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Rainbow Archipelagos of Queer Resistance

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride

A Queer Filipino Panel and Workshop 

Kick off Find Your Story with a panel of queer Filipino poets sharing their work. 

DC's Liwanag DC Filipino Book Festival organizers and Queer Poets perform poems of the ever evolving struggle to come out as queer, bisexual, non-binary and how their lives are impacted in the current turbulent times. Their poems address resilience as Filipino Americans find themselves fractured like the archipelago of their ancestry. Participants will be given a writing prompt inspired by their reading, with an opportunity to share their work in a nurturing environment. 

About the speakers

Reg Ledesma (they/them) is a queer Filipino writer based in the DC area. They are a graduate of the University of Maryland’s Asian American Studies program and Duke University’s Master of Public Policy program. They are a proud Jack Kent Cooke Scholar. They are the co-founder of Kwento Collective and Liwanag DC Filipino Literature Festival. 

Regie Cabico is the first Asian American and openly queer poet to win the Nuyorican Poet Cafe's Grand Slam. Television credits include MTV, HBO's Def Poetry Jam, TEDx Talk, and 2 episodes of The Poet Speaks. He is the author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex (Day Eight, 2023.) He is the Executive Director of A Gathering of the Tribes in New York. www.tribes.org

Nico Penaranda is a Filipino-American writer and musician from Washington, D.C. He currently teaches at Howard University. He graduated from AU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program in 2022. Recent publications are in Day Eight, Brigid Gate Publishing, Mistake House Publishing, Gardy Loo, The Keezel Review, and Z Publishing.IG: @npxhc.

Sponsored by the MOAPIA Mayor's Office of Asian Pacific Islander Affairs, A Gathering of the Tribes, and Day Eight. 

About Find Your Story...Writing with Pride 

A Day of Writing and Community at MLK Library Celebrating DC’s LGBTQ Writers.

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride will be a day of workshops, presentations, and author talks focused on DC’s writing community. For World Pride the event will have special focus on LGBTQ writers in the DC area. The day will include panel discussions, informal writing workshops, and a dedicated poetry stage.

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