The Just Kin Reading Series is a collective healing space intentionally curated by and for members of the LGBTQ+ community held on the second Saturday of the month from 4-7 PM at Semilla Cafe + Studio in Hartford, Connecticut. Each workshop will feature a reading and Q&A with a Queer or Trans writer exploring the themes of love, intimacy, and pleasure, followed by a writing exercise, conversation, and ritual.

• m. mick powell on March 9

• Alejandro Heredia on April 13

• danilo machado on May 11

Light refreshments will be provided via Semilla Cafe, Salty Queer Bakery, and Likkle Patty Shop. Participants are required to wear high quality masks (e.g. KN95 or N95) in the space unless eating or drinking. 

Space is limited and tickets are sliding scale $0-$100.

The Just Kin Reading Series is held in loving memory of Cecilia Gentili (1972-2024), Trans immigrant, sex worker, artist, activist, and mother.

ABOUT JUST KIN

Just Kin is a cultural organizing project of the People’s Saturday School dedicated to creating sanctuaries where Queer and Trans people can feel at home and tell our stories, centering Black and indigenous people, (im)migrants, and survivors. Co-founded by varun khattar sharma and danilo machado, Just Kin launched with an arts festival in August 2023, which featured the Hartford premier of “(Un)Documents”, a play written and performed by Jesús I. Valles which inspired the project’s title.

ABOUT THE PEOPLE’S SATURDAY SCHOOL

The People’s Saturday School (TPSS) is an emerging worker-owned cooperative of facilitators based in Hartford, Connecticut. Guided by the principles and practices of care, accountability, and cooperation, we support individuals and organizations working towards collective liberation. We offer workshops, training programs, arts & culture events, and consulting and peer counseling services. Learn more at our website: www.saturdaycooperative.org

FACILITATOR BIOS

Born in Medellín, Colombia, danilo machado is a poet, curator, and critic living on occupied land interested in language’s potential for revealing tenderness, erasure, and relationships to power. 

A 2020-2021 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow, their writing has been featured in Hyperallergic, Art in America, ArtCritical, Art Papers, Poem-A-Day, The Recluse, GenderFail, No, Dear, Long River Review, TAYO Literary Magazine, among others. They are the author of the collection This is your receipt and is not a ticket for travel (Faint Line Press, 2023) and the chaplets wavy in its heat and to be elsewhere (Ghost City Press Summer Series, 2022/2023).  

An honors graduate of the University of Connecticut, danilo is Producer of Public Programs at the Brooklyn Museum and formerly Curatorial Assistant at Socrates Sculpture Park. danilo is the curator of the exhibitions Otherwise Obscured: Erasure in Body and Text (Franklin Street Works, Stamford, CT, 2019-20), support structures (Virtual/8th Floor Gallery, featuring the 2019-20 cohort of Art Beyond Sight’s Art and Disability Residency), We turn (EFA Project Space, featuring SHIFT Residency cohort, 2021). 

danilo is the author The Post Post Post newsletter, and has contributed writing to exhibitions at CUE Art Foundation (Even there, there are stars), Miriam Gallery (The earth leaked red ocher), Abrons Art Center/Boston Center for the Arts (A Language for Intimacy), Second Street Gallery (Franscisco Donoso: Pathways), Real Art Ways (Kevin Quilles Bonilla: As the palm is bent, the boy is inclined), and No Longer Empty. As an independent programmer, danilo has produced and co-produced programs and series at The Studio Museum in Harlem, CUE Art Foundation, and Carriage House Theater. 

danilo has performed work at venues including National Sawdust, Poetry Project, Bowery Poetry Club. As DJ Queer Shoulders, danilo has DJ’d as a part of programs and fundraisers with The Shed, ART PAPERS, CultureHub, Daughter, Crown Heights Mutual Aid, Connecticut UndocuFund, and Connecticut Students for a Dream.

They are working to show up with care for their communities.

CURATOR BIO

varun khattar sharma (they/he/she)is a Punjabi Queer non-binary facilitator, writer, designer, curator, strategist, uncle, auntie, and survivor living in Hartford, Connecticut. 

They are a Co-Op Navigator Fellow with reSET, a co-founder of the People’s Saturday School, and a facilitator with Co-Creating Effective & Inclusive Organizations and Beyond Diversity 101. They previously co-curated “Homoland Security: Come In Gurl!” (2021), UndocuPoetry Week (2020) and “Breaking Bread & Borders: Conversations about Food, Migration & Home” (2020). 

A former high school teacher and community organizer, they believe deeply in our capacity and responsibility as humans to heal and transform.