BIO

David Acosta, Artistic Director

David Acosta is a poet, writer, curator and cultural organizer. Before co-founding Casa de Duende with his life partner Gerald Macdonald where he is currently its Artistic Director, he worked in public health focusing his work on HIV education and prevention. A long time LGBT health care and civil rights advocate, he was involved with many groups fighting for health care and civil-rights during the 80s and 90s.

He is a published author and poet whose work has appeared in many anthologies and literacy magazines. Among the most notable The Americas Review (University of Texas Press, 1997), American Poetry Confronts the 1990s (Black Tie Press 1990), The Limits of Silence (Asterion Press 1991), Poesida (Ollantay Press, 1995) and Floating Borderlands: Twenty Five Years of Latin American Poetry in The United States, (University of Washington Press, 1998). 

Literary journals include Mayrena, The James White Review, The Evergreen Chronicles, Philomel and others. He is a contributing writer to Queer Brown Voices, the first anthology focusing on documenting the history of the LGBTQ+ latinx movement in the United States and Puerto Rico. He has curated numerous visual arts shows, including Co-curating Stonewall @ 50 in 2019 at the Leonard Pearlstein Gallery showcasing 129 artists which became the largest LGBTQ+ art exhibition in Philadelphia History. 

He was a co-founder of the Philadelphia Latin American Film Festival, and has directed shows for First Person Arts, and has performed at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. He currently serves as the President of the Board of the Da Vinci Arts Alliance, is on the Artist Advisory board of Taller Puertorriqueño, is a member of the board of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and is a founding member of the international artist collective Dissident Bodies with members in the USA, Mexico, Colombia, and India and is a member of the Dislocada artist collective in Philadelphia. He was also co founder along with the artist poet and writer Susan DiPronio of Wicked Gay Ways a literary and arts journal devoted to queer erotica, He is currently at work on several projects including organizing two large photographic exhibitions in the spring and summer of 2022.