A few months ago, I wrote this essay for WIN Magazine, and now it’s out: Artist/Activist Partnerships: Five Tips For Booking Your Benefit.  It also includes a basic history of the Hip Hop Against Homophobia series.  If you’re an activist event organizer, it may be worth a read.  I think it’s important to be very intentional (a word I use about a hundred times in the essay) about collaboration, and that’s really what the piece is all about.  Feel free to share.

A few other random updates:

1. My poem REACH is featured at Indie Feed (audio) and at Button Poetry (video). If you like spoken-word, these are both major resources you should know about.

2. I’m currently booking shows for Fall, Winter and Spring, both spoken-word shows and/or Guante & Big Cats shows. If you have any contacts (especially at colleges and universities– activist organizations, hip hop or spoken-word organizations, social justice student centers, performing arts committees, etc.), shoot me an email at elguante@gmail.com and we can set something up.

3. We didn’t win the National Poetry Slam, but we did eat a lot of southern food. I have some great videos of my team— will post them this month sometime. Also got into a constructive discussion on my Facebook page about slam, democracy, elitism, sexism and more.

4. Ayo I’m on Wikipedia now. I don’t know who set up the page, and there are a couple of small errors, but thanks. Here it is. Guess I can retire now.

5. Finally, big new Guante & Big Cats album announcement coming up soon. We finished the second round of mixes today and now just have to send it away to get mastered and duplicated. We’ll be releasing the tracklist, album cover, release party details and some videos and songs over the next two months. The album is called YOU BETTER WEAPONIZE and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.  Stay tuned.