All Voices Reading Room Has Grand Opening

Last Saturday was the grand open­ing of All Voices Reading Room, locat­ed on the third floor of the his­toric McEldowney build­ing on the cour­t­house square in down­town Winchester.

A good crowd enjoyed sweet treats from 2 Dudes Baking and oth­er light refresh­ments. Kentucky Author Laurie Lee Hall was there to chat and auto­graph copies of her memoir.

The read­ing room was estab­lished in June by Lisa Bush, along with sev­er­al oth­er folks who com­prise the board of All Voices Reading Room. The estab­lish­ment occu­pies an ample, beau­ti­ful­ly-restored space in suite 301 of the build­ing at 5 Cleveland Avenue. The library fea­tures over a thou­sand books on top­ics relat­ed to mar­gin­al­ized communities—some of which are not avail­able elsewhere—and art by local mem­bers of the LGBTQ+ and African American communities.

Visitors can peruse the books and art­work in the com­fort­able room with an expan­sive view of the cour­t­house and Main Street. Or they can check out books or pur­chase art­work to take home.

A Vision Come True

The read­ing room is the cul­mi­na­tion of a vision Lisa Bush has had for some time.

“I was look­ing for some­thing that we could bring to the com­mu­ni­ty that would build a bridge,” Lisa says. “My youngest child is non-bina­ry and part of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty. When I looked at some of the dis­con­nects that were going on, it deeply trou­bled me to think that they may not have the same chances, the same oppor­tu­ni­ties that I would have. I read once that if some­one meets some­one who’s dif­fer­ent from them—someone from a dif­fer­ent cul­ture, the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty, a dif­fer­ent race or ethnicity—meeting one per­son can start to change their mind.

“Having this read­ing room offers an oppor­tu­ni­ty to come in to read a book or to meet peo­ple with­in the read­ing room, where you can learn a lit­tle bit about anoth­er cul­ture, anoth­er way of life, anoth­er eth­nic group, anoth­er race, anoth­er sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, what­ev­er the case may be, and to real­ize that there aren’t that many dif­fer­ences. When you real­ly look at it, every­body just wants the same thing.”

While bat­ting around var­i­ous ideas to address the need, Lisa heard about a project ini­ti­at­ed by Willie Carver—someone we have cov­ered sev­er­al times. Willie had start­ed a small LGBTQ library at the GRAC (Gateway Area Arts Center) in Mt. Sterling. Lisa approached him and described her vision.

“He was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ He donat­ed $1,000 worth of books. And that’s how we real­ly got start­ed. I kept build­ing on that and did pop-ups. We became incor­po­rat­ed in June of 2024. We start­ed doing pop-ups in January of 2025, and then got this per­ma­nent space in June 2025.”

For now, All Voices Reading Room is open only on Saturdays from ten to four PM, due to con­struc­tion down­town. But Lisa hopes to even­tu­al­ly have the room open on Thursdays through Saturdays, once con­struc­tion is fin­ished and park­ing is no longer an issue.

One mis­con­cep­tion about AVRR is that it is only for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties. But Lisa says it’s for everyone.

“It’s not a gay love sto­ry. It’s not a black his­to­ry book. It’s our his­to­ry. It’s our love sto­ry. This is a place for us to learn, to grow, to con­nect. It’s for every­one.

“Come and vis­it us! We’re open Saturdays from ten to four. We will soon be open on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. We have a great ele­va­tor. You don’t have to walk those steps.

“It’s a his­toric build­ing. The sec­ond floor hosts an art gallery. We cur­rent­ly have the art gallery for Byron Parker. We have local art that peo­ple can come and see and pur­chase. Artists keep 100% of their sales. It’s just a beau­ti­ful place to be. It’s cozy.”

It Takes a Village

Lisa Bush is obvi­ous­ly devot­ed to All Voices Reading Room, but she is not alone in this endeav­or. When she incor­po­rat­ed the orga­ni­za­tion, she select­ed capa­ble lead­ers to com­prise the gov­ern­ing board. Some of those board mem­bers were present on Saturday, includ­ing Tiffany Horn.

“I’ve only recent­ly become a board mem­ber,” Tiffany says. “Lisa had a cou­ple of board mem­bers who need­ed to step down, and we were kind of in the same cir­cles. She knows we share the same val­ues, and we both love books. I had recent­ly done a banned book swap over at Abettor. So she asked me to join, and I was hap­py to do so.”

Another board mem­ber, Hunter Malone, was also there.

“I’m not orig­i­nal­ly from the Winchester area,” Hunter says. “I met my hus­band a cou­ple of years ago, and he had a house here, and so I just kind of set­tled down. Some of the ear­li­est mem­o­ries I have with Lisa that led to this con­nec­tion was being involved with plan­ning local drag shows here in Winchester.”

Laurie’s Story

Also present on Saturday was Kentucky author Laurie Lee Hall, who resides in Crestwood. Her first pub­lished book is a mem­oir titled Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman.

Laurie told us that “the unique parts of my sto­ry are that I’m a trans­gen­der woman. But for most of my adult life, I was deeply involved in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah, work­ing both as an archi­tect for the church as well as an eccle­si­as­ti­cal leader.”

The book chron­i­cles Laurie’s life tran­si­tion and the dif­fi­cul­ties she encoun­tered with­in the Mormon church.

“In 2012, I came out as trans­gen­der. This book is about the whole pen­du­lum swing of my life with­in the church, from being deeply involved in it, to the point where I start com­ing out and they have to try to learn and under­stand what it means to be trans­gen­der and how to deal with me.”

Eventually, she was kicked out of the church and from her employ­ment there.

“It’s a sto­ry of resilience. It’s a sto­ry about claim­ing your own author­i­ty over your own sto­ry. It’s a sto­ry about being able to face the pow­er struc­ture that seems to con­trol every part of your life and stand in your own truth, break free, and go on and live a ful­fill­ing and hap­py life.”

Laurie’s sto­ry is part of the tapes­try that defines life for mar­gin­al­ized com­mu­ni­ties of all stripes—and a big rea­son why All Voices Reading Room exists.

As Laurie says, “It’s a sto­ry that has uni­ver­sal appeal to so many oth­er peo­ple liv­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly at this time, where the pow­er struc­tures can be very oner­ous and neg­a­tive. I declare in the book that gen­der iden­ti­ty is real, and the only way that you can know a person’s gen­der iden­ti­ty is to ask them and believe them. And that is delib­er­ate­ly opposed to all the neg­a­tive and igno­rant things being taught and said in the media right now.”

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