Victor Yates

Victor Yates is an award-winning writer, storyteller, poet, and performance artist, whose work explores Black identity, sexuality, history, culture, and the complexities of belonging. Based in Los Angeles, Yates has built a multidisciplinary career spanning literature, poetry, spoken word, visual media, television, and online storytelling.

Yates is a two-time Lambda Literary Award winner, receiving the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Debut Fiction for A Love Like Blood, followed by the Judith A. Markowitz Award for Emerging LGBTQ Writers. A Love Like Blood, published by Hillmont Press, examines race, religion, Americanism, sexuality, and identity through the story of a Black gay protagonist. The novel also received an Honorable Mention from the New England Book Festival. Lambda Literary praised Yates as a prolific writer whose work brings an intersectional perspective to contemporary issues affecting Black and LGBTQ communities.

His literary work extends beyond his debut novel. Two of his poems appeared in the anthology For Colored Boys, edited by Keith Boykin, a collection that received the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award–Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award. His poem, “Five Words” was published in The George Floyd Poetry Anthology by the Los Angeles Press. His essay “The Three Picture I.D. Rule” was published in the 2021 anthology Unheard Voices by IAP Press. Yates has also written for LGBTQ and cultural publications and has taught writing workshops for young people, LGBTQ communities, and people impacted by HIV/AIDS.