Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.

All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or you can donate in advance on Eventbrite.

Purchase OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture (Rutgers University Press, 2022, paperback, $26.95) from the Bureau’s online store by clicking on the title.

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Copies of OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture are also available at the Bureau’s physical store.

Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is a scholar and a poet. Her book manuscript A Fine Bind is a history of lesbian-feminist presses from 1969 until 2009. Her scholarly work has appeared or is forthcoming in Southern Cultures, Journal of Lesbian Studies, American Periodicals, WSQ, and Frontiers. She is the author of four poetry collections, Avowed (2016), Lilith’s Demons (2015), Sisterhood (2013), and Hand- made Love (2010). She is editor of The Complete Works of Pat Parker (2016), which won the 2017 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry; Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974– 1989 (2018); and Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (2011), which was a finalist for the 2012 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. She has her MFA and PhD from the University of Maryland. Enszer edits and publishes Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal, and is a regular book reviewer for the The Rumpus and Calyx. Read more of her work at www.JulieREnszer.com.

Elena Gross (she/they) is the Director of Exhibitions & Curatorial Affairs at the Museum of the African Diaspora and an independent writer and culture critic living in Oakland, California. She received an MA in visual and critical studies from the California College of the Arts in 2016 and her BA in art history and women, gender, and sexuality studies from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2012. She specializes in representations of identity in fine art, photography, and popular media. Elena was formerly the creator and cohost of the arts and visual culture podcast what are you looking at?, published by Art Practical. Her research has been centered on conceptual and material abstractions of the body in the work of Black modern and contemporary artists. She has presented her writing and research at institutions and conferences across the United States, including Nook Gallery, Southern Exposure, KADIST, Harvard College, YBCA, California College of the Arts, and the GLBT History Museum. In 2018, she collaborated with the artist Leila Weefur on the publication Between Beauty and Horror. Her most recent writing can be found in the publication This Is Not a Gun.

Reginald Harris won the 2012 Cave Canem /Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, recipient of Individual Artist Awards for both poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award and the ForeWord Book of the Year for 10 Tongues: Poems (2002), his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and other publications. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, he lives in Brooklyn where he is at work on another manuscript.

Mariana Romo-Carmona lost custody of her son when she came out as a lesbian in 1975. She is a novelist and teaches at City College.

Linda Villarosa is a journalist, author, editor, novelist, and educator. She is a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine, covering race, inequality, and health. She has won awards from the American Medical Writers’ Association, the Arthur Ashe Institute, Lincoln University, the New York Association of Black Journalists, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists’ Association, and the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. She is the author of, most recently, Under the Skin: Race, Inequality, and the Health of a Nation. Her other books include Body and Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being and the novel Passing for Black, released in 2008 and a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. She teaches journalism and Black studies at the City College of New York.