LGBT+ Literary Panel

In honor of 2018 Pride Month, our Suniland store will be hosting a LGBT+ Literary Panel! The panel will be made up of writers and readers in the LGBT+ community who want to talk about their lives, their work and the ways they inspire and foster a supportive community of sexual diversity. The panel will get the conversation started but you will keep it going!

Panel:

Christopher R. Alonso was born in Miami, FL to a Cuban family. He is a graduate of the NEOMFA program. His work has appeared in the Miami Rail and is forthcoming in Fireside Fiction. He is currently working on a novel.

Cathleen Chambless is from Miami, Florida. She graduated with her MFA in poetry from FIU. She is also a visual artist and activist. Her work has appeared The Electronic Encyclopedia of Experimental Literature, Jai-Alai, Fjords Review, Grief Diaries, Storm Cycle 2014 & 2015, and Wussy Mag. Her debut collection of poetry, Nec(Romantic), was a finalist for the Bisexual Book Awards in 2016.

Freesia McKee is author of the chapbook HOW DISTANT THE CITY (Headmistress Press, 2017). She writes about women, power, and apathy.

J.V. Portela (Havana, Cuba) is a poet, translator, and researcher based out of Miami, FL. His poems and essays have appeared in journals such as his personal diary, SensationFeelings, Conexos, and Nagari. He is the translator of two books of poetry: Dave Landsberger’s Suicide by Jaguar (Jai-Alai Books 2014), and Legna Rodríguez Iglesias’ Chicle: Ahora Es Cuando (2016), the first English translation ever published by renowned Cuban press Letras Cubanas. His academic translations of Christopher Columbus’ ship diaries from the Medieval Spanish were recently published in The Modern Spain Sourcebook: A Cultural History from 1600 to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2018). His translations and original children’s poems about native South Florida wildlife are also in permanent exhibition at the Miami Frost Museum of Science Everglades ecology exhibit, and will be published as a forthcoming children’s book. He serves as the Editor of Jai-Alai magazine, and serves or has served as the Staff Writer for the Miami Book Fair, the Programming Director of Reading Queer, and the Translator and Interpreter of the O, Miami Poetry Festival. Also a devoted cultural researcher and critic, he has received numerous awards for his research on the shifting construction of queer selves in contemporary Cuban culture. He shares a tiny home, a tinier garden, and a not-so-tiny avocado tree with his lover and their extended animal family.