1:30-2:45                               Queer Resistance               Room 203

This year’s RBF theme “Queer Resistance!” provides us all an opportunity to think about how to deal with and fight back against the ongoing attacks on queer and especially trans and gender non-conforming people. Drawing on the knowledge of activists of different generations and struggles, this panel will look back on successful strategies for resistance and imagine how we build power for the future.

Rainbow Book Fair’s flagship panel includes:

Victor Manibo, a Filipino novelist living in New York. A 2022 Lambda Literary Emerging Voices Fellow, he is the author of the science fiction novels THE SLEEPLESS and ESCAPE VELOCITY from Erewhon Books. Find him online at victormanibo.com and on most social media platforms @victormanibo.

Ariel Friedlander is a femme dyke artist living in Brooklyn, New York. As a community organizer, she has worked within ACT UP NY, Jewish Voice for Peace and Gender Liberation Movement to build intersectional movements through mass mobilization and arts engagement. She is also an arts educator, drag queen, and lover of the color pink. 

Alison Williams (They/she) is the founder of BLX Education, a nonprofit that center LGBTQIA sexual,mental and physical wellness. They have over 30 years providing public service at The New York Public Library. Creating spaces for queer/ Trans and GNC teens. They have mentored, coach, and trained staff in cultivating a collection and space welcoming to all. They co-founded ONYX Pearls New York-Northeast, which supports, educates, and empowers women of color in the leather and BDSM scene, and currently creates safe spaces and programming for young adults, specifically those who are queer, trans, and gender nonconforming. They are also CEO of  BLX, an organization whose mission focuses on kinkinformed sex education, specifically reducing stigma in the Black and Brown LGBTQ+ leather, kink, and BDSM community, as well as in alternative relationships.

Samiya Bashir is a poet, writer, librettist, performer, and multi-media poetry maker whose work, both solo and collaborative, has been widely published, performed, installed, printed, screened, experienced, and Oxford comma’d from Berlin to Düsseldorf, Amsterdam to Accra, Florence to Rome and across the United States. Bashir is the author of three poetry collections, most recently Field Theories, winner of the 2018 Oregon Book Award’s Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry. Her fourth collection, I Hope this Helps, is forthcoming Spring 2025 from Nightboat Books.

Moderater:Lori Perkins has been a newspaper editor, a literary agent, a book editor, a professor and an author for four decades. She considers herself a “word-slinger” because words are the ammunition that we all have.  She encourages you all to use your power and fight the good fight. Perkins founded the L. Perkins Literary Agency in 1988, which she still runs, and Riverdale Avenue Books, an award-winning indie publisher 13 years ago.  She is also the author of 30 books (both fiction and nonfiction) including the just published THE BOOK OF EVERYDAY RESISTANCE which is free to download. Perkins is also the publisher of Romancedailynews.com, an online romance-related magazine. She was an adjunct professor of journalism at NYU for 2 decades, and the founder and owner of Uptown Weekly News, a neighborhood newspaper in Upper Manhattan. Perkins was on the Lambda Literary Awards host committee from 2012-2015.  Riverdale Avenue books was chosen as the Bi-Publisher of the Year in 2014. Riverdale Avenue Books acquired Circlet Press in 2016, a 25-year-old erotic science fiction and fantasy publisher.

3:00-4:15                                           Asian Love Stories: Romance, Resistance, and Revolution                              Room 203

What are the resources in traditional Asian folktales, mythologies, and other forms of narratives for depicting queer romance, discovering queer resistance, and designing the queer revolution of literature? Ng Yi-Sheng (LION CITY), Aruni Kashyap (THE WAY YOU WANT TO BE LOVED), Sahar Romani (THE OPENING), and Pauline Park will read from their fiction and poetry and discuss the social and political uses of Asian love stories.

 Ng Yi-Sheng is a Singaporean writer, researcher and activist, with a keen interest in the forgotten histories and mythologies of Southeast Asia. His books include the story collection Lion City (winner of the Singapore Literature Prize) and the children’s history book Twisted Temasek. Additionally, he served as editor for A Mosque in the Jungle: Classic Ghost Stories by Othman Wok and EXHALE: an Anthology of Queer Singapore Voices, and as translator for Wong Yoon Wah’s The New Village and Homecomings.

 Aruni Kashyap is the author of The Way You Want to Be Loved, The House with a Thousand Stories, and the forthcoming How to Date a Fanatic. Along with editing a collection of stories called How to Tell the Story of an Insurgency, he is the translator of four novels from Assamese to English. He is an Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing and the Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Georgia, Athens.

 Sahar Romani is the author of The Opening, winner of a Poetry Society of America Chapbook Prize. She teaches expository writing at NYU and lives in Jackson Heights, Queens.

 Pauline Park is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), which she co-founded in 1998. Park co-founded Queens Pride House in 1997 and led it as executive director for three years (2012-2015), becoming the first Asian American trans woman to lead any LGBT community center in the United States.

 4:30-5:45                          Artists as Writers:Living and Sustaining a Creative Life   Room 203

Part of the Living and Sustaining a Creative Life series of books, edited by Sharon Louden, Artists as Writers offers first-person narratives that explore the day-to-day lives of individuals who use writing as both a creative practice and a means of sustaining their daily lives. Through richly detailed stories, they reveal how writing became a central force in their lives and how it continues to sustain them emotionally, creatively, and financially. Panelists include Khadija Goding, Max A Gordon, and JP Howard. Moderator: Steven G Fullwood. 

Steven G Fullwood is an archivist, writer, and editor. He is the co-founder of the Nomadic Archivists Project. His books include Artists as Writers with Seph Rodney (2025), Black Gay Genius: Answering Joseph Beam’s Call with Charles Stephens, (2014), and Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books with Lisa C. Moore (2007). Currently, Fullwood is the coordinator of Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, a multifaceted project curated by Dr. Nicole R. Fleetwood, that investigates the impact of the carceral state on American life through the lens of art and visual culture.

Max S. Gordon is a writer and performer. He has been published in the anthologies Inside Separate Worlds: Life Stories of Young Blacks, Jews and Latinos (University of Michigan Press, 1991) and Go the Way Your Blood Beats: An Anthology of African-American Lesbian and Gay Fiction (Henry Holt, 1996). His work has also appeared at The New Civil Rights Movement, openDemocracy, Democratic Underground and Truthout, in Z Magazine, Gay Times, Sapience, and other progressive on-line and print magazines in the U.S. and internationally. His published essays, collected on Medium.com, include, “Bill Cosby, Himself: Fame, Narcissism and Sexual Violence”; “Be Glad That You Are Free: On Nina, Miles Ahead, Lemonade, Lauryn Hill and Prince”, “The Cult of Whiteness” and “Faggot as Footnote: On ‘I Am Not Your Negro’, ‘Can I Get A Witness’, and ‘Moonlight'”.

JP Howard is a poet, educator, literary activist, and community builder. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*), Praise This Complicated Herstory: Legacy, Healing & Revolutionary Poems (Harlequin Creature) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians--We Are the Revolution! JP is a featured Lesbian Poet Trading Card (Headmistress Press) and was a Brooklyn College Tow Mentor-in-Residence. She has received fellowships and/or grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary, and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon. JP’s poetry and/or essays have been featured in POETRY Magazine, The New York Times, The Slowdown, The Academy of American Poets, Split this Rock, and elsewhere. JP is a Poetry Editor for Women's Studies Quarterly and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online. http://www.jp-howard.com

 Khadija Goding is a New York City based writer, editor-in-chief, voiceover artist, and creative. She is fascinated by connectivity that transcends human-made physical and ideological barriers. She views our unique journeys as a grounding for universal empathy and the power of storytelling as a healing modality. As an avid world traveler and polyglot, her passions lie in aiding a future of increased cooperation, understanding, and sustainable peace, with historical context and art serving as critical guides for progress. Khadija is also a graduate candidate in Ethical Leadership and Public Administration. She has a strong interest in Indigenous Sovereignty and  Disability Rights Advocacy and lives for positively impactful and ethical cultural exchanges.

1:00-1:30 SPECIAL EVENT!

Trans Anthology Project Showcase ROOM 203

A Video Presentation and Readings by Anthology Participants!

Readings

12:30-1:00

Samantha Pious

Annie Christain

Alex Alberto

Loretta Goldberg

1:00-1:30

Jeriann G. Hilderley

Chris Lombardi

Gerard Cabrera

1:30-2:00

Frank Pizzoli

David Messineo

Lauren Melissa Ellzey

2:00-2:30

Philip Clark

Larry Closs

Renee Roman

Christina Cooke

2:30-3:00

Dale Corvino

Sarah G. Levine

Larry Mass

Gary Zebrun

3:00-3:30

Finn Mott

Elizabeth Costello

Terence Diamond

Jiaming Tang

3:30-4:00

Kara L. Zajac

Gerard Cabrera

Mia Arias Tsang

Sue Harris

4:30-5:00

Kate Bean

Janet Mayes

Jeza Belle

D. Dave Churchill

Room 201B

RBF 2025 Featured Readers/Events

Room 310

2:00 Isle McElroy

3 :00 Donna Minkowitz

4:00 Drag Story Hour

5:00 Tribute to Felice Picano