Assotto Saint

Assotto Saint, born Yves Francois Lubin, was a Haitian-born American writer, performer, publisher, and AIDS activist. He contributed heavily to increasing the visibility of contemporary Black queerness in the cultural arts movement of the 1980s and early 1990s. 

In his work, Saint drew on his Haitian heritage through music, incantations, and radical politics to weave together a tapestry of literature celebrating life in the face of death and embracing politics as a way to change the world. A central figure in the Black Gay movement, he served as a mentor to a generation of up-and-coming Black, gay community members and carved out a space for voices often left behind. 

Saint's poetry, fiction, essays, song lyrics, and plays are gathered in Sacred Spells: Collected Works (Nightboat Books, 2023). As publisher at Galiens Press, he published two volumes of his poetry, titled Stations and Wishing For Wings, and edited two seminal anthologies of Black gay writing: Lambda Literary Award winner The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets and Here To Dare: 10 Gay Black Poets. He also wrote plays, including Risin' To The Love We Need, New Love Song, Black Fag, and Nuclear Lovers. 

In 1990, Saint was awarded both the Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the James Baldwin Award from the Black Gay Leadership Forum. He lived in New York City with Jan Urban Holmgren, his life partner and cofounder of Metamorphosis Theater and the techno-pop band Xotika. Saint died June 29,1994, of AIDS.