5th Annual East Portland Arts & Literary Festival, a.k.a. QUEERPALF

Our 5th East Portland Arts & Literary Festival was a success!

Listen to our conversations here.
Graphic Recordings of by Jayda Shuavarnnasri available for Online Exhibition Opening: Work from the East Portland Art + Justice Lab's Artists-in-Residence, Home is Where the Art is: A Storytelling Workshop, Radical Love, Radical Acceptance - Supporting our Queer & Trans Children and Families of Color, and Written into Being: A Write Around Portland Workshop.







East Portland Arts & Literary Festival 2021
Four Fridays: October 22 and 29, November 5 and 12
Free and online

Since January of this year, APANO’s Arts & Media Project (AMP), a collective of artists, designers, writers, sculptors, ceramicists, and more that identify as Asian or Pacific Islander and are interested in using art to advance social justice, has been meeting regularly to reconnect and deepen conversations on what is currently impacting our communities. From those conversations, the Queer/Trans Asian and Pacific Islander (QTAPI) Subcommittee was born, and it's with their leadership that we decided to continue their work as part of our 5th annual East Portland Arts & Literary Festival (EPALF).

As we enter into another fall with COVID-19, EPALF -- this year, aka QUEERPALF -- is focusing on reconnection. Hosted online on a series of Fridays, the festival includes writing workshops, storytelling sessions, an online marketplace, and a lunchtime art series to provide an array of opportunities to share our hearts and minds with each other. During this time together, we hope to shape a collective narrative for our community through a QTBIPOC lens. Partners include Write Around Portland, API Rainbow Parents, and ROSE CDC.

We invite you to join us for QUEERPALF, which includes:

ONGOING: QUEERPALF Marketplace
Opening October 22, Ends November 12

Support BIPOC artists by bringing home some of their incredible work!

Organized by Raveena Bhalara and Alisa Chen

The QUEERPALF Marketplace is an online “pop-up” featuring work by local BIPOC artists. In a white-centric city like Portland not enough BIPOC artists are featured in our local bookstores, boutiques, and galleries. This online space is for you to shop from these talented folks and ensure all of the money goes directly to them!

https://bit.ly/queerpalf-marketplace

Spatial Realities Lunchtime Art Series with Meenakshi Thirukode
Friday, October 22, 2021, 12 - 1 pm PST
An art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal)

Curated by garima thakur

Spatial Realities is a three-part lunchtime art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal). Artists Meenakshi Thirukode, Romi Morrison, and Ariella Tai respond and engage with the following questions in an open format: What is the possibility of a new spatial imaginary for queer people? Is it possible to imagine a space that values love and what does that even feel like? What does geography, urban landscape, cultural landscape look like when heteronormative limitations don't contour the world we live in? What does it mean to even be in space (digital, public, social) as who we are? How through various interventions do we make space available for us? What does it require from us? How does race and space (physical, digital, social and metaphysical) inform each other and how can we still dream of together?

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-lunch-1

A Letter Through Time
Friday, October 22, 2021, 6 - 7:30 pm PST
A QTBIPOC only writing workshop exploring queer pasts

By Lilly Do

This workshop invites QTBIPOC participants to reflect upon and write about their relationship to their own queer past through a series of letter-writing exercises. Whether that is writing to ones past self or speaking to the next generation of queer folks, A Letter Through Time workshop encourages its participants to ask oneself, "What does it mean to connect ones past experience within the larger narrative of the QTBIPOC community?

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-letter

Spatial Realities Lunchtime Art Series with Romi Morrison and Sharita Towne
Friday, October 29, 2021, 12 - 1 pm PST
An art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal)

Curated by garima thakur

Spatial Realities is a three-part lunchtime art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal). Artists Meenakshi Thirukode, Romi Morrison, and Ariella Tai respond and engage with the following questions in an open format: What is the possibility of a new spatial imaginary for queer people? Is it possible to imagine a space that values love and what does that even feel like? What does geography, urban landscape, cultural landscape look like when heteronormative limitations don't contour the world we live in? What does it mean to even be in space (digital, public, social) as who we are? How through various interventions do we make space available for us? What does it require from us? How does race and space (physical, digital, social and metaphysical) inform each other and how can we still dream of together?

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-lunch-2

Spatial Realities Lunchtime Art Series with Ariella Tai
Friday, November 5, 2021, 12 - 1 pm PST
An art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal)

Curated by garima thakur

Spatial Realities is a three-part lunchtime art series rooted in understanding multiple realities of queer spatiality (public, physical, digital and personal). Artists Meenakshi Thirukode, Romi Morrison, and Ariella Tai respond and engage with the following questions in an open format: What is the possibility of a new spatial imaginary for queer people? Is it possible to imagine a space that values love and what does that even feel like? What does geography, urban landscape, cultural landscape look like when heteronormative limitations don't contour the world we live in? What does it mean to even be in space (digital, public, social) as who we are? How through various interventions do we make space available for us? What does it require from us? How does race and space (physical, digital, social and metaphysical) inform each other and how can we still dream of together?

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-lunch-3

Online Exhibition Opening: Work from the East Portland Art + Justice Lab's Artists-in-Residence


Friday, November 5, 2021, 5 - 6:30 pm PST
A showcase of new projects from the East Portland Art + Justice Lab's Artists-in-Residence

Over the past year, the East Portland Art + Justice Lab's six Artists-in-Residence worked deeply with community members in and around the Orchards of 82nd (O82) to create new community artworks that cultivate resilience and strengthen social fabric. This online exhibition opening will feature presentations on the three projects that emerged from the residency: Forgotten Birds by Nikki Acevedo and Sabina Haque, Black Birth Matters by Felecia Graham and Roshani Thakore, and The Computer is OK by Myra Aldan and Cary Miga. Plus, the Artists-in-Residence will share their experiences and reflections as on-the-ground cultural organizers in this inaugural artist residency cohort.

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-air

Home is Where the Art is: A Storytelling Workshop


Friday, November 5, 2021, 6:30 - 8 pm PST
A QTBIPOC only storytelling workshop exploring reconnection

By Samson Syharath

This storytelling workshop is about Reconnection - reconnecting with our families, friends, ourselves, our minds and our bodies. Inspired from the "I Am From" poem format and using the Viewpoints language from Tina Landau and Anne Bogart, participants will use the Zoom platform to share stories through a visual poem.

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-storytelling
This workshop has a maximum capacity of 10 participants.

Radical Love, Radical Acceptance - Supporting our Queer & Trans Children and Families of Color
Friday, November 12, 2021, 12 - 1:30 pm PST

A workshop for BIPOC parents/caregivers of QTBIPOC youth

By Kelly Novahom, Lo'An Nguyen, and Liv Siulagi

This workshop provides an inclusive and safer space for parents/caregivers and other trusted family members to work on developing strategies around parenting and advocating for their QTBIPOC youth in a way that is radically loving, respectful, and accepting of the experiences of QTBIPOC youth. We will use art and meditation practices to help us navigate this discussion.

Register here: bit.ly/queerpalf-radicallove

Written into Being: A Write Around Portland Workshop
Friday, November 12, 2021, 6:30 - 8 pm PST
Utilizing the Write Around Portland model, this workshop will build community through a series of creative free-writes

By Lilly Do

Celebrating QTBIPOC poets and artists, the participants will discuss reading/visual samples before experimenting with their own writing then offering positive feedback to their fellow participants. Lilly will be facilitating a Write Around Portland workshop. This will start off with a warm-up write followed by a series of free-writes as well as a short discussion of a reading sample by a QT artist/writer.

Register here: https://bit.ly/queerpalf-wap
This workshop has a maximum of 10 participants.

If you would like to request digital accommodations or have any access questions about these events, please contact Roshani Thakore, Cultural Work Coordinator, at roshani@apano.org. We will do our best to provide requested accommodations to make our events as accessible as possible for attendees.

EPALF 2021 has been made possible with support from

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