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FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | MAY 2024 51 We hope you are enjoying the warm spring weather we are presently experiencing. To take advantage of this, we will host our next potluck on Saturday, May 18. Information on the location and the time of the event is available on our Facebook page or via our email (rainbowgroup@myyahoo.com). This month our selection for the Famous LGBT Americans series is the gay Mexican American playwright, Luis Alfaro, a winner in 1997 of the very prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation "Genius Grant." This award has been described as "perhaps the most coveted award in academia, the arts and sciences. You can't get nominated, and the pool of candidates is a tightly-held secret." According to the MacArthur Foundation website, it is a "no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential." The winners can spend the money any way they wish and do not need to report back to the foundation. Alfaro was awarded for his work as a playwright, poet, performance artist, instructor, and community organizer. His award amount was $230,000. Alfaro was born in 1963 and raised in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles. His work as a performance artist, playwright, and poet addresses a variety of areas, including race relations, sexual orientation, gender, and wealth. He explores the ways in which cultural and social practices shape personal and group identities. His work has focused on the immigrant and working- class Latino communities of Central Los Angeles and populations often overlooked in the mainstream theater, such as domestic workers, "homeboys," heroin addicts, and garment workers. He is also known for his activism, an example being his co-founding of VIVA!, a collective of gay and lesbian Latino artists. Alfaro is a tenured associate professor of Dramatic Writing at the University of Southern California and Director of the Master of Fine Arts Dramatic Writing Program. Previously, he taught at the California Institute of the Arts (Cal-Arts). He has received numerous awards, including a PEN America/Laura Pels International Foundation Theater Award for a Master Dramatist, a Ford Foundation Art of Change Fellowship, and a Mellon Foundation Fellowship. He is the only playwright to have received two Kennedy Center "Fund for New American Play" awards in the same year. For more information on Luis Alfaro, please go to the Rainbow Group's Facebook page or request a copy via our email. ~ Dan Hazeltine and Frank Galvan Rainbow Group