Stillness and Survival: A Life Between Trauma, Glitter, and the Echo of My Own Voice

2026 International Firebird Book Award Winner — LGBTQ Nonfiction

"A luminous, powerfully-written homage to the liberating verve of gay culture."

- Kirkus Reviews

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Some stories don't need exaggeration. Just honesty. Stillness and Survival by Jacob Anthony Rose is a raw memoir about trauma, drag as survival, chosen family, and learning that love was never something to earn. A powerful, deeply human read.

"A raw, luminous memoir of resilience that transforms pain into power." -Kathryn Dare, San Francisco Book Review

"Behind-the-scenes glimpses into the life of a drag performer punctuate the darkness of Rose's trauma with buoyancy and hope." -BookLife Reviews

I was a quiet boy with loud dreams. But dreams don't grow well in a house full of fear.

As a gay child in a home where silence meant survival, I learned to vanish. For years, I kept my voice hidden - not just from the world, but from myself.

Then came music. Drag. Glitter. Applause.

And, for a time, freedom. Onstage, I could be someone bigger than the pain. For twenty years, I sang and performed my way into pieces of joy I never thought I'd know.

But trauma has its own rhythm.

In the quiet of the covid years, the past came roaring back. I lost my voice again - this time to adulthood pain, depression, and the unhealed echoes of my childhood. Stillness and Survival is a story of silence and expression, queerness and survival, collapse and return. It is about finding your own voice - again and again - even when the world tries to take it away.

This is not just a memoir.

It's a reclaiming.