Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, community and LGBT activist and Executive Director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. He received a BA from Adelphi University and an MFA from Goddard College. His debut novel, Chulito, will be published by Magnus Books in the fall 2011. His work's been published in The Pitkin Review, Los Otros Cuerpos - the first anthology of Puerto Rican queer work, Best Gay Stories 2008, The Best of PANIC!: En Vivo from the East Village and in the upcoming Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing edited by Lázaro Limas and Felice Picano. He co-edited, with Charlie Vázquez, From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction. He's working on his second novel, Hunts Point, a look at a South Bronx neighborhood through a queer Latino lens. He's attended Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, VONA: Voices of Our Nation, Lambda Literary Writers' Retreat and Sandra Cisnero's Macondo Writing Workshop, and has done residencies at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He received an Audre Lorde scholarship from the ZAMI Foundation and a P.R.I.D.E. (Puerto Rican Initiative to Develop Empowerment) Award.Mr. Rice-González has written several plays including Pink Jesus, Los Nutcrackers: A Christmas Carajo and I Just Love Andy Gibb which won Pregones Theater's 2005 ASUNCION Play Reading Series and received a workshop production in May 2007.