Samiya Bashir News Today

The 35-year-old organization is amping up its advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ writers.

Author Chuck Forester Gives $250K to Lambda Literary.

Opera Theatre of St. Louis will present three short operas, all by artists of color who’ve worked largely outside the opera world. The works address the roots of Black, queer ballroom culture; three important inventors who were Black women, and the Supreme Court battle over a rock band’s attempt to reappropriate a racial slur.

“They kept asking us, ‘Why do you get to decide what the operas are? How come we never get to decide?’” recalls an Opera Theatre St. Louis director. Now, they do.

Opera Theatre of St. Louis will produce three short operas by artists of color who seek to expand the boundaries of American opera by incorporating new sounds and stories. A community panel of artists, most of whom work outside the opera field, selected the pieces.

Poet, associate professor at Reed College, and two-time Lambda Literary Award honoree Samiya Bashir has been selected as Lambda Literarys next leader. She spoke with PW about her hopes for the organization.

The chorus’s first Black conductor is getting to know the city.

It’s never a bad time to refresh your reading list, and it’s always a good idea to sprinkle in some homegrown favorites. Here are some of the best recent books by Oregon authors (we used five years as our cut off) to decorate your bookshelves and blow your minds. From dark dystopias to autobiographical essays to Parisian comedies to woolly mammoths, these local authors have taken on disparate themes and raised their individual, original voices to tell urgent, entertaining ...

Books About Race & Being Black in America February 7, 2021 The publishing industry has been on a roll lately. The number of great books by Black writers or about Black issues have been at an all-time high. Let’s keep that going by reading some of the gems we’ve listed here.  Some are new voices, some old, and there are a few you may never have heard of before. We encourage everyone – readers and nonreaders alike – to give these a chance.  Black Pacific Northwest Authors:  Ijeoma Oluo...