Registration now closed

Alligators, Mermen, and Latine Queer Bookworms, Oh My

Find Your Story...Writing with Pride

A live podcast for World Pride

A special World Pride edition of Los Bookis Podcast recorded live in front of an audience, featuring a roundtable discussion with queer Latine writers: Venessa Vida Kelley, author of When the Tides Held the Moon and Edgar Gomez, author of Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays.

   
About the Speakers

Venessa Vida Kelley, author, is a Nuyorican author, illustrator, and aspiring mermaid who writes fairy tales about the real world so they can draw them too. They hold a BA and MA in English literature with concentrations in film from the University of Delaware and the George Washington University respectively, and their illustrations have decorated LGBTQ+ books worldwide. Venessa lives in Washington, DC, with their spouse, two sons, and an overabundance of teacups and washi tape. 

Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released in February 2025 and was called "triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish" by Publisher's Weekly. A graduate of the University of California’s MFA program, Gomez has written for The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, New York Magazine, and beyond. He has received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez and learn more via his website. 

AGG, aka Adrian Gaston Garcia, podcaster, 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.

Sergio A. Lopez, podcaster, is a proud gay who bounces between Mexico City, San Antonio, and Washington, DC. He’s the founder of the legendary gay Latino bookclub, “Los Bookis.” He’s a committed social justice advocate and has worked at The Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights, Freedom to Marry, and was the author of “El Chanclaso”  for Voto Latino. He’s currently a contributing writer for GLAAD. 

About the Books

When the Tides Held the Moon

Benigno “Benny” Caldera knows an orphaned Boricua blacksmith in 1910s New York City can’t call himself an artist. But the ironwork tank he creates for famed Coney Island playground, Luna Park, astounds everyone, especially the eccentric side-show proprietor who commissioned it. Benny’s work earns him an invitation to join the show’s eclectic crew of performers—his first welcome in the city—and share in their astonishing secret: the tank Benny built is a cage for their newest exhibit, a living, breathing, in-the-flesh merman stolen from the banks of the East River under a gleaming full moon.

The merman is more than a mythic marvel, though. Benny comes to know Río as a clever philosopher, an observant traveler, and a kindred spirit more beautiful and compassionate than any human he’s ever met. Despite their different worlds, what begins as a friendship of necessity deepens to love, leading Benny’s heart into uncharted waters where he can no longer ignore the agonizing truth of Río’s captivity—and his own.

A cage is no place for a merman to survive. Though releasing Río means betraying his new family, bankrupting their home, and losing his soulmate forever, Benny must look within for the courage to do what’s right, and find a love strong enough to free them both.

"When the Tides Held the Moon is a beautifully illustrated novel with artwork throughout by Venessa Vida Kelley, known for her stunning romance and fantasy art. This novel includes two different full-color endpapers for front and back, fully-designed chapter headers, and 27 pieces of detailed illustrations throughout, using beautiful two-color, aqua blue and black inks.

Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays

In Florida, one of the first things you’re taught as a child is that if you’re ever chased by a wild alligator, the only way to save yourself is to run away in zigzags. It’s a lesson on survival that has guided much of Edgar Gomez’s life.

Like the night his mother had a stroke while he and his brother stood frozen at the foot of her bed, afraid she’d be angry if they called for an ambulance they couldn’t afford. Gomez escaped into his mind, where he could tell himself nothing was wrong with his family. Zig. Or years later, as a broke college student, he got on his knees to put sandals on tourists’ smelly, swollen feet for minimum wage at the Flip Flop Shop. After clocking out, his crew of working-class, queer, Latinx friends changed out of their uniforms in the passenger seats of each other’s cars, speeding toward the relief they found at Pulse nightclub in Orlando. Zag. From committing a little bankruptcy fraud for the money for veneers to those days he paid his phone bill by giving massages to closeted men on vacation, back when he and his friends would Venmo each other the same emergency twenty dollars over and over. Zig. Zag. Gomez survived this way as long as his legs would carry him.

Alligator Tears is a fiercely defiant memoir-in-essays charting Gomez’s quest to claw his family out of poverty by any means necessary and exposing the archetype of the humble poor person for what it is: a scam that insists we remain quiet and servile while we wait for a prize that will always be out of reach. For those chasing the American Dream and those jaded by it, Gomez’s unforgettable story is a testament to finding love, purpose, and community on your own terms, smiling with all your fake teeth.

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.

Upcoming events