Dr. Kaila Story 

Dr. Kaila Adia Story, PhD, is a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, with a dual appointment in the Department of Pan-African Studies at the University of Louisville. She holds the Audre Lorde Chair in Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Author of The Rainbow Ain’t Never Been Enuf: On the Myth of LGBTQ+ Solidarity and co-creator of Louisville Public Media’s “Strange Fruit: Musings on Politics, Pop Culture, and Black Gay Life,” Story credits her parents for the inspiration to educate, write, and advocate. “Although neither my mother nor father identified, verbally or explicitly, as feminists, both used Black feminist and Black queer feminist tools, like movies, books, and television shows, to teach me about the specific inequities that I would encounter as a Black girl, eventual woman, and later as a Black lesbian femme,” she says. “They both introduced me to the expansiveness of being Black, providing me with the space and understanding to bring my whole self into any room.” Today, Story seeks to inspire and transform students to feel challenged and ignited socially and politically by her classes. “Like the late, great Toni Morrison, who charged her students to go off and free others…this is what I was also called to do. To free others through my advocacy and education.” –MH