BAAM at The Gem Presents Come See Me in the Good Light with Richard Blanco

Join BAAM at The Gem on Friday, November 14th for the opening night of ‘Come See Me in the Good Light‘. Our friend and Poet Laureate, Richard Blanco, will introduce the film at 6:00 pm.

Two poets, one incurable cancer diagnosis. Andrea Gibson and Megan Falley go on an unexpectedly funny and poignant journey through love, life, and mortality.

Andrea Gibson was an American poet, performer, activist, and Colorado’s ninth poet laureate. In 2008, Gibson won the first Women of the World Poetry Slam. Gibson was known for their work involving gender norms, queer identity, social issues, and LGBTQ+ topics.

Gibson was the author of several poetry collections, including You Better Be Lightning (Button Poetry, 2021). They also won awards and honors such as first place for poetry in the 2023 Feathered Quill Book Awards and the gold medal for poetry in the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards. Gibson’s other books include Lord of the Butterflies (Button Poetry, 2018), Pansy (Write Bloody Publishing, 2015), The Madness Vase (Write Bloody Publishing, 2015), Pole Dancing to Gospel Hymns (Write Bloody Publishing, 2008), and the nonfiction book How Poetry Can Change Your Heart with co-author Megan Falley (Chronicle Books, 2019). Gibson also edited We Will Be Shelter: Poems for Survival (Write Bloody Publishing, 2014), an anthology of poems that address social justice issues. Their work was also named as a finalist multiple times for the Goodreads Choice Awards.

In addition to their literary achievements, Gibson released seven albums of spoken word and performance poetry, including Hey Galaxy (2018), Truce (2013), and Flower Boy (2011). Gibson was also a four-time Denver Grand Slam Champion and earned top placements in national competitions, including fourth in the 2004 National Poetry Slam and third in both the 2006 and 2007 Individual World Poetry Slams. They were featured on international platforms such as the BBC, C-SPAN, and Air America.

Originally from Calais, Maine, Gibson relocated to Boulder, Colorado in 1999 where they lived until their death from ovarian cancer on July 14, 2025.

Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us. He has also authored the memoirs FOR ALL OF US, ONE TODAY: AN INAUGURAL POET’S JOURNEY and THE PRINCE OF LOS COCUYOS: A MIAMI CHILDHOOD. Blanco has received numerous awards, including the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize, the PEN American Beyond Margins Award, the Patterson Prize, and a Lambda Prize for memoir. He was Woodrow Wilson Fellow and has received numerous honorary degrees. Currently, he serves as Education Ambassador for The Academy of American Poets and is an Associate Professor at Florida International University. In April 2022, Blanco was appointed the first-ever Poet Laureate of Miami-Dade County.

Social Hour at 5:00 pm

Introduction by Richard Blanco at 6:00 pm

Screening of ‘Come See Me in the Good Light’ at 6:15 pm

Tickets are Pay What You Can, benefiting future BAAM programming.