It’s been an exhilarating and exhausting year. Strange and wondrous. Politically queer and quite peculiar, but rewarding nonetheless. Last night (or was it the night before?),  I received a $70,000 Knight Arts Challenge Miami grant on behalf of Reading Queer, a literary organization that I co-founded with Maureen Seaton & Paula Kolek in 2013. 

The KACM grant will strengthen Reading Queer and its mission to foster and promote queer literary culture in South Florida by expanding the annual RQ Literary Festival, which is the first and only queer centric literary festival of its kind in the region. The grant will also empower us to help advance the careers of emerging and established queer-identified writers through an expanded RQ Writing Academy, an series of writer workshops, and the RQ Writers In Residence, collaboration with The Betsy Hotel-South Beach. 

Like all good things, there’s never a free ride. The grant is a challenge, which means hat we first raise the money first and then receive matching funds from the Knight Foundation, so we need your financial support to continue our work in the community. 

Donate now: readingqueer.org/donate.

About the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation: Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. We believe that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. For more, visit knightfoundation.org/.