News Is Out and our partner publications are featuring profiles of BIPOC LGBTQ+ artists across the country. These stories are made possible with support from Comcast Corporation.

Anastasia-Renée’s “Side Notes from the Archivist”

Anastacia-Renée is an award-winning writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, TEDx speaker, 2020 Arc Fellow (4Culture), Jack Straw Curator, podcaster, and served as Seattle’s Civic Poet. Her fascinating new book of poetry is called “Side Notes from the Archivist.” As the title implies, the book is a historical document that provides insight into five decades of American…

Pride with Pretty Boi Drag: A unique performance

Drag king performer Pretty Rik E and the rest of the Pretty Boi Drag troupe have made it their mission to turn you on and give you the performance of a lifetime that is “sensual, inclusive and safe,” with what they claim is ‘D.C.’s Best Drag Show.’  In 2016, Pretty Rik E started Pretty Boi Drag with…

Joanna McClintick’s ode to children and queer resistance

Together we are strong, is the unifying message of Joanna McClintick’s debut children’s book “Twas the Night Before Pride,” based on a poem McClintick wrote when they were still hoping to start their own family. As they prepared to become a parent, they found it increasingly problematic that most of the children’s books they encountered,…

Baruch Porras Hernandez: Multiple mediums, infinite joy

Baruch Porras Hernandez’s art encompasses everything from the written word to web comics and standup comedy to slam poetry. Dubbed a “Multi Hypenated Artist” by the San Francisco Chronicle, he was born in Toluca, Mexico and raised in the Bay Area. He moved to San Francisco in 2006 and continues to create art while also…

Art-felt: Chicago’s Pearl Dick helps young victims of trauma through glassblowing

Almost a decade ago, glass artist Pearl Dick and clinical psychologist Dr. Brad Stolbach co-founded Project FIRE (Fearless Initiative for Recovery and Empowerment)—an arts program that provides victims of trauma the chance to heal through glassblowing. Program components include mentoring, art and psychoeducation.  Project FIRE (in partnership with Healing Hurt People-Chicago, a hospital-based violence-intervention program)…

Director makes queer art for the stage in the big city and the suburbs

North Texas is never short on performing arts. With symphonies, operas, dance and theater flourishing in abundance throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth area, there are always plenty of options for entertainment onstage. And the suburbs are no exception, especially with one area theatrical director finding ways to celebrate diversity and inclusion in the smaller cities as…

Young filmmaker Emerson Basco is coming for the status-quo

From GAP ad star to filmmaker, Emerson Basco, 13-years-old, has already directed her first short film and screened it at Outfest Fusion Film Festival this spring and the San Diego Filipino Film Festival in 2021. Basco directed her first film “Can We Play” when she was only 11-years-old. And it’s not just any film, it’s…

Artist Kitoko Mai explores dissociative identity disorder through art

Meet Kitoko Mai. Mai is a Black, non-binary, disabled, emerging multidisciplinary performance artist, originally from Democratic Republic of the Congo. Mai’s pronouns are she/her and they/them. Also, meet Cheyenne, Niles, and Annie. They are three separate and distinct personalities, but they all exist within Kitoko Mai. As a multidisciplinary artist, Mai engages audiences in art…

Monica Palacios stands up and out

“Just comadres? I don’t think so,” is one of the many brilliant lines Monica Palacios has delivered onstage, commenting on Mexican women singing passionate mariachi songs together. Named one of the most influential Latinx performers ever, Monica Palacios was born to be a comedian. She was one of the first out Chicana lesbian comics to…

Aeryanah Von Moi: Finding liberation through theater

Aeryanah Von Moi has lived in Philadelphia for 27 years and has had a wealth of creative and professional experiences, including as an assistant to Family Court Judge Tiffany Palmer, where she still works. But it was acting that liberated her “in so many different ways.” Von Moi’s experience in theater began in the early…

Fabrizzio Subia navigates loss and grief through art

When it comes to loss, Fabrizzio Subia may know more about that than most people. Having dealt with everything from familial loss to the erasure of his history, the Ecuadorian-American multidisciplinary artist (who has also done things like host the open-mic event Tortas y Talento) has unveiled the video installation “Año Nuevo (2023)”—a grief performance…

Chicago video game developer seeks to increase Black queer representation

Dani LaLonders (she/they) vividly remembers when “Lizzie McGuire: On the Go” first came out on the Gameboy Advance in 2004, joking that she was “probably one of five people” who played the game. The Chicago-based creator holds fond memories of various video games that inspired her throughout her childhood.  “I played a lot of girly…

Asha Santee is creating queer healing through art

Asha Santee has always had a creative spirit, but becoming a full-time artist was never her plan. She landed here by accident. After growing up in California and then Houston, she came to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University on a basketball scholarship. Her goal was to play professional basketball and she even tried out…

Roadwork reflects on its herstory to plan its future

In 1978, amid the second wave of feminism in the aftermath of Roe v. Wade, Roadwork – a multiracial coalition – put women’s art, particularly that of women of color, on the road. Building the roads where they didn’t already exist, Roadwork created an intersection of opportunity and social change, wherein artists from diverse backgrounds…

Robert Moses Kin: Bootstraps Initiative connects choreography and community

For more than 25 years, Robert Moses has been a powerful force in the Bay Area arts community. His choreographic work for his own San Francisco-based troupe, Robert Moses Kin (RMK), and companies worldwide has attracted both praise and controversy, as it often deals with subjects such as race, identity, social justice and power. Beyond…

Author De’Shawn Charles Winslow on his latest novel, “Decent People”

Readers know that a writer has created an effective murder mystery when they are kept guessing, and then are utterly surprised by the revelation of the guilty party. Prize-winning gay author De’Shawn Charles Winslow does precisely that in his second novel “Decent People” (Bloomsbury, 2023).  Like his debut novel, “In West Mills,” the follow-up “Decent…

These stories are made possible with support from Comcast Corporation.