LGBTQ+ Community Care
Take our community needs survey
Across the country, LGBTQ+ rights are under attack. From censorship of our history and identities, to mean-spirited bans to keep trans kids from playing sports, to bans on gender-affirming care that threaten to separate families and tear communities apart. In Arizona, we’re dealing with our own versions of all of these provocations. We’ve already won some victories, and we’ll win more. At Equality Arizona, we’re dedicated to the well-being of Arizona’s LGBTQ+ communities, and from fighting anti-LGBTQ+ bills to championing statewide non-discrimination protections, we’re hard at work to build a better future for all of us. That effort needs you. Visit our website today to take our LGBTQ+ community needs survey.
Telling Your Story
6:00 pm March 15, 2022 | register
Equality Arizona is developing an LGBTQ+ Story Bank to celebrate the stories of Arizona’s LGBTQ+ communities and communicate the realities of our lives to Arizona’s leaders and decision-makers. We believe that your story has power, and we want to hear it! Share your story online today, or join us for an evening of storytelling on Tuesday, March 15 at 6:00 PM to build your storytelling skills and to share your story with the LGBTQ+ Story Bank.
Queer Poetry Salon
1:00 pm - 7:30 pm March 19, 2022 | register
The Equality Arizona Foundation and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University are partnering for quarterly readings with a diverse, world-class cast of queer poets. Over the past three years, the Queer Poetry Salon has been dedicated to strengthening and growing queer culture in Arizona by bringing the world's great LGBTQIA2s+ poets to our communities.
This year the Queer Poetry Salon will offer free creative writing workshops presented by our featured poets! While this event is free and open to the public, you must register through Eventbrite to receive the Zoom link and to RSVP for the community building workshops. Following both workshops, you’ll have a chance to read your own work as part of an open mic activity!
Schedule of activities:
1:00 - 2:30 PM online writing workshop led by the Queer Poetry Salon's featured poet, Vidhu Aggarwal
3:00 - 4:30 PM online writing workshop led by the Queer Poetry Salon's featured poet, Julián Delacruz
6:00 - 6:30 PM online open mic featuring 4 workshop participants
6:30 - 7:30 PM featured readings from Vidhu Aggarwal and Julián Delacruz
About our featured poets:
Born in Ranchi, India, Vidhu Aggarwal grew up in the Southern U.S., primarily in Louisiana and Texas. Her multi-media works in video, poetry, and scholarship are oriented around Bollywood spectacle, carnival, and science fiction. Her poems appeared in the top 25 of 2016 in Boston Review. Her collection of poems The Trouble with Humpdori (2016) received the Editor's Choice Prize from The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, was a handpicked selection with Small Press Distribution, and was selected by Sundress Publications as one of the best books of 2016. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, Poetry, Leonardo, Entropy, Chicago Quarterly Review, Juked, [PANK], Pedestal, Sugar House Review, INK BRICK, Arc, Counter-Desecration, among others. A Kundiman fellow, she has worked with John Sims Projects on “The 13 Flag Funerals” in Florida, and with artist Bishakh Som on “Lady Humpadori,” a poetry/comic book collaboration. Her chapbook, Avatara, is out with Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs. Her latest book Daughter Isotope is available for pre-order at Operating System. She teaches poetry and postcolonial/transnational studies at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.
Julián Delacruz is a third year M.F.A Candidate at Arizona State University. He is a June Jordan Teaching Fellow under ASU’s new poetry program, Poetry for the People, a workshop focused on poetry as a medium for telling the truth and building beloved community. He is also the co-host of Equality Arizona’s Queer Poetry Salon, the largest queer reading series in the southwest. He has had the pleasure to feature such esteemed poets as CA Conrad, Ariana Reines, Richard Siken, Eduardo Corral, and Tommy Pico, alongside queer indie poets across many identities. Delacruz was awarded the 2020 Mabelle A. Lyon award in poetry, and a Glendon & Kathryn Swarthout Award in writing at Arizona State. He lives and writes in Tempe, AZ.
Yoga for Organizers
7:30 am every Wednesday | register
Equality Arizona is committed to the well-being and long-term resilience of Arizona’s community organizers. Every Wednesday morning, we start the day with a yoga class led by our organizing manager (and certified yoga instructor) tanner menard. We know that you’re a passionate advocate who wants to make a difference for your community – we can see just how deeply you care. So join us each week to practice self care and to network with other organizers from across the state.
For our full calendar of events, visit equalityarizona.org/events.
