Hello, and thank you for your interest in participating in the Black Queer Grief Salon 2026-2027 Cohort! The purpose of the BQGS Initiative is to cultivate a space of communal witness, care, political imagination, and psycho-spiritual support that will equip participants as transformative griefworkers in their own communities. In identifying how grief operates in their personal lives, communities, bodies, and histories, participants will leave this experience with concrete action plans toward transformative care within their area of practice. 

Participation will include a) monthly, virtual convenings where fellows will co-exist in a space of catharsis, collaboration, and connection, and b) a culminating public-facing project demonstrating their development and strategic next direction for their work. Participants must be a) within the Black diaspora and b) 2STLGBQIA+.

Topics will include (but are not limited to):

• What grief means beyond death and mourning
• Black queer grief as collective, historical, embodied, and political
• The intersections of anti-Blackness, heterosexism, transphobia, dispossession, and erasure
• Grief connected to family rejection, displacement, criminalization, medical harm, invisibility, and loss of safety
• Why grief is often silenced in Black queer communities
• Building community agreements rooted in consent, care, confidentiality, and accountability
• Grief as a pathway toward connection, survival, and transformation

Please note: To ensure the intimacy, care, and attention warranted for this caliber of experience, only (8) applicants will be selected for this cohort. Thus, non-selection is not an indicator of deficiencies or unimpressiveness on your part. Moreover, our team will seek to actively create new engagement opportunities for non-selected applicants who maintain an interest in future collaboration.

For more information, please contact program facilitator, Joshua Baker, Ph.D., LMSW, at joshua.baker@tkosociety.com.