About this Event
In Flamboyants, George M. Johnson celebrates writers, performers, and activists from 1920s Black America whose sexualities have been obscured throughout history. Through 14 essays, Johnson reveals how American culture has been shaped by icons who are both Black and Queer – and whose stories deserve to be celebrated in their entirety.
Interspersed with personal narrative, powerful poetry, and illustrations by award-winning illustrator Charly Palmer, Flamboyants looks to the past for understanding as to how Black and Queer culture has defined the present and will continue to impact the future. With candid prose and an unflinching lens towards truth and hope, George M. Johnson brings young adult readers an inspiring collection of biographies that will encourage teens today to be unabashed in their layered identities.
________________
George M Johnson is an Award-Winning Black Non-Binary Writer, Author, and Executive Producer located in the LA area. They are the author of the New York Times Bestselling Author of the Young Adult memoir All Boys Aren’t Blue discussing their adolescence growing up as a young Black Queer boy in New Jersey through a series of powerful essays. The book was optioned for Television by Gabrielle Union.
As a former journalist, George has written for major outlets including Teen Vogue, Entertainment Tonight, NBC, and Buzzfeed. In 2019 was awarded the Salute to Excellence Award by the National Association of Black Journalists for their article “When Racism Anchors your Health” in Vice Magazine.
George was listed on The Root 100 Most Influential African Americans in 2020. The Out 100 Most Influential LGBTQ People in 2021. And in 2022 was honored as one of the TIME100 Next Most Influential People in the World.
Their second memoir WE ARE NOT BROKEN was released in September of 2021. It received the Carter G. Woodson Award which recognizes books that “accurately and sensitively depict the experience of one or more historically marginalized racial/ethnic groups in the United States”. The book also received the Nonfiction Honor Book in the YA category from the International Literacy Association.
In 2021 they wrote and Executive Produced the Dramatic Reading of All Boys Aren’t Blue starring Jenifer Lewis and Dyllon Burnside which received a 2022 Special Recognition Award from GLAAD.
George is also a proud HBCU alum twice over, and a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Incorporated.
Charly Palmer is the illustrator of the interiors in FLAMBOYANTS, as well as the cover of ALL BOYS AREN'T BLUE. Over 30 years and counting, Charly Palmer’s art speaks for itself. Literally, Palmer's paintbrush is as a Griot. In every painting, he bears witness of African ancestry and contemporary experiences — rhythmic, visual stories that shifts what each viewer believes to see — should one dare to look deeply.
Palmer has an innate awareness of documenting the intricacies of Blackness with such depth, patterns, symbols, and textures that it is easy to forget that he begins with a blank canvas. The ways in which he applies acrylic is somewhat its own aesthetic that transcends where one’s thought begins and ends.
As a Fine Artist Palmer’s heart’s desire? To be used as a vessel and expression of something higher than himself.
Follow the instructions of the ancestors and you will see greatness happen; there’s intrinsic beauty and strength of Blackness in each body of work. Much of Palmer’s messaging is in the eyes of his people, as if conversing with one another. Conversing with you. From loose sketches and tight lines to blocks of color to nuances of mixed media, his art manifests in visual expressions to the questions, “What came before? What truth must be told?”
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore, 116 Suffolk Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00 to USD 18.99