Writer to Writer Queer Voices: Curators, Past and Present

Writer to Writer is a series featuring conversations between BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color) writers.

Queer Births & Queer Battles: A Panel Discussion with Queer Voices Curators

The four curators of Queer Voices, past and present, have been honored to celebrate the queer literary community of Minnesota and create space for all voices across our big, beautiful, and bold rainbow. This Pride month founding curators, Andrea Jenkins, and John Medeiros, along with present curators, LM Brimmer and Sherrie Fernandez-Williams will share their work and discuss their writing lives, while providing some stories around Queer Voices’ 32-year history.

This program takes place at Quatrefoil Library.

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Panelist Bios:

Andrea Jenkins is a soulful poet, educator, artist, respected historian and  political powerhouse. In 2017 she became the 1st out Black Trans woman elected to public office in the United States. She serves on the Minneapolis City Council. She holds a Masters Degree in Community Economic Development from Southern New Hampshire University, a Masters of Fine Arts from Hamline University, and Bachelors Degree from Metropolitan State University. Additionally she completed the Senior Government and Executive Leadership program at Harvard University. She has been featured in TIME Magazine, Essence, Teen Vogue, The New York Times, The Guardian, Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine. In 2022 she was named on the OUT100 list by OUT Magazine, Twin Cities Business 100 People to Know, and Fast Company Top 50 Queers.

John Medeiros is a poetry, memoirist, and lawyer living in Minneapolis. His is the author of couplets for a shrinking world (North Star Press) and co-editor of Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose, and Pride (Minnesota Historical Society Press). His work has appeared in several anthologies, including Squares and Rebels (Handtype Press), Poetry City, USA, vol. 2 (Lowbrow Press), Collective Brightness (Sibling Rivalry Press), Other Words: A Writer’s Reader (Kendall/Hunt), and Gents, Badboys, and Barbarians: New Gay Male Poetry (Alison Publications). His writing is featured in numerous journals, including qarrtsiluni, Midway Journal, Marco Polo Quarterly, Two Hawks Quarterly, Raging Dove, Second Run, Swell, Sport Literate, Hot Metal Press, Water~Stone Review; Gulf Coast; Willow Springs, The Talking Stick, and Evergreen Chronicles.  He is the recipient of two Minnesota State Arts Board grants; Gulf Coast ‘s Nonfiction Award; and the AWP Intro Journals Award.  He has an MFA from Hamline University (St. Paul), and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays (2006). He co-curated the Queer Voices Reading Series with Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota, from 2005 to 2018. More information about him can be found at his website, www.jmedeiros.net.

LM Brimmer is an interdisciplinary artist living on Dakota land in Minneapolis, MN. Co-editor of the anthology Queer Voices: Poetry, Prose and Pride, their poetry have appeared in Colorado Review, Voicemail Poems, Impossible Archetype, Gasher Journal, The B’K’, Quarterly West and are forthcoming from Sonora Review.  A Randolph College MFA alumni, they are Artistic Director of Queer Voices of Minnesota – a reading series that since 1993 has celebrated and supported queer lives and the writers living them. They teach at Century College and the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities.

Sherrie Fernandez-Williams is a Black, Queer writer who earned her MFA from Hamline University. She is the author of the book of poems, Goddess of the Whole Self, and the memoir Soft. She has published poems and essays in New Limestone Review, Aquifer: The Florida Review, Duke University Press, We are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World, How Dare We Write: A Multicultural Creative Writing Discourse, and The Poverty and Education Reader. Her grants and awards include a Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a Black Voices in Children’s Literature award,  Minnesota State Arts Board, The Loft Literary Center, The Givens Foundation for African American Literature, Intermedia Arts,  SASE: The Write Place, and The Playwrights’ Center. Sherrie is Operation Director of Queer Voices.