AMPLIFY: Black Girl Dangerous Offering Writing Workshops to Queer and Trans POC

Mia McKenzie founder of Black Girl Dangerous, began the blog with two goals in mind; first to provide a safe and nurturing space for queer and trans* writers of color to develop their talents, and to give visibility to queer and trans* writers of color in a market that is often dominated by non-people of color.

BGD needs your help to continue this important work. She has currently launched a fundraising campaign hoping to reach a goal of $4000 by July 7, 2012.   With your donation, McKenzie will be able to provide writing workshops at low cost to queer and trans* writers of color for six months. She also hopes to expand BGD to Oakland, Philadelphia, Toronto, and provide online workshops over the course of six months beginning in July of this year.

[pullquote3 align=”center” variation=”purple” cite=”Mia McKenzie”]Black Girl Dangerous is a place where queer-identified women of color can make our voices heard on the issues that interest us and affect us, where we can showcase our literary and artistic talents, where we can cry it out, and where we can explore and express our “dangerous” sides: our biggest, boldest, craziest, weirdest, wildest selves. [/pullquote3]

If you needed any more incentive to support LGBT people of color writers, check out the facts BGD has posted on their Tumblr:

• Less than 5 percent of U.S. books published for children in recent years were written by writers of color.
• More than 30 percent of the American population is non-white, yet writers of color continue to account for less than 10 percent of employed television writers.
• More than 80 percent of plays produced are written by white men.
• In the New York Times Book review, 95 percent of the U.S. authors of political books were white.

In the land of creative writing, writing workshops cost a hefty amount of change and are often financially inaccessible to low income people. Add in the fact that queer and trans* writers of color are considered a niche within the writing world, so many workshops are not oriented around nurturing our specific needs with regards to the creation of safe spaces for telling our stories. What you’ve got is a conundrum that would leave queer and trans* writers of color in a hard place, but that’s only if you don’t donate to Mia McKenzie’s Black Girl Dangerous.

You don’t have to be a writer in order to help other writers actualize their potential. Sometimes all it takes is the swift click of a computer mouse and a credit card number to help queer and trans* writers of color nurture their talents and gain visibility in the literary world.

Visit  Black Girl Dangerous on Tumblr. to lean more about Mia McKenzie’s work.
Click HERE to donate.

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