OTHER COUNTRIES, BLACK QUEER EXPRESSION SUMMER SOLSTICE READING

Join Other Countries in partnership with The LGBT Community Center for a Summer Solstice reading this #pridemonth! Celebrating Black queer expression, the evening will include featured writers and a 3- to 4-minute per person open mic (sign-up required!) Sign-up for the open mic before 6 p.m. Please arrive early as it is first come, first serve. 

About Other Countries 

Established in New York City in 1986 in response to the under-representation of Black gay stories, essays, biographies, and dramatic writing in LGBT literature, Other Countries is a Black queer men's writing collective. The threat of HIV and AIDS magnified the urgent and ongoing need for safe spaces where Black queer men can express, support, and validate each other. Other Countries writing collective’s initial core program was a weekly, peer-facilitated writing workshop. Semi-annual public solstice readings presentations and performances at colleges, universities, and community centers increased our visibility. In addition to writing, reading, and performing, Other Countries members published three anthologies of poetry, prose, illustrations, and photographs. They are Other Countries: Black Gay Voices, a First Volume (1988), Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (1993), and Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Writing (2007, Redbone Press). 

The peer-facilitated writing workshop continues to meet, now virtually, on the 2nd and 4th Saturday of each month. For more information, email infoothercountries@gmail.com

https://www.facebook.com/other.countries.7

Speaker Bios

Featured Writer, Reginald Harris

Reginald Harris was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for his first book, 10 Tongues, and won the 2012 Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and recipient of Individual Artist Awards for poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, his work has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including the Other Countries anthology Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Writing, and This is the Honey: An Anthology of Contemporary Black Poets. He and his partner live in Brooklyn.

Featured Writer, Sheilah Mabry

Sheilah Mabry, LCSW-R, PCC (she/her/hers) is a consultant, facilitator, leadership coach, licensed clinical social worker, writer, and artist. Grounded in curiosity, creativity, and joy, Sheilah believes in the inner resourcefulness and resilience of people to work collectively to transform systems. As a Black bisexual cisgender woman, she centers equity, and anti-racism in all of her work.

Sheilah received her professional coach certification from Leadership that Works, and is a past board member of the National Association of Social Workers-New York City Chapter. She is a proud member of the National Queer and Trans Therapists of Color Network. Sheilah is a graduate of the Ackerman Institute for the Family’s Foundations of Family Therapy and Gender & Family Project. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Massachusetts Boston and a Master’s degree from the Hunter College School of Social Work. 

Featured Writer, David Barclay Moore

David Barclay Moore is a gay African American author & filmmaker and 2024 Bellagio Fellow awarded by the Rockefeller Foundation. David is also the author of numerous books, including the best-selling, award-winning The Stars Beneath Our Feet, Holler of the Fireflies and Boyogi. He is currently editing a book anthology on Black mental health. His work has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine and New York Magazine, among others. His novel The Stars Beneath Our Feet was optioned by actor/director Michael B. Jordan for a film adaptation. David splits his time between New York, Los Angeles and St. Louis. Follow him on social media at @dbarclaymoore or visit him online at www.davidbarclaymoore.com.

Featured Writer, Charles Rice-Gonzàlez

Charles Rice-González is a writer, LGBTQ activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and an Assistant Professor at Hostos Community College. He’s the author of the award-winning novel Chulito, which received recognition from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and his writing's been published in over a dozen anthologies and journals. Recent publications include Aster(ix), Obsidian and in the Afro-Latinx Anthology from University of Arizona Press, and When Language Broke Open: Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent on Memory, Care, and Futures. He attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, VONA: Voices of Our Nation, Lambda Literary Writers' Retreat and Sandra Cisnero's Macondo Writing Workshop. He’s a fellow of MacDowell, the Lannan Foundation and PEN America Writing as Activism.

Featured Writer, Allen Wright

Allen Luther Wright presently writes for the Speaker of the New York City Council. His own works can be seen in the anthologies A River Runs Beneath Us: Voices and Writings of the Griot Book Project; Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beams Call; the Lambda Award-winning works The Road Before Us: 100 Black Gay Poets; and, Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS; as well as the first Other Countries journal: Black Gay Voices. He is also proud to have shared the stage with his Other Countries brothers in a number of readings over the years, joined them at several marches and protests, and stood beside them in the Marlon Riggs’ film Tongues Untied.

Master of Ceremonies, Len Richardson

L. Philip Richardson has been a member of Other Countries since 1986. He is published in Black Gay Voices, A First Volume, Voices Rising, The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets, and Shade. He lives in New York City.