Tag: Brooklyn Book Festival

Episode 54 – Coming & Going (Part 1)

Have you ever wanted to be someone else? The opening story of “Coming & Going”— our second team-up show with Lambda Literary — follows Calvin…or as he’d like to be known, Craig, as he travels to Florida to become someone new. This journey to overcome grief caused by a death, a breakup, and an unforgiving New York City reveals that what we seek might already be inside us, even if we have to imagine our future with a new set of eyes once in a while.

Nicole Shawan Junior reads “Becoming Someone Else in Florida” written by Calvin S. Cato.

Nicole’s reading was directed by Amanda Sisk.

Bonus: For this, our first virtual show, we asked each storyteller that if we, the listeners, wished to summon them directly to our room what three items might we place in a magic circle to do so. As you see and will hear, a wide variety of ingredients are needed to complete the spell.

Top: Calvin S. Cato, Bottom: Nicole Shawan Junior

Switching it up, our next story takes us on a trip to the west coast where two lovers seek comfort in each other’s sanitized arms during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the backdrop of 2020’s chaotic energy, the two women must navigate their coping mechanisms, fears, and ultimately their love for each other in order to confront their futures — together or on their own.

Nicole Shawan Junior’s timely story, “Finding Our Way Back Home,” is read for us here by Calvin S. Cato.

Calvin’s reading was directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons.

No, YOU Tell It! “Coming & Going” was AN OFFICIAL 2020 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT and 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.

Look! “Coming & Going” Show Program!

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

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.
Hiding non-video participants: Click on the ^ symbol near the video icon in the lower-left and navigate to video settings. Verify the box next to Hide non-video participants is checked. 

Tonight’s Stories!

Becoming Someone Else in Floridawritten by, Calvin S. Cato, read by Nicole Shawan Junior, and directed by Amanda Sisk

Finding Our Way Back Homewritten by Nicole Shawan Junior, read by Calvin S. Cato, and directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons

The Faith of Candywritten by Nancy Agabian, read by Charlotte Marchant, and directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons

Cookiewritten 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!

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2020 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT
No, YOU Tell It! “Coming & Going” 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. 

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439

BKBF Bookend Events Begin Today! Ours is Wed!

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

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

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439

Meet “Coming & Going” Storyteller Charlotte Marchant

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.wordpress.com, her blog in 2014. She performed blog excerpts for Queer Organics at Dixon Place in April 2016. Her summer 2018 San Francisco performance reading was aired on the Pacifica radio station KPFA in Berkeley in November 2018. She was a Lambda Emerging Writers Fellow in the summer of 2019. Charlotte performed “Coming Out to My Dead Father” at Queer Memoir in New York City in January 2020. She grew up in housing projects in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. Her parents gave her the gift of seeing life through a leftist lens which she continues to do as a writer and advocate for social justice.

Click here to RSVP via Facebook!

Event Information

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439 Password: storyswap

Meet “Coming & Going” Storyteller Nicole Shawan Junior

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

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 MagZORAThe Feminist WireSLICEColor BloqCURA: A Literary Magazine of Art and ActionInkwell BlackSinister 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

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439 Password: storyswap

Meet “Coming & Going” Storyteller Calvin S. Cato

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

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.

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439 Password: storyswap

Meet “Coming & Going” Storyteller Nancy Agabian

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

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.

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439 Password: storyswap

Coming & Going

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Our “Coming & Going” show is coming up fast! For this special Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event, we’re teaming up once again with Lambda Literary for a special night of virtual queer storytelling with a twist.

Click here to RSVP via Facebook.

Top Left: Calvin S. Cato; Top Right: Nancy Agabian; BL: Charlotte Marchant; BR: Nicole Shawan Junior

We’ll be working with our storytellers over the next couple of weeks to develop their true-life tales inspired by the theme “Coming & Going” on the page. Join us via Zoom where they will trade tales and present each other’s stories on the virtual stage. Plus, a chance to win some literary fun from our friends at The Astoria Bookshop!

Storytellers:

Nancy Agabian (Queens Writers Resist)

Calvin S. Cato (RISK!, Laugh It Up, Astoria!)

Nicole Shawan Junior (Lambda Literary Fellow)

Charlotte Marchant (Lambda Literary Fellow)

$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).

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2020 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT

No, YOU Tell It! “Coming & Going” 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.

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom! Meeting ID: 976 7999 6439 Password: storyswap

2020 Brooklyn Book Festival Event

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Our first VIRTUAL SHOW is also a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event!

 

We are thrilled to team up with Lambda Literary once again for this special night of queer storytelling with a twist.

Four curated storytellers will work together to develop their nonfiction stories inspired by the theme “Coming & Going” on the page. Watch as they trade tales and present each other’s stories on the “Zoom” stage.

Plus, a chance to win fun literary prizes from The Astoria Bookshop!

Storytellers Nancy Agabian, Calvin Cato, Nicole Shawan Junior, and Charlotte Marchant.

More info on the storytellers and how to save your virtual seat coming soon…

 

THIS IS AN OFFICIAL 2020 BROOKLYN BOOK FESTIVAL EVENT

No, YOU Tell It! “Coming & Going” 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.

Event Information

Sep 30 2020 @ 7:30PM

Zoom!

Great Year of Switched-Up Storytelling!

Proud with a capital “P” of all that we have accomplished in 2019. Give a listen to live story swaps from our “Crafty,” “Snapped!” and “aMuse”  shows on the NYTI podcast. Also, available on iTunes, Apple podcasts, etc.

A ton of work goes into each installment of No, YOU Tell It! From curating a group of storytellers, story meetings to develop drafts on the page, rehearsals sessions to help story partners step into each other’s shoes on stage, all the way through to producing the podcast.

Every moment is worth this testimonial (which totally made us tear up) from Queens poet Pichchenda Bao!

Give a LISTEN to Chenda and Carolyn swap stories as part of our special 2019 Brooklyn Book Festival Event at The Astoria Bookshop in Ep 51.

As we prepare for NYTI 2020, we need your help to keep the switched-up storytelling going!!

CLICK HERE TO DONATE through our sponsored artist page on The Field.

No, YOU Tell It! is a sponsored artist with Performance Zone Inc (dba The Field), a not-for-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) organization serving the performing arts community. Contributions to The Field earmarked for No, YOU Tell It! are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.

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