It’s a fact: dead writers can’t read their work at Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival. So, Wicked Queer Authors presents the Afterlife Edition! Join us for a fabulous evening where friends and fans bring the words of dead queer authors back to life. Plus, some of our favorite living writers will debut tribute poems to queer voices. Expect tributes, influences, and maybe even some fresh, fab work from our readers! It’s a lively, literary séance you won’t want to miss!

Here is the very-much-alive author lineup:

Pamela Booker, an Interdisciplinary-Writing Artist, is a 2024 NJ State Council on the Arts Prose Fellow, awarded in partnership with the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. Her work is found in various outlets, and this October, Pamela is a featured, invited poet for the Segue Reading Series at Artists Space. Recent notable presentations/contributions include the Happy Birthday, Sonia Sanchez Poetry Reading, Rainbow Book Festival/Come Hear! Queer Poetry Marathon, the critically acclaimed anthology Blacktino Queer Performance, Duke Univ. Press., About Place Journal, Dark Matter Women Witnessing, Akashic Books: Sci-Fri series, and a new performance-text staged reading for the Caregivers Stories on Stage at ArtHouse, Jersey City. A passionate eco-activist, Pamela launched Where’s Your Tree? a non-profit for restorative urban green initiatives and is Assistant Professor, teaching-faculty in Writing Studies/Theater Arts at Montclair State University.

Pamela will read the work of Shay Youngblood.

Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Journal, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Los Angeles Review and Pleaides. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Steven will read the work of David Craig Austin.

Jonathan Ned Katz, an independent scholar and history activist, has published several books on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual U.S. past. He is the founder of OutHistory.org, the major website on the U.S. LGBT past. Two of his other books focus on African American history, and another is a memoir. Katz is also a visual artist. His long career as a painter began in his childhood. In 2004, at age 66, Katz returned to visual art. His lifetime of visual art-making can be seen at jnkArt.com.

Jonathan will read the work of his friend Allan Bérubé.

Jimena Lucero (she/her) is a writer, actor, & cultural worker living on Lenape / Canarsie Land (Queens). Jimena co-hosted Mouth to Mouth, an open mic centering queer BIPOC voices, with Kay Ulanday Barrett.  Jimena was a 2019-2020 Emerge-Surface-Be fellow at the Poetry Project. Her work engages with anti- colonial feminism, trans-liberation, and disability justice. 

Jimena will read the work of Cecilia Gentili.

Jerome Ellison Murphy is a poet and critic based in New York City. He earned his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he currently serves as Undergraduate Programs Manager. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in LitHub, Poets.org Poem-a-Day, Narrative Magazine, Bellevue Literary Quarterly, The Cortlandt Review and elsewhere, and was recorded for NPR as part of the Poetry Well performance series. His critical writing has appeared in The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.

Jerome will read the work of his friend David Eye.

Afterlife Authors:

David Craig Austin (1961–1991) published poems in The Yale Review and Poetry East, among other journals. His work also appeared in Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS (Persea, 1989), edited by Michael Klein. A segment of his poetry library was donated to Poets House in New York City at the time of his death, and in his honor Columbia University bestows the annual David Craig Austin Prize for “the most distinguished thesis in poetry.” He completed one manuscript, The Merciful Country, which remains unpublished.

Allan Bérubé (1946-2007) was a gay American historian, activist, independent scholar, self-described “community-based” researcher and college drop-out, and award-winning author, best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. He also wrote essays about the intersection of class and race in gay culture, and about growing up in a poor, working-class family, his French-Canadian roots, and about his experience of anti-AIDS activism. Bérubé received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996, and received a Rockefeller grant from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1994. 

David Eye (1960-2023) was the author of Seed (The Word Works, 2017), chosen by award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing in 2008 from Syracuse University, where he also began teaching. This came after seventeen years as a performer in New York City, national tours, regional theaters, and some television. Before moving to New York, he spent four years in Texas in the military. This placed him in an elite group of poet/professors who have served in both the United States Army—and the Broadway tour of Cats. David taught writing and literature at New York University, Manhattan College, Syracuse University, St. John’s University, and Cazenovia College. He was conducting research and writing the book and libretto for a stage musical set in the early 20th century in the Catskill Mountains.

​​Cecilia Gentili (1972- 2024) came to the USA from Argentina to pursue a safer life as a transgender woman. She lived undocumented for 10 years, hustling doing sex work which came with drug use. After surviving arrests and an immigration detention, she accessed recovery services and won asylum. She subsequently served as Director of Policy at GMHC and founded Transgender Equity Consulting, which works to ensure all people living on the margins receive dignity and respect. A storyteller and actress, Cecilia appeared in FX’s Pose and her own one-woman show Red Ink. Her book Faltas won the 2023 Nonfiction Stonewall Book Award.

Shay Youngblood (1959-2024) Georgia born writer Shay Youngblood was author of the novels Black Girl in Paris and Soul Kiss and a collection of short fiction, The Big Mama Stories. Her published plays Amazing Grace, Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery and Talking Bones have been widely produced. Her other plays include Square Blues, Black Power Barbie and Communism Killed My Dog. She was the recipient of numerous grants and awards including a Pushcart Prize for fiction, a Lorraine Hansberry Playwriting Award, an Edward Albee honoree, several NAACP Theater Awards, an Astraea Writers’ Award for fiction and a 2004 New York Foundation for the Arts Sustained Achievement Award. Ms. Youngblood received her MFA in Creative Writing from Brown University and has taught Creative Writing to faculty and graduate students at NYU and has been Visiting Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi and Texas A&M Universities. In 2011 she was awarded the JUSFC Creative Artist Fellowship for a residency in Japan. In 2018 she was invited to participate in the International Literary Writing Program of Jilin, China to discuss and write on the subject of the environment, nature and ecology. Ms. Youngblood’s practice included writing and painting, sometimes combining the two.

Curator, Marty Correia writes fiction, memoir, and poetry in NYC’s East Village. A graduate of NYU’s creative writing MFA program, she is currently writing the genderqueer memoir, Dear Dead Dad, about finding her biological father through a DNA website after a decades-long search. Marty’s short stories and poetry have appeared in The Mailer Review, Omnibus! Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, Punk Soul Poet, Lady Business Poetry Anthology, Flock, POST, and Cagibi. She has hosted the Dixon Place literary series A Tribe Called Butch and Wicked Queer Authors. Artists who have most influenced Marty are James Baldwin, Agnes Martin, Grace Jones, Patti Smith, Carl Hiaasen, Kathy Acker, David Bowie, Kate Conroy, Gitta Sereny, and José Saramago. Marty is also a notary public and a pinball wizard.

Donations help support the community during this challenging time as DP continues to bring together visionary artists and adventurous audiences. If you can make a gift at this time, we’re very grateful for your consideration! Support DP