Forbidden Boundaries

Readings from Victor Yates, Joe Okonkwo, John Copenhaver & Philip Dean Walker. Moderated by Turner Freeman of BRUHS. Victor Yates was raised in Jacksonville, Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. His writing has appeared in Windy City Times, Edge, Message, EndPain, and other publications. As a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Otis College, he is the recipient of an Ahmanson Foundation grant. He is the winner of the Elma Stuckey Writing Award (1st place in poetry) at Morehouse College. He received an Oprah Winfrey Scholarship and appeared on Oprah’s Surprise Spectacular show. Two of his poems were included in the anthology, For Colored Boys, which was edited by Keith Boykin. The book won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award. Also, he has taught writing workshops at the University of Southern California, Job Corps, Whaley Middle School (Compton), Gindling Hilltop Camp (Malibu), and Bright Star Secondary Charter Academy (Inglewood). His novel, A Love Like Blood, won the 2016 Lambda Literary Award aka The Lammys for LGBT Debut Fiction. Joe Okonkwo is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and editor. His debut novel Jazz Moon, set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and glittering Jazz Age Paris, was published by Kensington Books in 2016. David Ebershoff, author of The Danish Girl and The 19th Wife has called Jazz Moon "A passionate, alive, and original novel about love, race, and jazz in 1920s Harlem and Paris — a moving story of traveling far to find oneself." Jazz Moon won the Publishing Triangle's prestigious 2016 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. It is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction. Joe's short stories have appeared in Promethean, Penumbra, Cooper Street, Storychord, LGBTsr.org, Chelsea Station, and Shotgun Honey. His work has been anthologized in Love Stories from Africa (his first fiction published outside the U.S.), Best Gay Love Stories 2009, and Best Gay Stories 2015. John Copenhaver was a quarterfinalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award for his novel, Dodging and Burning, a literary murder mystery that explores the truth behind the photograph of a crime scene taken by a young war photographer, and its connection to the complex discriminatory attitudes toward homosexuals during the 1940s. Dodging and Burning is forthcoming from Pegasus Books. He graduated with a BA from Davidson College, MA in literature from Bread Loaf School of English, and a MFA in fiction from GMU, where he served as Executive Editor of Phoebe. Currently, John chairs 7-12 English Department at Flint Hill, a college preparatory school, outside of Washington, DC. Philip Dean Walker holds a B.A. in American Literature from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing (Fiction) from American University. His fiction has previously appeared in Big Lucks, Collective Fallout, Jonathan, Callisto, Glitterwolf Magazine, theNewerYork, Anak Sastra, Carbon Culture Review, Lunch Review and Driftwood Press. His story "Three-Sink Sink" was named as a finalist for the 2013 Gertrude Stein Award in Fiction from The Doctor T.J. Eckleburg Review and appears in the anthology Pay for Play (Bold Strokes Books, LLC). He has been nominated twice for the Pushcart Prize. His debut collection of short stories, At Danceteria and Other Stories, was published by Squares & Rebels in November 2016 and was the recipient of a "Kirkus Star" as well as being cited as a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Month (April 2017). His second collection of stories, Caravan, will be published by Lethe Press in late 2017. He hails from Great Falls, Virginia and currently resides in Washington, D.C.