Workshop | inQluded presents: You deserve to take up space

This workshop is exclusively for queer-identifying BIPOC folx on writing about your intersecting identities and making a career out of it. Open to all ages anywhere in the world.

InQluded Offers members of the QTIBIPoC youth community a platform and literary community within which to tell stories that are about more than just their identities will help them build a writing practice and audience such that they are themselves empowered to take that practice, and that supportive audience, proudly into mainstream media venues they value and would like to effect change in. The Founder: medina (they/them) – EIC of inQluded / writer /  MFA candidate at The New School -medina (they/them/their) is a queer Honduran nonbinary trans adoptee who lives in NYC. Their writing has appeared in: them, Catapult, Self Magazine, Bustle, The Establishment and more. They are an MFA Creative Writing Candidate (WFCYA) at The New School. medina is currently working on multiple children's novels.  They're represented by Marietta Zacker. When they’re not writing, they enjoy bedroom DJ’ing, music, reading and all things nature.

The Facilitators:

elle mckenzie – Elle (she/they) is a Black queer writer based in Brooklyn. She earned her B.A in Screenwriting & Playwriting from Drexel University. Her writing has appeared in 21Ninety, Milk, Femme, Collectively and more. 

aaron aceves - Aaron H. Aceves is a Mexican-American writer born and raised in East L.A. He graduated from Harvard College in 2015, where he received the Le Baron Russell Briggs Fiction Award after being nominated by Jamaica Kincaid. His fiction has appeared in Germ Magazine, as well as Raspa Magazine, a literary magazine focusing on the queer Latinx experience. He currently lives in New York, where he is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at Columbia University, and is represented by Tina Dubois of ICM Partners.

erika del carmen ruiz- Erika (they/them) is an agender Latinx person from San Bernardino, California. Since early tweenhood, Erika has understood the power of poetry as a tool that aids in healing generational trauma. They received their BA in Creative Writing from the University of Redlands. Their work has been published in: shufPoetry, The Redlands Review, The Body Is Not An Apology, and Chronicles of a Mixed Fat Chick. Currently, Erika works as the LGBTQ Youth Organizer with Inland Congregations united for Change (ICUC) and Inland Empire Prism Collective (IEPC). In this role, they guide QTPOC youth through leadership development and self advocacy. Erika’s overall life goal is to carve out spaces where marginalized people come into their own power and authenticity. In their free time, Erika reads tarot cards, religiously uses the internet, and cuddles with their cats. 

sonora reyes- Born and raised in Arizona, Sonora Reyes (they/them) is the author of the forthcoming contemporary young adult novel The Lesbiana's Guide To Catholic School. They write fiction full of queer and Latinx characters in a variety of genres, with current projects in both kidlit and adult categories. Sonora is also the creator and host of the Twitter chat #QPOCChat, a monthly community-building chat for queer writers of color.