This article first appeared in The Kansas City Star on May 11, 2025.

Several years ago, bestselling Olathe-based author Julie Murphy spotted Jonathan Van Ness in New York’s Javits Convention Center and dropped what she was doing to chase him. Luckily, the Queer Eye grooming expert was in a big plastic boot healing a gymnastics injury and wasn’t tough to catch. 

“It was a really cute way of meeting each other,” Van Ness said. “But who could have even knew that I was going to score the luckiest break ever getting to learn to write with Julie Murphy?” 

Van Ness knew and loved her book, Dumplin’, adapted for a film starring Jennifer Aniston and Danielle MacDonald. 

Once they got to know each other via Zoom meetings, Van Ness proposed the idea for a book he wanted to co-author: What if the ghost of a 1950s drag performer was stuck in a vintage designer bag thrifted by an unhappy teenager? 

Murphy liked it, and Let Them Stare releases later this month. It’s also the current KC Pop Up Book Group pick. 

“The ghost was like the membrane of the project from the very beginning,” Murphy said. “What’s really great about this story is how campy it is.” 

Van Ness added that he wanted to work in ghostly elements out of nostalgia for Harriet the Spy, Casper, and Hocus Pocus.

“I also wanted to be able to tell interesting queer stories that were based in something that could be reality, but also like paranormal, because the unsolved mysteries really hit hard, and continue to do so for my millennial self,” he explained. 

They developed the tale of Sully, an 18-year-old Pennsylvanian dreaming of life in the big city. But their ticket out – an assistantship with a social media influencer – is canceled the day after their goodbye party, after their car is sold, and after they’ve quit their job. 

The disappointment would have destroyed Sully had Rufus the ghost not appeared. 

Death wiped most of Rufus’ memories, as death does, so he doesn’t know his last name or the circumstances of his death. To free him from the vintage handbag, which is worth enough to buy Sully a ticket out of town, they’ll need to team up to find answers – and overcome some age-based communication challenges. 

Delving into LGBTQ history and retro slang

Murphy and Van Ness base each character’s language in their respective eras. 

Young-adult Sully uses words like “shmexy” and “cuh-yuuute.” 

Rufus tosses out old-timey phrases like, “putting an egg on my shoe and beating it.” 

Van Ness said he has “like 10 nieces and nephews” who provided some of the youthful lingo, but he and Murphy also spoke with several historians to nail down the archaic speech as well as some queer history that they compel the characters to discover. 

That history is the story’s key component and literally the key that releases Rufus from the bag. The effect on Sully is almost opposite – home tightens its grip, but in a good way. 

“It wasn't until I was in my 30s that I realized that I was, like, not the first queer person from my little town in Illinois,” Van Ness said. 

Through research, he consciously changed his own narrative about his relationship with his hometown, which Sully ultimately benefited from. 

Van Ness was surprised to learn that in the 1980s, his town once had a local queer bar called Irene’s Cabaret that housed an HIV/AIDS testing and resource center. He puts a similar, but older, hangout in Let Them Stare.

In each case, the discovered establishment offered community and respite to the LGBTQ community.

Murphy said that knowledge like this is a critical defense against self-doubt, but also against the potential for identity erasure. 

“The kids who fall for the lie that they are the first person to feel this way are the kids who think that there’s something wrong with them that can be fixed,” Murphy said. “There are people who have come before you. You’re not alone.” 

Over the course of the young adult novel, a parallel love story also unfolds. Sully finds an innocent sort of first love with a childhood friend. Evidence surfaces of Rufus’ similar romance decades earlier, but the outcome of each, decades apart, is very different. 

Murphy added, “[The legalized bigotry] is really just like the same monster with a new mask every few years. So in that way, it is a ghost. It just seems to never die and constantly haunts the queer community.”

But, Van Ness added, “I think our history, in a lot of ways, is an opportunity to connect us and give us something to celebrate.” 

The Let Them Stare book launch and author talk with Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy is at 6 p.m. on Monday, May 19 at the Central Library, 14 W. 10th St. Free with RSVP at KCLibrary.org/events. 

JOIN THE GROUP 

The Kansas City Star partners with the Kansas City Public Library to present a book-of-the-moment selection. We invite the community to read along. Kaite Mediatore Stover, the library’s director of readers’ services, will lead a discussion of Jonathan Van Ness and Julie Murphy’s Let Them Stare at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, June 18, at Under the Cover, 607 E. 31st St. Email Stover at kaitestover@kclibrary.org to join or RSVP at KCLibrary.org/calendar.