GLAAD Hosts Second Black Queer Creative Summit in Los Angeles

Dedicated to educating and empowering Black LGBTQ+ creatives across multiple sectors of the media industry. GLAAD's 2025 Black Queer Creative was all of that and then some!

To walk into a room and feel time stop is not an experience one forgets easily. On the first night of GLAAD’s second annual Black Queer Creative Summit (BQCS), held Sept. 18–21 at the Sofitel Los Angeles, I felt the world freeze. In that stillness, among laughter and embrace, I saw what so many who curse us could never understand, which is that Black queer life is nothing short of divine.

This was not just a summit. It was a gathering of gods, a conjuring of survival and imagination, a reminder that against all efforts to erase us, we continue to create.

The very architecture of the program reflected that truth. The Black Queer Creative Summit was built to spotlight and nurture the professional growth of Black LGBTQ+ creative leaders. Through keynotes, fireside chats, workshops, and community gatherings, it opened pathways and sharpened tools.

Over three unforgettable nights and two transformative days, we gathered not only to learn from industry professional across media fields, but also to build the kind of community that will outlast careers, chosen kin, creative conspirators, a pipeline for the next generation of storytellers and changemakers.

The Black Queer Creative Summit (BQCS), first convened in 2023, was born of necessity. Black queer artists and storytellers have always been central to the cultural pulse of this nation, yet too often left to work in silos, unprotected and unsupported. GLAAD’s vision was simple but radical—gather us together, equip us with tools, surround us with elders and peers, and remind us that community is the most enduring technology.

This year, that vision deepened and Black queer creatives from across the United States, myself among them, were selected to join in fellowship. For four days, we learned, laughed, danced, collaborated, and began weaving the fabric of chosen family and lifelong partnerships.

The summit was guided by the brilliant and amazingly talented, DaShawn Usher, who we would like to congratulate on his recent promotion to Vice President of Community and Media at GLAAD, and whose leadership has become synonymous with possibility. To be congratulated for this milestone is not enough; it is to be honored. Usher and the GLAAD team created a space that felt like a homecoming; a hug to the selves we once were, a grace to the selves we are now, and a blessing for the selves we will become.

Usher’s presence was quiet thunder, deliberate, visionary, and infused with care. He reminded us that being seen is not a luxury but a right. I was honored to chat with him about the summit he helped birth and here is a recap of that interview:

Saint Trey: Why is BQCS so important for not only GLAAD but for the larger LGBTQ community at large?
DaShawn Usher: The Black Queer Creative Summit is a vital investment in the future of storytelling. For GLAAD, it reflects our commitment to creating pathways for Black LGBTQ creatives to shape the stories that shift culture. For the broader LGBTQ community, it’s proof that when we empower our voices, we strengthen culture and expand representation for us all.

Saint Trey: What do you hope creators will have gained from the summit?
DaShawn Usher: I hope creators leave the Summit with more than just inspiration. That they walk away with tools, relationships, and a sense of possibility. My hope is that they gained the confidence to tell their stories on their own terms, the knowledge of how to navigate industries that haven’t always made room for them, and the connections to a network that will sustain them long after the BQCS ends. Ultimately, I want every creative to feel that their voice matters, that their art has power, and that there is a community behind them pushing for their continued success. Because when they thrive individually, we thrive collectively.

Saint Trey: Considering the times we are living in, what do you think the role of the Black Queer Creative is in our society?
DaShawn Usher: The role of the Black Queer Creative has always been one of truth-telling, boundary-breaking, and world-building. In these times, when our communities are facing renewed attacks, erasure, and attempts to silence us, the role is even more urgent. Black Queer Creatives carry the power to document our realities, reimagine our futures, and hold culture accountable through art, storytelling, and visibility. Every member of the BQCS that applied to be in the 2025 class possessed these attributes and more. 

Black Queer Creatives are the ones who remind society of its blind spots, who insist on humanity in the face of dehumanization, and who show the fullness of what it means to be Black, queer, and alive in this moment. Our role isn’t just to create, it’s to disrupt, to inspire, and to expand what is possible for generations to come.

Adjacent to him stood the entire GLAAD team, whose kindness in navigating our days left none of us feeling lost. This labor of hospitality is no small thing in a world that so often greets us with hostility.

Across four days, the summit offered sessions that fed our minds as well as our spirits. Creator intensives honed craft, while plenary conversations made visible to path from dream to industry. The list of speakers was itself a constellation: Cree Summer, Lena Waithe, Dewayne Perkins, Wendy Raquel Robinson, Sidra Smith, Nicco Annan, and Jason Lee just to name a few.

And on the final day, the energy climaxed in a pitch competition judged by none other than Lee Daniels, whose work has long chronicled the complex, bruised, and brilliant contours of Black and queer life. To pitch before him was not just to seek opportunity but to stand in the lineage of Black storytelling itself.

It is no small irony that at the very moment we gathered, recalcitrant legislatures across the country have been sharpening their knives. State legislatures, courtrooms, and congressional chambers have become staging grounds for the weaponization of queerness. Bills seek to disappear us, and laws aim to banish us from public life. And the current administrations fixes its gaze on our erasure.

And yet, inside the Sofitel, what bloomed was a vision of abundance. Where they legislate silence, we sang. Where they conjured exile, we built home. While they pronounce death, we celebrate life and the living.

This is why the summit matters. This is why the fight is not only against what seeks to destroy us, but for what reminds us of our beauty.

The first night, I had what I can only call a spiritual experience. As the room buzzed with conversation in possibility, everything paused. For a moment, the veil lifted. What I saw was magic; Black queer brilliance shimmering, undeniably. I wished then that those who hate us could bear witness, not to be convinced, but to be undone. To see what I saw would be to recognize that a God dwells in us, that queer folk are themselves chosen, that this form of holiness has always been ours.

GLAAD has found a formula, one as old as the ring shout and as new as a viral post, equip, train, and encourage us not as solitary stars but as a galaxy. The summit may clear that the future of Black queer creativity will not be defined by isolation but by collaboration.

The friendships, partnerships, and kinship formed this past weekend are not fleeting, rather they are seeds. Some will grow into business ventures, others into artistic revolutions, still others into the intimate and necessary safety nets that carry us through.

What I believe will come out of the summit is more than industry access or media strategy. It is a shift and how we see ourselves, not as anomalies but as architects of culture. The sessions gave us language, the mentors gave us maps, and the community gave us mirrors.

The Black queer future will be written by those who refuse to dim, who understand that every attempt at erasure is also proof of our power.

If history is an indicator, we know that at every turn in the struggle for freedom, justice, and love, queer people have stood at the center. From Harlem’s rent parties to the Stonewall uprising, from the ballroom floor to the protest march, we have always been the architects of tomorrow.

And if this nation is to be saved at all, it will not be through the same tired myth of power. Rather, it will be through us, through our art, our passion, our genius, which runs deeper than bone, and wider than time.

The Black Queer Creative Summit was not just the convening, it was a rehearsal for the future. And when the curtain rises, it will be us, Black, queer, and unrelenting who stand at the center stage, as the vanguard, saving the world with nothing but the truth of who we are and the magic that we possess.

Check Out More Photos from the 2025 Black Queer Creative Summit Below

Photography courtesy of  JElijahPhotos / GLAAD 

• View Day 1 Photos
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