Lawrence Everett Forbes (LEF) is a 2025 Lambda Literary Fellow and former Hurston-Wright Award finalist who received his MFA in Writing from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, and WIRED Magazine. He is currently working on a father-son memoir about himself and his sometimes-stubborn 91-year-old West-Indian father, a US army veteran with dementia.
LEF describes his painting as “inspired by a combination of abstract expressionism (Jackson Pollock), Chinese calligraphy (which he learned during a monthlong stint in China, back in 1995), and the urban graffiti I grew up observing in ’70s & ’80s era New York City.”
The paintings are often a rhythmic representation of the music he listens to and the collision-collusion of color, a nod to his mixed heritage (West Indian father + African-American mother). The layered lettering is meant to illustrate the way the instruments and harmonies intermingle.
Bohemian Dork 