This week, as we continue our June Pride Month Series, we enjoy a heavy dose of a Tuesday version of Super Soul Sundays, care of the magnificent Nico Grelli (they/them). A multi-hyphenate, queer af, multi-disciplinary artist, Nico brings us home to a place where we can all learn to accept ourselves and fight not just to be heard, but to experience aggressive joy in a space of "otherness". Join us for this special episode where vulnerability is the dish du jour and tackling difficult creative topics in the midst of a changing world becomes the status quo. 

In their own words, Nico is a NON-BINARY, ITALO-AMERICANO, MULTI-LINGUAL FILMMAKER, SCREENWRITER, DIRECTOR, and ACTOR (aka super geek, multi-hyphenate, pasta-making, music-obsessed art queerdo, yaaass!) Originally from San Francisco, Nico is a proud drop out of the London Film School's Masters in Filmmaking program and they create genre and hybrid-genre TV Series' and Films--worlds that are queer-saturated, boldly diverse, muscular and tender, and that break down norms with an irreverent and passionate wrecking ball. Nico's goal is to elevate and evolve genre film and tv making, and to place characters, communities, and circumstances in the forefront of stories in which they've been--if included at all--often sidelined, stereotyped, and ridiculed. And to move beyond stories that make otherized, marginalized people and their communities more palatable to Straight Cis Anglo Heteronormative audiences.

Currently, Nico is developing two 6-episode, 30 minute TV series, a Historical Crime Drama Feature Film, and A Creature Feature Trilogy. Nico and their writing partner Nidia Medina's Pilot/TV Series "The Triumph of Tatty Bojangles" was a recent Finalist for The Orchard Project's Episodic Lab.  Nico has been the recipient of three HowlRound Micro-Grants as a screenwriter and playwright--commissioned by J.Nicole Brooks through their National Playwrights Residency Project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and was a recent Quarter-Finalist in the SF International Screenwriting Competition. Nico wrote and directed the short films 'NUTELLA' and 'OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS' and directed two episodes of the acclaimed webseries 'BULK' by C. Julian Jiminez and Deneen Reynolds-Knott.  Nico was the creator, director, writer, DP, Editor, and Composer for their LATE NIGHT PUBLIC ACCESS STONER QUEERDO WEBSERIES: Pier Valentino's: SHOW WITHOUT END!, which has also existed as a live show (supported by The So-Fi Festival and The Tank), and a Cabaret--and Pier often made pre-Pandemic appearances at places like Shawn Randall's Symphonics Live at The Bowery Poetry Club, and Fear/Love at 67 Local. Nico's acting work in Theatre has garnered a New York Innovative Theatre Award, and a Jeff Award Nomination, and is now primarily focused on Acting for TV and FILM. Nico is a member of Theatre Breaking Through Barriers, and is a frequent teaching artist with places like Epic Theatre Ensemble, The 52nd St Project, and The Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and spent many years staging violence in NY and Regional theatres as a side hustle. For more info, visit www.nicgrelli.com.

This Pride Month, enjoy a voice like no other as we spend some time with Nico. Be healed and be inspired as we take you down a path you've never experienced. Unusual Creatures, indeed.