Featured Presenter: Marga Gomez

Marga Gomez is a native New Yorker who makes San Francisco her home and identifies as a bicoastal Gemini. As the daughter of a Cuban comedian and Puerto Rican dancer Marga made her stage debut in New York at age 7 and was hooked ever since. Her long and colorful career includes achievements in comedy, theater, film and television. She tours nationally and internationally as one of America’s first openly Gay comics. Her awards include “Best Comedian 2009 and 2008 Reader’s Choice Award” from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Her college appearances landed her on the 2009 Campus Pride Hot List as one of their “top 25 LGBT Favorites.” Marga’s television credits include LOGO’s “Wisecracks” and “One Night Stand Up,” Comedy Central’s “Out There,” HBO’s “Comic Relief VI,” and Showtime’s “Latino Laugh Festival.”

Her comedy career is profiled on Here Network’s “Laughing Matter’s” (also available on DVD.) Marga Gomez is the author/performer of eight solo plays: "Long Island Iced Latina", "Los Big Names", A Line Around The Block, Memory Tricks, Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay, Jaywalker, The Twelve Days of Cochina and "Proud and Bothered", which, along with her collaboration with Carmelita Tropicana on an erotic horror comedy Single Wet Female, have been produced nationally, internationally and in New York at The Public Theater, The 47th Street Theater, Performance Space 122, Dixon Place and La Mama. She frequently collaborates with director David Schweizer on her theater pieces.

Marga is a Drama Desk award nominee and the winner of the GLAAD Media Award for Off-Broadway Theater, Theater LA’s Ovation Award for “Best Featured Actress,” New York’s Hola Award for “Best Solo Performance.” Marga’s acting credits include roles in the Off Broadway and national companies of The Vagina Monologues working alongside Rita Moreno, Vicki Lawrence, Lisa Ling and Jo Beth Williams. Selections from Gomez’s work have been published in several anthologies including Extreme Exposure (TCG Books), HOWL (Crown Press), Out Loud & Laughing (Anchor Books), Contemporary Plays by American Women of Color (Routledge) When I Knew (Harper-Collins) and Out of Character (Bantam Books.)