As the MC of Bohemian Night, Castillo volunteers to perform first, allowing the others a few extra minutes to prepare. She opens with what’s clearly a crowd favorite: “Curly,” a poem that compares being gay to having curly—or nonstraight—hair. “I am going straight this week,” she begins. “I dread doing it./It is actually a waste of time but it is something different./I do it once a year sometimes.” Castillo describes a persistent mother subjecting her to curlers, flatirons and other treatments; the words are deeply emotional, but Castillo recites them quickly, playfully. “I hated the process./To be straight was not worth all that pain.” After prolonged applause and catcalls from the crowd of about 25, she shares another poem as an encore.

Castillo beams while on stage, and her grin lingers as she watches the next performer, Bruno Aponte, scale the stage to perform interpretive dance and read verse in a multicolored robe, sunglasses and hoop earrings.

Now a Spanish teacher at Manhattan’s Bread & Roses Integrated Arts High School, Castillo moved to New York from the Dominican Republic when she was 16. A lifelong poet (one of her favorite childhood pastimes was mailing original song lyrics to Menudo), she turned to writing in part to express her unique perspective as a lesbian immigrant. Unfortunately, though, New York’s Latino literary circles and workshops didn’t always value what she had to say: Gay content, she deduced from their coldness, was off-limits, so she restricted her work accordingly, which hurt. “If I wrote about being gay at all, it was really encoded,” she says. “Only a gay person could tell.”

Soon, she realized self-censorship and shame would only ruin her writing, so she turned to the work of Latina lesbian poets—among them, Cherri Moraga and the late Gloria Anzaldúa—for strength and inspiration. After joining and becoming a board member of Gay and Lesbian Dominican Empowerment, Castillo founded Bohemian Night to fight stigma within the Latino community and ensure that other local artists had a safe place to share their work.

Castillo says participant Debbie Cherena embodies the series’ goals. A Puerto Rican immigrant to Washington Heights who paints, photographs, and writes poetry, Cherena has shared her visual work at Bohemian Night since its inception, after some coaxing from Castillo. Tonight, for the first time, she’s mustered up the strength to read her poems in Spanish. Clearly nervous, she pauses frequently, but onlookers—even those who wandered into the event by accident—cheer her on.

The event, Cherena says, helped her feel more at home in a strange city. “When I first started coming, I was new in New York and I knew no one,” she says. “I met a lot of good people, and Bohemian Night helped me a lot—both with my art and my spirit.”

Ultimately, Castillo takes pride in the accessibility and welcoming tone of the event, which attracts a healthy mix of respected artists and novices who can learn from and help one another. “It doesn’t matter what level of artistry you have—if you’re a published poet or if you’re reading for the first time,” she says. “Here, you can be comfortable in front of everyone.”

The next Bohemian Night is Wed 30 at No Parking.