Jon Imparato is an award-winning writer, producer, and activist whose career spans decades in LGBTQ+ advocacy and cultural storytelling. For twenty-five years, Jon has served as the Artistic Director of the Lily Tomlin/Jane Wagner Cultural Arts Center, the largest cultural arts program for the LGBTQ+ community in the world. Producing more than 350 events and collaborating with artists including Liza Minnelli, Laverne Cox, Jane Fonda, Billy Porter, and Shirley MacLaine. Jon played a critical role in the progression of the queer community through the arts. His productions garnered over 199 awards, including multiple Ovation Awards and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle’s Award for Sustained Excellence in Theatre. In 2020, he was honored with the LA Stage Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the arts.
A Memoir of Grief, Forgiveness and the Unexpected
In The Good Inside the Grief, Jon Imparato takes readers on a sixty-year journey where death is never far away—lurking, chasing, and shocking. Through stories that are outrageous, heartbreaking, and unexpectedly funny, Jon reveals how grief is more than mourning. It’s a wild dance partner, a mischievous teacher, and ultimately, a force that transforms.
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Recently Published
You Had Me at Afghanistan
"I never would have thought this beautiful, sensitive man was a soldier."
Vagina Warrior
"The show was Eve Ensler's Obie Award-winning, one-woman play, The Vagina Monologues, which had opened Off-Broadway two years before. It was now 1988 and everyone had been waiting for this play to hit Los Angeles. "
The Shaving Cart:
Winner First Place
The Sherman Hewitt
Award for Non fiction
"Call it survivors guilt, call it my need to be the Angel of Mercy, or call it my way to take care of friends and lovers I lost."
Testimonials
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