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411 Hillsborough Street • Raleigh, NC 27603

Gratitude is profound. Please join the Raleigh LGBT center, Saturday November 5th for our inaugural monthly Center OpenMic night. This month’s theme is Thanks and will focus on readings celebrating how thankful we are to be alive. International performers Cornelia McDonald and Malcolm Randall will be hosting this event. We encourage all members of the community to join together to lift up our young people through spoken word, dramatic readings and testimonies of gratitude. Whether you choose to be a participant or an observer, you are invited to an evening of thanksgiving to show our LGBT youth that there is a supportive community of people who very much value their lives. We have all faced times in our lives where we felt utterly alone. This night represents a showing of solidarity in the Triangle that we will not stand by and let one more person feel isolated because of who they are. All life is precious and deserves love. Doors open at 6:30 pm, performances start at 7:00 pm.

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About the Performers:

Cornelia McDonald, the author of I Wanna Tell You My Story, is an internationally renowned speaker and dramatist, born in rural North Carolina in the early 1950’s. She was the daughter of a sharecropper and the great-great-grand daughter of slaves. Although regularly beaten by her father and publicly ridiculed for her tall stature, dark skin, and big lips, Cornelia was determined to find her place in life. That searched introduced her to her indelible beauty. Growing up in the pre-civil rights era, Cornelia has overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles and knows well the fight for basic human rights. She has transformed the abuse she suffered and turned it into breathtaking poetry, songs, and a one-woman play. Cornelia continues to take her message around the world, bringing hope to the masses. Next year she will be premiering her new play A Calling to the Village at Stars Theatre in Fuquay NC.

NPR Featured poet Malcolm Randall, grew up in rural communities and was always on the outside looking in. After leaving school in the 11th grade as a result of a lifetime of bullying, he set out to make life his greatest teacher and to find his place in the world. He got his start at the legendary NuYorican Poetry Café in NYC and has since performed in universities, middle and high schools, centers for abused children and detention centers. His one-man poetry show was featured at off-off Broadway’s The Here Arts Center in NYC. After traveling for four years with ten Tibetan monks, Malcolm moved to Raleigh NC to take care of his mother who was battling breast cancer. In 2010, Malcolm lost his partner to suicide and mother to cancer two months later. Malcolm has since released his first book, The Malchemist (apprentice), which is a collection of original poetry and prose celebrating the beauty of love and loss.