This Winter Solstice, the historic Black queer men’s writing collective Other Countries returns to its original home at The LGBT Community Center for an evening of poetry, performance, and community celebration, curated and organized by LaTefy Dolley (Curatorial Seminar alum, New York 2025) in collaboration with members Kevin McGruder, Robert E. Penn, and Katherine Cheairs. The evening will feature Other Countries member L. Philip Richardson as Master of Ceremonies and readings by collective members and guest artists including Steven G. Fullwood, Sur Rodney (Sur), Darryl DeAngelo Terrell, Malcolm Peacock, and Ryanaustin Dennis, followed by an open mic (advance sign-up required). The Winter Solstice 2025 program celebrates Other Countries’ enduring legacy of creativity, remembrance, and kinship—a word that remains a powerful site of connection and survival—and extends from LaTefy Dolley's ongoing collaboration with Other Countries first established through Last Address Tribute Walk: Harlem in 2021 (a partnership between Visual AIDS and The Studio Museum in Harlem, conceived by Pamela Sneed).
Other Countries was established in New York City in 1986 in response to the underrepresentation of Black queer stories, essays, biographies, and dramatic writing in LGBT literature, and emerged as a vital collective of Black queer men committed to creative expression and community-building. Conceived by writer Daniel Garrett of the Blackheart Collective, the group began as a weekly, peer-facilitated writing workshop at The Center. The threat of HIV and AIDS magnified the urgent need for safe spaces where Black queer men could express themselves, and support and affirm one another’s experiences, needs which are still ongoing today. Numerous members and collaborators, such as Essex Hemphill, Colin Robinson, Donald Woods, Assotto Saint, Marlon Riggs, and B.Michael Hunter, are now ancestors.
Beyond its workshops, Other Countries organized semiannual public solstice readings and presented programs at colleges, universities, and community centers nationwide—efforts that amplified the visibility of Black queer voices at a critical time. In addition to writing, reading, and performing, collective members published three anthologies of poetry, prose, illustrations, and photographs: Other Countries: Black Gay Voices, a First Volume (1988); Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS (1993); and Voices Rising: Celebrating 20 Years of Black Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Writing (2007, RedBone Press). Today, Other Countries returns to the site of its inception to honor this legacy and continue the intergenerational dialogue it helped shape.
