Abraham Johnson is a queer writer based in Athens, Georgia and he is so excited to be returning as a 2018 Lambda Playwriting Fellow this year. His plays have been developed all around Athens and Atlanta, working with the Classic City Fringe Festival, New Georgia Group, Horizon Theater, Out of Box Theater, Essential Theater, and Lionheart Theater. His playwriting has also earned him residencies with the Sundress Academy for The Arts, recognition as a 2017 Lambda Playwriting Fellow, and in 2018 he was a finalist for SPACE on Ryder Farms’ Greenhouse Residency. His publications can be seen in the international queer men’s magazine Hello Mr., Emerge, the 2017 Lambda Emerging Voices Anthology, and the Athens Playwrights’ Workshop Press. In his free time, Abraham enjoys drinking cheap wine with his boyfriend and recommending Sarah Ruhl’s 100 Essays to strangers. He hopes you pick up a copy for yourself.
Roger Q. Mason’s plays give voice to the silenced through the ritual of performance. His works have played at New Group, McCarter Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA, Son of Semele Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and the Kraine Theatre. His play The White Dress was a semi-finalist for the 2018 Bay Area Playwrights Festival. His piece Hard Palate was a New York Theatre Innovator Award nominee. Mason was a finalist for the Piven Center Lab and Activate: Midwest New Play Festival, semi-finalist for the inaugural Shonda Rhimes Emerging Playwright Award and Theatre Masters, and winner of a Hollywood Fringe Festival Encore Producer’s Award. Mason holds an MFA in Writing from Northwestern University, MA in English from Middlebury College, and BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University. He is currently a writer in residency at Skylight Theatre’s PlayLab.
Yosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed poet, educator, performance artist, and speaker. Born in Guerreo, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of “13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World” and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of “10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know.” His first collection of poetry, For Colored Boys Who Speak Softly… was self published after a collaboration with the legendary Carlos Santana. His work has also been published in various online journals and books including Mariposas: An Anthology of Queer Modern Latino Poetry (Floricanto Press), Queer in Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out (Cognella Press), and the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Xicano & Chicano Poetry (Kórima Press). Reyes was featured in the documentary 2nd Verse: The Rebirth of Poetry.
Michael Shayan is an Iranian-American Jewish writer and performer based in NY. He is currently under commission from Audible’s Emerging Playwrights Fund. Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting. He has recently developed and presented work at New York Stage & Film, La MaMa, The Lark, Project Y and Dixon Place. He is currently developing a theatrical project with Susanne Bartsch. Finalist: New Dramatists. Michael was also a member and performer at The Magic Castle in Hollywood.
Ry Szelong is a playwright/performer/director+ originally from the Bay Area, CA. He’s a 2018 Fellow with University Settlement’s Performance Project and a SPACE @ Ryder Farm Greenhouse Residency Finalist. His own work has been presented at Nuyoricans Poets Cafe, INTAR’s Steep Salons, Triskelion Arts, Ars Nova ANT Fest, Dixon Place HOT Festival, and on Governor’s Island as a 2017 Public Works Department Resident Artist. BFA from NYU Tisch: Playwrights Horizons Theater School where he is an alumni TA and mentor. Artistic Associate of The Parsnip Ship, which turns plays into live podcast recordings.
Writer-in-Residence Kay Ulanday Barrett aka @brownroundboi, is a poet, performer, and educator, navigating life as a disabled pilipinx amerikan transgender queer in the U.S. K. has featured globally: Princeton University, UC Berkeley, The Lincoln Center, Queens Museum, The Chicago Historical Society, NY Poetry Festival, Dodge Poetry Foundation, The Hemispheric Institute, & National Queer Arts Festival. They are a 3x Pushcart Prize nominee and has received fellowships from Lambda Literary Review, VONA/Voices, The Home School, and Drunken Boat. Their contributions are found in Asian American Literary Review, PBS News Hour, NYLON, The Margins, RaceForward, Foglifter, The Deaf Poets Society, Poor Magazine, Fusion.net, Trans Bodies/Trans Selves, Winter Tangerine, Apogee, Entropy, Colorlines, Everyday Feminism, Them., The Advocate, and Bitch Magazine. They are currently a Guest Editor at Nat.Brut and 2018 Guest Faculty for The Poetry Foundation & Crescendo Literary. When The Chant Comes (Topside Press, 2016) is their first collection of poetry.
Writer-in-Residence Matthew Haynes received his M.A. in Fiction Writing and M.F.A. in Nonfiction Writing from Boise State University. He has been a finalist for the William Faulkner Award, Writer’s Digest Literary Award, and Glimmer Train Short Short Story Award. He is the author of the novels Moving Towards Home and Friday. Matthew was a State of Idaho Literary Fellow in 2010, Idaho State Library Traveling Scholar from 2011-13, and Lambda Literary Fiction Fellow in 2017.
Writer-in-Residence Echo Pane is a returning 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow. Her work has appeared in Tin House, No Tokens, and The Still. She holds an MFA in Fiction from New York University and is a bookseller in Brooklyn. She recently finished revisions on a short story collection, The Hard Outer Layer, and will begin working on a novel at Lambda.
Jon Riccio is a PhD candidate at the University of Southern Mississippi’s Center for Writers where he serves as an associate editor at Mississippi Review. His work appears in print or online at Booth, The Cincinnati Review, Cleaver, Hawai’i Review, Permafrost, Switchback, and Waxwing, among others. The poetry editor at Fairy Tale Review and contributing interviewer for Sonora Review, he received his MFA from the University of Arizona.
j. sebastián alberdi writes plays & poems about being queer, being mexican, and being brought up in his mother’s catholicism. he runs (pnkprl.com), an erasure e-zine, and his first book of erasures Y ES is available from ghost city press.
