Forrest
Lotterhos

I grew up sticking out. As a queer, neurodivergent kid in the 90s, I got the message early: conform or stay small. There weren't many places I felt like I belonged — but the library was one of them. It was the place where my curiosity wasn't a problem to be managed. Where the questions I carried could actually expand.

Long before I had language for it, I was building community. I facilitated the Innisfree Open Mic in Boulder, founded the Queer Feral Forest Creative Club — an online creative community for queer and neurodivergent artists — and have spent years bringing people together through creative practice. My film career has been an extension of that same impulse: a decade of work at the intersection of climate action, outdoor access, and social justice — contributing to Chasing Coral, Chasing Ice, and The Social Dilemma — built not through transactions but through relationships and collaborative spaces. In 2024 I was named a CineFe Fellow, part of a cohort of underrepresented filmmakers committed to changing who gets to tell stories.

Being named a CineFe Fellow helped me begin to imagine what my career could look like if I re-focused on nourishing my personal creative practices and giving back to community. I started thinking about the moments that were tugging at something more expansive. Like when I developed curriculum for a 12-week film program and mentored a college-age student at the onset of his career — watching him light up, get inspired, start to see the creative possibilities open up. That was an "aha" moment: this is what I'm supposed to be doing. I realized it's not about profit for me. It's not even about my own creative work being the best it can possibly be. For me, it's about people. It's about invoking and watering the dream seeds. About fostering that spark and watching the resilience of the human spirit be reawakened. All of my work, my origin story, is unconventional — and also, it's culminating.

Library and information science is where I'm headed. Why? It is one of the last genuine third spaces we have. A system of exchange that actually works, in a world where so many systems are breaking down. I want to help build libraries of the future where neurodivergent and disabled patrons aren't an afterthought — where accessibility and belonging are designed in from the start, because that's what good design looks like for everyone. Libraries foster a natural gathering in a shared location, and help us imagine what is possible beyond those walls. In our society, and in the natural world. Our own backyards, the skies overhead — are doorways back to reality, back to imagination, back to each other. My work is about reclaiming that.