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.
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.
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.
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.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Our first story finds a dyed-in-wool New Yorker facing unforeseen suburban horrors. Negotiating neighborly encounters that make her question whether to recalibrate her moral barometer to keep up with the Joneses. Or, in this case, the Weavers.
Kicking off the second half of our special Brooklyn Book Festival event at The Astoria Bookshop, here is Ellie Dvorkin reading “The Neighbor’s Muse” written by H.E. Fisher.
Top left: Ellie Dvorkin; Top right: Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons and H.E. Fisher; Bottom left: Story partners!; Bottom right: H.E. Fisher
Switching it up, in our next story, a daughter fails to find anything amusing about her lifelong role of caretaker. Her mother’s recent health scare causing her to rethink the responsibilities we take on, the ones put upon us, and what it takes to release yourself from burdens of the past. H.E. Fisher reads “Fun” written by Ellie Dvorkin.
For this 2019 Brooklyn Book Festival event, we partnered with The Astoria Bookshop for a special evening of poets and comedians trading true tales inspired by the theme “aMuse.” Stories performed live on September 17th, 2019.
Storeis were directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons who also narrated this episode.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
First up, Pichchenda Bao’s “Speak, Muse” contemplates the roles we are assigned in life and the roles we adopt: refugee, American, daughter, mother, artist, citizen; the compromises we make for survival and the ways we interpret silence, and ultimately how we can expand, not contract, our relationship to each other and the world.
Read for us here by Carolyn Castiglia.
Story partners: Pichchenda Bao and Carolyn Castiglia
Switching it up, in Carolyn Castiglia’ s story “A Friend Request,” the author looks back at a time in her early twenties when she chose comfort over vulnerability and suffering over fulfillment. A small gesture reminds her how people who pass through our lives can show back up on our radar years later to remind us how we’ve weathered life’s storms.
For this 2019 Brooklyn Book Festival event, we partnered with The Astoria Bookshop for a special evening of poets and comedians trading true tales inspired by the theme “aMuse.” Stories performed live on September 17th, 2019.
“Speak, Muse” was directed by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons.
“A Friend Request” was directed by Erika Iverson.
Podcast narrated by Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons.
Poets and stand-ups trading true-life tales inspired by a theme was a jumping-off point for our Brooklyn Book Festival Event… Our four storytellers ran with that aMUSE-ing idea and all took fantastic leaps last night.
Congratulations to our story partners on fully embodying each other’s stunning stories and captivating the crowd. There was standing room only at The Astoria Bookshop but not a word was missed.
Top left: Pichchenda Bao, Carolyn Castiglia; Top right: H.E. Fisher, Ellie Dvorkin; Bottom left: Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons, Ellie Dvorkin, H.E. Fisher; Bottom right: Carolyn Castiglia, Pichchenda Bao
