Monica Palacios

Monica Palacios is a trailblazing Chicana lesbian playwright, stand-up comedian, solo performance artist, and academic who earned her BA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. Emerging in the early 1980s as one of the absolute first openly queer Chicana comics on the San Francisco stage, she became a foundational architect of the Latinx LGBTQ+ performance movement. Her multi-decade artistic accolades include formal resolutions by the Los Angeles City Council recognizing her cultural advocacy, a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Center for Chicana/o Studies at UCSB, and selection as a Lambda Literary Distinguished Writer. Palacios has taught extensively at UCLA, UC Riverside, and Loyola Marymount University while touring internationally with her comedic solo plays. She is an out lesbian artist whose work permanently revolutionized queer Chicanx self-determination