Monica Palacios

In 2016, Palacios performed her short play Say Their Names in the international theatre effort "After Orlando" in response to the Orlando shooting at Pulse Nightclub. That same year, she did a presentation about her career titled "Queer Chicana Lesbian Activism Through Theatre & Comedy" at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, she was a panelist at a World AIDs day panel called "Queer Latinidad: Histories of AIDS Consciousness from Los Angeles" at Pitzer College. Palacios does much of her activist work in universities. For example, she performed during Gay and Lesbian awareness month at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and MIT in 1994.

Her work is known for being unapologetically queer, despite the homophobia that had permeated Latinx communities since long before she began performing. Palacios acknowledges that she often takes uncomfortable topics and makes them more palatable to herself and her audiences with physical comedy, but not without challenges and some pushback. She continues to produce works like The OH! Show, where discussion of sex is intentionally ubiquitous. This is evident in the forward of the play, in which she declares, "...we are sexual beings until we die, or until your partner removes the vibrator from your hands—whichever comes first."

From 1992-2000, Palacios was the director of VIVA, Lesbian and Gay Latino Artists of Los Angeles. She organized cultural events in Los Angeles County which combined art and activism. The goal of these events was to inspire and promote queer, Latino artists in her community, and the majority of her works are developed to empower them.

Monica Palacios is a Chicana playwright, solo performer, director, and self-proclaimed "international hip chick." She attended Chico State University and transferred to San Francisco State University, at which she earned a BA in Cinema with a concentration in screenwriting. She has been producing theatre works for over three decades. In her specifically Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian performances, Palacios emphasizes activism and community organizing. She combines aspects of race, culture, and sexuality in her performances, and she was one of the first openly lesbian/queer stand up comics in 1982 in San Francisco. She has created several one-woman shows, plays, and screenplays. Her poems, plays, and anthologies are taught in universities and examined in scholarly settings, usually in the fields of LGBTQ Studies, Chicano Studies, and Feminist Studies. Palacios works with students of a wide range of ages (from elementary students to college students) and has served as a writer, director, and dramaturge for over 400 student theatre works.

In over three decades, Palacios has written numerous plays, standup sets, poems, and articles. She began her solo work in 1982 and has dozens of performances.