Nahshon Dion is a multi-talented writer and teaching artist from Altadena, California. Published in LGBTQ anthologies and journals, Nahshon speaks to discrimination and violence black and brown LGBTQ youth face. Nahshon has created a uniquely personal work turning her anguish into art that touches on mental health, gun violence, and state terrorism. She’s the recipient of dozens of grants, fellowships, artist residencies, honors, and awards totaling over $100,000 that provided ammunition and support towards developing and creating her gutwrenching forthcoming memoir Shootin’ Range. Nahshon’s literature shows how youth can reach their full potential and shine when their rainbow is blurred. @nahshondionanderson www.nahshondionanderson.com
JUBI ARRIOLA-HEADLEY is a Blacqueer poet, storyteller, & first-generation United Statesian who lives with his husband in South Florida & whose work explores themes of masculinity, vulnerability, rage, tenderness & joy. He’s a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow, holds an MFA from the University of Miami, & his poems have been published with Ambit, Beloit Poetry Journal, Literary Hub, Nimrod, Southern Humanities Review, The Nervous Breakdown, & elsewhere. Jubi’s debut collection of poems, original kink, is available now from Sibling Rivalry Press. Black Lives Matter. Trans Lives Matter. Stop Asian Hate. Art is Labor. Eat the Rich. Free Palestine.
Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received a B.A. in Communications from Adelphi University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel, Chulito (Magnus 2011), has received awards and recognitions from American Library Association (ALA) and the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture 2011) with Charlie Vázquez. He is also an award-winning playwright and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology co-edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera in 2015. He received an Audre Lorde scholarship from the ZAMI Foundation, a P.R.I.D.E. (Puerto Rican Initiative to Develop Empowerment) Award and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award in 2014. Charles serves as the chair of the board for The Bronx Council on the Arts and NALAC – The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and is an active organizer for the Queer Latina/o Writers Collective.
Jaime Shearn Coan is a PhD student in English at The Graduate Center, CUNY and a poet whose work has appeared in publications includingThe Brooklyn Rail, Drunken Boat, The Portland Review, and Troubling the Line: An Anthology of Trans and Genderqueer Poetry. Jaime has received fellowships from Poets House, The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Tin House Writers Workshop, and the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. He was awarded a 2014 Jerome Travel & Study Grant and has a chapbook forthcoming from Argos Books in Spring 2015. (Photo credit: Arnold Adler Photography)
Molly McCloy is an NYC Moth Storytelling Slam winner with work published in Nerve and Slate. She has performed recently for Tucson’s Odyssey and FST series as well as the award-winning Lit Lounge series at The Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art. Her work has been described as all-muscle, hilarious, inspiring and heartbreaking. She has been called a happy misanthrope and an angel.
