StS Reading for Casa Ruby

Written By Holly Mason

Friday, May 6th, 7pm

Epicure Café

11104 Lee Hwy

Fairfax, VA 22030

Located in Washington, D.C., Casa Ruby provides shelter and a community center for LGBT homeless folks. The organization’s founder, Ruby Jade Corado, tells me that they are just a “local organization addressing a national issue.” Ruby says that LGBT youth even outside of D.C. and the surrounding areas will come to the center (or be dropped off by parents) after having been kicked out of their homes due to their identity. Ruby says, “These kids are still human. Even though their parents have thrown them away, they still say, ‘I miss my mom.'” Ruby’s heart to help this community is immense.

But Casa Ruby’s resources are running thin. Funding is tight and there are many people in need of the organization’s services. And so we at So to Speak have decided to help this organization out by collecting donations at our 2016 So to Speak Reading for Casa Ruby.

The event will be held Friday, May 6th @ Epicure Cafe in Fairfax, Virginia. Beginning at 7pm. The event is FREE, but we are asking that attendees bring donations for Casa Ruby. We are collecting nonperishable food items, hygiene products (such as shampoo, conditioner, soap, toilet paper, and deodorant), as well as cash donations that will be used to purchase supplies for Casa Ruby. If you would like to donate but are unable to make it to the event, please email Holly Mason at Hmason2@gmu.edu.

Holly Mason

Holly Mason Badra is a queer, Kurdish American writer living in Northern Virginia. She is the curatorial editor of Sleeping in the Courtyard: Contemporary Kurdish Writers in Diaspora (The University of Arkansas Press). Her work has been published or is forthcoming in Mizna, The Markaz Review, Everything is Political, Poet Lore, Manoa, Rowayat, Meridian, Asymptote, The Arkansas International, The Northern Virginia Review, The Adroit Journal, The Rumpus, SWWIM Everyday, Circumference Magazine, CALYX, and elsewhere. She is the associate director of Women and Gender Studies at George Mason University. She reads for Poetry Daily and serves as the board vice-president of Henar Press.

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