I’m coming out. My name is Neil de la Flor, and I’m the Executive Director of Reading Queer and a writer for Knight Arts. Reading Queer, which won a 2012 Knight Arts Challenge Grant, seeks to establish Miami as a diverse and vibrant center for queer literature. Our mission is to transform the lives of the queer community and encourage them to be free, confident, strong and as queer as they choose to be through the act and the art of creative writing.

With the support of and in partnership with the Miami Book Fair International, Reading Queer is also coming out. These two literary organizations have joined forces to celebrate the diversity and richness of the queer community with, “I am the what-are-you: Queer Poetry/Queer Differences,” RQ’s inaugural event featuring writers and performers who create genre-bending works that address queer identity.

Reading Queer.

“Queer poetry, like queerness itself, is often dominated by the same voices. It’s time for a change,” writes José A. Villar-Portela, Reading Queer’s Program Director. “This panel explores and celebrates queer differences with poets who speak from varied perspectives. In their own way, each of these poets give testament to the rich and succulent diversity of queer poetics and the queer community at large.”

I’ll read, along with poets Eduardo C. Corral (Slow Lightning), Maureen Seaton (Fibonacci Batman), L. Lamar Wilson (Sacrilegion) and E. Parker Phillips. However, “I am the what-are-you” is more than just a reading. It signifies Reading Queer’s commitment to expose the community to genre-bending works that not only queers language, but queers the spaces in which we inhabit. In other words, expect–. After the reading, there will also be a Q&A session.

Reading Queer exists to provide the queer community with a platform for self-exploration and self-expression, where individual voices come together to connect, create and communicate what it means to be queer and to dispel myths that disempower and dehumanize.”I am the what-are-you: Queer Poetry/Queer Differences” aims to fulfill that goal by demonstrating how creative writing can be used as a medium to improve, empower and enrich the creative lives of the writers and the larger community. All we need is your support on November 23rd.

Reading Queer invites you to its first official event, presented in partnership with the Miami Book Fair International on Saturday, November 23 at 1 p.m. at Miami Dade College-Wolfson Campus, Room 8203, Building 8. Learn more about the event and the writers here.