Andrea Jenkins Minneapolis Poet

Queer Voices, one of the nation's longest-running reading series, marks its season premiere tonight at Intermedia Arts. As part of their new Beyond the Pure series, Queer Voices is intended to be "a safe place for GLBT writers and audiences to explore the day-to-day material of life without internal or external censorship."

Local freelance writer and Loft Mentor Series Fellowship award winner Andrea Jenkins curates Queer Voices with John Medeiros, author of the memoir Self, Divided which was awarded the Outstanding Creative Nonfiction Thesis of the Year. Jenkins and Medeiros have found an impressive roster of authors to begin the season.

Tonight's session will include readings by locals Kristin Johnson, Christine Stark, Michael Kiesow Moore, and William Reichard, who all have impressive bodies of work. Johnson, who teaches at Metropolitan State University, has won the Mystery Writers of America Helen McCloy Award. Stark also teaches writing at Metropolitan State University and is a 2010 Loft Mentorship winner. Moore is a Loft Literary Center instructor and a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship recipient. He currently curates the new Birchbark Books Reading Series in Minneapolis. Reichard revised and edited the award-winning memoir, The Evening Crowd at Kirmser's: A Gay Life in the 1940's, by the late Ricardo Brown. Reichard has also written an anthology, American Tensions: Literature of Social Justice, which will be released in spring 2011.

To read more about visiting artists and find information on future readings, visit Intermedia Arts.

Queer Voices is at 7 p.m. at Intermedia Arts (2822 S. Lyndale Ave., Minneapolis). There is a $5 suggested donation at the event to support the series.

By Coco Mault