Nia King

mixed race queer art activist >podcast reviews & interviews blog

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Suzy Exposito discusses interviewing Bad Bunny for Rolling Stone | Nia King

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Just pulled this out from behind the paywall. I interviewed music journalist Suzy Exposito back in 2020, shortly before her first Rolling Stone cover story... on Bad Bunny. I'm currently reading P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became The Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance and Suzy is quoted extensively.

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Queer Colombian Salvadoran Alejandro Varela is one of my favorite living writers. His work weaves together comedy and tragedy as if it was the easiest thing in the world. His first novel, The Town of Babylon, is about growing up queer and brown in a place where neither is possible. His second book, The People Who Report More Stress, begins with a short story about gay hookups at the U.N. I had the honor of interviewing him in mid-October when he was in Philly to promote his new book, Middle Spoon. We nerd out about the craft of writing, explore how his public health background shapes the way he sees the world, and discuss how white supremacy leaves immigrants of color blaming themselves for failing to achieve the American Dream.

Listen to the audio at qtpocart.libsyn.com.

Read the transcript at scribd.com/artactivistnia.

Support the podcast at patreon.com/artactivistnia.

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Left to right: The Town of Babylon, The People Who Report More Stress, Middle Spoon.

I had the opportunity to interview one of my favorite authors yesterday, Alejandro Varela. Keep an eye/ear out for that podcast interview, coming soon. In the meantime, I highly recommend his books!

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New episode alert! I interviewed Charles A. Bush, author of every variable of us, a queer YA novel set in West Philly with a Black girl protagonist and an Indian American love interest.

Listen here.

Read here.

Support the podcast here.

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Super excited to read Alejandro Varela's new book. Even more excited to interview him for the podcast on October 15! (Middle Spoon isn't technically out yet, but I highly recommend his novel, The Town of Babylon, and his short story collection, The People Who Report More Stress. Babylon was a National Book Award finalist!)

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New podcast episode! Bangladeshi Irish novelist Adiba Jaigirdar writes love stories with queer brown girls as protagonists. In this interview, we discuss risk-taking in the publishing industry, racism in Ireland, and do deep dives into three of her novels. We discuss the interracial (Brazilian-Bengali) relationship in The Henna Wars (2020), the interfaith (Hindu-Muslim) relationship Hani & Ishu's Guide to Fake Dating (2021), and representing fatphobia without depressing the audience in The Dos and Donuts of Love (2023). Photo by Aleksandria Rudenko.

👂 Listen to the interview at qtpocart.libsyn.com. 👀 Read the transcript at scribd.com/artactivistnia. ❤️ Support the podcast at patreon.com/artactivistnia.

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My best friend Sawyer Lovett's queer YA novel Shampoo Unicorn comes out tomorrow! It's about queer teens in a small Appalachian town finding community through a podcast. (Inspired by We Want the Airwaves, obviously!) Please support your local bookstore and buy a copy!

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Dona a Emergencia por inundaciones en aldeas indígenas., organizada por Efren CABRERA BARRIENTOS

Emergencias por inundaciones en comunidades de la Amazonia … Efren CABRERA BARRIENTOS necesita tu apoyo para Emergencia por inundaciones e

My friend Efrén is fundraising for Indigenous communities in the Bolivian Amazon whose livelihoods were destroyed by recent floods. Please help if you can. (Once you click the link, click "leer más" and scroll WAY down for English.)

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New episode alert! I interviewed gay Iranian author Abdi Nazemian!

We dive deep into his queer young adult novels: Desert Echoes, about addiction and grief; Only This Beautiful Moment, about three generations (two queer) of an Iranian family; and Like A Love Story, about coming of age at the height of the AIDS epidemic. In the process, he explains what it was like growing up in the '80s, why he's grateful to an ex for forcing him out of the closet, and how Madonna saved his life. Listen here. Transcript available here.

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I interviewed Lamya H, author of Hijab Butch Blues, which won the Brooklyn Public Library's Nonfiction Prize for 2023. We discuss growing up South Asian in an Arab country, moving to the U.S. for college, and trying to find/build progressive queer Muslim community once she got here. Listen here. Read the transcript here. Find more podcast episodes of We Want the Airwaves podcast here.

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Stand-up comic Tan Hoang (photographed by Casey O'Donnell)

Comedian Tan Hoang discusses moving from Vietnam to the Philly suburbs at age 9, transitioning at acting school, and how training as an actor made her a better stand-up on this latest episode of We Want the Airwaves podcast. She also tells stories of hosting Pride events in small towns, being recognized when she's out with her mom, and being a "peacocky-ass kid" and an aspiring rock star in a dying genre. If you live near Philly, catch her at Tattooed Momedy on the last Tuesday of every month!

Listen to the podcast.

Read the transcript.

Learn more.

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This month on the podcast, I interviewed Jonny Garza Villa (they/them), one of my favorite queer YA authors. In this interview they discuss growing up queer and Mexican in a small Texas town, how getting into astrology helped them develop characters, and how pettiness can serve as inspiration. We also do a deep dive into their queer Mexican love stories Fifteen Hundred Miles from the Sun (2021), Ander + Santi Were Here (2023), and Canto Contigo (2024), with a teaser for their forthcoming adult novel Futbolista at the end. Listen here or read the transcript here.

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I was invited to speak at Mt. Holyoke College by my friend, Professor Niamh Timmons. It's virtual, so come through if you can! This Wednesday night (10/9) at 7 p.m. EST.

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New podcast episode, featuring Sonora Reyes, author of The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School!

Growing up, reading and writing were things that made Sonora Reyes feel "dumb" in school. So how did they get from there to writing the Lamba Literary Award-winning, National Book Award-nominated Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School? In this interview, Sonora discusses healing their relationship to writing through fanfiction, growing up with a combination of brown pride and gay shame, and receiving an autism diagnosis later in life. Listen to the interview at qtpocart.libsyn.com. Support the podcast at patreon.com/artactivistnia.

Read the transcript here. Support the podcast here.

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Has anyone else noticed an uptick in queer authors of color winning prestigious literary awards lately? Not just the Lambda Literary Awards, but National Book Awards and others that aren't queer-specific?

Here are my thoughts on some award-winning books by queer people of color I have read in the last few months:

The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. is devastating novel about a Southern plantation where two enslaved men have found comfort in each other. Thought their romantic and sexual relationship is what makes this book "novel," it's about so much more than that. It's about the role of women, the role of ancestors, the importance of the parts of African cultures that were retained despite the Middle Passage... it's about power: racial, sexual, and economic. Above all, it's about what it means to be UNfree. Things you might like about this book: witchcraft and magical realism. Things you might not like: many, many instances of sexual (and physical) violence.

The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School by Sonora Reyes. I loved this book so much, I don't want to spoil anything about it for you. Just read it. It's very funny.

Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo. Another baby-dyke love story (like The Lesbiana's Guide), this time set in SF Chinatown in the 1950s. Touches on the bar raids/lesbian bar culture, the Red Scare, and the threat of deportation that Chinese immigrants lived under as well as the racialized and gendered expectations of young Chinese American women.

All This Could Be Yours by Sarah Thankam Mathews. About a young Indian lesbian working a hellish entry level corporate job in Milwaukee after college. Much of this will be relatable to anyone who has survived their 20s or the isolation of moving alone to a new city. The unexpected aspect is how the book deals with trauma, illustrating how past sexual violence can effect one's ability to form new intimate relationships. The protagonist is flawed, but she's doing her best, under a lot of familial pressure, a very long way from home, which I think makes her sympathetic enough to follow throughout her many bad decisions.

The Town of Babylon by Alejandro Varela. I really loved this book. It's ostensibly about a man reconnecting with an old flame (despite being married) while visiting his hometown to take care of his ailing father. But again, it's about so much more: it's about immigration, about being the first to racially integrate a neighborhood and the hostility that comes with it, about the health impacts of living under the stress of racism and poverty. I was truly impressed by the scope of this novel and the way the author can reduce complicated phenomenon into simple lists demonstrating relationships between cause and effect. Highly recommend.

QPOC books on my "to be read" shelf:

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante

Stay True by Hua Hsu

You Exist Too Much by Zaina Arafat

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H

Of the books by queer people of color you've read recently, which are your faves?

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My books are on sale for pride season. Usually $20 each, you can get all three volumes of Queer & Trans Artists of Color for only $50 (and free shipping) until the end of June. These books include interviews with Janet Mock, Julio Salgado, Vivek Shraya and more! Get the discount here. Full listing of interviewees below the break.

VOLUME ONE (2014) ​CO-EDITED BY TERRA MIKALSON & JESSICA GLENNON-ZUKOFF

Mixed-race queer art activist Nia King left a full-time job in an effort to center her life around making art. Grappling with questions of purpose, survival, and compromise, she started a podcast called We Want the Airwaves in order to pick the brains of fellow queer and trans artists of color about their work, their lives, and “making it” - both in terms of success and in terms of survival.

In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses fat burlesque with MAGNOLIAH BLACK, queer fashion with KIAM MARCELO JUNIO, interning at Playboy with JANET MOCK, dating gay Latino Republicans with JULIO SALGADO, intellectual hazing with KORTNEY RYAN ZIEGLER, gay gentrification with VAN BINFA, getting a book deal with VIRGIE TOVAR, the politics of black drag with MICIA MOSELY, evading deportation with YOSIMAR REYES, weird science with RYKA AOKI, gay public sex in Africa with NICK MWALUKO, thin privilege with FABIAN ROMERO, the tyranny of “self-care” with LOVEMME CORAZÓN, “selling out” with MISS PERSIA and DADDIE$ PLA$TIK, the self-employed art-activist hustle with LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA, and much, much more. Buy book one here.

VOLUME TWO (2016) ​CO-EDITED BY ELENA ROSE

Building on the groundbreaking first volume, Queer and Trans Artists of Color: Stories of Some of Our Lives, Nia King is back with a second archive of interviews from her podcast We Want the Airwaves. She maintains her signature frankness as an interviewer while seeking advice on surviving capitalism from creative folks who often find their labor devalued.

In this collection of interviews, Nia discusses biphobia in gay men’s communities with JUBA KALAMKA, helping border-crossers find water in the desert with MICHA CÁRDENAS, trying to preserve Indigenous languages through painting with GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS, revolutionary monster stories with ELENA ROSE, using textiles to protest police violence with INDIRA ALLEGRA, trying to respectfully reclaim one’s own culture with AMIR RABIYAH, taking on punk racism with MIMI THI NGUYEN, the imminent trans women of color world takeover with LEXI ADSIT, queer life in WWII Japanese American incarceration camps with TINA TAKEMOTO, hip-hop and Black Nationalism with AJUAN MANCE, making music in exile with MARTÍN SORRONDEGUY, issue-based versus identity-based organizing with TRISH SALAH, ten years of curating and touring with the QTPOC arts organization Mangos With Chili with CHERRY GALETTE, raising awareness about gentrification through games with MATTIE BRICE, self-publishing versus working with a small press with VIVEK SHREYA, and the colonial nature of journalism school with KILEY MAY. The conversation continues. Buy book two here.

VOLUME THREE (2019) ​CO-EDITED BY MALIHA AHMED

Is it possible to make art and make rent without compromising your values? Nia King set out to answer this question when she started We Want the Airwaves podcast in 2013. In her Queer & Trans Artists of Color book series, Nia collects podcast interviews — with Black, Latinx, Asian, Middle Eastern and Indigenous LGBTQ writers, musicians and visual artists — which feature both incredible storytelling and practical advice.

In the latest installment of the Queer & Trans Artists of Color series, Nia discusses performing at the White House with VENUS SELENITE, the global nature of colorism with KAMAL AL-SOLAYLEE, writing for Marvel Comics with GABBY RIVERA, using lies to tell unspeakable truths with KAI CHENG THOM, Black mental health with ANTHONY J. WILLIAMS, curating diverse anthologies with JOAMETTE GIL, growing up trans in rural Idaho with MEY RUDE, covering crime as a baby-faced reporter with SAM LEVIN, feminist approaches to journalism with SARAH LUBY BURKE, documenting Black punk history with OSA ATOE, crossing color lines with QWO-LI DRISKILL, fat hairy brown goddesses with PARADISE KHANMALEK, the usefulness of anger with JIA QING WILSON-YANG, transitioning as death and rebirth with ARIELLE TWIST, surviving homelessness and touring the world with STAR AMERASU and much, much more. Buy book three here.

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A panel featuring four of Nia King's favorite artists: Sawyer Lovett, Joe Hatton, Vo Vo, and Cristy C. Road. Zines played a crucial role in reducing social isolation for many of us, whether we were one of the only punks of color in our scene (Nia in Boston, Joe in the Dakotas, and Vo in Sydney, Australia), or the only gay in our rural Virginia town (Sawyer). Cristy C. Road discusses growing up in Miami's predominantly Black and brown punk scene and using zines to process heartbreak and trauma.

Listen here. Read here. Donate here.

More zinesters you should know below:

Mimi Thi Nguyen, Jackie Wang, Lauren Jade Martin, Suzy X, Osa Atoe, Adee Roberson, Lawrence Lindell, Breena Nuñez, Ajuan Mance, the Queer Zine Archive Project, Jenna Freedman/the Barnard Zine Library, and many, many more.