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A Gathering of Our Pride

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride

A marathon queer poetry reading from the DC LGTBQ poetry community.

As part of Find Your Story, join the Library and A Gathering of the Tribes for a marathon reading of queer poetry. Regie Cabico, the Fairy Godmother of Spoken Word, and Kim Roberts, the premier literary historian of DC, curate and host fourteen LGBTQ+ poets from the greater DC region as they share poetry of love and resilience. 

About the poets

Ishanee Chanda is a prose writer and poet from Dallas, Texas. She is the author of two books of poetry titled Oh, these walls, they crumble and The Overflow. Her work appears in the Eckleberg Project, Stoked Words: A Queer Anthology, Z Publishing House’s Emerging Texas Writers, Flypaper Magazine, OutWrite Journal, the ASP Bulletin, and Apricity Press.

Hiram Larew is the Founder of Poetry X Hunger: Bringing a World of Poets to the Anti-Hunger Cause; Organizer of Voices of Woodlawn, a program of poetry, music, and art that explores the tragedy of slavery; and author of six collections of poems, including Patchy Ways (2023) and Mud Ajar (2021).

Natalie E. Illum is a poet, singer, and disability activist living in Washington, DC. She is the author of two poetry chapbooks: On Writer’s Block and Acrobats (2006), and Ground Lover (2004). Illum competed on the National Poetry Slam circuit for five years and was the 2013 Beltway Grand Slam Champion. Illum was a founding board member of mothertongue, a women’s performance series that lasted 15 years, and she was selected as a writer-in-residence at the Appomattox Regional Governor’s School in Petersburg, Virginia.

Dan Vera is a writer, editor, watercolorist, and literary historian. The recipient of the Oscar Wilde Award for Poetry and the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, he’s co-editor of Imaniman: Poets Writing in the Anzaldúan Borderlands (Aunt Lute Books) and author of two books of poetry, Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen Press) and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books).

Regie Cabico is the first Asian American Poet and openly Queer Poet to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam and is a three-time National Poetry Slam Finalist. He is the author of A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex ( Day Eight, 2023)

Kim Roberts is the author of Buried Stories: A Guide to Washington, DC-Area Cemeteries (Rivanna Books, 2025), and editor of the anthology By Broad Potomac’s Shore: Great Poems from the Early Days of our Nation’s Capital (University of Virginia Press, 2020) She administers the Arts Club of Washington’s Pride Poets-in-Residence program and co-edits DC Pride Poem-a-Day each June with Jon Gann.

Michelle Parkerson is a writer, educator, and award-winning filmmaker based in Washington, DC.  Her work has screened at prestigious international festivals including The Sundance Film Festival, The Berlin Film Festival, and AFI Fest.  She has documented LGBTQ icon Audre Lorde, jazz innovator Betty Carter, a cappella activist Sweet Honey in the Rock, and legendary male impersonator Storme’ DeLarverie. 

Sunu P. Chandy is the daughter of immigrants from Kerala, India, and currently lives in DC with her family. Her award-winning collection of poems, My Dear Comrades, was published by Regal House. Sunu is  a Senior Advisor with Democracy Forward, and on the board of the Transgender Law Center. Sunu has been included as one of the Washington Blade’s Queer Women of Washington.

   
Tanya Olson is a lecturer in English at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She is the author of three books of poems: Born Backwards (YesYes Books, 2024, a finalist for the Indies Book of the Year); Stay (YesYes, 2019); and Boyishly( YesYes Books, 2013, winner of a 2014 American Book Award). She has won a Discovery/Boston Review prize, a Lambda Literary Fellowship, a Pride Poets Fellowship from the Arts Club of Washington, and inclusion in Best American Poems.

Malik Thompson is a Black queer man from Washington, DC. He served for three years as co-chair of OutWrite DC, an annual LGBTQ+ literary festival. Thompson has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, the Brooklyn Poets Mentorship Program, the Anderson Center, the Arts Club of Washington, and Sundress Publications. 

Jona Colson’s poetry collection, Said Through Glass, won the 2018 Jean Feldman Poetry Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. He is also the co-editor of This Is What America Looks Like: Poetry and Fiction from D.C., Maryland, and Virginia (2021). In 2022, he became co-president with Caroline Bock of the Washington Writer’s Publishing House and edits  WWPH Writes.

Saundra Rose Maley is the author of the poetry collection Disappearing Act (2015). She co-edited A Wild Perfection: The Selected Letters of James Wright with Anne Wright (2005), and she and 

Wright collaborated with Jeff Katz on So Much Secret Labor: James Wright and Translation (forthcoming).

AGG, aka Adrian Gaston Garcia is a queer Latine storyteller originally from Chicago. He is co-host and co-producer of Los Bookis Podcast and performs with Washington Improv Theater.  AGG was a Summer 2023 Resident of the DC Mayor’s 202Creates Initiative. His play “Joteria” premiered at the 2022 Intersections Festival and featured in the Minnesota Fringe Festival, and he performed in Story District’s “Out/Spoken” LGBTQ+ showcase in 2023. 

Dwayne Lawson-Brown is the author of Twenty: 21 (2023), and co-author, with Rebecca Bishophall, of Breaking the Blank (2022). Lawson-Brown works for the DC Commission on the Arts as the Community Engagement Specialist and is co-founder of DC’s longest-running open mic series, Spit Dat. They are a DC native.

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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