2017 marks the third iteration of the Reading Queer Literary Festival, which I co-founded in 2014. This year, Reading Queer partnered with the Miami Book Fair, The Olympia Theater and O Cinema Wynwood to create a series of queer-centric cultural programming for South Florida.
I’m incredibly excited that Chen Chen (Long listed for the 2017 National Book Award – Poetry), t’ai freedom Continue reading “Reading Queer Literary Festival 2017”
Miami New Times interviews Neil de la Flor about Reading Queer: Poetry In A Time of Chaos, a new anthology he co-editedwith Maureen Seaton.
Excerpt: “As Miami’s cultural landscape boomed in the past decade — with the influx of major art fairs, new museums, and local galleries opening in up-and-coming neighborhoods — the city’s queer culture was in flux. Reading Queer, a Knight Foundation-sponsored cultural organization, is looking to change that fact by highlighting voices from a community that remains fractured between Miami and Fort Lauderdale. Recently, the group announced a publication deal for a paperback anthology of poetry from local bards and internationally recognized queer writers.”
“’I think it’s the first Miami-based anthology of queer voices,” says founder Neil de la Flor, who has also contributed to New Times. ‘Poetry has had a resurgence because of the political climate and the need to huddle together and connect. Queer writers have an ever greater need to reach each other through every means,’ he says, including social media and poetry.'”
“Thanks to Reading Queer, Miami’s LGBTQ community has had a forum that gives voice to underrepresented stories. It’s badly needed in a city whose queer culture was split in two after the gentrification of South Beach.”
Read the full article here.
I’m happy to announce the forthcoming anthology Reading Queer: Poetry In A Time of Chaos, (Anhinga Press, 2018), which brings together fifty LGBTQ poets in the spirit and solidarity of poetry at its finest and fiercest.
Pre-order now @ http://www.anhingapress.org/poetry/reading-queer-poetry-in-a-time-of-chaos.
Edited by Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton, Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos is vulnerable, sexy, heartbreaking, revolutionary. It’s poetry that pushes against and beyond boundaries in both form and content.
Featuring: Thalo Kersey, Aaron Smith, Bryan Borland, Caridad Moro-Fronlier, Cathleen Chambless, Celeste Gainey, cin salach, Collin Kelley, Eduardo C. Corral, Elizabeth Bradfield, Ellen Bass, Farah Milagros Yamini, Gem Blackthorn, Gerry Gomez Pearlberg, Gregg Shapiro, Holly Iglesias, James Allen Hall, Jan Becker, Jason Schneiderman, Jen Benka, Jim Elledge, JV Portela, Joseph O. Legaspi, JP Howard, Julie Marie Wade, Julie R. Enzer, Justin Torres, Kevin Simmonds, L. Lamar Wilson, Lori Anderson, Megan Volpert, Meredith Camel, Phillip B. Williams, Qwo-Li Driskill, Ruben Quesada, sam sax, Samiya Bashir, Samuel Ace, Seth Pennington, Shane Allison, Stacey Waite, Stephanie Lane Sutton, Stephen S. Mills, Tara Burke, Ching-In Chen, Nicholas Wong, tc tolbert and Valerie Wetlaufer.
To receive notice of publication, subscribe here.
Ensure that queer voices are never silenced. Donate today and support the launch of Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos. The Knight Foundation will match every dollar that you donate today (up to $70,000). Example: Donate $50 and the Knight Foundation wil match your $50 giving Reading Queer a total donation of $100.
Double your impact today. 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/.
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awards Reading Queer a 2016 Knight Arts Challenge Miami (KACM) grant, a community-wide initiative funding the best ideas for the arts in South Florida. This is the second KACM grant awarded to Reading Queer since 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, with a series of main stage performances, writing workshops and literary installations,” said Neil de la Flor, Executive Director of Reading Queer. “With the aim of advancing the careers of emerging and established queer-identified writers, Reading Queer will also expand the RQ Writing Academy and collaborate with The Betsy Hotel-South Beach to launch the week-long RQ Writers in Residence program.”
With rapidly changing conceptions of gender and sexuality and a historical moment defined by racialized forms of violence against various marginalized groups of queer-identified people, Reading Queer empowers and provides a safe space for aspiring, emerging and established queer writers to create and share their work with the community. Reading Queer serves as both respite and resource to amplify queer voices and effect change.
We need your financial support to continue our work in the community. The Knight Foundation will match it dollar for dollar up to $70,000.
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/.
I’m happy to announce that Reading Queer is a finalist for a 2016 Knight Arts Challenge grant along with 68 individuals and organizations using the arts to transform the community.
“The Miami of today is radically different from the Miami of 2008 when we first launched this challenge. Artists and cultural organizations have pushed this community to seek high levels of excellence, while continuing to experiment with new ideas. Our belief in this city, and our investment in its people, is born out every day in the performance halls, galleries and streets of Miami, and again by the 68 finalists in this year’s challenge,” said Victoria Rogers, vice president for arts at Knight Foundation.
Knight Foundation will announce the winning ideas, which will share $2.5 million, on Nov. 28, 2016.
In the meantime, support RQ’s mission to promote & preserve queer literary culture with a small, medium or large donation today. Every dollar we raise powers our mission and transforms the community through the arts.
Visit www.readingqueer.org/donate to make a donation now. Read more about the KAC here.
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/.
For KnightBlog, I wrote about the old independent film center Alliance Cinema (South Beach), my first encounter with Javier Bardem and its connection to Queer Screens: LGBTQ Film Series, a new film series co-presented by Reading Queer and O Cinema. It was a difficult, but formative period of my life. The Alliance Cinema made coming out in the early 1990s and the horrors of the AIDS epidemic palpable. It was the first time I felt I had a community, that I fit in, that I mattered even though I was always the one kind of hiding in a dark corner.
Here’s an excerpt from the article: “In the 1990s, the Alliance Cinema was the pulse of South Beach–a center for independent film culture and, most importantly for me, a safe space for a burgeoning queer community. It’s where I met Javier Bardem….
In that dark, single-screen, six-row theater, I felt safe watching films that revealed the multitudes of being and becoming queer, with my community sitting next to me. It would pull me out of darkness more than once.”
Read more > here.
Raised in the Oriente Province of Cuba in the 1940s, Arenas began his life-long love of the sea and water. Leaving home as a young adolescent, he moves to Havana where he finds himself swept up in the revolutionary spirit and joins a circle of writers and artists. His first novel, “Singing from the Well,” is published in Cuba, but as Castro’s oppressive regime gathers force, Arenas’ homosexuality and political writing make him a target. After being falsely accused of molestation, Arenas is arrested and imprisoned at El Morro. Eventually released from prison after dehumanizing treatment, Arenas flees Cuba in the 1980 Mariel Harbor boatlift. After moving to New York with his friend Lazaro Gomez Carilles, Arenas’ hopes for a new life are destroyed by AIDS, and he dies in 1993, at the age of 45.
Reading Queer in collaboration with O Cinema, Pridelines, Aqua Foundation, Miami Jewish Film Festival and the MIFO LGBT Film Festival present the academy awarding winning film MILK in honor of the victims of the Orlando attack. 100% of all funds collected will be donated directly to the Equality Florida fund.
Buy tickets > here http://www.o-cinema.org/event/milk/
Thursday, June 23rd @ 8pm at O Cinema Miami Beach.
Neil de la Flor 