Ethel Walker School
Sarah Prager ’04 (back row, third from right) with members of WINGS, Walker’s gender and sexuality alliance.
On Wednesday, October 4, 2023, Sarah Prager ’04 addressed The Ethel Walker School community during an assembly hosted by Walker’s Ward and Williams Center for Equity and Justice. Through her work as an author and speaker on the LGBTQIA+ community, she raises awareness about a history that is often deemed as “inappropriate” and has been banned in many schools, libraries, and other venues. Sarah is the author of four widely-acclaimed books for young people about LGBTQIA+ history: Queer, There, and Everywhere; Rainbow Revolutionaries; Kind Like Marsha; and A Child’s Introduction to Pride. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, National Geographic, NBC News, and over 40 other national outlets. She has spoken about LGBTQIA+ history to over 200 audiences across eight countries including two U.S. embassies.
Sarah claims The Ethel Walker School as her home, having grown up on campus as a faculty child of longtime teacher and administrator Rich Prager P’04, ’07, and where she and her younger sister were educated through middle and high school. Walker’s is where Sarah embraced her queer identity during a time when not many students or faculty made this part of their identity public. She was the head of WINGS, the School’s gender and sexuality alliance that is still active today, and credits Walker’s for teaching her to use her voice to stand up for herself and to never hide who she is.
“Queer people’s contributions to the world are in our everyday lives — straight and cisgender, too,” Sarah says. “We can thank queer people for Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, West Side Story, Sweeney Todd, A Streetcar Named Desire, A Raisin in the Sun, the Mona Lisa, the David, and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It’s a history to be proud of and for everyone to know. We have been here and will always be here. We will survive the discrimination and attacks and create beautiful things while we do it. I thank Walker’s for helping me to build my life where I can create my own beautiful things and the strength to defend them in a world where they are banned from libraries and schools just for mentioning this history.”
Learn more about Sarah’s books here.
