Loyalty is so excited to celebrate The Queer Cookies Cookbook in a virtual night of poetry! Queer Cookies is a poetry series, bake sale, and soon-to-be-released cookbook celebrating DMV-area LGBTQ+ poets. Join Queer Cookies creators, Regie Cabico and Tyler French along with participating poets, Angelique Palmer, Marlena Chertock, Patience Sings, and Rasha Abdulhadi, for an evening of joy-filled, salty/sweet, and toothsome poetry. You’ll be the first to be able to purchase a copy of The Queer Cookies Cookbook, which is filled with tasty poetry and custom-designed cookie recipes based on that poetry. Savor doubly salted cream cheese caramel brownie bites alongside a selection of haiku! Find the balance between tartness and sweetness while crewing on queer joy, intergenerational connection, and family-making! Mull over Sichuan peppercorn, strawberry, rosewater thumbprints and an out-of-this-world abecedarian! This event will be held digitally via Crowdcast and is free to attend, but registration is required. Click here to register for the event. There will also be an option to snag the book during the event.

The Queer Cookies Cookbook and reading series is supported by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. ASL interpretation will be provided. This event will also be live-streamed on Queer Cookies Facebook page and recorded.

Angelique Palmer is a performance poet, a finalist in the 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slam, and a member of the 2017 Busboys and Poets/Beltway Poetry Slam Team. Author of The Chambermaid’s Style Guide, and the upcoming Also Dark (Etruscan Press), she’s a Florida State University Creative Writing graduate who calls northern Virginia home. Her work centers on Black Femme Narratives, Awkward Queerness, and Mental Health & Recovery. She makes her own ice cream.

Marlena Chertock has two books of poetry, Crumb-sized: Poems (Unnamed Press) and On that one-way trip to Mars (Bottlecap Press). She uses her skeletal dysplasia as a bridge to scientific poetry. She is queer, disabled, and a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee. Marlena serves as Co-Chair of OutWrite, Washington, D.C.'s annual LGBTQ literary festival, and on the Board of Split This Rock, a nonprofit that cultivates poetry that bears witness to injustice and provokes social change. Her poetry and prose has appeared in AWP’s The Writer’s Notebook, Breath & Shadow, The Deaf Poets Society, Lambda Literary Review, Little Patuxent Review, Neon Hemlock Press, Noble/Gas Quarterly, Paper Darts, Paranoid Tree, Plants & Poetry, Rogue Agent, Unheard Poetry, Washington Independent Review of Books, WMN Zine, Wordgathering, and more. Find her at marlenachertock.com and @mchertock.

Patience also known as Patience Sings is a creator, poet, actress and vocalist, native to Washington, D.C; a creative with a passion for the spoken word and sound healing. Patience is most recently recognized as the "Scat" of the Peace & Bodyroll Duo BOOMscat and the Director of Programs for Makers Lab - DC based arts collective. Patience is an artist who creates collages for your listening pleasure. If you listen closely you may feel her heart between your ears.

Rasha Abdulhadi is a queer Palestinian Southerner who grew up between Damascus, Syria and rural Georgia and cut their teeth organizing on the southsides of Chicago and Atlanta. Their work has been anthologized in Halal if You Hear Me, Super Stoked, and Luminescent Threads: Connections to Octavia Butler. They edit fiction at Strange Horizons and are a member of Justice for Muslims Collective, the Radius of Arab American Writers, and Alternate ROOTS. Their chapbook who is owed springtime is forthcoming from Neon Hemlock press.

Please note Loyalty has a zero tolerance policy for harassment or intimidation of any kind during this virtual event.

The Queer Cookies Cookbook Poetry Reading w/ Angelique Palmer, Marlena Chertock, Patience Sings, and Rasha Abdulhadi