Beyond Representation: Storytelling Through the Queer Gaze

This Pride month, join us at Jefferson Market Library for an evening of conversation about queer storytelling, featuring authors Jade Song, Zee Carlstrom, and Julián Delgado Lopera in dialogue with Jacob Aplaca.

Rather than treating queerness only as an identity category or secondary theme, these writers take queerness as a starting point for exploring cultural heritage and community ties. Centering novels like Song's Chlorine, Lopera's Fiebre Tropical, and Carlstrom's Make sure you die screaming, this conversation will consider how themes of political struggle, regional identity, and generational trauma take on new meaning when subject to the queer gaze of storytellers and readers alike.

The panel will be followed by a live performance by Krystofer Maison, exploring queer stories in song!

Register now. This event will take place in person and online. 

To join the event in person | Please register for an In-Person Ticket. Doors will open 30 minutes before the program begins. For free events, we generally overbook to ensure a full house. Priority will be given to those who have registered in advance, but registration does not guarantee admission. 

To join the event online | Please register for an Online Ticket. A livestream of this event will be available on this NYPL event page. To receive an email reminder shortly in advance of the event, please be sure to register! If you encounter any issues, please join us on NYPL's YouTube channel.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Julian Delgado Lopera, photo credit: Vilerx Perez

Julián Delgado Lopera is the author of The New York Times acclaimed novel Fiebre Tropical (Feminist Press 2020), the Winner of the 2021 Ferro Grumley Award and a 2021 Lambda Literary award; a finalist of the 2020 Kirkus Prize in Fiction and the 2021 Aspen Literary Prize. Julián is also the author of ¡Cuéntamelo! (Aunt Lute 2017) an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Julián currently resides in Brooklyn where he is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and Contemporary Latine Literature at CUNY.  His second novel, Pretend You're Dead and I Carry You is forthcoming in May 2026 from Liveright, an imprint of Norton.

Jade Song

Jade Song is an artist and the author of novels I Love You Don't Die and Chlorine, which was lauded as “visionary and disturbing,” named a winner of the Alex Award and the Writer’s Center First Novel Prize, selected as a New York Times Editor's Choice, and translated into five languages. Her third book, Ox Ghost Snake Demon, is a short story collection based on the Chinese zodiac animals forthcoming January 2027. They pole dance and live with too many books in Brooklyn.

Zee Carlstrom

Zee Carlstrom is a genderqueer writer from Illinois. Their debut novel, MAKE SURE YOU DIE SCREAMING, is a finalist for the 2026 Lambda Literary Awards and was named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2025.

Jacob Elias Aplaca

Jacob Elias Aplaca (he/him/his) is a First-Year Class Adviser and Associate Faculty at NYU's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. Jacob received his PhD in English from the CUNY Graduate Center in 2024. His dissertation, Bad Becomings: Autobiographical Writing, Queer/Trans Theory, Melancholia, was awarded the Paul Monette-Roger Horwitz Dissertation Prize by CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies. His academic writing can be found in WSQ and Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly.

Krystofer Maison
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Krystofer Maison is a theatrical storyteller with a voice that refuses to be confined, effortlessly stretching across genres, moods, and nearly three and a half octaves. His artistry was shaped by a decade of classical and musical theatre training, a love for romantic composers like Puccini and Rachmaninov, and a fierce connection to modern icons like David Bowie, Elton John, Lady Gaga, Adam Lambert, and Pink. With “Glitter Rinse Repeat”. Maison is beginning to release his debut album, a biomythography about his journey back to being an artist that blends operatic drama with synth-pop shimmer. But beneath the glam, genre jumps, and glitter lies a core of honesty. He writes like someone who’s lived through it, and sings like someone who made it out the other side.