You don’t have to be a woman to read women writers, a poet to read poetry, or a chewer of Juicy Fruit gum to happily listen to a pack of lesbian writers read their fabulous work. “Juicy Fruits: A Pack of Lesbian Writers” is an evening of celebration – of dykes with pens and laptops. We are prsenting excellent poets and writers, including Donna Minkowitz, Ana Božičević, Candace Williams, Sarah Sarai, and Mariel Reyes. ALL are welcome.

Art: Pearl Blauvelt, All Sizes Both Silk and Cotton, ca. 1940.

Donna Minkowitz is the author of the memoir Growing Up Golem, which Kirkus lauded for bringing “a defiant, playful energy to her difficult and dark past.” She won a Lambda Literary Award for her first memoir, Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me About Sex, God, and Fury. Minkowitz has also written for The New York Times Book Review and The Nation, and was a columnist for the Village Voice for eight years. She is the restaurant columnist for Gay City News.

Candace Williams is a Brooklyn Poets Fellow and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Sixth Finch, Bennington Review, Lambda Literary Review, Copper Nickel and elsewhere. She earned her MA in Elementary Education at Stanford University and has taken workshops at Cave Canem and Brooklyn Poets. She lives in Brooklyn with a pit bull named Madonna and tweets a little too often (@TeacherC). www.candace-williams.com.

Ana Božičević’s chapbooks include Morning News and Document. Her first book-length collection, Stars of the Night Commute, was a Lambda Literary Award finalist, and her second book Rise in the Fall won a Lambda Literary Award. Joy of Missing Out will be published this Fall. She was born in Zagreb, Croatia; emigrated to New York City; studied at Hunter; recently worked on renovations at the Ruth Stone House in Vermont.

Sarah Sarai’s chapbooks include The Risen Barbie, I Feel Good, and Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Face. Geographies of Soul and Taffeta was published this year by Indolent Books. Her poems are in Painted Bride Quarterly, Barrow Street, Boston Review, Threepenny Review, and others; her fiction in Devil’s Lake, South Dakota Review, Tampa Review, and so on. She reviews for Lambda Literary; is a freelance editor of poetry collections, fiction, and pharmaceutical advertising. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and a Twitter account—@SarahSarai.

Mariel Reyes has always been a mad scientist weirdo nerd. Not a doctor, lawyer or engineer, but instead letting herself get sucked into storytelling, hoping be as engaging as her grandmother someday. She’s performed on stages at The Brooklyn Museum, BAX, Dixon Place & BGSQD. You’ve can see her online in funny web videos or in the film Appropriate Behavior. She’s 5’2 and finally understands the appeal of a runny egg.