TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 11 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.

The theme for March 21, 2026 is My Favorite Story, featuring storytellers Lisa Davis, Heather Lynn Johnson, and Jilberto Soto.

With a PhD in Comparative Literature, Lisa Davis taught Hispanic Languages and Literatures at SUNY Stony Brook and York College CUNY. She also collaborated with the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter College, CUNY) and Areito, a publication of the New-York based Circulo de Cultura Cubana. Her novel Under the Mink (2001, 2015) re-creates the 1940s world of Village nightclubs that featured drag shows and strip acts. Her non-fiction chronicle of the career of lesbian FBI informant Angela Calomiris (who testified for the prosecution at the 1949 trial of the National Board of the American Communist Party) is called Undercover Girl (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2017). Both books are available. Other highlights of her career include meeting Fidel Castro and almost drowning in the Colorado River.

Heather Lynn Johnson (she, they) is an artist and poet living in Brooklyn whose work is characterized by its lyricism and cultural critique. Centering queer and Black American liberation with an emphasis on outsiders, rebels, and lost histories into an autobiographical framework, Heather’s formal approach to the narrative, whether visual or poetic, is distinguished by her willingness to lay bare her own existence. Their paintings have recently been in a two-person exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, NY (2026), and in exhibitions for Pace Gallery’s project space 125 Newbury Gallery, NY (2025), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2024), Canada Gallery, NY (2023) and at her solo exhibition, “The Essence We Leave Behind” at Nesto Gallery, MA, (2022). Heather has exhibited internationally for the Queer Arts Festival in Antwerp, Belgium, (2020) and published poems in the Panorama Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Pique Magazine, Pine Magazine, and Facility Magazine. They have been invited to read poems for Experiments & Disorders at Dixon Place, Ford Foundation, Segue Reading Series at Artists Space, Knockdown Center, and the Brooklyn Arts Book Fair. Heather was a co-curator for Queer|Art|Film from 2020-23, the 2019 Leslie-Lohman Museum Fellow, and the 2017 Literary Fellow for Queer|Art|Mentorship. She is also the author of The Survival Guide For Queer Black Youth (Inpatient Press, 2017) and received an MFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Jilberto Soto is a first gen. Mexican American stand up comedian. He began comedy in London and moved to NYC during the pandemic. He co-produces two shows: Purple Park Comedy- showcasing upcoming POC/female comics and Mariposas Comedy – a curated all queer line up. Alongside co-producing, he also hosts his own podcast: I hope this ages well, which centers around the interesting lives of senior members around NYC.