HELLO

HOW DO YOU PULL TOGETHER an issue that is true to your vision of showcasing Pride and the Black experience while in the midst of a nationwide lockdown caused by a pandemic unlike anything we’ve seen in a century? If the year is 2020, you DM people.

I sent messages to people like Beija Marie Velez (page 60), who I met years ago after casting her brother in a student film. Even then, it was clear that Beija was a force. Simply by existing in a photograph, on in a video game, she obliterates boundaries in the minds of young queer women of color who could never imagine themselves in the spaces she frequents. I know Beija has this effect. People who see her on the walls in my studio have said so.