Episode 122's Dr. Martin Patrick, a British author, playwright, and educator, returns with 20 questions to interview Our Black Gay Diaspora Podcast's Erick Taylor Woodby. Among those listed as the National Black Justice Collective’s “2025 Cohort of 100 Black LGBTQ+/SGL Emerging Leaders to Watch,” Woodby is a Los Angeles-based American writer and podcast producer committed to building bridges across borders.

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Emil Wilbekin is an award-winning American journalist, media executive, curator, and professor at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. He's also the founder of NATIVE SON, “a movement, community, and platform of Black gay/queer men who inspire, empower, and celebrate each other.” Emil is the former editor-in-chief of Vibe and Giant and editor-at-large at Essence. While at Vibe, he helped to elevate the careers of music artists like Mary J. Blige, Maxwell, and Aaliyah.

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Diana Bamimeke is an Ireland-based Nigerian independent curator, art writer, and transdisciplinary artist based in Dublin. Their socially engaged practice spans text, exhibition-making, performance, pedagogy and other artistic interventions. Guided by critical and political frameworks—including Black feminist & queer thought, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism—Diana strives to understand themselves and their world. Their writing has been published by VISUAL Carlow, Visual Artists Ireland News Sheet, Douglas Hyde Gallery, Paper Visual Art, and Frieze.

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Dr. Martin Patrick is a British author, playwright, and educator. He began his professional career writing for the theatre, but found his true calling writing crime and romance novels. Dr. Patrick's literary works include JJ’s Isolation, Love Both Ways, Son of a Dish, The Labyrinth of Families, and his most recent, The Torment of Desire. With 30 years of experience in teaching creative writing in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, the United States, and Sweden, he was an international professor in drama, film and cultural studies.

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Anastacia-Reneé is an American writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, playwright, former radio host, and TEDx speaker. She is the author of Forget It, Sidenotes from the Archivist, and Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere. Side Notes From The Archivist was selected as one of “NYPL Best Books of 2023” and the American Library Association's (RUSA) “Notable Books of 2024.” Anastacia-Reneé is a recipient of the James W. Ray Distinguished Artist Award and was selected by NBC News as part of the list of "Queer Artist of Color Dominate 2021's Must-See LGBTQ Art Shows," for “(Don’t Be Absurd) Alice in Parts”, an installation at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle, Washington.

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Jay Penn is an American writer, producer, and singer. His 2024 album, Sky High Sunsets, features the songs “Euphoria (Say Yes)” and “Money”. In 2020, he released the EP, Before Then. His 2018 EP is titled Pennding. Jay is also the creator, writer, and lead in the SLAYTV web series, Love & Us. It centers around the lives of three 30-something Black gay men who navigate dating and friendship in Los Angeles.

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This special episode features Dr. Harvey Kennedy-Pitt, a British Trustee for Portfolio for Global Health & Development for ReportOUT, a UK-based global human rights organisation for sexual and gender minorities. Dr. Kennedy-Pitt is a “globally oriented health strategist and public health practitioner committed to advancing health equity on an international scale.” He’s worked with other organisations like the NHS, World Health Organisation, and Unstukk.

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Chiamaka Okike is a Nigerian multidisciplinary writer who has edited for women’s issues in Isele Magazine and spoken at various workshops and panels. Her writings have appeared in The Kalahari Review, Narratively, Wilson Quarterly, Edinburgh’s Literary Salon, Brittle Paper, and ActiveMuse. Chiamake's works include Perihelion, Chewed Glass, Return of the Sun. She's also the author of the novella, Seeri.

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Steve Morris is a British LGBTQ+ Travel Curator for Outbound Adventures, an agency where he curates travel adventures for LGBTQ+ couples and small groups. Steve’s ten years of world travel as a flight attendant gave him a front-row seat to how one can relieve the stress and experience the magic of international travel. With Outbound Adventures, he offers “travel with heart and structure”.

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Rodrigo Tadeu is a Brazilian international advocate, storyteller, and human rights & public policy strategist. With a background in international law and public affairs, he is a “passionate advocate for justice, equity, and transformative leadership.” Rodrigo is also a Global Campaigns Officer for ReportOUT, an organisation founded by Drew Dalton, that is “protecting the human rights of sexual and gender minorities in the United Kingdom and globally.”

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André Wade is the State Director for Silver State Equality, Nevada’s statewide LGBTQ+ civil rights organization. André leads legislative, policy, and government affairs work, as well as fundraising, political and advocacy activities. In May 2018, he was one of The Advocate's ‘Champions of Pride’. In May 2023, André was featured in Modern Luxury Las Vegas magazine as one of the 15 Most Influential People. His book, Seven Ways to Disappear: The Book within the Book, is “a creatively insightful guide to the reinvention of the self.”

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This episode features "The Karamazovs," Rami Margron and Jordan McCree. Rami is an American actor, playwright, dancer and physical comedian. Their résumé includes being a founding member of Reconnect, an African-diaspora dance theater company, a resident artist at San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater, and acting in televisions series like Law & Order, New Amsterdam, and Ray Donovan. Jordan is an an American composer who has collaborated on projects with Clubbed Thumb, Theatre Horizon, The Wilma Theater, and the Philadelphia Theatre Company. He is also a member of the hip-hop collective, ILL DOOTS.

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Anthony Oakes is an American comedian, writer, actor, and producer who is taking comedy by storm. His clean, yet edgy, southern, intellectual, witty humour will have you reeling with laughter. He is a Washington, D.C. resident who has performed at The DC Improv, DC Drafthouse, The Bier Baron Comedy Loft, Busboys and Poets, and The Wonderland Ballroom. Anthony has also been at The Apollo, The John F. Kennedy Center, The DC Improv, The Broadway, The Westside, and The Greenwich Village Comedy Clubs in New York City, and The Laugh Factory, Comedy Store, Flappers, and The Ice House Comedy Club in Los Angeles. In 2021, he was the recipient of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser's prestigious Mayoral Arts Award for Excellence in the Performing Arts. 

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Mark Broomfield (PhD, MFA) is an award-winning American scholar and artist, and an Associate Professor of English and Founding Director of Performance as Social Change at SUNY Geneseo. He has written for numerous publications in the areas of race, gender, sexuality, dance performance, and ethnography, and lectured, choreographed, and directed across the United States. Broomfield's book, Black Queer Dance: Gay Men and the Politics of Passing for Almost Straight (2024), explores Black masculinity and sexual passing in American contemporary dance. As a dancer, he has performed with national and international repertory companies, such as Cleo Parker Robinson Dance in Denver, Colorado, and worked with some of the most diverse and recognised African American choreographers in the American modern dance tradition.

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Anthony Green is the American playwright of the hit plays When Boys Exhale and Gay Love Jones. When Boys Exhale is based on the 1995 film, Waiting to Exhale, and has travelled to Nashville, Atlanta, and Houston. Anthony is also the founder of Cagedbirds Productions, a Washington, D.C.-based company that “has affirmed the black, LGBT lived experience on screen and on stage.” It also produces 'The Writers Forum', an annual panel of Black LGBTQ+ writers from across the U.S. who discuss the craft, life and business of writing.

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Percy Mthombeni is a South African chef and the director at Vezabuhle Caters. Percy’s culinary skills are from his Zulu mother, and in an article on Obsidian Travel Club's site, he said, “…each dish becomes a sacred connection to roots, preserving flavours and rituals.”

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American Rapper and Songwriter, LYRICALMAR, is a Washington, DC native whose love of luxury takes him beyond the realm of hip-hop to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with music style icons like Janet Jackson, Grace Jones, and Lil Nas X. His latest EP is called MARCHIVES, and features the songs God’s Gift (My Turn) and On A Roll. His 2020 debut album, Begin, had the single Black Money, which featured Wuhryn Duman. It earned him the PopSmashRadio Award for the socially conscious song. LYRICALMAR is part of the lineup for the 2025 World Pride Music Festival.

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British Author and Poet Dean Atta has been described as “the Gil Scott-Heron of his generation”. In 2014, his debut collection, I Am Nobody’s Nigger, was shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize. Dean’s other literary works include his 2024 memoir, Person Unlimited: An Ode to My Black Queer Body, the young adult novels The Black Flamingo and Only on the Weekends, and the children’s book, Confetti: A Colourful Celebration of Love and Life. His latest YA novel is I Can’t Even Think Straight. Dean’s 2025 animated short, Two Black Boys in Paradise, is based on a poem and had its UK premiere this past March 2025 at the BFI Flare London: LGBTQIA+ Film Festival.

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Rashid Owoyele is the Berlin-based Nigerian-American Managing Partner and Transdisciplinary Designer at Transekt Agency in Berlin. They’re also an innovation and career coach whose practice centres around “…a questioning of what exists and how to evaluate that through social practice and envisioning collaborative ways to engage communities and groups in processes of innovation.”

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Vernal Scott is a British author and consultant on EDI with over four decades of experience. Vernal was the Head of Equality & Diversity Unit at Oxford University and the Diversity and Inclusion Manager at Essex Police. In 1991, he organised the historic Reach Out and Touch HIV/AIDS Procession with Flowers—an event privately financed by George Michael and starring Whitney Houston. Vernal’s upcoming memoir, UK Black, will be published via Amazon on 16 April for the Kindle ebook and on 18 April for the paperback.

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