Wicked Queer Authors

It’s a fact: dead writers can’t read their work at Dixon Place’s HOT! Festival. So, Wicked Queer Authors presents the Afterlife Edition! Join us for a fabulous evening where friends and fans bring the words of dead queer authors back to life. Plus, some of our favorite living writers will debut tribute poems to queer voices. Expect tributes, influences, and maybe even some fresh, fab work from our readers! It’s a lively, literary séance you won’t want to miss!

THE LIVING

Steven Cordova’s full-length collection of poetry, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010. His poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Journal, New Orleans Review, Notre Dame Review, Los Angeles Review and Pleaides. From San Antonio, TX, he lives in Brooklyn, New York. Steven will read the work of David Craig Austin.

Jonathan Ned Katz, an independent scholar and history activist, has published several books on the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and heterosexual U.S. past. He is the founder of OutHistory.org, the major website on the U.S. LGBT past. Two of his other books focus on African American history, and another is a memoir. Katz is also a visual artist. His long career as a painter began in his childhood. In 2004, at age 66, Katz returned to visual art. His lifetime of visual art-making can be seen at jnkArt.com. Jonathan will read the work of his friend Allan Bérubé.

Jerome Ellison Murphy is a poet and critic based in New York City. He earned his MFA from the Creative Writing Program at New York University, where he currently serves as Undergraduate Programs Manager. His poetry appears or is forthcoming in LitHub, Poets.org Poem-a-Day, Narrative Magazine, Bellevue Literary Quarterly, The Cortlandt Review and elsewhere, and was recorded for NPR as part of the Poetry Well performance series. His critical writing has appeared in The Yale Review, LA Review of Books, Publishers Weekly, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere. Jerome will read the work of his friend David Eye.

THE DEAD

David Craig Austin (1961–1991) published poems in The Yale Review and Poetry East, among other journals. His work also appeared in Poets for Life: Seventy-Six Poets Respond to AIDS (Persea, 1989), edited by Michael Klein. A segment of his poetry library was donated to Poets House in New York City at the time of his death, and in his honor Columbia University bestows the annual David Craig Austin Prize for “the most distinguished thesis in poetry.” He completed one manuscript, The Merciful Country, which remains unpublished.

Allan Bérubé (1946-2007) was a gay American historian, activist, independent scholar, self-described “community-based” researcher and college drop-out, and award-winning author, best known for his research and writing about homosexual members of the American Armed Forces during World War II. He also wrote essays about the intersection of class and race in gay culture, and about growing up in a poor, working-class family, his French-Canadian roots, and about his experience of anti-AIDS activism. Bérubé received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996, and received a Rockefeller grant from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in 1994. 

David Eye (1960-2023) was the author of Seed (The Word Works, 2017), chosen by award-winning poet Eduardo C. Corral. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing in 2008 from Syracuse University, where he also began teaching. This came after seventeen years as a performer in New York City, national tours, regional theaters, and some television. Before moving to New York, he spent four years in Texas in the military. This placed him in an elite group of poet/professors who have served in both the United States Army—and the Broadway tour of Cats. David taught writing and literature at New York University, Manhattan College, Syracuse University, St. John’s University, and Cazenovia College. He was conducting research and writing the book and libretto for a stage musical set in the early 20th century in the Catskill Mountains.

Curator, Marty Correia writes fiction, memoir, and poetry in NYC’s East Village. A graduate of NYU’s creative writing MFA program, she is currently writing the genderqueer memoir, Dear Dead Dad, about finding her biological father through a DNA website after a decades-long search. Marty’s short stories and poetry have appeared in The Mailer Review, Omnibus! Anthology, Sinister Wisdom, Punk Soul Poet, Lady Business Poetry Anthology, Flock, POST, and Cagibi. She has hosted the Dixon Place literary series A Tribe Called Butch and Wicked Queer Authors. Artists who have most influenced Marty are James Baldwin, Agnes Martin, Grace Jones, Patti Smith, Carl Hiaasen, Kathy Acker, David Bowie, Kate Conroy, Gitta Sereny, and José Saramago. Marty is also a notary public and a pinball wizard.