Courtesy of Cassie Nova
Audio By Carbonatix
For our Best of Dallas 2025 issue, celebrating banned books, we spoke with some of the players in Dallas’ book world, including popular drag queen Cassie Nova, who took part in drag story times for kids at Dallas public libraries, before the tide of hate rolled in. For our special issue celebrating books, we also interviewed Akwete Tyehimba from Pan-African Connection and Will Evans of Deep Vellum Books.
Once upon a time, which seems too long ago, someone had a great idea: Bring Dallas drag performers to public libraries to read children’s stories to kids. Engage children with books. Teach them empathy. Let them know that decent, interesting people and unfamiliar ideas exist in the world. And if some of those kids happen to be a little different, let them know they’re not alone. Being different is OK.
And then came the dragons. What seemed like a good idea, teaching children how experiencing stories can broaden their horizons, went up in smoke in the face of protests and vitriol from conservative Christian opponents of all things LGBTQ+.
We recently published our Best of Dallas 2025 issue, and it’s been a few years since the Dallas Public Library, facing protests, last hosted a drag story hour. But the controversy is still alive, with the Texas Senate this year voting a second time to withhold state funding from any public library that hosts such an event. (The bill died in the House.)
Since we’re celebrating books in this issue, we thought we’d offer a special retroactive applause for Cassie Nova, who, along with Jenna Skyy, led the first story hour at Dallas’ central library downtown in 2018. Three more would follow, and the pair would be invited to speak before the Texas Library Association. About a year later, protesters were lined up at Grauwyler Park Branch Library, and the performers were fielding vicious attacks online. Counter-protesters who supported the program came as well. Security was tightened as the heat rose, one side shouting Bible verses and “happy rainbow families” on the other.
They would hold four storytimes at Dallas libraries, the last one live and shown online from the Rose Room in 2021.
“It blew up that … we were ‘groomers’ and all this ridiculousness,” Nova recalls. “You know, I never was expecting to … be a kids’ entertainer. But I also know the importance of representation and things like that, because I had nothing like that growing up.”
Nova, 53, says that when she was a child, gay people were rarely represented in the media, and when they were, it was usually “something bad.”
At first, she was skeptical of appearing at a story time, expecting awkward questions. She’s an adult entertainer, and her performances for grown-ups can be bawdy.
“I didn’t think I’d like it. I’m a drag queen. I tell dick jokes, and I’m pretty foulmouthed on this stage here, so I was a little nervous,” Nova says. “We had to take a little training course about how to deal with children and what you can or can’t say around them. We took it very seriously.”
Turns out, she was a natural.
“Kids freaking love me, but I’m also witty and funny enough that I can keep parents entertained with jokes that aren’t meant for the kids, but aren’t vulgar in any way,” she says.
Interactions with the kids never became awkward. The “little kids would look up at us … big-ass wigs, big costumes, and see more like a Disney princess or something than a man in a dress or a drag queen,” Nova says. “The ones that were old enough to understand that we were dressed up, they couldn’t be bothered. I mean, that just wasn’t a factor for them. But most of the little kids just were, ‘I like your hair.’”
Nova recalls one boy, the son of lesbian parents, showing up in a dress because, the boy said, the weather was hot. Besides, that’s what his moms wear. Nova saw the boy again later, and he said he wasn’t wearing dresses as much, though he still liked them. No big thing.
“You know, that’s just part of him … seeing what the world’s like to people who dress or act different.”
Children are willing to accept differences until someone teaches them otherwise, and there’s no shortage of people willing to offer lessons in prejudice, even if that means distorting the truth. One book Nova picked to read was What Color Is Your Underwear? by Sam Lloyd. It has pictures of animals dressed in underwear hidden under flaps. Lift the flap and say the color. “Oh my god, they laugh. They giggle,” Nova says. They learn about different colors.
Soon afterward, right-wing social media exploded — drag queen groomers want to know about your kids’ underpants. Nova didn’t read the book again.
There are ways to silence books other than banning or burning them. You silence those who share them. Or you try. Nova says she has since done the occasional drag story time, though not at the public library. So here’s a belated Best of Dallas for a reader who keeps reading — and representing.
“The reason I still continue to do it is if you don’t want your kid to be around it, don’t take them. But you should not tell other parents how to raise their kids.”
Cassie Nova is the show director of the Rose Room and other Caven bars and has worked as a drag artist/showgirl there since 1993. Her Monday night Freak Show cabaret is our 2025 pick for Best Drag Show. Her Rose Room shows are Thursday-Sunday, upstairs inside S4, 3911 Cedar Springs Road. roseroomdallas.com
