A Weeklong Celebration of Queer Black Artistry
October 5-9, 2020
Lambda LitFest is back for its fourth year with a week-long festival that will celebrate and defend Black LGBTQ lives. Join over 20 BIPOC LGBTQIA+ writers in conversations on art-making, joy, and how to dismantle a white supremacist, ableist, cisgender, heteronormative world. The events include ASL interpretation and recordings are closed captioned.
Lambda LitFest is supported in part by an Arts Grant from the City of West Hollywood, as well as support from the California Arts Council and the Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs.
BLACK JOY
featuring Nicole Shawan Junior, Roger Q. Mason, Jordyn Jay, Nasir Kenneth Ferebee, & George M. Johnson
Recorded live on October 5th, 2020 6:00 p.m. PT / 9:00 p.m. ET
Join us for a discussion on Black Joy, how it is vital to the health of Black LGBTQIA+ communities, and how happiness can be celebrated in Black art.
Nicole Shawan Junior is a black, queer and poverty-born counter-storyteller who was bred in the bass-heavy beat and scratch of Brooklyn, where the cool of beautiful inner-city life barely survived crack cocaine’s burn.
Roger Q. Mason (he/they) is an award-winning writer, performer and educator known for using history’s lens to highlight the biases that separate rather than unite us.
Jordyn Jay is a community organizer, arts advocate, producer/director and the Founder and Executive Director of the Black Trans Femmes in the Arts Collective (BTFA).
Nasir Kenneth Ferebee is a Los Angeles based television producer, filmmaker, activist, and public speaker.
George M. Johnson is an award-winning writer, activist, and bestselling author of All Boys Aren’t Blue.
Author names and bios correlate with banner from left to right.
BLACK AESTHETICS
featuring Jaden, Juliana Huxtable, t’ai freedom ford, & Marrion Johnson
Recorded live on October 6th, 2020 6:00 p.m. PT / 9:00 p.m. ET
Four of today’s leading Black artists come together to share their perspective on Black Queer Aesthetics and how they define, create, and imagine art-making. They’ll define their personal views on Black aesthetics and how their particular philosophies on art-making informs their work.
Jaden is an LA-based poet, performer, cultural worker, and story collector.
Juliana Huxtable is an artist, writer and musician working between New York and Berlin.
t’ai freedom ford is New York City high school English teacher and author of two collections of poetry including & more black, winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry.
Marrion Johnson is a Black, queer writer, storyteller and communications strategist, based out of Oakland California.
Author names and bios correlate with banner from left to right.
WRITING IN HOLLYWOOD AS BLACK AND POC LGBTQIA+ FOLKS
featuring Steve Harper, Kase Peña, Taneka Stotts, & Darnell L. Moore
Recorded live on October 7th, 2020 6:00 p.m. PT / 9:00 p.m. ET
Hear from what happens behind the screen in a time where “diversity” is a slogan, but not necessarily an integral part of how the industry functions. This is a conversation where Black and POC industry professionals will discuss re-imagining the future of Hollywood and how they are manifesting their dreams as BIPOC LGBTQIA+ writers.
Steve Harper currently serves as Supervising Producer on the CW drama Stargirl and has written for God Friended Me on CBS, ABC’s American Crime, the USA Network’s Covert Affairs and created the Emmy nominated web series SEND ME.
Kase Peña An award winning filmmaker, Kase Peña is a Transgender Latinx Female of Dominican descent, who’s currently raising funds for her independent feature film Trans Los Angeles.
Taneka Stotts is an Emmy-nominated Television Writer who has worked on the animated series My Little Pony: Pony Life (Hasbro), Steven Universe Future, and Craig of the Creek (Cartoon Network).
Darnell L. Moore is the author of the 2019 Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir, No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America, which was listed as a 2018 NYT Notable Book and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers’ pick; he is the Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content and Marketing at Netflix and currently at work on his second book, which is tentatively titled, Unbecoming: Visions Beyond the Limits of Manhood.
Author names and bios correlate with banner from left to right.
POLITICS, ACTIVISM & WRITING THROUGH A BLACK & POC LGBTQIA+ LENS
featuring Kai M. Green, féi hernandez, edxi, Ianne Fields Stewart & Zach Stafford
Recorded live on October 8th, 2020 6:00 p.m. PT / 9:00 p.m. ET
Hear what it means today—right now—to be a BIPOC LGBTQIA+ writer and activist within a white supremacist cis-gender heteronormative dominated world. This is a conversation where panelists will share what activism & writing means to them as BIPOC LGBTQIA+ creators.
Kai M. Green is a writer, poet, filmmaker, and scholar. He is currently working on a memoir entitled, A Body Made Home. He is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Williams College.
féi hernandez (b. 1993 Chihuahua, Mexico) is an Inglewood-raised immigrant trans non-binary visual artist, writer, and healer.
edxi is a Afro Pinay Siksika trans multimedia cultural worker. Her work entails political education while providing material support to marginalized & colonized communities. Creating art/media for the sake of propagating resistance culture, counter narrative and collective liberatory projects that spark discourse, sources of healing, critical thought, dialogue, and mutual aid.
Ianne Fields Stewart (pronouns: she/her/they/them) is a black, queer, lesbian, and nonbinary transfeminine New York-based storyteller working at the intersection of theatre and activism, and the founder of The Okra Project and co-organized Brooklyn Liberation: A Rally for Black Trans Lives where she delivered a speech in front of 15,000 people who gathered to march for Black lives.
Zach Stafford is an award-winning journalist who recently served as the editor-in-chief of The Advocate and host of the morning show AM2DM.
Author names and bios correlate with banner from left to right.
SEX & BODY POLITICS
featuring Brontez Purnell, Kenyon Farrow, KOKUMO, Nahshon D. Anderson, & Randa Jarrar
Recorded live on October 9th, 2020 6:00 p.m. PT / 9:00 p.m. ET
A panel where there are no rules or norms to follow. Panelists are free to say what they want about sex and the body without censorship. This is a conversation where BIPOC LGBTQIA+ writers will share how sex & body politics manifests in their writing.
Brontez Purnell is a 2018 Whiting Award recipient for Fiction- his work weaves sustained narratives of sex and desperation punctuated with triumph.
Kenyon Farrow is a writer and activist, splitting his time between NYC and his hometown, Cleveland, OH.
KOKUMO, the Queen of Queer Soul, is a legendary, award-winning musician, poet and activist.
Nahshon D. Anderson is a creative non-fiction writer from Altadena, California and is author of forthcoming memoir titled Shooting Range.
Randa Jarrar is the author of the forthcoming memoir Love Is An Ex-Country, the novel A Map of Home, and the collection of stories Him, Me, Muhammad Ali.
Author names and bios correlate with banner from left to right.
Previous Years’ LitFests
In 2019, Lambda LitFest featured over 150 writers in venues across Los Angeles, including Danez Smith (pictured), Charlie Jane Anders, Dynasty Handbag, Phranc, Karen Tongson, Katherine Agyemaa Agard, Myriam Gurba, Tommy Pico, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Tegan & Sara.
Lambda LitFest is supported by:
