Sitting in a dark corner of a Brooklyn café with her back facing the audience, Diana Reyes reaches for a slender paintbrush and carefully dips it into a vibrant shade of blue

When fly walks onto the stage, her presence ferociously commands the attention of her audience.

Last year, during my first trip to the Big Apple, I had the pleasure of meeting 25-year-old Alicia Boone at three a.m. on the two train headed toward Brooklyn. It was a chance meeting, one of mutual respect and a refreshing sense that young people here were making ‘art their business.’

As Obama concluded yet another eloquent oration to the resounding applause of thousands of supporters, my mind began to entertain a notion that had become increasingly prevalent as the Democratic Primary began to fully develop and Obama’s bid for the party’s nomination became less of an ambitious senator’s aspiration and more of a reality.

This issue: The Boys of Baraka by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, Millions by Danny Boyle, and Blackout by Jerry LaMothe.

In the memoir, She’s Not There, Jennifer Finney Boylan reveals what it felt like to grow up as the wrong gender and his desire to be a woman.

i avoid direct eye contact with
her,
because she always knows the contents
of my pockets,