Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category

Thank you!

… to the hundreds of attendees, presenters, vendors, sponsors, and the city of Austin for making Fire & Ink III: Cotillion a smashing success!

Stay tuned here for photos, videos, and more information about all that happened. Also, keep an eye out for Nikky Finney’s rousing Keynote Address, which will be uploaded here soon.

Were you there? Please click over to the Fire & Ink Facebook Group to share your experience, and upload your pics and videos to the Group where those who couldn’t make it - and those who could - can relive the wonderful time we all created together.

Keep an eye out for more information about future Fire & Ink events coming soon …

In the meantime, Fire & Ink still needs your support now more than ever! Click here to find out how you can help us keep the momentum going now and into the future!

Most of all — thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

-Fire & Ink, Inc.

Thanks Philly!

We had a fantastic time at Fire & Ink’s Literary Cafe during Philadelphia Black Pride! Thanks everyone for coming out, and for sharing your wonderful work and spirits!

Check out these wonderful pictures.

This is gonna be good…

We know you’ve been waiting… and tomorrow the wait will be over! Hotel and registration info is just around the corner of midnight. Stand by!

Why are you coming to Fire & Ink? Doug Cooper-Spencer responds.

Fire & Ink III: Cotillion is on the way! Hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer writers of African descent will be descending to Austin, Texas, from October 8 to October 11, 2009, for the greatest gathering of literary fierceness on earth. Writer and commentator Doug Cooper-Spencer won’t be missing the Cotillion.How about you? Send us your videos at fireandink2009@gmail.com and tell us why you’re coming!

Fire & Ink III: CotillionOctober 8-11, 2009
Austin, Texas

Original music (c) Phillip Alexander.

The words are coming thick and fast …

anthony_jano_2002The planning for Fire & Ink III: Cotillion has been well under way for over a year — but now that planning is hitting full steam.

We’ve just received a bucketful of abstracts on topics so fierce we’re going to make you wait on bated breath for a minute before we drop it on ya.

Fire & Ink’s Board of Directors is getting together with a group of our extended planning team for a Fire & Ink 2009 Board Retreat in Austin, Texas, from January 9-11th. We’ll be reviewing submissions, enjoying the scenery at Alma de Mujer Center for Social Change, and checking out Sharon Bridgforth’s production of delta dandi, her newest performance piece happening in Austin, Texas, that same weekend.

Our plates will certainly be full all weekend and, just like this October, it will be well worth the trip.
Continue reading ‘The words are coming thick and fast …’

Happy New Year from Fire & Ink

Looking for Change?
National Coming Out Day may never be the same.


A new year is upon us and some black LGBT writers (you know who you are our media darlings) are letting us know that it’s all about change.

Fire & Ink III: Cotillion is all over it. Hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer writers of African descent are already making plans to head on down to Austin, Texas, from Oct. 8 to Oct. 11, 2009 for Fire & Ink III: Cotillion.

Since our first event in Chicago in 2002 through our upcoming national festival, Fire & Ink, Inc. has been recognized as the most influential supporter and advocate for LGBTQ writers of African descent.

We’ve asked people all over why they are coming to The Cotillion. Writer and UT Professor Dr. Matt Richardson will be there. “So much happens at Fire & Ink,” said Dr. Richardson. “You’re going to be really sad if you miss it.”

The theme of Cotillion was conceived to acknowledge that some of the best creative and cultural work being produced today is created, supported, and/or inspired by LGBT writers and artists of African descent.
Continue reading ‘Happy New Year from Fire & Ink’

Habari Gani - Umoja!

Happy Holidays!

The first day of Kwanzaa, December 26th, celebrates Umoja, or Unity. Fire & Ink is recognized as the most influential supporter and advocate for GLBT writers of African descent.

Fire & Ink III: Cotillion is on the way! Hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer writers of African descent will be descending to Austin, Texas, from October 8 to October 11, 2009, for the greatest gathering of literary fierceness on earth.

Steven, Robert & Anthony are going to expand their minds & “get their lives”.

How about you? Why will you be there? (Because you know you will.)
Send us your videos at fireandink2009-at-gmail.com and tell us why you’re coming!
Continue reading ‘Habari Gani - Umoja!’

Fire & Ink Presents! Heating up Nashville

Fire & Ink Presents!
Saturday, October 25, 2008
3:30 p.m.-5 p.m.
CREATE Room, Hotel Preston
733 Briley Parkway, Nashville, TN 37217

It’s getting cold outside, but the weatherman says the sun is coming back to Nashville on Saturday. We have a good idea about the four reasons why: Laurinda, KMatador, Fiona, Marquette!

This has been a great year so far for Fire & Ink. We’re still course for Fire & Ink III: Cotillion and blazing our trail to Texas with event after fiery event from coast to coast.

Speaking of Texas, we had an awesome time at Dallas Southern Pride. Check out the great pictures by JW Richard at Mandrake Society Radio or the wonderful pics from Calvin Glenn of Black Gay USA by clicking here. Join us on Saturday afternoon, from 3pm - 5pm, to hear these dynamic authors share their work:

Laurinda D. BrownLaurinda D. Brown uses her writing to tell universal stories that apply to all cross-sections of society. She is the author of six novels, Fire & Brimstone, UnderCover, Walk Like a Man, Strapped, The Cathouse, and The Highest Price for Passion, and a contributing author to Zane’s Purple Panties. In 2007, Laurinda won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Erotica with her book of short stories, Walk Like a Man, which became a critically acclaimed stage play now in its third year of production. A graduate of Howard University, she writes about life, not lifestyles. She currently resides in the Atlanta metro area with her two daughters and her partner of twelve years, Charlotte.

The Highest Price for Passion: A century of unrest equals ten decades of change. The Highest Price for Passion uses as background one hundred years of the most volatile era to divide American soil, interspersed with the uncontrollable fervor from the unlikeliest of sources—when both master and mistress vie for the affections of a slave too beautiful to destroy, with a quiet intelligence neither can outwit.

Keith MontgomeryKeith Montgomery is an amateur bodybuilder, singer/songwriter and novelist. A native of New Jersey, Montgomery’s time in the military became material for his first book, Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, a story of a young black man coming out gay and HIV positive. Look for his next book, Family of Felons, coming soon.

In Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, Bert grew up in a hostile, abusive, unstable family, but sought the American dream: a wife, a house and kids. His sexual relationships portrayed another story, and when Bert is diagnosed as HIV-positive, his self-destructive behavior spins out of control. Through his inner strength—and his grandmother’s religious strength—Bert is able to cope with the stigma of being HIV-positive, black and gay.

fiona_hi-res.jpgFiona Zedde lives and writes in Atlanta, Georgia with her partner. She is the author of the novels Bliss, A Taste of Sin, Every Dark Desire, and Hungry for It, as well as the novellas “Pure Pleasure,” “Going Wild” and the soon-to-be-published “Sweat,” which appear in the collections Satisfy Me, Satisfy Me Again, and Satisfy Me One More Time, respectively. Find out more at www.fionazedde.com.

In Hungry for It, her newest novel, Zedde presents Rémi Bouchard. With good looks, limitless sex appeal, and the wealth and popularity that comes from owning the city’s hottest jazz bar and restaurant, Rémi Bouchard can have anyone she wants. Lately though, the allure of wild one-night stands and no-strings flings is starting to wear thin. Rémi craves something more. At her best friend’s wedding, she looks across the crowd and finds exactly what she’s been searching for—an intense, soul-searing connection. But passion this deep has its dangers—especially when it means falling in love with the one person who should be off limits.

MarquetteCarney.jpgMarquette Carney has been writing poetry since he was 12. Carney, a native of West Tennessee, is the author of Swallow the Moon (2005), and Not What I Wanted, But What I Needed (2006); his most recent title is Love—Exotic or Toxic, released in September 2008 as a book and audio CD.

“Every relationship is either good (exotic) or bad (toxic),” says Marquette Carney in Love—Exotic or Toxic. His newest project is released as a book and audio CD, comprised of spoken words of love (be it exotic or toxic) fused with the sounds of jazz, R&B, neo-soul, and funk. From a tribute to domestic violence, “For All Your Tears,” to the heartfelt “Disappearing Act,” Love—Exotic or Toxic will take you on love’s journey of joy, pain, sunshine and rain. Welcome to love!

If you really wanna get down, check out Fire & Ink TV!
Love it? Comment! Share it! Join in the fun!

The question of the day: Why are you headed to Fire & Ink? Got access to video? Send your video-response to fireandink2009@gmail.com. We’d love to hear from you!

Don’t forget to also subscribe to our YouTube channel, to friend us on MySpace, or join our Facebook Group!

For Black Gays, Writing is Power

What are you doing a year from now? Kicking back and reminiscing about what a great time you had down in Austin at Fire & Ink III: Cotillion, that’s what!

Just ask Priscilla Hale, Director of Organizational Development at allgo. She’s waitin’ for you!

If you needed another reminder of what Fire & Ink is all about and why the festival is a can’t-miss event for writers, readers, literature and art lovers East and West, North and South, Kuma2.net is serving it up.

Republished today at Kuma2.net’s Spirit Space was Rev. Irene Monroe’s moving essay on the first Fire & Ink Festival, For Black Gays, Writing is Power.

The exclusion we experience from publishing houses and the literary world due to homophobia and/or racism, at best, departmentalizes our works as either black or queer; thus erasing the LGBT of African descent literary canon, and, at worst, rendering us invisible and muting our voice.

In a statement by Barbara Smith and Joseph Beam in March 1988 at the Second National Black Writers Conference at Medgar Evers College, in Brooklyn N.Y., they said, “In spite of efforts to ghettoize and exclude us, we are part of a long and proud Black Lesbian and Gay literary tradition. The Harlem Renaissance could not have occurred if it had not been for its Black and Gay participants, among them: Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Wallace Thurman, Alain Locke, and R. Bruce Nugent.”

And Nugent was the only self-declared gay man in the bunch. “Harlem was very much like the village. People did what they wanted to do with whom they wanted to do it.”

The name of this conference, “Fire and Ink,” is a spin-off from the literary magazine FIRE!! that was published by the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. For these gay writers, as for our present-day LGBT writers of African descent, their sexuality was as central to their work as their race. However, the sexual politics espoused in their opuses were censored, and consequently only one issue of FIRE!! made it to print. The reading out or weeding out of the queer experience in the Harlem Renaissance was due to patrons who would not support openly gay writers or due to relatives in charge of their estates who weeded out any implied references or overt pronouncements about their sexual behavior or sexual orientation.

Being both of African descent and queer creates a distinctive epistemology that shapes not only our identity but it also shapes our distinctive interpretative lens we zoom on the world about politics, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, arts, music.

Our method of identifying and “languaging” our way of identifying as both of African descent and queer is evident in the terms we use like “in the life” — an identifier, a code, that derives from the Harlem Renaissance. Another is the term “same-gender loving” that became popular in our queer lexicon in the 1990’s. Both terms are indeed a radical pronouncement for LGBT people of African descent, because they are statements about openly engaging in sexual behavior, mannerism and lifestyle outside of the accepted norm, and about naming it in the face of virulent homophobia in the black community that could very well cost them their careers if not their lives.

Why are you coming to Fire & Ink?

Fire & Ink III: Cotillion is on the way! Hundreds of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer writers of African descent will be descending down to Austin, Texas, one year from tonight.

We thought it was about time we asked them why they aren’t going to miss it. We know why we aren’t. Calvin Glenn of Black Gay USA was among the first to respond.

How about you? Send us your videos at fireandink2009@gmail.com and tell us why you’re coming!

SAVE THE DATE!
Fire & Ink III: Cotillion
October 8-11, 2009
Austin, Texas