SPECIAL EVENT
Queeriosity @ BNV Turns 10!
From humble beginnings as a Queer Open Mic at BNV 2010, Queeriosity has grown to become a staple of the festival.
In this year’s queer centered space of love, poetry and glitter, Queeriosity is digging through the archives. Since the event’s inception, legendary artists have touched the color-filled stage and inspired hope and bravery to young folks across time. This year we will be viewing poets over the years and highlighting poets of the now.
Special Performers
Curator
Andrew Wilson is a multimedia artist working in the intersections of the systematic consumption of Blackness, ritual and funerary rights honoring the deceased, new interpretations of mythology and queerness. His work is at once beautiful with an attention to craftsmanship and repulsing in its graphic subject matter. He wants to create an extra moment of counfoundment for the viewer to contemplate their relationship to the work and the imagery and histories it evokes. He received his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2013 with a concentration in Jewelry/Metals and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Wilson’s work has been in many galleries and institutions including: The Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. He has received such awards and honors as: the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, and Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Carr Center Independent Scholars Fellowship and more. He has also shown with Carrie Mae Weems in The Spirit that Resides in Havana, Cuba alongside the Havana Biennial. His work has been collected by Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico.
Andrew Wilson
Andrew Wilson is a multimedia artist working in the intersections of the systematic consumption of Blackness, ritual and funerary rights honoring the deceased, new interpretations of mythology and queerness. His work is at once beautiful with an attention to craftsmanship and repulsing in its graphic subject matter. He wants to create an extra moment of counfoundment for the viewer to contemplate their relationship to the work and the imagery and histories it evokes. He received his BFA from Ohio Wesleyan University in 2013 with a concentration in Jewelry/Metals and his MFA from the University of California, Berkeley in 2017. Wilson’s work has been in many galleries and institutions including: The Berkeley Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SOMArts, and the Museum of the African Diaspora. He has received such awards and honors as: the Jack K. and Gertrude Murphy Award, and Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, the Carr Center Independent Scholars Fellowship and more. He has also shown with Carrie Mae Weems in The Spirit that Resides in Havana, Cuba alongside the Havana Biennial. His work has been collected by Michigan State University and the University of New Mexico.
Feature
Paul Tran is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Their work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and the Netflix movie Love Beats Rhymes with Azealia Banks, Common, and Jill Scott. They are the first Asian American since 1993 and first transgender poet ever to win the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam, placing top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam, and in 2019 they coached the St. Louis team to first place at Brave New Voices.
Paul Tran
Paul Tran is the recipient of the Ruth Lilly & Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation and the Discovery/Boston Review Poetry Prize. Their work appears in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, and the Netflix movie Love Beats Rhymes with Azealia Banks, Common, and Jill Scott. They are the first Asian American since 1993 and first transgender poet ever to win the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam, placing top 10 at the Individual World Poetry Slam and top 2 at the National Poetry Slam, and in 2019 they coached the St. Louis team to first place at Brave New Voices.
Feature
Joshua Merchant is a 29 year old self proclaimed Literary Artist from east Oakland. Though, he may have the tendency to be Lochness-like, when he does come up for air it’s because he thinks he may have found a way to filter the air that was given to us into something fresh and finds it necessary to share that. Hopefully in a way that makes sense. But alas, he is fully aware that art, is indeed just that.
Joshua Merchant
Joshua Merchant is a 29 year old self proclaimed Literary Artist from east Oakland. Though, he may have the tendency to be Lochness-like, when he does come up for air it’s because he thinks he may have found a way to filter the air that was given to us into something fresh and finds it necessary to share that. Hopefully in a way that makes sense. But alas, he is fully aware that art, is indeed just that.
Feature
Yosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of "13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World" and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of "10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know."
Yosimar Reyes
Yosimar Reyes is a nationally-acclaimed Poet and Public Speaker. Born in Guerrero, Mexico, and raised in Eastside San Jose, Reyes explores the themes of migration and sexuality in his work. The Advocate named Reyes one of "13 LGBT Latinos Changing the World" and Remezcla included Reyes on their list of "10 Up And Coming Latinx Poets You Need To Know."
Feature
Jari Bradley 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 published in The Adroit Journal, The Offing, Academy of American Poets, 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.
Jari Bradley
Jari Bradley 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 published in The Adroit Journal, The Offing, Academy of American Poets, 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.
DJ
CaSera Heining, best known as DJ Ca$h Era, is an internationally recognized performer and the Official DJ for Young Chicago Authors' Louder Than A Bomb — Chicago’s largest youth poetry festival. She is also the face of AT&T's #ItsA312Thing CodeTalk Ad Campaign. CaSera completed her College B.A. in Radio Broadcasting, and minor in Video Production, at Columbia College Chicago in May of 2017. She is now a Producer at 720AM WGN Radio and continues to DJ on a regular basis all throughout the Chicagoland area.
DJ Ca$h Era
CaSera Heining, best known as DJ Ca$h Era, is an internationally recognized performer and the Official DJ for Young Chicago Authors' Louder Than A Bomb — Chicago’s largest youth poetry festival. She is also the face of AT&T's #ItsA312Thing CodeTalk Ad Campaign. CaSera completed her College B.A. in Radio Broadcasting, and minor in Video Production, at Columbia College Chicago in May of 2017. She is now a Producer at 720AM WGN Radio and continues to DJ on a regular basis all throughout the Chicagoland area.