Featured Events

​

​

 

Jayy Dodd the subject known as jayy dodd aka [redacted] aka Lady Tournament beamed down in Los Angeles ’92 & is now based in Portland,OR. Her professional literary career includes positions at The Offing, Winter Tangerine & more with features in the LA Times, Poetry Magazine, Oprah Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Willamette Weekly, The New York Public Library & several anthologies. She’s the author of Mannish Tongues (Platypus Press 2017) & The Black Condition ft. Narcissus (Nightboat 2019). Her film & performance work has been installed & screened across the country from classrooms to museums. She has been a Lambda Literary Fellow & Precipice Art Grant Recipient through Portland’s Institute of Contemporary Art. she the mother of Tournament Haus, a boutique Ballroom house in Portland Kiki Scene, where she manages & produces young Black queer & trans artists. Find her talking slick or in another dimension. https://www.jayydodd.net/

 

Chen Chen / 陳琛 is the author of When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and won the Thom Gunn Award, among other honors. In 2019 Bloodaxe Books published the UK edition. Chen is also the author of four chapbooks, most recently GESUNDHEIT! (with Sam Herschel Wein & out from Glass Poetry Press). His work appears/is forthcoming in many publications, including Poetry, Poem-a-Day, and three editions of The Best American Poetry (2015, 2019, & 2021). He has received a Pushcart Prize and fellowships from Kundiman and the National Endowment for the Arts. He holds an MFA from Syracuse University and a PhD from Texas Tech University. He teaches at Brandeis University as the Jacob Ziskind Poet-in-Residence. He also teaches for the low-residency MFA programs at New England College and Stonecoast. With Sam, he co-runs the journal, Underblong. He lives in Waltham, MA with his partner, Jeff Gilbert and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. https://www.chenchenwrites.com/

 

Jasmine Reid is a twice trans poet of flowers. She is the author of Deus Ex Nigrum, winner of the 2018 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, selected by Danez Smith. An MFA graduate from Cornell University and recipient of fellowships from Poets House and Jack Jones Literary Arts, her work has been published or is forthcoming in Muzzle Magazine, Apogee, The Academy of American Poets, Pinwheel, TriQuarterly, and Washington Square Review, among others. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poet, Jasmine was born and raised in Baltimore, MD, and is currently based in Ithaca, NY. Find her at https://reidjasmine.com/

​

​

​
 

​

 

 

 

 

 

Queer Liberation Is A Spiritual Practice: Why We MUST Center Kindness In Our Movement Spaces Today & How To Do It With Intelligence & Self-Care

​

Description: The world is shifting at a chaotic and exponential pace. Everyday, we are encountering more and more unknowns, and without intentional room for collaborative visioning, community care, and intentional pleasure, those unknowns can facilitate justifiable feelings of terror, hopelessness, and isolation. It is clear that we need creative, inclusive, and gentle queer movement spaces – ones that provide softer landing grounds for healing and liberation – now more than ever. But, in order to create those spaces, we must recognize, prioritize, and truly honor kindness as an intellectual and sacred liberatory practice. Please join Vanessa Lewis & The Reclaim UGLY team for a passionate, healing, and experiential exploration on how to use our juicy imaginations, intentional kindness, and yesterday's hard-won wisdom to transform today's unknown into a playground of healing possibility, love building, and the queer paradise that can serve and support us all. 

 

​

​

​

​

​
 

Closed QTPOC (LGBTQ+ and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color Identifying) Chat and Connect

​

Closed QTPOC (LGBTQ+ and Black, Brown, Indigenous, People of Color Identifying) Chat and Connect. Hangout and feel supported and understood by your fellow LGBTQ+ attendees of color. This space is a great opportunity to spend more time with Vanessa and escape white-dominated spaces.

​

​

​

​

​

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bottoms Up: an embodied werqshop discussion on sex, intimacy, and alternative subjectivities of the erotic

​

Description: Bottoms Up will be an intimate container that will be part-discussion, part-rage room, part-dance party, and part-grief ritual for folks who are interested and get excited by discussing their relationship to sex, intimacy, the erotic, and pleasure in relation to and not related to the pandemic. As a survivor, I have always had to get creative with how I approach sex and intimacy and have found portals for activating the erotic in my everyday life that don't necessarily require other human bodies (I do miss their warmth though).
 

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

Hayden Kristal (preferred pronouns they/them/theirs, but accepts anything said with good intent) is a Deaf, bisexual, Jewish, queer activist and stand-up comedian. Living their life at the intersection of multiple marginalized identities has led Hayden to a career as a professional speaker, exploring the intersections of ability, gender, sexuality, and access –  particularly within the spheres of activism and social justice. They have brought their funny, engaging, and interactive workshops and speeches to dozens of conferences, businesses, and schools all across North America including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Vistaprint, and the Connecticut Supreme Court. In the realm of speaking and activism, Hayden has been a TEDx Presenter, a Catalyst Award winner, and a Lavender Graduation commencement speaker; comedically, Hayden was a semifinalist for Stand Up NBC, a finalist for Full Frontal with Samantha Bee’s Comedy Writing Mentorship, a featured performer at Limestone Comedy festival, and has opened and featured for Maria Bamford.