Noel Alumit is a novelist, actor, and activist. He was born in Baguio City, The Philippines, and grew up in Historic Filipinotown, Los Angeles.

Alumit earned his BFA in Drama from the University of Southern California and is currently working toward his Masters in Divinity at the University of the West. He received an Emerging Voices Fellowship from PEN Center USA West and a Community Access Scholarship to UCLA’s Writers Extension, studying fiction and the personal essay form.

Alumit’s first novel Letters to Montgomery Clift received many awards, including the Stonewall Book Award, Violet Quill Award, the Global Filipino Literary Award and the Gold Seal.

Alumit created not one but two one-man shows. His one-man show The Rice Room: Scenes from a Bar received critical praise and played to sold-out houses in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Boston, and Philadelphia. It was voted one of the best solo shows of the year by the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

For his efforts in art and activism, Noel Alumit was listed as one of Out magazine’s “Out 100 for 2002” and named one of Genre Magazine’s “Men We Love.” He has been involved in the AIDS field for over twenty years, most of them with the Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team. Alumit is a founding member of the Los Angeles County HIV Prevention Planning Committee, served as a California Commissioner on Asian and Pacific Islander Affairs, sits on the Advisory Board for the UCLA Art/Global Health Center, and provides feedback as a Community Advisory Boardmember for the Childrens Hospital Healthy Young Mens Study.

Recently, Alumit was honored with the James Duggins Award, a prize that recognizes talented mid-career gay writers. In an interview, his advice to emerging writers was as follows:

Find that story that you and only you can tell. What stories do you have to tell? I also want to stress the importance of establishing a literary community. This community has been vital to my development as a writer, and I highly encourage any serious writer to establish his/her support network as soon as possible, both for the emotional support we need as writers, but also for readers. And on this note: pick varied, trusted readers. Some of the best readers in my writing group have a life experience way different from my own. Be careful who you lock out.