Pride on the Page

Words. Carefully. Chosen.
From The Voices of Queer Poets

Moderator: Brian Sonia-Wallace

Panelists: Susan Abbott, Nate Lovell and Victor Yates

West Hollywood City Poet Laureate Brian Sonia-Wallace has spent the last decade writing poems for over 10,000 strangers based on their stories in a string of unlikely residencies, ranging from Amtrak to the Mall of America. In 2021 he was named an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow for LGBTQ+ poetry activism, and he is the author of The Poetry of Strangers: What I Learned Traveling America with a Typewriter (Harper Collins, 2020). Brian also teaches at UCLA Extension Writers' Program and co-hosts a weekly open mic at Micky's WeHo. Learn more at Brian Sonia-Wallace's website and @rentpoet

Susan Abbott is a writer, poet, painter and activist. Her poetry/art chapbook The Everyday Holy of We was published by Cholla Needles earlier this year. She collaborated as illustrator with the poet Cynthia Anderson in the making of Now Voyager (Cholla Needles, 2019). She is also the author/illustrator of Nasty Women Rise—The Dream and the Curse (Cholla Needles, 2017). Her writings have appeared in many anthologies and collections including in Cholla Needles, Sojouner, So's Your Old Lady and Perspective.

Originally from Rumford, Maine, Susan currently resides in Joshua Tree, having spent significant time also living in Boston and Amherst, MA and numerous locations in California. Her poetry influences include Muriel Rukeyser, Audre Lorde, Judy Grahn, Emily Dickinson and Pat Parker. She joined the ranks of lesbian widowhood in 2018 when her partner of 43 years passed away. She occupies the office of lesbian poet with an emphasis on integrity, humor, liberation and kindness.

Nate Lovell grew up in Norfolk, VA where he attended the Governor’s School for the Arts magnet school during high school. He studied at The Theater School at DePaul University in Chicago and AMDA College and Conservatory for Performing Arts in Los Angeles where he received a BFA. He is a former coach for the Hampton Roads Youth Poetry Team for the international poetry competition Brave New Voices. He is also the co-founder/creator of an open mic based in Micky’s West Hollywood called The Mic.  He’s worked on various productions that can be streamed on Amazon Prime and Netflix. He has also worked with the historic Robey Theater Company. LA and the arts have his heart!

Victor Yates is a content creator, writer, storyteller, and performance artist. His digital Black Lives Matter spoken word performance, Death Sentence, received grants from the city of West Hollywood (2020) and Glendale (2021). He was also awarded a grant from West Hollywood to shoot a documentary recording narratives of older gay men. He was selected for the Fire Island Artist Residency and is the winner of the 2020 George Floyd Honorarium for Poetry from the Los Angeles Press. He won the 2017 Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers and the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction for his book, A Love Like Blood.