Arts & Entertainment

Writing and ruminating

Center gives queer authors forum with Outwrite Book Fair

Published

14 years ago

August 2, 2012

Outwrite LGBT Book Fair
Friday and Saturday
Various times
D.C. Center
1318 U St., N.W.
Readings and discussions are scheduled throughout the event
Visit thedccenter.org/outwritedc for times

Lesbian writer and performance artist Kimberly Dark is one of the performers at this weekend’s OutWrite LGBT Book Fair. (Photo by Roni Galgano; courtesy Dark)

Even in a culture-rich town like Washington, there are always a few pockets of time — usually in the dead of winter after the holidays or right about now when the novelty of summer has worn off but nobody’s ready for fall yet either — when there’s almost nothing going on.

Organizers at the D.C. Center think the “dog days” are a perfect time for the OutWrite Book Fair, which is back this weekend for a second installment. Organizers guess between 200-300 attended last year’s maiden event and say it’s important, even with book sales having migrated mostly online, for queer authors and readers to have a place to gather.

“Literature is one of the many ways in which we express ourselves and find echoes of our own lives,” says Lin Wang, a Center intern who helped organize the event. “Hosting an LGBT book fair is one way to affirm queer identities and give them an empowering environment where they can keep creating and celebrating their art.”

Several readings, performances, discussions and spoken word events are planned throughout today and Saturday. Many new and used LGBT-themed books will be available.

Among the highlights:

• Gay author and former stripper Rick McGranahan will read from his memoir “The Ghost of Puppyboy,” which tells of his years in the ‘90s working at the former D.C. gay strip club WET, where he found what he calls “microcelebrity” status, good money but also drugs and alcohol. His reading will be Saturday at 11 a.m.

“I kept journals during all of my dancing years,” he says. “The relationships, people, places and endless nights. I would revisit the journals and read them over and over and end up with insomniac attacks from the memories.”

• Lesbian poet and mother Brittany Fonte of Annapolis, Md., will read from her book “Buddha in My Belly,” a prose poetry collection, Saturday at 5 p.m. She says having two kids, now 2 and 6, made novel writing too time consuming. She found the shorter windows of time she had available more conducive to writing poetry. Her book just came out two weeks ago.

“I think when I was a kid, I didn’t see any gay or lesbian authors,” she says. “We heard about Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes in school but we didn’t know anything about them being gay. … Teens coming out now have so much more experience with being able to find role models and people to talk to … there’s less suppression and bullying.”

• Gay poet and novelist Rashid Darden, a life-long Washingtonian, will be part of a poetry reading with several other poets dubbed “head/heart/soul” Saturday at 6:30 p.m.

He says with Lambda Rising no longer in business in D.C. and precious few mainstream bookstores remaining anywhere, it’s important for writers to have a place to gather.

“There’s a chance to do some of that at Pride events, but that’s not the kind of thing where you can have much of a niche market either,” he says. “I think it’s really important for the Center to provide an alternative to the existing constructs, as a sort of replacement for the bookstores that no longer exist.”

• Saturday night at 8:15, performance artist Kimberly Dark will close the festival. The San Diego-and-Hawaii-based lesbian has been performing for LGBT audiences in arenas of all sorts since the mid-‘90s. She says issues of sexual orientation and gender, which largely inform her work, provide almost endless fodder for observation and discussion.

“Everyone’s lives matter and even today, we still have a really narrow image of who’s who in the world,” she says. “It’s very hard for many people to see their own lives reflected on stage or TV.”

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Celebrity News

Madonna headlines World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam

Kylie Minogue made surprise appearance alongside gay icon

Published

2 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Michael K. Lavers

Kylie Minogue with Madonna at the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam on Aug. 2, 2026. (Photo courtesy of Cejlon Studio)

AMSTERDAM — Madonna on Sunday headlined the final night of the World Pride Music Festival in Amsterdam.

The gay icon took the stage shortly before 2:30 a.m. local time (8:30 p.m. ET on Saturday) during Club Confessions, a set that MISTR, a telehealth platform that offers free access to PrEP, Doxy PEP, STI testing, and long-term HIV care, organized.

“Mother is here and this is gay heaven,” said Madonna when she took the stage inside Amsterdam’s AFAS Live concert hall that can hold up to 6,000 people.

Stuart Price, who produced Madonna’s 2005 “Confessions on a Dance Floor” album and “Confessions II,” which debuted on July 2, DJed the set.

Kylie Minogue made a surprise appearance. She and Madonna performed a new remix of “Love Sensation” from “Confessions II.”

(Washington Blade video by Michael K. Lavers)

“Throughout my career, I’ve always supported efforts to fight HIV and AIDS, and that fight begins with education and access,” said Madonna in a MISTR press release. “With MISTR, (CEO) Tristan (Schukraft) is expanding access to HIV prevention and sexual healthcare for everyone. Through this work, he’s helping preserve and strengthen LGBTQ+ spaces while investing in the communities and culture that have long sustained us.”

Minogue in an Instagram post thanked Madonna, Price, Schukraft, and MISTR.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kylie Minogue (@kylieminogue)

Madonna appeared at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., in April. Madonna in June celebrated Pride month with a pop-up performance in New York’s Times Square.

Jake Resnicow and Insomniac produced the World Pride Music Festival that also featured Bebe Rexha and Paris Hilton, among others.

“Pride has always been about bringing our community together,” said Resnicow. “At a moment when too many people are being told to hide or make themselves smaller, gathering openly, joyfully, and without apology matters more than ever. I couldn’t be prouder of what this festival brought to life in Amsterdam — one dance floor, completely free.”

Theater

Reggie White relishing first season as artistic director of Woolly Mammoth

First five shows a reminder that ‘pressure is a privilege’

Published

11 hours ago

August 2, 2026

Patrick Folliard

Reggie D. White (Photo by Ambe J. Williams)

Madly talented and preternaturally energetic, Reggie D. White, 38, is about to launch his first season as artistic director of D.C.’s boundary-pushing Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company.

White brings a lot to the job. As actor, playwright, and director, his varied resume includes a 2019 Broadway acting debut in Matthew López’s Tony Award–winning play “The Inheritance,” his semi-autobiographic play “Fremont Ave.” that opened to acclaim last season at Arena Stage, and a number of exciting regional directing credits.

A longtime admirer of Woolly, the out theater-maker was selected from a pool of candidates before receiving the offer last November and starting work in January. His season of five world premieres kicks off with gay playwright Steve Yockey’s “Venus” (Sept. 9-Oct. 4), a darkly funny study of modern relationships told through two lesbians looking back on their first encounter.

White was introduced to Woolly Mammoth as a pre-law student at Cal State Hayward in the San Francisco Bay Area, long before he foresaw a life in the arts. “As part of a random theater history course, I was assigned to write a paper on a counterculture company called Woolly Mammoth,” he recalls “Strange name. I was like what the hell is that?”

Nineteen-year-old White was intrigued. Research acquainted him with Howard Shalwitz who co-founded Woolly in 1980, and the company’s commitment to living playwrights and new work. He also learned how theater could be used as a tool for difficult conversations and shape the way people thought about social issues by employing imagination and rigor.

“Never in a million years did young me envision that one day I’d be Woolly’s third artistic director in its 46-year history,” says White. “It’s kind of serendipitously insane.”

WASHINGTON BLADE: Was there a moment when the enormity of the job hit you?

REGGIE D. WHITE: After I’d signed my contract and finished all the paperwork, I got my keys and sat in the theater by myself in the dark and thought about what an incredible honor it is to be trusted with what happens in this beautiful space [in D.C.’s Penn Quarter]. I might have cried. Sometimes I have to pinch myself to remember it’s real.

BLADE: Are you curating the upcoming 2026–2027 season?

WHITE: Yes, I am. It’s very rare that an incoming artistic director gets to program their first season, but I was lucky in terms of time. After being hired late last year, I asked Woolly’s managing director Kimberly E. Douglas, if she thought it would be crazy if I programmed the season. She warned me it would be hard.

I invoked tennis legend Billie Jean King’s maxim “pressure is a privilege” and got to work.

These plays [dubbed White’s “first five”] represent both the kind of theater that Woolly can do really well and speak directly to my voice as curator and how I want to contribute to the larger theatrical conversation in the DMV.

Getting here has meant a lot of late nights. But I knew the juice would be worth the squeeze.

BLADE: As a queer artistic director, what makes you unique?

WHITE: When I was playing in “Inheritance” on Broadway, after a performance, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sotomayer came backstage to meet the cast. She spoke about how her lens on the world as a Puerto Rican woman shapes her decisions. Similarly, because I’m a queer Black man I see through a lens that shapes my work.

I know I’m not the only queer artistic director in town. For me, it influences how I make editorial decisions. Out of this season’s five plays there are explicitly queer characters in four [“Venus,” “Chanukkah Spectacular,” “Ten Grand,” and “Love I Awethu Further”] and I’m directing two [“Venus,” “Ten Grand”].

BLADE: Will we see familiar faces?

WHITE: Every show this season will feature a Woolly Mammoth company member in its cast. Our company also includes designers and directors who we’ll include. I’m invested in continuing to provide a showcase for their work.

BLADE: How do you think queer audiences will receive the season?

WHITE: Very well, I think. For queer people who’ve had to navigate the world subversively and solve problems in unique ways, I think it will be especially interesting. I find theater a potent place for questions.

Like all artistic directors. I’ll show up for the job in my own way. I’m just excited that I’ve been invited to bring the fullness of myself to the role.