The Light Looks Like Me Book Celebration

Shout Mouse Press celebrates the publication of The Light Looks Like Me: Words on Love by Queer Youth, a multi-genre anthology exploring LGBTQ+ love. In partnership with Loyalty Bookstores, this event will feature readings from the book’s young authors, music by DJ Franky J, and a performance by award-winning poet Denice Frohman. Attendees will be able to purchase book copies, get their books signed, and explore all the ways queer love brightens their own lives.

Denice Frohman is a poet and performer from New York City. She has received support from The Pew Center for the Arts, Baldwin for the Arts, CantoMundo, Headlands Center for the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Poem-A-Day (The Academy of American Poets), The BreakBeat Poets: LatiNext,Nepantla: An Anthology for Queer Poets of Color and elsewhere. A former Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, she has featured on hundreds of stages from The Apollo to The White House. Currently, she is performing her one-woman show, Esto No Tiene Nombre (work-in-progress), which centers the oral histories of Latina lesbian elders.

DJ Franky J is a native Washingtonian. She has been a DJ for almost six years now. She’s had the opportunity to spin at places such as the Kennedy Center, Dirty Goose, Eaton Hotel, Fillmore Silver Spring, and March for Moms, to name a few.

About the Book

Young people from across the LGBTQ+ spectrum came together to explore what love looks like to them, in all its iterations. This anthology was dreamed as a response to book bans nationwide targeting literature featuring LGBTQIA+ characters and themes, and the related silencing of these voices and conversations. With the help of local queer teaching artists, young writers and artists responded to that call through poetry, prose, comics, art, and more. Their work shows us the love that they find everywhere: in their friends and family, their communities, and bubbling through their brilliant selves.

This project was created in partnership with The DC Center for the LGBT Community, Sasha Bruce Youthwork, SMYAL, and Split This Rock.