BIPOC Reading Series April

Geeta Lewis is a Writer, a Performance Storyteller, and a Visual Artist. As a Queer, Black, Trans Woman, she brings an intersectional lens to her prose, and her visual art. Geeta’s prose unearths an intimate vulnerability, informed by the intersectionalities of her lived experiences. Somewhere between the light, the darkness, and the laughter, she's found her weapons of choice, in response to inequities of being othered under an American apartheid. In her own words, “I try to find ways to repurpose the crux my personal narratives into my fiction. It is my hope that the stories I tell speak to a broader understanding of what it means to love, and be loved”.

Regardless of the medium, Geeta endeavors to bring light to the dark places that divide us from our humanity. Her goal is to ignite our collective compassion for one another. She measures her progress through those she’s inspired to acknowledge the bitter truths of our shared American experience, and by their commitment to help build a more equitable world in spite of those truths.

Geeta Lewis’ readings have been heard locally at the Artists Repertory Theater, The Armory Theater, and The Portland Arts & Lectures series. Her visual art has been displayed locally at the Paragon Gallery, The Portland Center for the Arts, and the Q Center Gallery. A series of her paintings are also part of a federal historical archive in Washington, DC.

Lindsey Danae Perez is a two-spirit multimedia Tongva artist who encourages self-decolonization through visual storytelling, giving voice to gender-nonconforming experiences, cultural reclamation, and spiritual awakening in their collection of handmade, self published comic zines. Lindsey is currently enrolled in the Comics Portfolio program at the I.P.R.C. and frequently participates in pop up markets across the west coast, selling handmade art prints, zines, buttons, stickers, sketch portraits and more. You can follow their artistic adventures on social media @LindzenatorDraws.

Kyle Yoshioka thinks and writes a lot about belonging. He is the founder and editorial director of Provecho, a publication about the intersection of food and identity, and co-hosts the BIPOC Reading Series at Literary Arts. His writing projects have been supported by the Independent Publishing Resource Center, the McCormack Writing Center Workshop (formerly the Tin House Workshop), and the Andy Warhol Foundation's Precipice Fund. Kyle is working on his debut novel about a multigenerational Japanese American family that explores whether inheritance is destiny.