Shade Literary Arts is literary organization focused on the empowerment and expansion of literature by queer writers of color.
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APPLICATIONS FOR ROUND 2 OF THE QUEER WRITERS OF COLOR RELIEF FUND OPEN ON TUESDAY, APRIL 13
This fund is for queer writers of color who are in critical need due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first iteration of this fund started in March 2020, disbursing nearly $45,500 to 175 writers across the world.
With thanks to the Philadelphia Assembly and the Money in the Streets initiative, we'll be able to provide 40 queer writers of color with $250 each.
This fund will prioritize trans women writers of color.
The deadline to apply is May 13 at 11:59PM PST. You will be notified in late May of your status.
Kick Your Feet Up Reading Series
George Abraham (they/he) is a Palestinian american poet, educator, and engineer from Jacksonville, FL. Their debut poetry collection Birthright (Button Poetry, 2020) is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Bisexual Poetry and the Big Other Book Award. He is a board member for the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI), a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and The Boston Foundation, and winner of the 2017 College Union Poetry Slam Invitational's Best Poet title. Their work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Baffler, The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, Mizna, and elsewhere. A graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard University, Abraham currently teaches at Emerson College, and will be a Litowitz MA+MFA Candidate at Northwestern University in the fall.
Jari Bradley (they/them) is a Black genderqueer poet and scholar from San Francisco, California. They have received fellowships and support from Callaloo, Cave Canem, Tin House, The Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments. Jari’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has been published/forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Blood Orange Review (selected by judge Nikky Finney), The Offing, Academy of American Poets (Poem-A-Day) , Callaloo, Columbia Journal, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Jari Bradley (MFA, University of Pittsburgh) is the current 2020–2021 First Wave Poetry Fellow at UW–Madison.
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Imani Davis is a queer Black writer from Brooklyn. A Pushcart Prize-nominated poet, they’ve earned fellowships from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The Lambda Literary Foundation, BOAAT Press, and the Stadler Center for Poetry. They completed their B.A. in English and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and they’re currently pursuing a Ph.D. in American Studies at Harvard. Imani’s poetry appears with Best New Poets 2020, Best of the Net, PBS NewsHour’s Brief But Spectacular Series, Poetry Daily, Shade Literary Arts, The Offing,The Adroit Journal, and elsewhere.
Paul Tran is the author of the debut poetry collection, All the Flowers Kneeling, forthcoming from Penguin Poets in 2022. Their work appears in The New Yorker, The Nation, and elsewhere. A recipient of the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize, as well as fellowships from the Poetry Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts, Paul is currently a Visiting Faculty in Poetry at Pacific University MFA in Writing and a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University.
While we are not fundraising directly for round 2 of the Queer Writers of Color Relief Fund, you can still invest in our community and the work we are doing by donating to our PayPal.