Dear friends,
As many of you know, last Friday Nightboat and many literary and arts organizations received news that our 2025 grant from the NEA had been terminated. At the moment, we are uncertain if we will receive the remaining third of our $30,000 grant, money which would go directly to supporting our artists, staff, and editors. But, after 20 years of publishing queer, experimental, and transgressive literature in America, we aren’t surprised—because this isn’t new.
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These voices from the past remind us:
We must fight our numerous detractors, who will try to block our visions as well as the world’s visions of us. Nor can we cover our own eyes from the glaring sunlight and pretend that it is night.
—Assotto Saint
Interdisciplinary writer, performer, and activist Assotto Saint’s artistic practice is integral to Black and LGBTQ activist movements worldwide, both historic and present, but the majority of his writing was out of print. Nightboat published Sacred Spells, their collected works, edited by Michele Karlsberg, with a foreword by Pamela Sneed and an introduction by Jamie Shearn Coan, in 2023.
The faggots have accepted all that they know and see as the way things are and so can no longer be shocked. The men live in the fantasy that everyone is like them and so are constantly shocked.
—Larry Mitchell
Larry Mitchell had such difficulties finding a publisher for The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions that he founded his own press, Calamus Press, to put out the book. Nightboat reissued the out-of-print text, with a preface by Tourmaline and introduction by Morgan Bassichis, in 2019.
self-appointed censorship clerks
who won’t support art
but will support war
poverty
lung cancer
racism
colonialism
and toxic sludge
that’s their morality
that’s their religious conviction
that’s their protection of the public
& contribution to family entertainment
what do they care about art
—Jayne Cortez
Jayne Cortez was a poet of ceaseless, clear-eyed resistance, whose writing and activism faced wave after wave of government repression. Nightboat will release Firespitter, her collected poems, edited by Margaret Busby and with a foreword by Sapphire in August 2025.
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This loss of funding is profound. But we aren’t surprised, and we aren’t afraid. We believe in the power of community coming together in times of crisis and state repression to support each other. A donation today helps to bridge this new gap, and affirms our deeply held—and historically grounded—belief that resilience is a collaborative project. You can support Nightboat and the many presses that have lost funding by buying our books, coming to events, requesting our titles at your local bookstore and library, or making a donation.
In solidarity,
The Nightboat Staff and Board