Prepare to be swept into the beautifully bizarre universe of Yvie Oddly, a revolutionary drag artist, rapper, and fine-art visionary who continues to shatter every mold placed before her. From winning RuPaul’s Drag Race Season 11 to turning heads as an All Stars: All Winners finalist, Yvie has carved out a legacy defined by fearlessness, creativity, and truth. Her boundary-pushing looks, gravity-defying performances, and unmistakable cackle have cemented her as one of drag’s most powerful and uncompromising voices, and this season, Yvie’s most meaningful work is happening off the runway.
In honor of Trans Awareness Week and Giving Tuesday 2025, Yvie Oddly has partnered with The Trevor Project, the leading suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for LGBTQ+ youth. On December 2, fans can purchase autographed copies of her memoir, All About Yvie: Into the Oddity, exclusively through OddlyYvie.com with proceeds helping The Trevor Project continue its life-saving work. For Yvie, this collaboration is more than philanthropy; it’s a promise to LGBTQ+ young people everywhere that they are loved, valued, and never alone.
With candid storytelling, electric artistry, and a message rooted in empowerment, Yvie Oddly stands as a beacon of visibility for queer and trans youth, especially those who rarely see themselves represented. Her memoir is both an origin story and a call to action, celebrating every strange, sparkly, spectacular part of who we are. We talked about the importance of the Trevor Project and how telling her story has benefitted not only those who have read it, but also the author herself in our exclusive interview.
What inspired you to partner with The Trevor Project for Trans Awareness Week and Giving Tuesday this year?
I mean not to flatten it all out, but we live in a very, very terrifying time to be trans, specifically after what came to be such a period of revolution and forward thinking and progress for our entire community, for the whole queer community.
So, I think I mean now – I hate when people say this, but now more than ever, it actually is important to be doing work to allow or to protect spaces that are actually there for the trans community. And it’s kind of a trip because the Trevor Project is one of the first foundations I had ever come to be aware of before I had even identified as queer learning.
Learning about the atrocities that a world could commit around me and then learning that there was a space that was trying to do justice in the face of that was really impactful. And then, a decade later when I came out and started involving myself in the community and celebrated my first trans awareness week, I got to see the range and the depth of the struggles, the triumphs like the history that I was never taught. It just really felt like kismet at a time where I know not everybody has a lot to give. But if, if we’re gonna be giving girl, we’ve gotta give it to the people who need a little bit of fortification.
Now you’ve said that your book celebrates every strange, sparkly and spectacular part of who we are. How does that message align with the mission of the Trevor Project?
I mean, I feel like that is exactly what the Trevor Project is here to preserve. The work that they do, even just in providing a space of support like a hotline and an outreach for people who might feel like they’re the only weirdo in their town is so important.
I think about some of my family members I have who live out in these rural spaces in Colorado alone, and how the world really doesn’t see them except for the people in their immediate small world, and if you don’t have anybody there to look up to, to tell you it’s gonna be okay to offer you solutions and plans, it can feel pretty bleak. And the Trevor Project is a project that works everywhere. So, as long as we are fortifying that space, I feel like we have at least a last defense against the tyranny that imposes against all of us.
The Trevor Project’s research highlights especially high risks for Black transgender and nonbinary youth. As a Black queer artist, how does that statistic land with you?
Painfully close to home. Yeah, it always has. And that was actually one of the most impactful things I remember from my first Trans Day of Remembrance – this was a decade ago – and just like reading the hundreds of people like that year and then seeing that so many of them were like my color were in spaces where they weren’t supported, where there wasn’t a lot of community where we had the scrap on the streets where there were laws against us. So, it’s like look at the place where the wound is going the deepest. It’s really important to me that the Trevor Project is doing something to protect the dolls and protect people of color, you know, to put up and not even plan on shutting up.
Your memoir is deeply personal. What was the most challenging part of telling your story so openly – and what was the most freeing?
I mean, the most challenging part of telling my story was that it can only be so long. I’ve got a whole life and unfortunately just to be able to get the bigger picture across, there’s a lot of things that I don’t think can always be explored. I wish it could be double the length because after I went back and read it, I was like, oh wait, there’s also these things. So that was the challenge for me – not even getting to step back enough to look at the bigger picture and figure out how much I was missing. The biggest freedom of it all was feeling like this was the first space I’ve had as an artist in a long time to be able to tell my own story in a way that is digestible for people.
I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve had to share what I have with the world and there’s just something that much more magical when you get to be the producer behind it and being like, oh yeah, that’s right. We’re gonna get into like the really gritty stuff that people may not want to hear about me, like my favorite color is actually throw up green. I mean, today, I don’t know. It could change tomorrow.
You talk about balancing your public persona with your private identity. How did writing the book help you understand that balance?
It just helped me heal a lot of the bonds I have – in all honesty – with the people who are in my life and who have always loved me and supported me and had to watch me go through this transformation of being somebody that was just in their life to now somebody who is perceived by the public. Like I’m partially owned by the public – according to some of the public – but I think this book really helped start a lot of the conversations that I don’t know if we would’ve been able to have after.
I’ll say, after having read the book back myself, it became so difficult to not speak about a few things that had already come up in my mind. So much so that I ended up having a talk with my stepfather that healed so much of a rift between us that I thought I was willing to just like let lie until one of us is in the grave. He apologized for all the hurt I felt about his homophobia, about trying to squash that weirdness.
He was my first bully in my mind and seeing a grown man cry and be like, I never saw your perspective before and I didn’t realize that I was doing these things to hurt you. I was scared because of the kids I grew up with who had far worse fates if they didn’t hide. It’s really strange how these conversations were lurking there, but having spoken them out to the public just forced me and my whole family at least to sit down and be like, wow, this is what our relationship is.
Was there a moment in your childhood or your early drag journey where you realized that your oddity was actually like your superpower?
I mean, I always thought my uniqueness was my superpower. I thought that was the coolest thing about me was that I was like, Ooh, none of these other second graders know I can do a back flip but I think what really strengthened it was drag. It was the place where instead of having to keep this secret of like, oh, I can do a back flip, or I love to paint. Instead of having this secret place where you can be really proud of things that you deserve to be proud of, like your beauty, your artistry, your vision, your love, your obsessions, drag gave me this platform to be like, no, no, no, no. I’m a really great artist. I am this weird, gender queer creature that is gonna be a man one day, a woman the next, and an asteroid from space a third. [Drag] was the first place where I found it not to be cringe to affirm myself, and it’s the role that drag has been able to allow me to play my everyday life ever since.
Visibility is central to both your art and the Trevor Project’s mission. What does authentic representation mean to you right now?
It means everything to me. I mean there’s a million different ways to be queer and there are a million different environments for us to be living in but I think it means finding the ways to do something that is so true to you, even if it is not what the world around you tells you. And I always prioritize people putting their safety first. Your physical safety is more important than anything. If you live in a place where they’re gonna stone you to death for wearing a skirt, girl, you better pack that skirt away and you better sneak off to the next town but find the little places where you can break those rules for yourself because it’s the most important thing.
And if you can share that gift with somebody else, you know, like paint your nails and walk around in a museum some, some place where different people from all different walks of life and ages and backgrounds are. Go be visual where you can because that is going to be the spark that changes somebody else’s life.
Drag has become increasingly politicized lately. How do you stay inspired and also defiant through your creativity?
Oh, I’m glad you included the word defiant because that really is where all my creativity stems from. It’s the little brat in me who is like Disney told me I can be anything I want to be and somebody is like, you know only there are only two genders now, I’m going to be the brat who sticks my tongue out and is like, fine, then I’m a man in a dress. I just toe the line because defiance is the root of art. It’s the root of expression and, honestly, it’s the root of radical queerness in and of itself, it is being defiant and having to unlearn all these systems of self-hatred.
You’ve always pushed the boundaries of drag aesthetics, how do you see your art evolving as you continue to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and youth?
I think it’s always going to look different. It’s always going to take on different roles. Speaking in a grander scheme, when the world first became aware of Yvie, I was really trying to push the idea of drag as the switching of genders into, just a full-on artistic expression and right now my drag is mostly about humanizing. It’s about taking the scary things and the things that people wanna call us and perceive us as and like laugh at it.
So, you know, I think I won’t ever be able to predict what my drag is going to mean for the future but I do know it’s always going to give that other queer person who feels so alone a little bit of visibility to be like, oh my gosh, there’s another way of thinking.
Now, going along those lines, if you could speak directly to a young LGBTQ+ person who feels scared or alone, what would you want them to hear?
You’re not alone. I hope you can find a space someday where you can go – whether it be like a pride event or a dance or even just seeing something on the internet – but I hope you can know how many of us there are and how many people have felt weird and how there’re going to be times where it might feel like that is something to be ashamed of.
But if you keep feeding your weirdness, if you keep doing the things that make you happy, if you surround yourself with people who want to see you embracing the things that bring you joy, just know you’re going to see an entirely different side of the world that the people who might not want you to feel happy don’t even know exists. Hold in there weirdo. I see you
You wear many hats. You are a drag performer. You are an author, you are a podcaster. What is next for you? Is there something you have done, haven’t done yet that you really want to conquer?
Yeah, actually, I’d love to get into stage acting. It is just hard because you know, that takes rehearsals and performance time. That’s the last art form I practiced before I got into drag, which is something that feeds my ADD. It’s like today you can be a painter. Tomorrow you can be a seamstress, and the next day you’re choreographing a Britney Spears dance. So, if maybe if I break my ankle or something, I’ll get back on stage.
Is there anything else going on that you’d like to promote?
Listen, listen to my podcast, HIGHKEY! It’s really fun. I talk to lots of fun people and I’ve got new music that I’ve been working on, so, keep your ears, ears, peeped. We’re always gonna be experimenting with more. We’ve got more coming.
Grab an autographed copy of All About Yvie at OddlyYvie.com on December 2 (but feel free to support The Trevor Project all year long.) Follow Yvie on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and listen to HIGHKEY! on IHeartMedia.