PRESS RELEASE: Meet The Faculty for the 2024 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices

Author: Chloe Feffer

October 19, 2023

7 LGBTQ Writers to Join Lambda Literary’s 2024 Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices as Faculty

New York, NY—For over 30 years, Lambda Literary has championed LGBTQIA+ books and authors based on its belief that lives are affirmed and culture preserved when our stories are written, published, and read. Since 2007, Lambda Literary has offered the Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices—the nation’s premier LGBTQIA+ writing residency, which brings together emerging poets, playwrights, screenwriters, essayists, novelists, and memoirists in a safe, welcoming, and love-centered community.

Lambda Literary is pleased to announce the 2024 Faculty to lead our fellows during our prestigious Writers Retreat. We are returning back in person from July 28-August 3 at Chestnut Hill College outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Applications for fellowships open October 30, 2023 and close on December 11, 2023.

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Fiction

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Fiction is Casey Plett.

Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman (2021), which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Little Fish(2018), winner of a Lambda Literary Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and the Amazon First Novel Award in Canada; and A Safe Girl to Love (2014), also a winner of a Lambda Literary Award. She was the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers (2017) alongside Cat Fitzpatrick. Casey has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, and other publications. She is the publisher at LittlePuss Press. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ontario.

Nonfiction

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Nonfiction is Raquel Gutiérrez.

Raquel Gutiérrez is a critic, essayist, poet, performer, and educator. Gutiérrez’s first book Brown Neon (Coffee House Press) was named as one of the best books of 2022 by The New Yorker and listed in “The Best Art Books of 2022” by Hyperallergic. Brown Neon was a 2023 Recipient of The Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction. A 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism, as well as a 2017 recipient of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant, Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona home.

Playwriting

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Playwriting is James Ijames.

James Ijames is a playwright, director and educator. Ijames is the recipient of the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Artist recipient, two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Play, two Barrymore Awards for Outstanding Direction of a Play, a Pew Fellowship for Playwriting, the Terrance McNally New Play Award, Kesselring Honorable Mention Prize, the Whiting Award, a 2019 Kesselring Prize for Kill Move Paradise, a 2020 Steinberg Prize and the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama recipient.

He received a B.A. in Drama from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA and a M.F.A. in Acting from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA. Ijames is an Associate Professor of Theatre at Villanova University and a co-artistic of the Wilma Theater. He resides in South Philadelphia. 

Poetry

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Poetry is Chen Chen.

Chen Chen is the author of Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017). He teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College, Stonecoast, and Antioch.

Speculative Fiction

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Speculative Fiction is Charlie Jane Anders.

Charlie Jane Anders is an author, columnist, and speaker living in San Francisco. She has written multiple science fiction books, including the Unstoppable series, and has published a book of essays, Never Say You Can’t Survive, about how creativity bolsters resilience. She also hosts a recurring literary event, Writers with Drinks, in which local writers share their work with an appreciative and tipsy audience.

Screenwriting

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Screenwriting is Rasheed Newson.

Rasheed Newson is the author of My Government Means to Kill Me, which examines the political and sexual coming of age of a young, gay, Black man in New York City in the mid-1980s. The novel is a 2023 Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “The 100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. Rasheed is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. Along with his television writing partner, T.J. Brady, he co-developed and is an executive producer of the drama series Bel-Air. Rasheed and T.J. have also worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series.

Young Adult Fiction

The Faculty Member to lead our fellows in their study of Young Adult Fiction is Darcie Little Badger.

Darcie Little Badger is a Lipan Apache writer with a PhD in oceanography. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Elatsoe, was featured in Time Magazine as one of the “Best 100 Fantasy Books of All Time”. Her second novel, A Snake Falls to Earth, received a Nebula Award and a Newbery Honor, and is on the National Book Awards longlist. 

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Lambda Literary is excited to announce that in 2025, we will be offering a fully-online winter Virtual Retreat. This Retreat will offer three cohorts: Prose, Poetry, and Performance. We’re taking this year to envision and plan what this new offering will look like. Stay tuned throughout this year for more updates.

We are honored to welcome all seven of our faculty members to our 2023 Retreat. To learn more about the Retreat, please visit our website.

With care,

Chloe Feffer (they/she/he)

Program Manager

Lambda Literary