For the month of June, LGBTQIA* folks and allies across New England come together in thoughtful reflection and celebration of Pride, which highlights progress since the Stonewall Riots. While much progress has been made, it is also an important time to reflect on what work our LGBTQIA* communities need to do in order to promote inclusivity, safety, and basic civil rights in the face of a hostile political system. We at Take want to acknowledge this important month by highlighting the artists whose work engages with LGBTQIA* themes and issues, as well as the creatives who claim these sexuality, minority, and gender non-conforming identities. All the folks featured on this list enlivened our editorial by challenging normative understandings of gender, sexuality, and identity in general through their unique work.

The following stories are about all kinds artists: previously pregnant butch dykes, rural drag queens of color, cis gay Asian-Americans, trans femmes, lesbian separatists, non-binary babes, and many individuals and groups of people whose identities aren’t as easily summarized. This diversity in our editorial exists because that is the diversity of our region. Though it’s true that we live in a society that constantly works to erase and delegitimize the existence of LGBTQIA* people, we’re still finding artists and cultural leaders who boldly embrace this sometimes fraught, yet always beautiful, spectrum of existence.

While we are proud to present our highlighted list of artists we’ve covered since January 2015, we’re not so naive to think that these are the only LGBTQIA* folks we’ve featured. While some artists openly share their identities with our staff and contributors, other artists have asked us to keep their identities off the record, or choose to never disclose for privacy and safety concerns.

Take is proud to feature these artists and our team will work harder to bring you more creative voices from the LGBTQIA* community as we expand our web edition and return to print this fall.

Massachusetts

Car Wash

Wading In

This Ain’t No Game

Comfort & Discomfort

Catastrophe in Provincetown

The Insider’s Take: Eternal Slumber Party

Come Closer

Tender, Forever

Becoming The Gold Dust Orphans

Facebook-to-Face

The Kids Are Alright

Cave and the Art of Community

Connecticut

Women of Abstraction

Gender Bender

Feminine Mystique

BL&D Interview – Arien Wilkerson

From Clay to Catastasis

Life is Gross

Sacred Stones

Crossing Equators with Arien Wilkerson

Maine

Portland’s Cherry Lemonade

Notes from an Expat: Where Are You From

Not-so-Little Women

Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor

Slow Boat to Iceland

The Simple Power of the Cup

New Hampshire

Manchester’s “Sexy Industrialist”

Hood is Downtown…For Now

Rhode Island

Kitty Eyes & Spandex

Taken: Todd Oldham at RISD

Rachel Blumberg Sees And Hears More Than You

Hustler of Providence

Aurora Catalyzes Variety and Community in Providence

ART/Crush: J.R. Uretsky

Meet Rhode Island’s Newest City Boy

Nine Months in Drag

Vermont

The Rainbow Cattle Co.

Make Some Time for Angus McCullough

What Happened Before Homosexuals?

New England

Artists to Watch 2017

10 New England Tattooers You Need to Follow on Instagram

7 New England Niche Film Festivals You Can’t Miss

The post Take Magazine Pride Month Round-up appeared first on Take Magazine.

Her passion and purpose extend far beyond her poetry, though. Williams is also a Professor of English and the Associate Vice President for Strategic Initiatives at Bates College.

You’ve made quite an impact at Bates College in the 3 years you’ve been on staff. Can you tell us more about the programs you’ve implemented?

Programmatically, we have created a series of distinctive interventions that seek to support, inform, and energize the community. Some of them include:

The Dinner Table program, which focuses on prompt-based storytelling as a means by which students increase measures of empathy, broaden their perspectives on what constitutes diversity and why diversity is a mutually held source of power and effectiveness, among other outcomes. Just two weeks ago, this year’s final storytelling event featured ten Dinner Table storytellers, nominated by their peers, on the main stage at our Olin Arts Center. Listening to stories that reflected an enormous range of experience – a Black woman’s move to wearing natural hair, a student’s struggle with suicide ideation, a Black man’s journey to shrugging off the stereotypes that once bound him, and a young man who nearly burnt his house down making nachos – reminds us all of our commonalities and distinctions, and how much we learn from and rely on each other.

Bobcat First!, a First Year, cohort-based program focused on supporting students who are first in their families to attend a four-year college, which actively involves first generation to college alumni and faculty and staff.

Lingua Franca, a student-driven, college-wide open forum meant to spark conversations across differences. Bates community members identify topics for discussion, and call on faculty and staff experts as well as a unique community circle model of small group discussion.

SPARQ!, our new multi-platform program supporting LGBTQIA+ identified community members and allies.

We are still in the early days. Each of these programs is new to the College, but to-date, the data we’ve collected suggests that they are helping us accomplish some of our primary goals, which include providing students, staff, and faculty with opportunities to build stronger, more inclusive communities, networks, feel more empowered, and more successfully engage a fundamental part of our mission statement, to engage, “the transformative power of our differences.”

You were recently commissioned by MoMA to write poems as part of the Jacob Lawrence Migration Series exhibit. What was that like?

Well, certainly, being involved in anything related to MoMA is a great honor. And I was particularly honored that Elizabeth Alexander, who I so admire, invited me into the project. But I was also thrilled to have been able to substantively engage with Leah Dickerman, who catalyzed this multi-disciplinary project. To be surrounded by so much brilliance and excellence is always a privilege. In this way, my inclusion in this project has seeded so much new thinking—oh, about poems, new forms, partnerships and potential projects. From one endeavor, I hope, will emerge many! So it has meant a reinvigoration of sorts, for which I am profoundly grateful.

You have published four collections of poems, that’s impressive. Out of these collections, a line that intrigued me was “The heart is a beautiful monster, it nearly always survives its fate.” Break this down for us…

I love that this line struck you as being of interest. That is, I think, the beauty of poetry—it asks us to slow down, ponder, turn language and meaning over in our heads and hearts. For this reason, I’m loath to answer the question because, ultimately, the line must mean something to the reader and that meaning may be quite different from my own.

That said, I think our “hearts” or spirits are our most robust qualities. They are from whence emerge our kindnesses and our travesties. So they can be both monstrous and beautiful and are often both—at once. This duality is what makes human beings, at least to me, so very interesting and compelling. And, in the context of the poem, the heart/spirit in this regard, can and will survive its fate, which was deep sorrow.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

Do you have anything new in the works right now?

In relation to my own writing, I have grown especially interested in work that employs multiple voices and multiple angles of vision that address the same topic and/or event. I am currently working on a book meant to be read as a memoir comprised of monologues interconnected by voice and topic and also performed as a play.

Having lived in Detroit, Madrid, Portland, and New York City—what’s most appealing to you about Lewiston?

What I most appreciate about Lewiston, and what reminds me most of my hometown, Detroit, is its working class nature, the people who live here who are making their way, their strong communities and traditions. These feel very familiar to me, even though I am not part of those communities and traditions. I appreciate its very “real” feeling, especially having lived for so long in Portland, Oregon, which could easily be characterized as a life-style city, resplendent with so many trappings of a world too few Americans experience and/or can afford. I like that Lewiston reflects and therefore reminds me of the millions of Americans living in cities and towns just like it—good people, hard-working people, people who want something more for their family and friends.

Image courtesy of Crystal Williams

The post Take Q&A: Crystal Williams—Writer, Advocate, Advisor appeared first on Take Magazine.