Founding Queen of Drag Story Hour releases debut novel and prep for future film

“An absolute triumph of a story that’s certain to repair nearly any ache in your heart”

— Dog-Eared Books

American Booksellers Association’s “Indies Introduce” Award Winner

SAN FRANCISCO – Kyle Casey Chu, known widely as “Panda Dulce”, is the founding queen of Drag Story Hour and also a former educator and social worker. This year, Chu is expanding her talent for storytelling into publishing and film, as a debut novelist and emerging filmmaker.

In 2022, far-right extremists stormed her Drag Story Hour to silence her (see Vogue article). Refusing to be silenced, she is now leveraging her global platform to tell even gayer stories. 

Chu is releasing a middle grade novel described as “Better Nate Than Ever” meets “Dumplin”, “The Queen Bees of Tybee County” (Quill Tree Books, April 15, 2025), an uplifting coming-of-age story that celebrates authenticity, queer identity and Chu’s personal upbringing as a queer fourth-generation Chinese American.

She is also expanding her storytelling into film. She is a SFFILM FilmHouse Resident for emerging filmmakers (2024-2025), Sundance Institute Trans Possibilities Fellow (2024), Lambda Literary Emerging LGBTQ Voices Fellow (2024) and Sundance Institute Uprise Fellow (2022).

Her short screenplay based on her 2022 experience, “After What Happened at the Library”, won SF Indie Fest’s Best Short Screenplay and TITAN Awards’ Best Short Screenplay competitions. And she has co-written, produced and starred in a new short film shot on-location at San Lorenzo Public Library, the site of the actual incident, premiering at 2025’s Florida Film Fest and SFFILM. embargo until estimated date of April 23, 2025: A 2025 Rainin Arts Fellow in Film, Chu has also secured $100,000 funding to turn this short film into her debut feature film.

Whether on page, stage or screen, Chu’s message is: “We must imagine the futures we want, and dance toward them, with a conclusive exclamation point. Art: drag, literature, film and music, is what saved me from life’s rough patches. Consuming art reminded me of how not alone I was. It showed me that my pain wasn’t a point of isolation, but something I shared with many others. It brought me closer to the people I care about.”

ABOUT KYLE CASEY CHU

KYLE CASEY CHU (AKA Panda Dulce) is a San Franciscan Author, Filmmaker and one of the founding queens of Drag Story Hour. In 2022, far-right extremists stormed her Drag Story Hour to silence her. She is now leveraging her global platform to tell even gayer stories. Chu’s writing has received awards and recognition from Sundance, SFFILM, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the California Arts Council, Lambda Literary and more. In 2023, she served alongside Drag Story Hour as Grand Marshall of San Francisco’s Pride festivities. Her debut two-novel middle grade series, “The Queen Bees of Tybee County” (HarperCollins, 2025) was optioned by Lambur Productions into a UK episodic. She is currently a FilmHouse resident at SFFILM, in script development for her debut surrealist drama feature film, “After What Happened at the Library.”

Her work has been featured on Vogue, NPR, HuffPost, VICE, at SXSW, Harvard & MIT’s Broad Institute and more. She created, produced and starred in the all-QTPOC web series “Chosen Fam.”

Find out more about her at www.kylecaseychu.com, or follow on Instagram at @pandadulce

“The Queen Bees of Tybee County”

Kyle Casey Chu | April 15, 2025 | Quill Tree Books | Middle Grade Coming of Age

Hardcover | 9780063326958 | $19.99 

Ebook | 9780063326972 | $9.99 

PRAISE

“In this emotionally grounded tale about becoming one’s true self, Chu carefully balances an affirming coming-out narrative with honest, approachable accounts of familial secrets, intergenerational trauma, and systemic racism and homophobia.”

— Publishers Weekly

“An important book for middle school shelves, and for any reader seeking a positive role model demonstrating courage and strength in the face of challenging situations—even when it’s family who might pose the biggest ­obstacle.” 

— School Library Journal

“The Queen Bees of Tybee County is a heartfelt celebration of authenticity that asks us all to follow our joy.”

— Kacen Callender, bestselling and award-winning author of “King and the Dragonflies and Hurricane Child”

An Interview with Kyle Casey Chu

1. You have made quite the impact in the book industry with your work as a founding queen of Drag Story Hour. Have you always wanted to be a writer yourself?

Short answer: Yes! One day, as a 7-year-old in summer school, we were tasked with writing a children’s book. That afternoon, I ended up writing and illustrating five books. Come seventh grade, I wrote a hundred-something-page book: “Brother’s Ethnicity,” a vaguely plotless fantasy adventure novel about four best friends who embark on a cross-country road trip together. Looking back, I realize writing this helped me process the crushy-crush feelings I was developing toward one of my closest friends. I came out to my friend group shortly after completing the book.

2. Your protagonist’s journey is inspired in part by your own personal journey. When did you know you wanted to be a drag queen?

Often as a kid, when adults asked me, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” I had at least 17 answers. At certain points, I wanted to be a detective, a figure skater, a writer, a teacher, an actor, a musician or a “face painter,” which I now know, of course, interpret as a pull toward drag.

Much like writing, drag encourages you to be and experience all of these things — to imagine expansively. As a drag queen, you are at once expected to be a makeup artist, a dancer, a comedian, an actress, a hostess. You can be a figure skater for the night, or a noir detective, until you whirl off a trench coat at the exact right moment to reveal a stunning sequined gown.

3. Why did you decide to pick Georgia as the setting?

I’m a nerd who wanted to learn more about Southern pageant culture!

I chose Georgia because Atlanta is commonly regarded as one of the South’s largest queer metropolises. Doing research for this book helped me better appreciate pageant culture, a tradition that focuses more on jaw-dropping regalia — high-stacked wigs, dripping drop-earrings and resplendent gowns — as opposed to the more edgy experimentation and genre-bending performances I was used to, coming from San Francisco.  

4. What inspired you to share this story, particularly now?

The media’s blueprint to approach LGBTQ+ stories is through the lens of trauma, a real impossible-struggle-to-triumph arc. There’s good reason for this, for there’s a lot that we’re up against. It is not enough to live like this, set on our back foot, always responding to the latest terror. We must also imagine the futures we want and dance toward them.

This is what I hope to put forth in “The Queen Bees of Tybee County.” It is a joyous story about a fish-out-of-water who boldly proclaims who he is, and is met with support that overwhelms any discouragement. Not only is this story, and the world it introduces true, and quite possible, but I think it’s the type of tale we all need right now.

5. How has your background as an educator and in social work informed your storytelling?

My book draws on a lot of concepts I learned in social work school that wish I’d learned earlier on. Ironically, many queer stories out there still operate on binary terms — having to be one or the other, to choose this identity or that. Queer imaginations are more creative and expansive than that. This tale shows us that we don’t always have to choose between our differing parts. That we can integrate our masculine, feminine and androgynous qualities, or our interests in sports and drag, as equal and essential parts that make us whole and unique.

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