Panel Discussions & Featured Readings
The Fair is hosting panels and readings all day!
Explore queer books and their authors in depth.
“Queer Resistance Now: No Stopping Us!”
1:30-2:45 Getting Your LGBT Book Published Room 203
We've been told for years that no one is going to want to read books anymore, but the enormous market for queer books of all kinds has proved otherwise. For many authors, though, the hardest part is not the writing — it’s getting their books in front of readers. In this panel, publishers at a variety of queer presses will talk about how they evaluate manuscripts for publication, the editing process, and what authors can do to get their work into print. Line-up in process. Moderated by Lori Perkins, the founder of L. Perkins Agency (LPA) and the founder and publisher of Riverdale Avenue Books
3:00-4:00 Asian Love Stories: Romance, Resistance, and Revolution Room XXX
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 transwoman to lead any LGBT community center in the United States.
4:30-5:45 Politics as Experience/Experience as Politics Room 302
For LGBT people, the line dividing politics and experience is very thin: to live our lives the way we want to, we’ve always had to organize, demonstrate, and make political demands. And as queer people have become a part of the larger political landscape, we bring a wealth of knowledge with us that are unique to our lived experiences. From the Homophile movement to Gay Liberation to ACT UP to the current movement for trans rights, we have shaped and been shaped by the political environments in which we live, work, and resist. Panelists include Paisley Currah, Professor of Political Science, Brooklyn College CUNY, author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, Laura A. Jacobs, psychotherapist and editor of Surviving Transphobia, Boon Lin Ngeo, Pastor, New York Metropolitan Community Church, author of Gay is OK! A Christian Perspective, Douglas Sadownick, Psychologist, author of Healing Gay Sex and Love: Group Therapy, Plato, and All of Us Strangers Come Together, Lauren Melissa Ellzey an autistic self-advocate, social justice influencer, and author of YA novels, most recently Gimmicks and Glamour.” Moderated by Darrell B. Perry (aka DarrellBlackandBlue of DarrellsDungeon.com)
Readings
12:30-1:00
Bold Strokes Books Showcase
Moderated by Anne Shade
Morgan Adams
Melissa Brayden
Mary P. Burns
Maggie Fortuna
1:00-1:30
University Press of Kentucky
Jonathan Corcoran
Serkan Görkemli
1:30-2:00
Nan Campbell
Jessica Max Stein
Sarah Sarai
Bruce Whitacre
2:00-2:30
Rebel Satori Showcase
Philip Clark
Scott Alexander Hess
Dale Corvino
Larry Closs
2:30-3:00
Miles Borrero
Renee Roman
Patricia Carragon
Roxanne Hoffman
Lauren Melissa Ellzey
3:00-3:30
Jöyce Showcase
Joyce Miller
Eileen Dover
Marlee Alcina Miller
3:30-4:00
Riverdale Avenue Books Showcase
Moderated by Lori Perkins
Mike Coleman
David Valentin (discusses what Riverdale Avenue Books is looking for to publish)
5:15-5:45
Jeza Belle
Jeffrey Round
Anne Shade
Chocolate Waters
Room 310
Featured Readers
RBF 2025 Featured Readers
TIMESLOTS TBD
Isle McElroy
Donna Minkowitz
A Tribute to Felice Picano
2:00pm FXXXXXXXX Room 202
3:00pm TXXXXXX Room 202
4:00pm Drag Story Hour (Library)
Bureau of General Services Queer Division, Room 210
TWO BONUS EVENTS![BGSQD Room 210]
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Felice Picano
Felice Picano’s stories, novellas and novels are translated into seventeen languages. He’s received awards for poetry, drama, stories, novels, and memoirs. His newest books are the duology Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment and Pursued: Lillian’s Story. His SF trilogy, City on a Star, is now complete. Joining the classic Dryland’s End, are The Betrothal at Usk, and A Bard on Hercular. Picano lectures live and via Zoom on Vintage Hollywood and scriptwriting. He will be speaking about the reissue of his now classic fictionalized memoir of childhood in the 1950s, Ambidextrous: the Secret Lives of Children, one of the most controversial and banned books in the queer canon—copies of the book were burned on the docks in London rather than be allowed into the UK. "Book List" in Publishers Weekly described Ambidextrous as, "a revealing burst of sexual samizdat in incandescent prose." Picano is entertaining, frank, and unblushing. Expect to have your ears opened and your jaw drop.
Photo by Dan Nicoletta
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Torrey Peters
Torrey Peters, author of bestselling novel Detransition, Baby (Random House, 2021) was a finalist for the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award. She was a selection for Roxane Gay’s Audacious Book Club, and also the author of the novellas Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker. Detransition, Baby is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can’t reach. Throughout the book, Peters navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships with her original, witty, and deeply moving novel. Kirkus Reviews calls the debut, “Smart, funny, and bighearted. Trans women will be matching their experiences against [this novel], but so will cis women—and so will anyone with an interest in the human condition.” Peters is set to write the pilot episode of the TV adaptation for Detransition, Baby with Grey’s Anatomy writer-producers Joan Rater and Tony Phelan lined up to serve as showrunners on the half-hour dramedy adaptation of the novel.
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Samra Habib
Samra Habib (they/them) is a writer, photographer, and activist. Their bestselling memoir We Have Always Been Here is an exploration of faith, art, love, and queer sexuality, a journey that takes them to the far reaches of the globe to uncover a truth that was within them all along. It’s a triumphant memoir of forgiveness and family, both chosen and not, and a rallying cry for anyone who has ever felt out of place and a testament to the power of fearlessly inhabiting one’s truest self.
As a journalist they’ve covered topics ranging from fashion trends and Muslim dating apps to the rise of Islamophobia in the US. Their writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Advocate, and their photo project, “Just Me and Allah,” has been featured in Nylon, i-D, Vanity Fair Italia, Vice, and The Washington Post. Samra works with LGBTQ organizations internationally, raising awareness of issues that impact queer Muslims around the world.
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Andrea Lawlor
Andrea Lawlor teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College, is the recipient of a 2020 Whiting Award for Fiction, and has been awarded fellowships by Lambda Literary and Radar Labs. Their publications include a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016), and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl, a 2018 finalist for the Lambda Literary and CLMP Firecracker Awards. Paul, originally published by Rescue Press in 2017, is out now from Vintage/Knopf (US) and Picador (UK & Ireland).
