Please join us in celebrating the resilience and beauty of our diverse queer community! June is Pride month, and Medicine for Nightmares will host “Pride in Words,” an LGBTQ+ literary reading and open mic on June 22 at 7PM. Featured readers for the evening include LD Green, Caleb Luna, Roberto F. Santiago, James J. Siegel, and Mimi Tempestt.
We also want to feature you! There will be eight open mic slots available at the reading. Each open mic performer will get three minutes at the mic to share their queer words and literary works. Please arrive early to sign up for the open mic. Sign up ends once the eight slots are taken.
We can’t wait to see you and celebrate our great Bay Area queer community!
Performer bios:
LD Green (they/them) is a non-binary writer and community college professor. They co-edited the anthology We’ve Been Too Patient: Voices from Radical Mental Health with Kelechi Ubozoh. They are the author of Phoenix Song, and have been published on Salon, The Body is Not an Apology, Foglifter and elsewhere. They have received multiple fellowships for their writing, including Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Stowe Story Lab for screenwriters in 2022. They are currently working on the script for a graphic novel.
Caleb Luna is an artist, public scholar, and theorist of the body. Texas born and raised, they have lived as a visitor to Huichin, Ohlone land (Bay Area, CA) since 2016, where they earned their Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. They are the author of “REVENGE BODY” (Nomadic Press, 20222) and co-host of the podcast Unsolicited: Fatties Talk Back. Publishing, performing, and curating across genre and medium, Caleb's work examines, responds to and challenges discourse and tropes surrounding race, size, sexuality and disability in media and culture. Ultimately, they are interested in engaging embodied difference as a generative resource toward fatter understandings of collective freedom. You can follow them on Instagram at @chairbreaker, or get in touch with them at caleb-luna.com
Roberto F. Santiago received an MSW from UC Berkeley and MFA from Rutgers University. His work has appeared in Apogee, Anomaly, Ninth Letter, and The Acentos Review. Roberto was awarded the Alfred C. Carey Prize and has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, CantoMundo, Community of Writers, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Lambda Literary Foundation. His debut collection, Angel Park (2015), appeared on the LA Times list of 23 Essential New Books by Latino Poets and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Roberto latest book published by Nomadic Press is titled Like Sugar.
James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection, “The God of San Francisco,” published by Sibling Rivalry Press. He is the host and curator of the monthly Literary Speakeasy show at Martuni’s piano bar in San Francisco. Originally from Toledo, Ohio, his first poetry collection, “How Ghosts Travel,” was a finalist for an Ohioana Book Award. He was a scholarship recipient to the Antioch Writers’ Workshop and his poems have been featured in a number of journals including The Cortland Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, HIV Here & Now, The Good Men Project, and more.
Mimi Tempestt is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, and daughter of California. She has a MA in Literature from Mills College and is currently a doctoral student in the Creative/Critical PhD in Literature at UC Santa Cruz. Her first book, the monumental misrememberings, is published with Co-Conspirator Press//TheFeminist Center for Creative Work (2020). She was also a creative fellow at The Ruby in San Francisco. She was selected for participation in the Lambda Literary Writers Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices & writers in 2021. Her works can be found in Foglifter, Apogee Journal, Interim Poetics, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.