Steven Reigns

Steven Reigns
Born	(1975-11-11) 11 November 1975 St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Occupation	Poet, Educator
Nationality	United States
Alma mater	The University of South Florida Antioch University
Genre	poetry
Notable awards	Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Artist in Residency Grant for 2007, 2009, 2011.

Steven Reigns (born 1975) is an American poet, artist and activist.^[1]

Biography

Early years

Reigns grew up in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri with one sister.^[2] His writings address his troubling upbringing.^[3] Reigns frequented the library at an early age and discovered the works of writers that had a huge impact on him: Sapphire, Essex Hemphill, Dorothy Allison, Edmund White, Christopher Bram, Anaïs Nin, Irene Zahava, Amy Scholder, John Preston and Audre Lorde.^[3]

Community Work

Reigns graduated from the University of South Florida. Later he organized Loving in Fear, a gay, lesbian, bisexual, queer literary event in response to Hillsborough County’s lack of gay, lesbian, bisexual or queer programming.^[4]

He recounted the experience in a Watermark Magazine article about National Library Week.^[5]

He was the first to speak to the commissioners about their discriminatory policy at the library.^[6]^[7]^[8]

He was Literary Director for The Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual Center of Tampa for two years.^[9]

Reigns poetry, art, and activist work have made him a valuable speaker. Reigns has been keynote speaker at Rollins College,^[10] Stonewall Library,^[11] and at the American Library Associations Annual Breakfast.^[3]

Reigns has been active in the HIV community due to the person loss of loved ones due to AIDS.^[2] He headed a program in Pinellas County doing HIV outreach and testing to minorities in the inner city.^[12] He has also assisted on a panel with Los Angeles County on standards of care for HIV. In 2011, he ran a support group that utilized film as a projective tool at Being Alive.^[2]

Artistic Involvement

Reigns has participated in several collaborative online projects, such as Heather Champs’ Mirror Project^[13] and Anni Holm’s Getting My Name Out There.^[14] He was also a character in Hilary Goldberg’s In The Spotlight.

His artwork has been shown in galleries throughout the country.^[15]^[16] Most recently at The Advocate gallery part of Rainbow Gobblins exhibit in May 2007.^[17]

In January 2007, Reigns embarked on a 7 years living/art project under the mentorship of Linda Montano.^[18] His project has received praise for being innovative and easy to understand.^[19]

In 2011, he organized The Gay Rub, a participatory project gathering GLBTQ rubbings from across the globe to then view the public historic commemorations at once.^[20] Reigns sees this project as "activism and educational but it’s also artistic."^[21]

Scholarly Work

He is still motivated and moved by his early library influences. He is an Anaïs Nin scholar^[22] and presented at The Sapphire Symposium.^[23]

In February 2008, Reigns organized Anais Nin @ 105 at the Hammer Museum. Reigns said, “Nin bonded and formed very deep friendships with women and men decades younger than her. Some of them are still living in Los Angeles and I thought it’d be wonderful to have them share their experiences with (Nin),”^[24] It was through the event Reigns met Bebe Barron, who made her last public appearance at Anais Nin @ 105. Reigns spoke at Bebe Barron’s memorial.^[25]

Publications

Reigns has written four books of poetry, Your Dead Body is My Welcome Mat, Ignited, Cartographyand Inheritance. .^[1] He has been published in Velvet Mafia,^[26] a poetry chapbook on gay and lesbian’s response to war, Outside the Green Zone,^[27] was Mr. November in the Most Intriguing and Sentual Male Poet Calendar.^[28]

In June 2008, Reigns edited the anthology My Life is Poetry. The first of its kind, a book of autobiographical poetry by gay, lesbian, and bisexual seniors. The preface was written by Dorothy Allison and portraits were taken by Jenny Walters.^[29]^[30]

In May 2011, Sibling Rivalry Press.^[31] released Inheritance. Praised as, "an unadorned picture of a troubled childhood made all the more powerful by his use of simple, direct language and an economy of words that draws aside the curtain of metaphor and puts these episodes into the dangerous language of reality."^[32]