Venmo: @Monica-Palacios-26.   PayPal: PayPal.Me/GroovyPedestrian

 

Bring Monica to your campus, cultural center, theater, gallery for her solo shows, multi-character plays, writing performing workshops, a course in your department. 

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Monica Palacios is a Chicana lesbian playwright and solo performer living in Los Angeles, creating work promoting the LGBTQ Latinx experience. Palacios is one of the first Chicana lesbian comics to be out and proud on stage during the 80s in San Francisco when the AIDS crisis was raging and homophobia was rampant. Because of her triumphant history, national and international scholars have critically engaged her work in academic journals, books, dissertations and conference panels. Numerous undergraduate and graduate courses regularly incorporate her live, published and video archived work into their curricula. Monica is a 2025 and 2024 United States Artist Fellow Nominee. Her testimonial: La Llorona Loca through My Chicana Lesbian Lens, was published in The Journal of Lesbian Studies March 2023. She is featured in the new queer film: STAND UP, STAND OUT: The Making of a Comedy Movement, winner of Best Documentary Santa Fe Film Festival 2021, about the first gay comedy club in the nation in San Francisco during the 1980s, directed by David Pavlosky. Monica was a 2023 Semi-Finalist for the National Fellows Playwright Program at Dramatist Guild Foundation. She received an AGE In The Arts Legacy Playwright Grant 2023. Palacios received the Nancy Dean Lesbian Playwriting Award 2020 by Open Meadows Foundation. Monica was selected as the Lucille Geier Lakes Writer-in-Residence at Smith College, Spring 2019. Monica was granted The McKenna Guest Theater Artist Award 2019 at Holyoke Community College. Palacios received a Postdoctoral Rockefeller Fellowship from UC Santa Barbara, enabling her to write, direct and produce her play: Sweet Peace. Monica has worked with iconic playwrights: Maria Irene Fornés, Luis Alfaro, Migdalia Cruz and Paula Vogel. She is a proud member of The Macondo Writers Workshop, an association of socially-engaged writers working to advance creativity, foster generosity, and serve community. Her latest publications include: Jota Anthology by Korima Press 2024; Practicing Transgressions by Third Woman Press 2024; Scenes for Latinx Actors: Voices for The New American Theatre by Smith & Kraus Publishers 2018; Pulse/Pulso: In Remembrance of Orlando by Damaged Goods Press 2018; Game Changers, Lesbians You Should Know About by Robin Lowey Press 2017, and IMANIMAN: Poets Writing In The Anzaldúan Borderlands by Aunt Lute Press 2016. Monica has taught at: Smith College, UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, UC Riverside, Holyoke Community College, Loyola Marymount University, California State University Long Beach, California State University Los Angeles, Claremont College, Pomona College and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Palacios has received numerous awards, including from the City of Los Angeles as a Latinx LGBTQ Trailblazer 2017. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa declared October 12, 2012 “Monica Palacios Day” honoring her 30-year career as a pioneering Chicana lesbian writer/performer.