In June, millions of people in more than 100 countries will attend annual Pride parades to celebrate the lives and identities of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Many in Vermont’s LGBTQ community have never known a time without such celebrations. They may know little about the beginnings of local Pride 43 years ago, when openly queer Vermonters risked the loss of their job, rejection by their family and friends, even violence.
Published this week, a new comic called Proud Little State recounts the history of Vermont’s first Lesbian and Gay Pride Parade, as it was called back then. Held in Burlington’s City Hall Park on June 25, 1983, and involving about 350 people, the march was timed close to the anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City’s Greenwich Village, which launched the modern LGBTQ rights movement.
The first in a series of short comics that will explore LGBTQ topics from Vermont’s past and present, Proud Little State is a collaboration of the University of Vermont’s Center for Research on Vermont, the Vermont Queer Archives and Vermont Folklife.
Issue No. 1, “Burlington Pride 1983,” was written and illustrated by Burlington cartoonist and queer organizer Teppi Zuppo, who drew from interviews, photos and other archival material compiled for “Pride 1983,” an exhibit that toured Vermont’s libraries and museums from 2020 to 2024 and now lives online. The eight-page comic features drawings and quotes from several organizers of Vermont’s first Pride parade, which, as illustrated in the comic, is now commemorated by a roadside historical marker in City Hall Park.
“It was such an amazing moment of activism,” Zuppo told Seven Days. “There have been a lot of ups and down since 1983, but it’s nice to see that … a lot of those folks are still here and still activists.”
Proud Little State was conceived by Holly Painter, director of the Center for Research on Vermont and a senior lecturer in UVM’s English department. Painter had seen Vermont Folklife’s 2021 nonfiction comics anthology, The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont, Drawn by New England Cartoonists. Thinking that a similar project devoted to Vermont’s queer history and culture could reach a wider audience than conventional books, she reached out to Meg Tamulonis, who’s worked on the Vermont Queer Archives for more than 20 years, and Andy Kolovos, associate director and archivist at Vermont Folklife. Both were instrumental in the “Pride 1983” exhibition.
Why a comic rather than another artistic medium?
“I believe very strongly that all documentary work, even journalistic work, is ultimately subjective,” Kolovos explained. Whereas books, films and podcasts can sometimes create the illusion of objectivity, “in comics, the subjectivity is embedded in the form. There’s no question that there’s a human hand guiding it.”
New issues of Proud Little State, each drawn by a different cartoonist, will come out once per semester — expect the second this fall. Future ones will cover such topics as Vermont’s queer nightlife, the civil union law, the history of queer media and contemporary student activism.
Said Painter, “I don’t think there was ever a world where we were going to make just one comic.”
Proud Little State will be distributed for free, starting at a launch party at UVM on April 7. Thereafter, bookstores, museums and queer organizations will make it available throughout the state, with multiple issues eventually compiled into a full-length book.
This article appears in Money & Retirement Issue • 2026.
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