Aurora Pride Performer Spotlight: Shirley Delta Blow

Whenever Shirley Delta Blow enters a room, she makes sure to stand out for all the right reasons – it’s not just because of her 6-foot-3 stature and hot pink foam wig.

A staple within Denver’s drag community, Delta Blow is anything but boring. For her, drag is an outlet to explore an alternative persona, and she describes herself as a big city girl with small town dreams, who is positive and uplifting. She also doesn’t mind telling a fun dad joke from time to time. 

In addition to entertaining and lip syncing for audiences on stage, Delta Blow is a resident bingo host at X Denver, and she conducts drag queen story time, reading some of her favorite children’s books at local bookstores and libraries. She is a third-grade teacher outside of drag and believes it is important for children to understand diversity in the world. 

Delta Blow will be a headlining performer at this year’s Aurora Pride on August 5, and OFM caught up with the performer to talk more about the event, drag queen story time, and future goals.  

How excited are you to perform at this year’s Aurora Pride?

Oh, I love Aurora Pride! Pride festivals are usually held in the city, where everything’s tight and smashed together, but with Aurora Pride, you’re on this reservoir and it feels like you’re at the beach. It feels tropical, and it’s just a lot of fun. It’s a unique venue, so I think it lends itself to making it a unique event as well. 

Can you give us a hint as to what we can expect from your set at Aurora Pride?

I’m hoping to do a fun Broadway mix, and then I would love to do a little story time. I love reading books to kids. For my day job, I’m an elementary school teacher, so I do that on a regular basis, and I just really want to welcome kids and families with children to our event. For those youth who are questioning, letting them know that Pride is a celebration, a protest, and a safe place for people anywhere along that spectrum.

Is that what Pride personally means to you?

Yes! I have come into my own as a proud queer person because the world tried to prevent me from doing that. For thousands of years, the world has shamed the other and tried to marginalize all our diversity. They’ve been very effective for many years doing that with queer people, so when people come into their own and are proud of who they are, when they’re no longer ashamed of their life, that is worthy of a celebration. 

In the 1950s, it was illegal to be gay in the United States, and in the 60s, if you were out in public, you had to wear articles of clothing from the gender on your driver’s license. In the 70s, in California, they tried to pass Proposition 6, which would have banned a gay person from being a public school teacher. In the 80s, when AIDS struck us and the government did nothing, the gay community rallied and we took care of our own. In the 90s, in Colorado, they passed Amendment 2, which said cities cannot provide any protections for LGBTQ people. 

So, Pride is also a protest, standing up and saying, you have tried to do this, and we have not gone away yet. You have not been able to eliminate us, and you’re not going to. What I do in my personal life doesn’t have any effect on your life. We have differences in the world, and that should be okay. 

What do you think makes the Denver drag community unique and stand out from other drag communities?

We have a lot of diversity in our community, and we have lots of different types of performers. You have the court system with the Imperial Court of the Rocky Mountain Empire, the pageant system, show queens that perform at places like Tracks and Hamburger Mary’s, independent queens, and weirdos like Yvie Oddly and Willow Pill, who love to push the boundary with performance art. There are so many venues that support local drag performers, and we have such a supportive community that allows drag artists and entertainers to thrive and exist. 

For those who don’t know, how did your journey with drag begin?

I like to say I’ve probably always been a drag queen, but I was kind of afraid of it. I had my first role in a theater play when I was six, so I was bitten by the performance bug early, and that kind of propelled me all the way through college at the University of Kansas, where I got a degree in theater. Then I moved to Denver and started acting in plays, and I was really coming into my own as an out gay person. A big part of the queer community and the shows that we’d go to were drag shows, and I found drag queens to be intimidating. They’re so confident, funny, and quick witted, and even though I have some of those characteristics, I was like, oh my gosh, I’m terrified of these drag queens because they’ll cut a bitch!

In 2011, I was playing with the Colorado Gay Volleyball Association, and they asked me to be in their Miss Queen of ACEs Pageant. I agreed, and I knew this was supposed to be a campy little pageant, but I decided to take it seriously. So, I picked a talent that was a lot of fun, and I think I got lucky with a good question in the question-and-answer segment, and I ended up winning the pageant. I thought that was the end of it, but then one of the judges came up and said, hey, I think you’re really great. We’d like to do a show with you, let’s put something in the books. 

Two months later, I’m hosting a show, and two days before the show, the person who has all the experience hosting drag shows calls and says, my mother is sick. I have to go home, so you’re on your own. I’ve only been to a few drag shows in my life, so I didn’t know what to do. But I went on, then I’m suddenly like, I think I can do this. That was 2011, and then I started doing a show every three months or so, and everything kind of evolved. I think people like what Shirley brings to the stage. She can be light and fun, but she also has a little jab as an activist, making a call to action. We’ve got to stand up and take care of our own. 

You have become well-known for your drag queen story hours. How did you get involved with that?

I was in a show at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, and a local bookstore said, we want to do drag queen story time. We heard that this is very popular, and we want to bring it. They didn’t know who to hire, so they looked at the Denver Center, which was doing a show called DragOn, a drag mashup for Comic Con, so they hired us to come and do this drag queen story time. 

It was funny because the rest of the cast are actors, but they were like, how comfortable do you feel reading for kids? They got to me, and I was like, I’m an elementary school teacher. I literally do this every day. I’m going to be fine. It’s been great, and I love telling the stories. I pick really good books about identity and supporting diversity, and it’s just so much fun to do.

Unfortunately, drag queen story hour, and drag shows in general, have been under attack by far-right conservatism. What are your thoughts on the anti-drag sentiment?

If you’re against drag queens, then you probably haven’t been to a drag show. If you’re against drag queens reading books to kids, you probably haven’t been to drag queen story hour. A lot of these conservatives, they’re the same people who are banning books, and most of them will say, oh, I just heard that this book is terrible. I haven’t actually read it yet. That would be the same as me saying, your church is full of sexism, racism, and homophobia, but I haven’t even been there yet. That’s just what I heard. I read it somewhere or I heard about it from somebody. It’s an unfair judgment of an entire group of people, trying to demonize them and making them into the villains of the story. Drag queens are not the people who are harming your kids. Clean up your own house before you come sweeping mine. 

Do you believe it’s important to introduce kids to drag at an early age?

Sure, but again, I think parents have a better understanding of their kids. If they want their kids to see some diversity and come to a drag queen story hour, I’m all for it. I personally think it’s a great idea for kids to come and hear me read stories because, one, I’m a very good storyteller (laughs).  Two, I have colorful and fun costumes. I have an experience of saying, look, I’m an out proud person, but I still get afraid in the world sometimes because there are scary and uncertain things that happen. 

I sometimes find comfort in the pages of a book, where I meet a character who is going through the same thing as me, or I meet a character who finds their people in a club, a certain city, or in a park. You think, maybe I should go to those places. It’s important to help young kids understand the diversity in our world, so I do think kids should be exposed to drag queen story time at an early age because it helps them see that not only are there queer people, but sometimes queer people look like this and this is what they do, and that’s okay. The world is wide and there are many colors of the rainbow.

What are some future goals you hope to accomplish with your drag career and platform?

Wow, that’s a good question. I’ve auditioned for RuPaul’s Drag Race a bunch of times, and I’ve never even gotten a thank you for auditioning email, so I guess I’m not quite what they’re looking for. However, if I were to get on the national stage, I wouldn’t do the lip syncing at bars, the fashion, or the red carpets. I would take story time all around the country. I would love to read these wonderful stories to little kids in Kansas, Michigan, Montana, wherever they need us to be. I think that would be such a fun opportunity. 

I’ve got a couple picture books of my own in my head, and I would love to film a drag queen story time TV show for a network like PBS. Get some of these stories to kids and libraries in places where they don’t have access to them. Stories about being yourself and loving your kids. There’s one story that I read called My Shadow Is Pink by Scott Stuart, and at the end, the dad says, ‘Shout with your voice that this is me, and some, they will love you, and some, they will not. Those that do love you, will love you a lot.’ Kids need to know that it’s okay to be yourself, and even though some people are not going to like you for that, that’s fine. They’re not your people. You don’t have to like them back.

Before we wrap up, are there any other upcoming projects or anything else you’d like to mention or plug? 

I just want to say to all our queer and drag allies out there, we need you not just during the month of June, but we need you during the other 11 months of the year as well. If you’re not standing close enough to us where you get hit by a couple of the rocks that are aimed at us, then you need to take a step closer. I hope everybody has a happy, fun, and safe Pride, and just get out there and be your authentic self!

Stay up-to-date and connect with Shirley Delta Blow by following her on Instagram @shirleydeltablow, or visit shirleydeltablow.com. For more information on Aurora Pride, visit aurorapride.com.

The natural hair wigs will be credited to Joanne Kappel and the foam wigs credited to Christopher Cleary.