Fausto Fernós (born April 16, 1972) is a gay Puerto Rican podcaster, performance artist, and

drag performer Drag is a performance of exaggerated femininity, masculinity, or other forms of gender expression, usually for entertainment purposes. Drag usually involves cross-dressing. A drag queen is someone (usually male) who performs femininely and a drag ...

. He originated and co-hosts the Feast of Fun, an award-winning daily comedy talk show, with his partner Marc Felion. They were the first openly gay couple to win a People's Choice Podcast Award, which they have won five times (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2011), and been nominated for the top prize of "People's Choice" six times in a row. Fernós currently resides in Chicago, Illinois.

Biography

Early life

Fausto Fernós was born in

Santurce, Puerto Rico Santurce (, meaning Saint George from Basque language, Basque ''Santurtzi'') is the largest and most populated Barrios of San Juan, Puerto Rico, barrio of the Municipalities of Puerto Rico, municipality of San Juan, Puerto Rico, San Juan, the cap ...

, in 1972. He is the son of Puerto Rican architect Gonzalo Fernós-López and of the educator Patricia Fernós and is related to the first Puerto Rican cardiologist and its longest serving resident commissioner

Antonio Fernós-Isern Antonio is a masculine given name of Etruscan origin deriving from the root name Antonius. It is a common name among Romance language–speaking populations as well as the Balkans and Lusophone Africa. It has been among the top 400 most popular ...

. Fernós was featured at age of 10 in the cooking section of

El Nuevo Día ''El Nuevo Día'' (English: ''The New Day'') is the newspaper with the largest circulation in Puerto Rico. It is considered mainstream and the territory's newspaper of record. It was founded in 1909 in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and today it is a subsi ...

newspaper about being one of the youngest boys studying the confectionery arts in Puerto Rico. The article focused mostly on the fact he and his sister Talia Fernós were being homeschooled by their mother.

Career

Fernós left San Juan and enrolled at the

University of Texas at Austin The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public university, public research university in Austin, Texas, United States. Founded in 1883, it is the flagship institution of the University of Texas System. With 53,082 stud ...

at the age of 17 in 1989. There he studied performance art with

Linda Montano Linda Mary Montano (born January 18, 1942) is an American performance artist. Early life Born in Saugerties, New York, Montano was raised in a devoutly Roman Catholic household, partly Irish and partly Italian, surrounded by artistic activity. ...

. One of his class projects became a long running performance art experiment, ''SoftMen'', a weekly improvised soap opera which involved fellow performers Chris Rincón and Andrew Johnson performing all the roles simultaneously, in the tradition of plays like '' The Mystery of Irma Vep''. In 1992 he began organizing musically oriented variety shows. They were originally titled ''Big Wig Revue''. While the name suggested traditional cabaret, the goal was to redefine the genre. In 1993 he started the performance art collective Performance Art Church, better known by its abbreviation Pe.A.Ch., with artists Kerthy Fix, Sheelah Murthy, Diana García, Scott Alton Dulaney and Carol Gilson. Most of their shows were short performances hosted by one of the performers tied around a central topic or theme. One show was a tribute to

Lawrence Welk Lawrence Welk (March 11, 1903 – May 17, 1992) was an American accordionist, bandleader, and television impresario, who hosted ''The Lawrence Welk Show'' from 1951 to 1982. The program was known for its light and family-friendly style, and the ...

, while another was a discussion on the Superhero/Comic book genre. Fernós started the Feast of Fools in Chicago in the spring of 1998 with the Chicago

Radical Faeries Radical Faeries are a loosely affiliated worldwide network and Counterculture, countercultural movement blending queer consciousness and secular spirituality. Sharing various aspects with neopaganism, the movement also adopts elements from anarchi ...

as a fundraiser for the struggling Randolph Street Gallery. Obejas, Achy
''"Feast of Fools" - A Celebration of Diversity. Colorful Fausto Fernós - An Appropriate Host for Radical Faeries.''
''Chicago Tribune'' March 31, 2000. Section: Friday; Page 28. In 2004, Fausto Fernós turned to audio and video blogging as a way to promote his unusual live musical variety shows. On February 8, 2005, the first ''Feast of Fools'' podcast was posted on his LiveJournal blog, FaustoFun. Within several weeks of posting shows, the audience for the online show grew beyond the size of the local Chicago audience. In 2009, the name of the show was changed from ''Feast of Fools'' to Feast of Fun to better reflect changes in the program's design and functionality. Along with his partner Marc Felion, Fernós currently hosts the ''Feast of Fun'' podcast, one of the top rated talk show for an

LGBTQI LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The group is ...

audiences on iTunes.Heidemann, Jason A.
Personal Best: Cheers to the Queers Who Made Our City Better in 2006
'

Time Out Chicago ''Time Out'' is a global magazine published by Time Out Group. ''Time Out'' started as a London-only publication in 1968 and has expanded its editorial recommendations to 333 cities in 59 countries worldwide. In 2012, the London edition became ...

December 28, 2006 - January 3, 2007. Issue 96; Section: GLBT, retrieved August 29, 2011.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Fernos, Fausto 1972 births 21st-century Puerto Rican comedians Gay comedians LGBTQ podcasters Living people Entertainers from San Juan, Puerto Rico Puerto Rican gay entertainers Puerto Rican LGBTQ comedians Puerto Rican male comedians Puerto Rican podcasters Radical Faeries members

Biography

Early life

Career

References

Further reading

External links