BGSQDBureau of General Services—Queer Division
BGSQD
In celebration of Black History Month, The Publishing Triangle in collaboration with the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, presents a special OUTspoken Reading Series event celebrating the life of acclaimed Black lesbian poet, commentator, activist and educator, Nikki Giovanni.
Presenters will include JP Howard, Reginald Harris, Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, a Drag Queen Story Hour reading by Harmonica Sunbeam, Samiya Bashir, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, and UGBA (Nuyorican Poets Café slam team). The event will be hosted by Emanuel Xavier.
Join us in-person or watch the live-stream to hear some of our community’s most dynamic voices honor the legacy of one of our most acclaimed icons.
This event will take place in person in room 101 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, 208 W. 13th Street, in collaboration with Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books. All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation. We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the event or on Venmo @BGSQD
Emanuel Xavier’s honors include the Marsha A. Gomez Cultural Heritage Award, a New York City Council Citation, a Gay City News Impact Award, and a Silver Medal in the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award category at the International Latino Book Awards for his book Love(ly) Child, also a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His work has appeared in Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology, Poetry, A Gathering of the Tribes, and elsewhere. Emanuel Xavier is on the Board of The Publishing Triangle and is currently working on a memoir and a screenplay based on his 1999 cult novel, Christ Like.
JP Howard is a poet, educator, curator, and literary activist. Her debut poetry collection SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System) was a Lambda Literary finalist. She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon.
Reginald Harris has been a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the Griot-Stadler prize. He won the 2012 Cave Canem / Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. His work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and online. Born in Annapolis, Maryland, and raised in Baltimore, he lives in Brooklyn.
Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is the author of seven collections of poetry which include Mama Phife Represents, a verse memoir about the life of her son, Hip Hop Legend, Malik “Phife Dawg” Taylor. Her most recent collection, The Limitless Heart, won the 2024 Firecracker Award for poetry. Cheryl is a graduate of The Stonecoast MFA program.
Harmonica Sunbeam, The Comedy Queen, has been delighting audiences at nightclubs, cabarets, fundraising events and supermarket openings throughout the United States and abroad for over 32 years. She is the North Jersey coordinator of Drag Queen Story Hour and since the inception of DQSH in the New York area, Miss Sunbeam has been featured in the NY Times and interviewed for a now viral video on Buzzfeed.
Samiya Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the Oregon Book Award. Her fourth, I Hope This Helps, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2025. A sought-after editor, Bashir currently serves as the June Jordan Visiting Scholar at Columbia University.
Darrel Alejandro Holnes is the author of Stepmotherland, winner of an International Latino Book Award and the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize and Migrant Psalms, winner of the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize. Holnes is the winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry and the C.P. Cavafy Poetry Prize. Holnes is also a recent nominee for the Best of the Net and an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and director.
UGBA (oog ba) (pronoun inclusive) is a queer poet, rapper, playwright, actor, and activist based out of Brooklyn, NY. UGBA is a former member of the Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group 2020-2023 cohort, a 2022 MAP Grant recipient, a 2020-2021 BAM Resident, 2024 Nuyorican Poetry Slam member, and former Artistic Director at NY Writers Coalition.