Samiya Bashir is the author of Gospel, finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and the 2009 Lambda Literary Award, and Where the Apple Falls, a Poetry Foundation bestseller and finalist for the 2005 Lambda Literary Award. Bashir is editor of Best Black Women’s Erotica 2, and co-editor, with Tony Medina and Quraysh Ali Lansana, of Role Call: A Generational Anthology of Social & Political Black Literature & Art. Bashir's poetry, stories, articles and editorial work have been featured in numerous publications and her awards include grants, fellowships and residencies from the Hopwood Program, the Astraea Foundation, the National Association of Pen Women, the University of California, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, University of Michigan, Soul Mountain Writers Colony, The Austin Project, Alma de Mujer, the James Dick Foundation for the Performing Arts, and Cave Canem, among others. For over a decade Bashir worked as a social justice communications professional and was a founding organizer of Fire & Ink, a writers festival for LGBT writers of African descent Most recently, she was owner and principal consultant of Lead Time Consulting, specializing in communications for nonprofits and arts organizations She currently lives in Portland, OR, where she teaches creative writing at Reed College. 

www.samiyabashir.com

Samiya Bashir is available for readings, residencies, speaking events, multimedia poetry installations (images and more from previous shows and installations available upon request), workshop leadership and more. A gifted writing coach and editor, she can be reached here for information on customized one-on-one coaching sessions. 

[Photo © 2006 by Jacqueline Thompson.] 

www.sharonbridgforth.com

[Photo © 2011 by Vanessa Vargas.]

Sharon Bridgforth is available for residencies, performances, readings and the Finding Voice workshop. Suggestions: Interdisciplinary theatre, dance, music, spoken word venues, universities, community-based organizations. Black, queer, people of color, women and gender studies, Diaspora programs, organizations that serve poets/dancers/spoken word artists/hip hop artists/performance artists/visual artists/musicians of all experience levels/people that do not easily fit in box, artists that do not flow in mainstream culture, people that are not hooked into systems of privilege and support. 

Ernest Hardy writes about film and music from his home base of Los Angeles. His criticism has appeared in the LA Weekly, the Los Angeles Times, Vibe, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, the Source, Millennium Film Journal, Flaunt, Request, Minneapolis City Pages, and the reference books 1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide, among others. He’s written liner notes for Chuck D Presents: Louder Than a Bomb, the box-set Say It Loud: A Celebration of Black Music in America, Curtis Mayfield: Gospel; the box-set Superstars of Seventies Soul; and the Luther Vandross box-set, Love, Luther; he is the winner of the 2006 ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for excellence, honoring his liner notes for the Chet Baker CD, Career 1952-1988. A Sundance Fellow and a member of LAFCA (Los Angeles Film Critics Association), he’s sat as a juror for the Sundance Film Festival, the San Francisco International Film Festival, the Palm Springs International Short Film Festival and Los Angeles Outfest. He’s also co-programmed the FUSION Film Festival in Los Angeles. Blood Beats: Vol. 1, Hardy’s first collection of film and music criticism, won a 2007 PEN/Beyond Margins Award. Blood Beats: Vol. 2, published February 2008, is his second volume of film and music criticism.

[Photo copyright 2006 by Alex Demyanenko.]

Ernest Hardy is available for cultural criticism on topics ranging from queer sexualities in hip-hop (ex: a feminist-filtered read on the layers and meaning of Lil' Kim; gay hip-hop porn) to the work of visual artist Mark Bradford; from the political currents of House music and culture to the racial and sexual politics of contemporary mainstream and indie film. He is also available to read as a poet and short story author.

G. Winston James

James is the founder of Top Pen Press and a former executive director of the collective Other Countries: Black Gay Men Writing. Founded in New York City in 1986, Other Countries is an organization of writers and artists dedicated to the development, dissemination and preservation of literature and other forms of cultural expression of gay men of African heritage. 

[Photo © 1998 by Luna Luis Ortiz.]

G. Winston James is available for poetry and fiction readings. Suggested speaker topics are the writing and publishing process, sexuality and desire, LGBT spirituality, the writing workshop, art and community building, art and the construction of the individual, and the importance of anthologies. 

Ana-Maurine Lara is an an award-winning author. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in numerous literary journals including Calalloo, The Encyclopedia Project, Sable LitMag and Torch Magazine. Her debut novel Erzulie's Skirt was a Lambda Literary Award Finalist in 2007; her second (unpublished) novel received Third Prize for the 33rd Annual Chicano/Latino Literary Prizes. Lara is a Cave Canem Fellow and a member of The Austin Project, a collaborative workshop between artists, activists and scholars. Lara coordinates We are the Magicians, the Path-breakers, the Dream-makers LGBTQ POC Oral History Project. Currently, she is working on a Ph.D. at Yale University in African American studies and anthropology.

[Photo © 2006 by Krissy Mahan.]

Ana-Maurine Lara is available for readings (poetry, fiction), lectures (topics include: black queer aesthetics, memory and art, Dominican Republic, blackness and queerness) and writing workshops. 

Lisa C. Moore is the founder and editor of RedBone Press, which publishes work celebrating the culture of black lesbians and gay men and promoting understanding between black gays and lesbians and the black mainstream. Moore is the editor of does your mama know? An Anthology of Black Lesbian Coming Out Stories, co-editor of Spirited: Affirming the Soul and Black Gay/Lesbian Identity, and co-editor, co-compiler and co-publisher (with Vintage Entity Press) of  Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books. She is executive producer and writer of the Untitled Black Lesbian Elder Project, a feature-length documentary honoring the legacy of black lesbian elders. Moore is board president of Fire & Ink, an advocacy organization for LGBT writers of African descent.

[Photo © 2009 by Michael-Christopher.]

Lisa C. Moore is available for speaking engagements, readings, copy editing, and literary contest judging. Panel and workshop topics include RedBone Press; history of black gays and lesbians in publishing; politics and economics of publishing; history of black gay and lesbian writers; literacy and activism. Particular topics in publishing are the self-publishing process; traditional vs. self-publishing vs. print-on-demand; creating anthologies, book production, and book contracts.  

Marvin K. White, author of last rights (finalist for Stonewall Book Award and Lambda Literary Award), nothin’ ugly fly (finalist for Lambda Literary Award), Our Name Be Witness and Status, is a poet, performer, playwright, visual artist and community arts organizer. His poetry has been anthologized in The Road Before Us: 100 Black Gay Poets; My Brothers Keeper; Gents, Bad Boys and Barbarians: New Gay Writing; Things Shaped in Passing; Sojourner: Writing in the Age of AIDS; Bum Rush the Page; Role Call; and Think Again, as well as other local and national publications. He is the co-editor of If We Have to Take Tomorrow: HIV, Black Men & Same Sex Desire. An ex-member of the critically acclaimed Pomo Afro Homos, he has led creative arts and writing workshops for a range of audiences, from youth centers for runaway kids to black gay support groups to literary conferences and social justice organizations. White was co-founder of B/GLAM (Black Gay Letters and Arts Movement), a Bay Area, California, organization whose goal was to preserve, present and incubate black gay artistic expressions He currently holds a fellowship in the national African-American poetry organization, Cave Canem; and sits on the board of Fire & Ink, a national black LGBT writers organization. In community, Marvin K. White is articulating a vision of social and creative justice through being a deacon, homemaker, cake baker, Facebook statustician, activist and office manager. 

[Photo © 2011 by Duane Cramer.]

Marvin K. White is available for poetry readings, poetry manuscript consultation and critique, and leading creative writing/poetry workshops. Particular communities of expertise are LGBT, African-American, youth and beginning writers. He is also available for contest reading and judging.