An update from November:

We spoke briefly at UIC’s Asian American Resource & Cultural Center for their Trans Day of Remembrance event, which this year honored the late Mark Aguhar. Before we moved to Chicago and were still blogging under the moniker Radical Faggot, Mark was one of our original supporters. She helped get some of our first writings out into the queerverse, and had a huge impact on our earliest formations as a writer/organizer/artist. It was an honor to speak her name amongst her family and community, especially now that we are living in the city where she made so much of her crucial work.

This month we are so excited and grateful to join our friend and mentor Kemi Alabi for a joint reading as part of the Open Door series at the Poetry Foundation on December 8th at 7pm CST. This series highlights collaborative creative relationships, and will also include words from Sylvia Aguilar-Zéleny and blake nemec. RSVP for that event here, and receive a link to the livestream if you cannot attend in person.

We’ll follow that immediately with a performance at the DuSable Black History Museum as part of the closing symposium for The Color Is, an exhibition of the work of artist siblings Nick and Jack Cave. We’ll remount Dancer As Insurgent on December 9th at 2pm CST in the museum’s theater, in conversation with the Caves’ iconic sculptures/outfits and their themes of Black queer protection. We’ll also perform briefly at CALOR’s World AIDS Day Variety Show at Healthy Hood, hosted by our gay mother, the legendary Milani Varela.

In addition to these performances, we’ll squeeze in one more facilitation before 2023 arrives, joining Liberation Library for their end-of-year retreat. After two intense years of supporting young people on the inside through COVID, we’ll reevaluate the group’s alignment with their vision and mission, talk burnout, and revisit some of their paused programing that might be ready for a revival.

In 2022 we participated in three fellowships, were featured in three anthologies (congrats to Ricky Tucker on having “And the Category Is…” named one of the best music books of 2022 by Pitchfork!), performed for the first time ever in Puerto Rico, and co-organized a convergence of bomberxs and voguers from across the diaspora in two different cities. It was a sea change year, and we have big dreams for the year to come. We hope you continue with us on this journey.

BH