Charles Rice-Gonzalez is the author of Chulito, his debut novel that received awards from the American Library Association and the National Book Critics Circle, and broke new ground as the first novel detailing a gay Puerto Rican experience in New York City. He co-edited From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction, his writing has appeared in nearly a dozen anthologies, and his play I Just Love Andy Gibb was published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology.
While at MacDowell he brought printed copy of a draft of his novel, Hunts Point and made line edits in order to prepare it for agent queries; organized four short stories and edited one novella to be added to the collection that will be titled A Loving Place, and prepped them for two pending book proposals; and generated six chapters (78 pages) of new work for the creative non-fiction book Defiance and Triumph: A Bronx Queer History. He was recently named a 2022 PEN America Writing as Activism Fellow and his essay "How Much is Too Much?" on culturally responsive pedagogy was published in the anthology Teaching Black (University of Pittsburgh Press, December 2021).
Portrait by Lisa Kehane
