As part of this year’s World AIDS Day programming, explore the continuing literary legacies of the AIDS crisis with us through readings of their own works and the poems of the late Haitian-born poet, Assotto Saint, whose Sacred Spells: Collected Works was recently published in August 2023, and the late working-class Italian-Polish-American poet, Walta Borawski, whose Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski won the Publishing Triangle 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.

How is rage, loss, grief, humor, love, and survival expressed? How does race, class, language, religion, and national origin play out in these works? How do we preserve the collective knowledge and experiences of our diverse communities? How do we define “survival” today?

Featuring Gerard Cabrera, Philip Clark, Reginald Harris, Charles Rice-González, and Steven Riel.

Co-Sponsored by The Publishing Triangle OUTSpoken Series

Gerard Cabrera is from Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of the first American dictionary, Dr. Seuss, and basketball. His debut novel, Homo Novus, was published in October 2022, by Rattling Good Yarns Press, and was supported by the Bread Loaf Writers Conference and a Bread Loaf Bakeless Foundation fellowship at The Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Other writing has appeared in Gay Community News, Acentos Review, Angel Rust, Apricity, JONATHAN, Kweli, and Digging Press. An attorney, he lives and works in New York City. Visit him at www.gerardcabrera.com.

Philip Clark is the co-editor of Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski (Rebel Satori, 2022), winner of the 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry.  His previous books are Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton.  The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, he is completing a biography of H. Lynn Womack, a pioneering gay publisher from the late 1950s to the early 1970s.  He lives near Washington, D.C.

Born in Annapolis, Maryland, and raised in Baltimore, poet and librarian Reginald Harris was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for his first book, 10 Tongues, and won the 2012 Cave Canem /Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A member of the National Book Critics Circle and recipient of Individual Artist Awards for poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and online including Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide, Lambda Literary Review, Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call, Encyclopedia of Contemporary Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer Literature of the United States, The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South and The Spaces Between Us: Poetry, Prose and Art on HIV/AIDS. He and his partner live in Brooklyn.

Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, LGBTQ activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and an Assistant Professor at Hostos Community College. His novel, Chulito, received recognition from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle, he co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb was published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology. His writing’s been published in nearly a dozen anthologies including Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing (University of Wisconsin Press 2011), Love, Christopher Street (Vantage Point 2012), QED: A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking (Syracuse University 2016), and his article on Culturally Relevant Pedgogy will appear in Teaching Black (University of Michigan Press 2020). His honors include the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Dr. Betty Berzon Emerging Writer Award in 2014, an award from the New York City Council in 2016, the Men(cion) Award from 100 Hispanic Women in 2017 and a Gay City News Impact Award in 2017 for his activism and contributions to advancing the lives of LGBTQ people, and a Lannan Foundation Fellowship in 2018. He’s the chair of the board for The Bronx Council on the Arts and The National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, and is on the advisory board of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop.

Steven Riel is the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Edgemere and Fellow Odd Fellow. His chapbook Postcard from P-town was published as runner-up for the inaugural Robin Becker Chapbook Prize. His poems have appeared in The Minnesota Review and International Poetry Review. He edits the Franco-American journal Résonance. Recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant, Riel was also named the 2005 Robert Fraser Distinguished Visiting Poet at Bucks County (PA) Community College.