TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.

Housing/Home is the theme of the fifteenth installment of TELL. Featuring Lady Quesa’Dilla, Kirya Traber, Kei Williams, & Chavisa Woods.

$5-10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Besides winning the 2011 Miss LEZ title, Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in fesivals globally. She just won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. Drae was dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell throws a monthly party in Brooklyn called PRIME. Check her out online (her reel and her website www.draecampbell.com) and around town.

Alejandro Rodríguez AKA Lady Quesa’Dilla  — Alejandro is a native Tejan@ from the El Paso and Ciudad Juárez border. Their work is at the intersection of cultural identity, drag, and community. “The Brown Queen,” an autobiographical solo performance about growing up queer in the southwest, premiered at HERE Arts Center in the spring of 2010. Most recent solo performances include “My Tia Lupe” and “The Faggot in the Pink House”. Alejandro has performed in New York City, El Paso, Texas, Chiapas, Mexico, and Montreal, Canada. Alejandro is a member of The  House of Bushwig, as Lady Quesa’Dilla, duties include Volunteer Coordinator for the annual Bushwig Festival.

    Alejandro can also be found as an Information and Referral Specialist at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan; and as a Teaching Artist in The Bronx and Brooklyn.

    Alejandro holds a BA in Theater from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and a MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and is an alum of The Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics.

    Resides in Brooklyn.

    Lady Quesa’Dilla is the reigning Miss Coney Island Queen of Drag.

Kirya Traber is a cultural worker, a nationally awarded writer and performer, a Black queer woman, a high femme, and an Oakland girl with a Brooklyn address. Born and raised in northern California, Kirya relocated to New York in 2011, where she received her MFA in Acting from the New School for Drama, and just completed a year as the Lincoln Center Education Artist Fellow. Kirya is the recipient of the California Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, Robert Redford’s Sundance foundation award for Activism in the Arts, Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Certificate of Recognition, an Astrea Lesbian Writers Fund award for Poetry, and is a former judge for the LAMBDA Literary awards in LGBT Drama. Kirya is an alumnus of the 2010 VONA/Voices retreat for writers of color, and the 2012 EmergeNYC intensive at the Hemispheric Institute, and is a 2014 Space Grantee at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Kirya has toured the United States and Canada as a poet and solo performance artist, and her written work can be found in the pages of, Other Tongues, an anthology by Inana Press, and in her 2009 chapbook, black chick. She has worked as an arts educator with youth and adults, in school and community based settings, and within the juvenile justice system.

Kei Williams is the founder of Woodruff, a creative entity that they use to produce all of their artistic endeavors. A self-taught visual artist & graphic designer, they serve as a community manager through consulting entrepreneurs in order to sustain the economic development, along with affirming the culture, of Harlem NY. Since high school when they created the “Underground Café” located in Central NY which caters to the needs of inner-city youth, they have been dedicated to addressing the impacts of racism and sexism that have generationally plagued the communities of Black folks and people of color. They are currently an organizer and member of Black Lives Matter (NYC). When not being superboi or stoop sipping in Harlem, they play with their adorable “borkie” Spartacus. Kei connects with the world under the Twitter handle @BlackBoiKei.

Chavisa Woods is the author of two books of fiction, The Albino Album, a novel, (550 pages) Seven Stories Press (Distributed by Random House), 2013; and Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind, full-length fiction (Fly by Night Press, 2009). The Second Edition of this book was released by Autonomedia Press under the Unbearables imprint in 2013. Woods was the recipient of the 2013 Cobalt Prize for fiction and was a finalist (second nomination) for the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for fiction. Woods has appeared as a featured author at such notable venues as The Whitney Museum of American Art, City Lights Bookstore, Town Hall Seattle, The Brecht Forum, The Cervantes Institute, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Evergreen Review, New York Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, Cleaver Magazine, and Jadaliyya. Woods was the recipient of the 2009 Jerome Foundation award for emerging authors, recently served as the guest prose editor for Great Weather for Media’s 2015 anthology, and is currently completing her third work of full-length fiction.

Woods has presented lectures and conducted workshops  on short fiction and poetry at a number of academic institutions, including: New York University (NYU), Penn State, Sarah Lawrence College, Bard College, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Tech and the New School.