was an Oxford Study Abroad Programme student, SURF Fellowship recipient, OURI Grant recipient, Sigma Tau Delta president, NEON literary and arts magazine editor, and Honors Program student and mentor. She has been previously published in African Literature Today and Q. Her research fields include Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Disability Studies, Afrifuturism, and Romantasy. Aside from academic research, she also moonlights as a freelance copyeditor, photographer, and web marketing consultant. You may find her playing guitar to her two cats, or, at lmalpeli@ut.edu.
Katie Brady is a graduate and adjunct professor at the University of Tampa for the Communication Department, as well as a special needs elementary school teacher and wedding officiant. Previously, she worked within marketing and advertising for television and film for over a decade. She graduated from the University of Tampa with a masters in Professional Communication and from the University of South Florida with bachelors in Technical and Professional Communication. Her research fields include Media, Popular Culture, Fan Fiction and Fandom Studies, Sexuality, and Gender. After realizing her own queerness as a child, she took two very large steps back into the closet for a good twenty years before coming out as bisexual at the ripe old age of twenty-nine while attending the Strawberry Festival. Given how Floridian her “coming out” story is, Queeroots is her way of trying to give back to the local Florida community. Her spare seconds involve writing fan fiction, making repairs to her 1960s teal ranch-style house, and traveling around the state to enjoy its strangest destinations.