Upcoming and past live shows
“Words can wound but they also have the capacity to heal.” – Kent D. Wolf, NYTI Snapped!
As Pride month comes to a close, we are thrilled to announce that for our next show, we are once again teaming up with Lambda Literary for an evening of queer storytelling with a twist!!
More information soon about No, YOU Tell It! “Defiant” coming in September as part of the 2021 Brooklyn Book Festival and produced in partnership with Lambda Literary and The Astoria Bookshop.
Tonight! Our storytellers first met in person back in March to turn out true tales inspired by the theme “Precious” on the page. Join us these many months later as they swap stories on the virtual stage.
Click here at 7 pm to join directly or “Join a Meeting” on Zoom with the Meeting ID: 973 9881 8640
Passcode: storyswap
Take a look at our “Precious” storytellers who will be trading their true-life tales.
For optimal viewing and listening experience, be sure to keep your video off, your mic muted and your non-video participants hidden. See instructions below for how to do this. When ready, verify you are in ‘Speaker View’ and enjoy the readings.
Survey Says written by Heather Quinlan and read by Sokunthary Svay
I Heard Some Chords written by Sokunthary Svay, read by Heather Quinlan
Home written by Gail Thomas, read by Nita Noveno
Gathering (1973) written by Nita Noveno, read by Gail Thomas
Listen carefully because we’ll be doing story trivia for a chance to win storyteller Heather Quinlan’s new book, Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses: From the Plague of Athens to Covid-19. Click here to order the book now from our friends at The Astoria Bookshop!
At the end of the evening, everyone is invited to unmute and turn on their cameras to congratulate our storytellers and ask questions.
$10 suggested donation for tonight’s show to the Woodside/Sunnyside Community Covid-19 Food Relief Group.
Click here to donate directly. When donating use the dropdown to indicate Covid 19 Sunnyside/Woodside Food Distribution (or Venmo @KellyJean-Fitzsimmons who will collect and donate)
Huge thanks to our friends at The Astoria Bookshop and Queens Council on the Arts!
No, YOU Tell It! “Precious” is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Brush up rehearsals begin tonight for No, YOU Tell It! “Precious” on Thursday. Albiet virtual this will be the first time we’ve all met since March. Hope to see you in the Zoom room.
But first, meet our final storyteller Gail Thomas!
GAIL THOMAS is a writer, actor, lawyer, and storytelling instructor. She has over 30 years of performance experience on stage and screen, with credits including national commercials, Law & Order SVU, and voiceovers on Angelo Rules, Beavis and Butthead, and David Letterman. She is the voice of the parrot on John Cameron Mitchell’s Anthem: Homunculus. Gail has been a speechwriter for over 30 live world-class events such as the Tribeca Film Festival and Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Los Angeles. She is a Moth StorySLAM winner and has told stories with RISK!, The Liar Show and the Story Collider. She also teaches storytelling privately and for the Story Studio NYC. More info at 
https://gail-thomas.com
In March, we postponed our No, YOU Tell It! “Precious” show as COVID-19 cases surged in NYC. It’s been a long nine months for all of us, and we’re grateful the four storytellers are ready to swap tales virtually on December 10th.
Inspired by the theme, “Precious,” the storytellers wrote, workshopped, and rehearsed their story swaps back in March. Now they are brushing up and readying to trade true tales on the Zoom stage. Click here to RSVP via Facebook.
Top left: Sokunthary Svay; Top right: Gail Thomas; Bottom left: Heather Quinlan; Bottom right: Nita Noveno
Join us for this special Queens edition of No, YOU Tell It! Bonus: Audience members will have a chance to win storyteller Heather Quinlan’s new book, Plagues, Pandemics and Viruses: From the Plague of Athens to Covid-19. Can’t wait? Click here to order the book now from our friends at The Astoria Bookshop!
Storytellers include:
$10 suggested donation to benefit the Woodside/Sunnyside Community COVID-19 Food Relief Group
Click here to donate directly. When donating use the dropdown to indicate Covid 19 Sunnyside/Woodside Food Distribution (or Venmo @KellyJean-Fitzsimmons who will collect and donate).
No, YOU Tell It! “Precious” is made possible (in part) by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
TONIGHT! Join us for our team-up show with Lambda Literary an official Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event!
Click here at 7:30 to join directly or “Join a Meeting” on Zoom with the Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439
Take a look at our stellar set of storytellers who will be trading tales on the virtual stage inspired by the theme “Coming & Going.”
For optimal viewing and listening experience, be sure to keep your video off, your mic muted and your non-video participants hidden. See instructions below for how to do this. When ready, verify you are in ‘Speaker View’ and enjoy the readings.
Becoming Someone Else in Florida – written by, Calvin S. Cato, read by Nicole Shawan Junior, and directed by Amanda Sisk
Finding Our Way Back Home – written by Nicole Shawan Junior, read by Calvin S. Cato, and directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons
The Faith of Candy – written by Nancy Agabian, read by Charlotte Marchant, and directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons
Cookie – written by Charlotte Marchant, read by Nancy Agabian, and directed by Amanda Sisk
Put your listening hats on because co-producer Tim Linder of Revisionary Writing and Editing LLC has whipped up some fun story trivia for us. The first ones to put the right answer into the chat will win a $25 gift certificate to The Astoria Bookshop!
$10 suggested donation for tonight’s show to the Woodside/Sunnyside Community Covid-19 Food Relief Group.
Click here to donate directly. When donating use the dropdown to indicate Covid 19 Sunnyside/Woodside Food Distribution (or Venmo @KellyJean-Fitzsimmons who will collect and donate)
Huge thanks to our friends at Lambda Literary, Brooklyn Book Festival, and Queens Council on the Arts!
Brooklyn Book Festival Bookends kick off today and continue all week with events taking place from dawn, lunchtime and into the night. Full schedule here.
See you on Wednesday for our “Coming & Going” show at 7:30! RSVP via Facebook.
TL: Nancy Agabian; TR: Charlotte Marchant; BL: Nicole Shawan Junior; BR: Calvin S. Cato
One week until our upcoming Lambda Literary team-up show that we are proud to say is also an official Brooklyn Book Festival Event!
First, meet our fourth and final storyteller Charlotte Marchant.
Charlotte Marchant started writing, 
100lettersfrommyfather.
Click here to RSVP via Facebook!
Lambda Literary introduced us to our next storyteller.
We are excited to share the love and have you meet Nicole Shawan Junior! Click here to RSVP to our upcoming “Coming & Going” show.
Nicole Shawan Junior (Smith College BA | Pace University MST | Temple University JD) was bred in the bass-heavy beat and scratch of Brooklyn, where the cool of inner-city life barely survived crack cocaine’s burn. She is a black, queer and poverty-born counter-storyteller. Her writing appears or is forthcoming in Lambda Literary’s anthology Emerge, Roxane Gay’s Medium platform Gay Mag, ZORA, The Feminist Wire, SLICE, Color Bloq, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and Action, Inkwell Black, Sinister Wisdom, and more. A 2021 Hedgebrook Writer in Residence, Nicole has received fellowships from New York Foundation of the Arts, Esalen, Show Us Your Spines RADAR Productions, and more. She’s an alumna of the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Tin House Summer Workshop, the Hurston/Wright Foundation’s Writers Week, the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat for Emerging LGBTQ Voices, and VONA. Nicole is also the founder of Roots. Wounds. Words. Inc.: A Literary Arts Revolution and the Senior Nonfiction Editor at Raising Mothers: A Literary Magazine. Learn more about Nicole at www.NicoleShawanJunior.com. Follow her on Instagram @NicoleShawanJunior and on Twitter @NicoleShawan
How excited are we for our first story meeting tomorrow night! The storytellers are going to virtual meet each other for the first time and work together to develop their true-life tales on the page.
But, FIRST, meet our next storyteller Calvin S. Cato.
Calvin S. Cato has performed all across the United States and has even crossed the border into Canada. His television appearances include the Game Show Network, Oxygen’s My Crazy Love, National Geographic’s Brain Games, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. His comedy has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Austin’s Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, Brooklyn Pride, and the Women in Comedy Festival. In addition, you may have heard him overshare on many podcasts including Keith and The Girl, Guys We F*cked, RISK!, and Tinder Tales. In 2017, Calvin was named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For.
Our first story meeting for “Coming & Going” is this week! Excited for these four dynamic storytellers to meet each other and workshop their true-life tales. Meet our first storyteller, Nancy Agabian!
Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher, and literary organizer, working in the spaces between race, ethnicity, cultural identity, feminism and queer identity. Her recent novel “The Fear of Large and Small Nations” was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially-Engaged Fiction. She is the author of Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (Aunt Lute Books, 2008), a memoir that was honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Writing Prize, and Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books, 2000), a collection of poetry and performance texts. Her personal essays that explore liminal spaces of identity have been published in The Margins, The Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, Kweli Journal and the award-winning anthology, Fierce: Essays by and about Dauntless Women (Nauset Press, 2018). She teaches creative writing at universities and art centers, most recently at NYU, The New School, and The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art in SoHo. With writers Meera Nair and Amy Paul she has connected neighbors, writers, and activists in Queens, NY, with the reading series Queens Writers Resist. She is currently a caregiver to her elderly parents in East Walpole, Massachusetts, in the house where she grew up.
