In The News
Mix 104.1 Interviews Katie for Pride Month 2024
June 27, 2022
Karson & Kennedy of Mix 104.1 talks to Katie about why she started the Little Queer Library and why she thinks it is so important. The interview with Katie begins at 05:43 in the program.
CBS News Boston Pride Month 2022
June 27, 2022
CBS News Boston celebrated Pride Month with a closer look at the people and organizations impacting Boston’s LGBTQ community. Katie is featured in this video talking about the Little Queer Library and the importance of queer representation.
GBH reported on the repeated incidences of someone emptying the Little Queer Library of children's and young adult LGBTQ+ focused books, book challenges Waltham's School District has faced, and the growing attacks by conservative political groups across the country on LGBT+ representation.
WBZ news reported on the third incidence of a man emptying the Little Queer Library of books within a month. Several hundred dollars worth of books were taken on each occurrence, and never returned. "We are more determined than ever to keep this library going. Because of the overwhelming outpouring of recent support, we will be fully restocking as soon as possible,"
Owners of Free Library Say LGBTQ+ Books Stolen Again
March 6, 2022
NBC 10 Boston reported that for the third time in less than a month, someone was caught on video Sunday morning stealing LGBTQ+ books from The Little Queer Library in Waltham. "Came up to the book box, grabbed an arm full of books after rifling through it. Went back to his car and then did it again," Krysta Petrie said. "You can't stop LGBT voices from being heard even if you take a few of our books, so please just stop."
Jesse Collins from the Waltham News Tribune interviews Katie about the repeated incidences of an older man clearing the library of queer books, including the entire children's section. They then speak of the overwhelming community response: "It has been frustrating and sad at times, but coming out of this, this has been much more positive, it has outweighed those negatives."
Video capta robo de libros de mini biblioteca de Waltham
February 17, 2022
Mercedes Paris of Telemundo New England talks with Krysta, Katie, and their Spanish speaking friend Ceci about recent incidents of an older man taking large numbers of books from the library. "It's basically a hate crime."
Owners of Free Library Say It's Been Targeted Over LGBTQ+ Books
February 17, 2022
Michael Rosenfield talks with Katie and Krysta about recent thefts from the library. "We think of ourselves as a local community resource," says Krysta Petrie. "We think that this was basically a directed, targeted affair"
Katie and Krysta talk to CBS Boston about the recent thefts from the library, as well as why they started the library. According to Katie, LGBTQAI+ books are "hard to find, they are often expensive, and a lot of people are looking for that kind of representation. They are looking for themselves on the pages."
LGBTQ Little Free Library in Waltham allegedly targeted by thieves
February 17, 2022
Katie Cohen, speaking with the news station about recent thefts: “If you keep taking them, we’re going to keep putting them out and you’re giving us the ability to reach more people because more people are paying attention to what’s happening."
Krysta and Katie speak to local WBZ reporter Karyn Regal about recent thefts from the library. “The community response once again has been huge and we’re reaching more and more people than ever,” Petrie explained. She added that more people now “know about our library."
Shaun Chaiyabhat speaks with Krysta and Katie about the older man repeated taking large quantities of queer books from the library. "If you keep taking them, we're going to keep putting them out and you're giving us the ability to reach more people because more people are paying attention to what's happening," Cohen said.
Collection of new books taken from Waltham's Little Queer Library
February 11, 2022
Katie speaks with local reporter Jesse Collings about the first major incident of books being taken from the library en masse. "We always try to have certain books in the library at all times, one of them is This Book is Gay, which is one of the books being challenged at the moment at the high school," Cohen said. "Those types of books are resources that answer questions people might have. I wish I had those types of books when I was trying to figure things out. "
You can't steal from a little free library, but can you censor it?
February 11, 2022
Johnny Diamond of The Hub discusses using the term "stealing" with regards to Little Free Libraries, and whether or not the Little Queer Library is being censored.