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We Want the Airwaves: QPOC Artists on the Rise

Is it possible to make art and make rent without compromising your values? Since 2013, Nia King has been interviewing queer and trans artists of color to find out. Here's what she learned. Find more episodes at niaking.com. Logo by Joamette Gil. Photo of Nia interviewing Gabby Rivera by Tecpatl DeSequoia.

Nov 2, 2025

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...


Oct 5, 2025

Charles A. Bush is a Black queer writer from West Philadelphia. In this interview, we dive deep into their first book, Every Variable of Us, a love story between two high school girls, one Black and one Indian American. Listen in to find out how much of the story is based on Charles' real life. It's much more than...


Jun 27, 2025

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),...


Apr 6, 2025

Gay Iranian author Abdi Nazemian joins Nia to drop some intergenerational wisdom. 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...


Mar 2, 2025

Lamya H., the author of Hijab Butch Blues (she/they) is a bit of an enigma. In the memoir (and this interview), she never reveals which South Asian country she was born in or which Middle Eastern country she grew up in, and Lamya H. is a pen name. However, the book is not sparse on details when it comes to...