© 2025 New England Public Media

FCC public inspection files:
WGBYWFCRWNNZWNNUWNNZ-FMWNNI

For assistance accessing our public files, please contact hello@nepm.org or call 413-781-2801.
PBS, NPR and local perspective for western Mass.
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Big Gay Speakeasy, Queer Joy Fun Fair, Word Nerd

We’re exploring all the colors of the rainbow, cause it’s PRIDE MONTH, ya’ll.

The Queer Joy Chorus recently became the Queer Joy Collaborative and is celebrating its first year in the new incarnation. This Sunday, they’ll throw the first-ever Queer Joy Fun Fair with activities, singing, food and more at Smith Vocational High School in Northampton. We chat with Mara Levi and Micki McInnis about the shift inside this ever-growing organization.

And in the Berkshires, an innovative incubating theater teams up with a New York-based theater company to tell lost histories in song. The Big Gay Speakeasy happens June 13-14 in Adams, so we speak with Adams Theater’s artistic director, Yina Moore, and Life Jacket Theatre’s artistic director, Travis Russ, about the production, their collaboration and how we can use music to tell the tales of those lost.

Plus, Word Nerd Emily Brewster, senior editor at Merriam-Webster, digs into a listener question about poisonous words by exploring the similarities and differences of baleful, baneful, bale and bane.

Big Gay Speakeasy
Baneful and baleful with the Word Nerd
Queer Joy Fun Fair

Christopher “Monte'' Belmonte is host and executive producer of NEPM's The Fabulous 413. He was born and raised in Massachusetts and has been a radio host in western Massachusetts for the last 20 years — the last 17 of them as host of Mornings with Monte on The River 93.9/WRSI.
Kaliis Smith is a radio host and producer for NEPM's The Fabulous 413. She was most recently host and producer at The River 93.9/WRSI where she appeared on Mornings with Monte for the Nerdwatch segment and hosted weekday evenings.