Featured Readers RBF 2025

Isle McElroy is a writer based in Brooklyn. Their debut novel, The Atmospherians, was named a New York Times Editors' Choice. Their second novel, People Collide, was New York Times Critics' Pick. Other writing appears in The New York Times, New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Cut, Vulture, GQ, Vogue, The Atlantic, Tin House, and elsewhere.  

​Isle was named one of The Strand's 30 Writers to Watch. They have received fellowships from The Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, The Tin House Summer Workshop, The Sewanee Writers Conference, The Inprint Foundation, The Elizabeth George Foundation, and The National Parks Service. 

2:00PM

Donna Minkowitz’s new autofiction novel DONNAVILLE was praised by Chills at Will as a “master class in world-building,” with “vivid imagination.” Minkowitz is also the author of the fantasy memoir Growing Up Golem, which was shortlisted for both the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography. Her first memoir, Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me about Sex, God, and Fury, won a Lambda Literary Award. She has been a columnist at the Village Voice, and has also written for the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Slate, Salon, and New York magazine. Minkowitz is the recipient of a GLAAD Media Award, the Exceptional Merit Media Award, an NLGJA Award for Outstanding Journalism, and an Art Omi residency fellowship. She currently writes a Substack called Rough Tongue, described as “urgent, sexy, tender, left-wing essays.”

3:00PM

Readings & remarks on Felice Picano, gay writer, activist, publisher, and teacher. Jenifer Levin, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, and more join host Walter Holland.

This tribute to Felice Picano (1944-2025), groundbreaking novelist, memoirist, poet, and queer publisher will be a multigenerational remembrance to this New-York-bred, Los Angeles writer who loved the Rainbow Book Fair and the amazing queer community it represents.

Photo by Dan Nicoletta

5:00PM