LGBTQ+ Stories: The Creative Process: Gender, Equality, Gay, Lesbian, Queer, Bisexual, Homosexual, Trans Creatives Talk LGBTQ Rights

“I do feel that we are infinite choice makers. You make millions of choices all the time. Make the right choice and if you make the wrong choice, understand that mistakes are great teachers. Learn from that and move on. I do have this sense of responsibility of passing something on a love of dance history that really informs my process. Speaking in old language in a new way with a contemporary acc...

Seán Curran began his dance training with traditional Irish step dancing as a young boy in Boston, Massachusetts. He went on to make his mark on the dance world as a leading dancer with Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. He received a New York Dance and Performance Bessie Award for his performance in Secret Pastures. A graduate of New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, Curran was an...

“In developing Harper’s character, it felt like just very realistic. We’re in a major city that's very liberal, that’s very creative, that this would be someone who would be a stylist, who would not necessarily need to have a coming out story because maybe they aren't from a background where… She might have come out as pansexual when she was 13. That probably didn’t need to be said. Carly wouldn't...

Ali Schouten is a showrunner, executive producer, and writer who is quickly establishing herself as a creative on the rise as her formidable talent and artistic versatility continue to make waves. Schouten currently serves as the showrunner and executive producer of the wildly successful iCarly revival for Paramount+, which set 10 years later, features Miranda Cosgrove reprising her iconic role. T...

Dr. G. Samantha Rosenthal is an Associate Professor of History and Coordinator of the Public History Concentration at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. Rosenthal teaches courses in public history, women’s and gender studies, and general education. She is interested in environmental studies, working-class studies, LGBTQ, queer, and trans studies, community organizing, and scholar-activism. She is...

Mark Seliger was born in Amarillo, Texas. He was Rolling Stones chief photographer for 20 years, where he shot over 150 covers silica shoots frequently for Vanity Fair, GQ, Italian Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, L, and other magazines. His advertising work includes projects for Adidas, Anheuser-Busch, Levi's, Netflix and Ralph Lauren. Seliger received the Alfred Eisenstadt Award, Clio Grand Prix, the C A...

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books&nbs...

Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, American Short Fiction, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. She is the author of the books&nbs...

Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof,...

Neil Patrick Harris is a Tony and Emmy award-winning stage and screen performer, famous for his roles as Barney Stinson in the popular CBS sitcom How I Met Your Mother, and as the iconic and beloved Doogie Howser, M.D., and Count Olaf in A Series of Unfortunate Events. He’s hosted the Oscars, Tony, and Emmy Awards, and performed in several Broadway shows, including Rent, Cabaret, Proof,...

“I just want to make the poems like a living being…There are moments that I’m not at the desk, but I’m living life. And living life is actually what leads to writing. You have to have experiences to write about. Whether or not you are aware of those experiences as you are writing them down because if you’re doing music first, maybe you’re not aware of what you’re writing. And yet, those experience...

Jericho Brown is author of the  The   Tradition  (Copper Canyon 2019), for which he won the Pulitzer Prize. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard, and the National Endowment for the Arts, and he is the winner of the Whiting Award. Brown’s first book,  Please  (New Issues 2008), won the...

"The idea of writing memoir is about listening carefully. The way to find a story or, at least the story that needs to be told is that moment that you’re writing is the emerges from a deep kind of inner listening and finding the memories that are charged that don’t want to leave that have a certain kind of energy to them and, if you listen to them, and you allow them to be born in the writing, you...

Writer and producer Rebecca Walker has contributed to the global conversation about race, gender, power, and the evolution of the human family for three decades. Author and editor of seven bestselling books on multiracial identity , Black Cool and ambivalent motherhood, she has co-founded the Third Wave Fund, which makes grants to womxn and transgender youth working for social justice. For her eff...

“To not honor that we are all creative, beautiful, interesting deep, rich individuals. We’re not zeros and ones on a spreadsheet. We’re not scientifically explained. We are not mathematically judged. We are imperfect blobs of emotion and bone and spirit and life and when we come together there is nothing greater than the chemistry and the alchemy of musical theater… There’s a joy, there’s a bounce...

Most highly noted for his stunning work in musical theater, Gavin James Creel is a Tony & Olivier Award-winning actor, singer and songwriter. On Broadway, he’s performed in shows including Throughly Modern Millie, Hair, The Book of Mormon, Waitress and Hello, Dolly!, his performance in which won him his first Tony Award. Creel is also a LGBTQ+ activist, having done much to raise awareness and...

“I always find it an ironic thing to think about the fact that Fred Rogers was colour-blind. He could barely tell a blue from a grey. I was young and to him I was a child and I certainly played the role of a child and he played the role of parent… He was profoundly patient.” Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood ’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first...

Dr. François Clemmons is perhaps best known as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood ’s Officer Clemmons. He made history as the first African American actor to have a recurring role on a children’s television program. He received a Bachelor of Music degree from Oberlin College, a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and an honorary degree from Middlebury College. In 1973, he won a Grammy Award for a record...

"If you are thinking about too much, you're probably not doing it right. Some nights you do it and you're just like, that just felt like it was ten minutes long and I just was on cloud nine. What was I doing? A great, great American actor George C. Scott had a great quote once, he said, "Every actor worth their salt has one good show a week and spends those other seven shows wondering what they di...

John Benjamin Hickey is a veteran of the stage and screen, with a Tony Award-winning performance as Felix Turner in The Normal Heart and his Emmy-nominated role as Sean Tolkey on The Big C . On stage, he’s had leading roles in Cabaret , The Crucible , The Inheritance - Parts 1 and 2, Six Degrees of Separation, and Love! Valour! Compassion! also starring in the latter’s movie adaptation. His film a...

“For a writer of non-fiction or essayist that’s very difficult to work with because we aren’t, or at least some of us don’t consider ourselves journalists. The tools that we are working with aren’t– What your favorite color is. Where you grew up. Or what your favorite number is. If we’re writing a profile of something, the tools that we’re working with are long conversations in which people are sh...

John D’Agata is the author of Halls of Fame , About a Mountain , and The Lifespan of a Fact , as well as the editor of the 3-volume series  A New History of the Essay , which includes the anthologies The Next American Essay , The Making of the American Essay , and The Lost Origins of the Essay . His work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Howard Foundation Fellowship, an NEA Lit...

Writer & President of the Dramatists Guild of America Doug Wright is an award winning playwright whose plays include I am My Own Wife, for which he won a Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, Posterity, and Quills, for which he won an Obie Award. He has written books for the Tony-nominated musical Grey Gardens, the Drama Desk nomination “Hands on a hardbody”, The Little Mermaid, and War Paint. He adapted...

“All the themes are very contemporary. I think what moves this story is the search for instantaneous celebrity. That’s what the girls are all about, Roxie and Velma. They want to be famous. Of course everything that you cited, corruption, crimes, the press focusing on sensational stories–it’s all there. And I think that’s why the public relates so much to it.” Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leadi...

Paulo Szot won the Tony as Best Leading Actor in a Musical for his Broadway debut at Emile de Becque in the 2008 Tony-winning revival of South Pacific. This performance also netted him Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, and Theatre World awards. Szot’s opera credits include performances at the Metropolitan, Scala di Milano, Paris Opera, Carnegie Hall, and others. He’s currently starring as Billy Fl...