Are you looking forward to spring as much as we are? Besides the anticipation of warmer temperatures, there are quite a few exciting projects on our radar from Black queer creatives that we believe should be on yours too. From new book releases to theatrical productions, and even an LGBTQ+ bus tour. There’s something for every Black LGBTQ+ person and our allies to enjoy as queer content creators continue to elevate the stories and experiences of our community from the page to the screen. This is not a comprehensive list. And while we’re excited to share our picks with you, we’d love to hear about the Black queer projects that have you excited about their spring arrival. Dive into our selections below.

These men are taking their pleasure into their own hands.

While this reality may not be revolutionary, especially considering the data from one study that suggests 92% of American men masturbate, these three Black gay men are doing two things the majority of the population refuse to do—they’re talking openly about their masturbatory practices, with two of the three men exclusively identifying as solosexual—individuals who prefer masturbation (or “bating” as it’s commonly called) over other forms of sexual activity. For these men, and perhaps, many more like them, getting off solo is not a substitution for “the real thing,” their sex lives are real and so are the mind-blowing orgasms they experience multiple times a day.

Between December 2019 and May 2020, Joshua Henry Jenkins, co-creator of “Black, Gay, stuck at home,” lost two of his closest Black queer friends—Dr. Louis F. Graham, an Assistant Professor in the Department of Health Promotion and Policy at The University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Marcus R. White, an Assistant Professor of Dance at Arizona State University. The sudden loss was incomprehensible and rippled throughout the marginalized and artistic communities in which their work was rooted, specifically, but not limited to the cities of Chapel Hill and Greensboro, where Jenkins first encountered the former romantic partners as undergraduate students at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill during the early stages of creating KuchuQwanzaa—a 7-day celebration and expression of Black LGBTQ+ cultural principles, values, and ideals that expands on the more widely known Kwanzaa celebration from December 26, to January 1.

“The idea of interrogating or flipping Kwanzaa on its head to be Black and queer meant that Louis [Graham] and Marcus [White] wanted to also interject those ideologies into the name,” Jenkins says.

Before the digital explosion of Black gay blogs and social media in the mid-2000s, “CLIK,” a glossy full-color monthly magazine created specifically for the Black gay community dominated as the publication of choice for a decade. Co-founded by Lewis Nicholson, who served as the first editor-in-chief, and Dwight Powell, initially a publisher and graphic designer who assumed the role as editor-in-chief after Nicholson’s departure; ultimately becoming the magazine’s longest-running editor and the personality most widely associated with the magazine, which quickly became a Black LGBTQ+ staple.

One of the goals in softball is to return to the same home plate you started from, but Jeremy Nobles’s journey through the sport led him to a new world.

“Growing up, being around the same people, doing the same thing every day and every weekend,” Nobles says, describing his life as a 20-year-old in Moundville, Ala., population less than 2,500. “And just knowing in the back of my head that I like guys and there’s no way the people I hang around with would acknowledge or understand that. It’s hard living with that kind of secret with nobody to talk to, and trying to find myself—I just didn’t know what to do.”