Join us for the republication of Donna Minkowitz’s masterful 2013 memoir Growing Up Golem, in which queer journalist Minkowitz “presents herself as a golem, created and controlled by her wacky, needy, and sexually abusive mother” (Julie R. Enszer). Golem, which was shortlisted for both a Lambda Literary Award and for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize, tells the story of Minkowitz’s attempts to transform from golem to human, and to be “a servant no longer for her mother, her sister, or the women she dates” (Enszer).

The late celebrated novelist Ellis Avery said, “In Growing Up Golem, Donna Minkowitz comes to the unlikely, brilliant conclusion that she must have been her mother’s golem, a manikin formed from clay and garbage and sacred letters… Exciting, startlingly fresh. Donna Minkowitz takes a dazzling leap of fancy and then writes a new bridge into being behind her for the rest of us to follow.”

Copies of the new edition of Growing Up Golem will be available for purchase at the event. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Growing Up Golem for April 9 event” in the subject line.

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by buying books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.

All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

Donna Minkowitz is a writer of memoir, journalism, and fantasy. Back in the day she served as the Village Voice’s main columnist and reporter on queer politics and culture. She is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me about Sex, God, and Fury, which was about covering the antigay Christian right undercover as a radical lesbian journalist. She also wrote DONNAVILLE, a novel Chills at Will called “a master class in world-building” and which Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore said “shocks the senses to open the gates between myth and belonging.” She has also written for the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Slate, Salon, and New York magazine. She is the winner of a GLAAD Media Award.

Griffin Hansbury is the author of Some Strange Music Draws Me In (winner of the Stonewall Award), Feral City (finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), and Vanishing New York, as well as The Nostalgist and Day for Night, a collection of poems. A trailblazer in the field of psychoanalysis, he was also the first analyst to practice and publish as openly transgender.