BGSQD

TELL 45: Lost and Found
2018-06-09 19:00 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Lost and Found is the theme for the 45th installment of TELL. Featuring Maybe Burke, Thomas Dolan, Ronnie Mae Painter, and Melissa Rocha.
$10 suggested donation to support the Bureau and the performers. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in with Rebecca Drysdale, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in festivals globally. Drae won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. She once reigned as Miss LEZ and also got dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell hosts and curates a monthly queer storytelling show called TELL at BGSQD. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.

Maybe Burke is a New York based theatre artist and trans advocate interested in telling the stories that haven’t been told. They are excited by new material that can honestly and realistically portray marginalized groups of people. They have worked with Joe’s Pub, Cherry Lane Theatre, Ars Nova, La Mama, HERE Arts Center, The Flea, The Duplex, and more. Maybe is a co-curator of the Trans Theatre Festival at The Brick and the founder of The Trans Literacy Project. Artistic Associate, Honest Accomplice Theatre. BA Directing, Pace University. maybeburke.com @believeinmaybe

Thomas Dolan is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies at George Washington University, focusing on Middle Eastern diaspora and race. A recent recipient of the Calouste Gulbenkian Global Excellence Scholarship, Thomas’ research has also been supported by the Institute for Middle East Studies, Dr. Philip M. Kayal Fund for Arab American Research, Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, Bentley Historical Library Bordin-Gillette Fellowship, Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom and the Armenian General Benevolent Union. He is an alumnus of NYU, the New School’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, and Yale University. Last semester, Thomas was a visiting researcher at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and has recently published in Huffington Post, Muftah, and HowlRound. Prior to returning to graduate school, Thomas performed and produced work at Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center, Town Hall, Studio 54, among others.

A native New Yorker born and raised in Astoria, Queens, Ronnie Mae Painter is a Brooklyn-based artist who’s primary media are painting on canvas and works on paper. She is also a published author and poet. Her literary works can be found in the anthology “Are Italians White”, edited by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. Painter’s experiences growing up as a woman of African-American and Italian-American biracial descent during the 1970s are transcended through both her visual and literary works in energetic movements and a shouting tone.

Melissa Rocha is a brooklyn based comic. She’s very nice and is looking forward to spending the evening with you.

On Euphoria: A closing celebration with Jarrett Key, Anuradha Golder, and Marco DaSilva
2018-06-08 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
For the closing of Marco DaSilva‘s solo exhibition No Reason To Be Careful, please join us on Friday, June 8th, for an evening of performance and celebration at the Bureau in response to the notion of Euphoria. With performance pieces by Jarrett Key, Marco DaSilva and music by Anuradha Golder.

Marco DaSilva‘s No Reason To Be Careful remains on view at the Bureau until Sunday, June 10th.

Jarrett Key was born in Seale, AL. Key attended Brown University where they studied Theater Arts and Public Policy. Since moving to New York, Key has been featured in exhibitions and residencies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, La MaMaGalleria, The Columbus Museum, Gallery 67, Swiss House/MGLC, Galerija Kresija, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Caelum Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Outlet Fine Art, Former Pfizer Pharmaceutical Factory, Secret Dungeon, La Maison D’Art, Shanghai Theater Academy, and East Meet West Gallery. Key has work is in the collections of the Schomburg Center, MoMa Library, The Metropolitan Museum of ArtLibrary, among other institutions. The HAIR PAINTING series has been featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Harlem Arts Festival in Marcus Garvey Park, as well on television: SLAY TV, and CBS 2 NYC. Key will be moving back to Providence to pursue an MFA in Painting at RISD.

Anuradha Golder is a Bronx-based, Bangladeshi-born DJ, curator, playwright, organizer, and zine-maker. Sonically, she plays around with Afro-diasporic and indigenous-to-the-Americas instrument samples. She has performed with the Buenos-Aires political arts collective Hiedrah as well as their sister group Salviatek in Montevideo. Golder also spearheads the multi-lingual Club Etiquette zine, which focuses on issues both broad and trivial that rise in nightlife and set tangible guidelines practiced at their accompanying parties. She has a BFA in Theatre with a concentration in Playwriting from Barnard College.

Marco DaSilva is a native New Yorker whose symbol-based paintings explore hybridity through the intersections of his Brazilian-American, queer identity and manic experience. He has exhibited works at The Brecht Forum, IMAGE Gallery, Heath Gallery, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art among many others. Last year he was a NYFA Artist as Entrepreneur fellow and is currently a Visual Arts fellow for Queer Art Mentorship’s 2017-2018 cycle. He creates work at his studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Marco has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY New Paltz.
While in the waiting room at Bellevue Hospital in his manic state, DaSilva was extremely hyper and had an unlimited supply of uninhibited energy. While listening to his party playlist through big headphones, he danced uncontrollably, sweating non-stop for hours while everyone sat and stared. In this state he felt like a star, and loved every moment of it. DaSilva will recreate this manic dance in the waiting room at the Bureau. While he will be listen to his own music, the audience will listen to an audio recording of his self- published manic book of poetry, My Quaint Struggle. These poems were mini- epiphanies DaSilva had and wrote down in this euphoric state when he did not sleep for four days straight.

Book launch of Patrick E. Horrigan's novel PENNSYLVANIA STATION
2018-06-07 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A party and reading to mark the publication of the novel PENNSYLVANIA STATION (Lethe Press) by Patrick E. Horrigan

Copies of Pennsylvania Station are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Photograph by Frank Marando

Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, Patrick E. Horrigan is the author of the novel PORTRAITS AT AN EXHIBITION (Lethe Press), about a young man’s search for the meaning of life amid a gallery of old master portraits. PORTRAITS won the Dana Award for fiction as well as the Mary Lynn Kotz Art-in-Literature Award, sponsored by the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is also the author of WIDESCREEN DREAMS: GROWING UP GAY AT THE MOVIES (University of Wisconsin Press), an analysis of several popular films from the 1960s and 70s. He has written artists’ catalogue essays for Thion’s LIMI-TATE: DRAWINGS OF LIFE AND DREAMS (cueB Gallery, London) and Ernesto Pujol’s LOSS OF FAITH (Galeria Ramis Barquet, New York). His essay “The Inner Life of Ordinary People” appears in Anthony Enns’ and Christopher R. Smit’s SCREENING DISABILITY: ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND DISABILITY (University Press of America). His play MESSAGES FOR GARY, composed entirely of answering machine messages received by the activist and socialist scholar Gary Lucek, was a critically-acclaimed hit of the Third Annual New York International Fringe Festival. With his husband, the actor and writer Eduardo Leanez, he co-wrote the solo show YOU ARE CONFUSED! about the relationship between a gay Venezuelan boy and his charismatic mother. He and Mr. Leanez are the hosts of ACTORS WITH ACCENTS, a recurring variety show on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Winner of Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, he is Associate Professor of English at LIU Brooklyn. He lives in Manhattan.

Book cover design by Franco La Russa, aka Thion

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Mediterranean Food
2018-06-06 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
Please join us for Mediterranean Food/Dieta Mediterránea (2009), directed by Joaquín Oristrell and starring Olivia Molina, Paco León, and Alfonso Bassave.
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: In this Spanish romantic comedy, Sofía, Toni, and Frank grow up together in a seaside village. While Frank encourages Sofía’s ambition to be a world-famous chef, she is also drawn to Toni’s vision of traditional family life. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Women Your Mother Warned You About
2018-06-05 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for Women Your Mother Warned You About, an explosive evening of uncensored vulnerability, magic, and hope from the best trans women and CAMAB non-binary writers in the country! Hear fantastic stories and celebrate the Lammy nomination of Resilience with Heartspark Press Editor Sugi Pyrrophyta and a short-list of incredible artists we’re thrilled to be sharing the stage with. Come out and support trans women writers!
THE WRITERS JOINING US
JEANNE THORNTON
APRIL DANIELS
SARA OLIVER WIGHT
A.K. BLUE
TYLER VILE
SUGI PYRROPHYTA
& MORE
ABOUT THE RESILIENCE ANTHOLOGY
Take a journey through the worlds of over thirty (C)AMAB* trans writers in what is currently the largest collection of poetry and prose made for and by us. Featuring new work by Luna Merbruja, Magpie Leibowitz, Moss Angel, KOKUMO, Joss Barton, Ariel Howland, Casey Plett, Sascha Hamilton, A.K. Blue, Oti Onum, Rahne Alexander, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Lawrence Walker, Connifer Candlewood, Serafima Mintz, Talia Johnson, Tyler Vile, Lina Corvus, Bridget Liang, erica inchoate, Lillita Lustre, CHRYSALISAMIDST, Ana Valens, Larissa Glasser, Lilith Dawn, AR Rushet and more, including an introduction by Julia Serano!
Curated and Edited by Amy Heart, Sugi Pyrrophyta, and Larissa Glasser.

Copies of Resilience are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

SARA OLIVER WIGHT
Sara Oliver Wight is a Brooklyn based model, author, and aspiring lesbian farmer. Her current work focus is how to convey queer femme sexuality through noodles and sandwiches. Her work can be found on vice.com, in the Resilience anthology and on her Instagram @saraoliverwight
A.K. BLUE
Andreia Kundry Blue lives in the Hudson Valley. She writes science fiction, trans fiction, and eccentric mash-ups of the two. Her story in Resilience, “God Empress Susanna,” is part of her work in progress, Sea of Nightmares, a collection of linked SF stories. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a member of the Brooklyn Trans Writing Workshop.
TYLER VILE
Tyler Vile is a writer, performer, and activist from Baltimore, MD whose novel-in-verse, Never Coming Home, is available on Topside Press. She is a member of the board of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a radically inclusive synagogue, and was the vocalist in a punk band called Anti-Androgen. Her interactive poetry zine, Hassidic Witch Murderer is available on her website, tylervile.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared in the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology, Resilience, published by Heartspark Press, as well as the magazines Femmescapes, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Rogue Agent. She hopes to one day become the world’s greatest transsexual lesbian yenta.
SUGI PYRROPHYTA
Sugi works against the hegemony that academic institutions have on knowledge and that financial institutions have on power, specifically the roles that capital and obedience to oppressive structures play in upholding/withholding those institution and the rewards. She has been working most of her life on collecting stories of the lived experience of those most oppressed while attempting to make impossible the powers that hold us down. She knows first-hand and viscerally how hard it is to carve out time/energy to create while fighting every step for her and her friends’ survival, and has no further accolades to dress herself in here because you can do anything, you don’t need a fancy degree or an income or to have been published before; you are the fire that keeps us warm.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe and Christopher Bram in Conversation: Storytelling and Community
2018-06-03 17:00 - 18:30 | NY
Launching her new novel, THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE, Lucy Jane Bledsoe will be in conversation with Christopher Bram. They’ll discuss how communities function in crisis, and the role of storytelling in shaping community and culture, with a queer twist on all of the above.

Copies of The Evolution of Love are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of six novels, including the just-released THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE and recently-released A THIN BRIGHT LINE. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination, a Yaddo Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. Her story collection, LAVA FALLS, is forthcoming this fall. Bledsoe lives in the Bay Area where she spends as much time as possible kayaking in the bay, as well as hiking and cycling in the hills.

A novelist and critic, Christopher Bram is the author of nine novels, including GODS AND MONSTERS, which was made into the movie starring Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave. He has written nonfiction for a broad range of publications, including Out, the Huffington Post, and Architectural Digest. Bram’s book of essays, MAPPING THE TERRITORY, and his books SURPRISING MYSELF, HOLD TIGHT, IN MEMORY OF ANGEL CLARE, and GOSSIP were reissued by Open Road Books in 2013. He was a 2001 Guggenheim fellow and winner of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. His recent books include EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGED AMERICA (Twelve, 2012) and THE ART OF HISTORY: UNLOCKING THE PAST IN FICTION AND NONFICTION (Graywolf, 2016).

Book Launch - A Reprobate Sense by Hunter O'Hanian
2018-05-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
This artist’s book explores the origins of anti-same sex attitudes found in modern society. The author, Hunter O’Hanian, uses a book written in 1049, The Book of Gomorrah, which for the first time, cataloged the sins associated with same-sex behavior.

O’Hanian researched Peter Damian’s life, the origin of the book and its impact on modern day society. A Reprobate Sense contains selected excerpts from Damian’s work illustrated with screen shots from 1970s films made to entertain gay males.

Gay writer and historian Hugh Ryan will interview O’Hanian about the book.

Copies of A Reprobate Sense are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

About Hunter O’Hanian – With degrees from Boston College and Suffolk University Law School, Hunter O’Hanian has held leadership positions at visual arts programs including the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Massachusetts College of Art and Design Foundation (Boston, MA), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (New York, NY), and College Art Association (New York, NY). He has served on non-profit boards and panels for more than 30 years. His contributions have been recognized through an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston and a permanently endowed fellowship in his name at the Fine Arts Work Center.

About Hugh Ryan – A journalist, curator, and speaker write for folks like The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, VICE, and Slate, and other places. He mostly covers queer culture, art, and politics, but also Rube Goldberg machines, racism on reality television, the renaissance of Shirley Jackson, non-linear non-fiction, and the literary origin of zombies in America. Recently, he became the resident historian at them, the new Conde Nast LGBTQ publication, where we writes a column called “Themstory” every two weeks. This year, he will be a resident artist at The Watermill Center as he finishes his new book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, due out with St. Martin’s Press in March of 2019.

Affirmative Laughter
2018-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Come celebrate Elsa Waithe‘s 30th bday the only way she know how… WITH LAUGHTER!!! On May 25th @ 7pm, Bureau of General Services-Queer Division is gonna be packed as we ring in Elsa’s new decade with this hot lineup:

Beth Maria
Margo Reiss
Shelly Colman
Sarah Hartshorne
Norah Yahya
Mamoudou N’Diaye

$10 suggested donation to benefit the Bureau and Affirmative Laughter performers. No one turned away for lack of funds!!!!

Queer/Literary Defiance!
2018-05-20 15:30 - 17:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cultural defiance has maintained Queer identity, keeping alive a culture rich in creativity, zest, and courage. In today’s political and social environment, when LGBTQ rights and legitimacy are again under attack, Queer cultural defiance is a bulwark against forcing the community back into hiding.

On Sunday, May 20th, five acclaimed Queer writers—poets, playwrights and novelists—will celebrate Queer/Literary Defiance. Each will read a short passage from their work, followed by a discussion of the role of defiance in their writing; how it shapes it, informs it, gives it fire. This award-winning lineup of authors represents a diversity of social and cultural experience in the Queer community. As writers, they distill those experiences into art.

Featuring Ann Aptaker, Ella Boureau, JP Howard, Jee Leong Koh, and Trace Peterson.

Gay Artists of the Negro Renaissance
2018-05-19 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join longtime activist, scholar of African American studies, and friend of the Bureau James Wright and guest speakers for a discussion of gay artists of the Negro Renaissance.

Featuring a historic overview of Harlem, the Negro Renaissance, and biographical information on several gay artists of the period, including Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Alain Locke, and Bruce Nugent.

We will screen Brother to Brother (2005, written and directed by Rodney Evans, 90 minutes), a dramatic film about the life and times of Bruce Nugent.

James Wright has organized events at the Bureau exploring the lives and works of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, as well as an event focused on Bruce Nugent and the first and only issue of the black literary journal FIRE!!, which Nugent created with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis in 1926.

About the image: In 1926, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis created the first and only issue of the black literary journal FIRE!!, which included Nugent’s explicitly gay poem “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.”

John Fleck Is Who You Want Him to Be: Screening with Director Kevin Duffy and Guest Lucy Sexton of Dancenoise
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE is a documentary film by Kevin Duffy examining the legendary performance artist who was at the center of the culture wars during the AIDS crisis. The film includes contemporary cinema vérité footage of Fleck’s performances in New York and LA, a sit-down interview and archival footage reaching back over 30 years, including never before seen footage of the performance that sparked the NEA 4 crisis and the subsequent US Supreme Court decision.
Director Kevin Duffy will engage in a Q&A following the screening.

A Q&A will follow the screening with the filmmaker hosted by Moderator Lucy Sexton of DANCENOISE, the subject of the recent retrospective “Don’t Look Back” at the Whitney Museum.

Reception 7:30 PM
Screening 8 PM

JOHN FLECK (Subject) is a performance artist and actor based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990 he and 3 other performance artists became known as the NEA-4 denied funding by the National Endowment for the Arts because of religious and political pressure. Fleck’s latest venture BLACKTOP HIGHWAY premiered @ REDCAT in Los Angeles and recently made its NYC debut @ Dixon Place receiving rave reviews and a critic’s choice in the NY Times. His last show MAD WOMEN won the 2012 LA Weekly Award for ‘Outstanding Solo Performance’ and was nominated for a Bessie Award.

KEVIN DUFFY (Filmmaker) directed, produced, shot and edited the documentary feature, JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE. The film has screened at the American Cinematheque, Los Angeles, the Los Feliz 3 Cinema, the New York Indie Theater Film Festival and CalArts. Duffy’s first independent feature, BECOMING BLOND (2010) starring Mink Stole is distributed by Ariztical Entertainment and has screened on Here TV. Duffy’s short film, cheap flight, (1996) screened on the Sundance Channel, at the Hamptons International Film Festival, the American Cinematheque and other venues. A graduate of New York University, Duffy won a Fellowship in Playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He received an M.F.A. in screenwriting from the American Film Institute.

Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn-born choreographer, director, and producer who works in the fields of dance, theater, and film. With Anne Iobst, she created the dance performance duo DANCENOISE. She directed the off-Broadway plays Spalding Gray; Stories Left to Tell and Tom Murrin’s The Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic; and produced the Charles Atlas films The Legend of Leigh Bowery and TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. Since 2009, she has served as the Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies.

Red Pubes: Writing the Queer Body
2018-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Poetry reading followed by Q & A with renowned poets Omotara James and Christopher Atamian.

Omotara James is a poet and essayist. The daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants, she lives and studies in New York City. Her poetry chapbook, “Daughter Tongue,” was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, “Mama Wata,” is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Her awards include the Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Recluse, Nat.Brut, American Chordata, Winter Tangerine, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Seventh Wave, Arkansas International and elsewhere. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU.

Christopher Atamian is a writer and creative producer of Italian–Armenian background and the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors. While his current work is increasingly devoid of overt ethnic topics, much of his early writings centered around issues of sexuality, ethnic origin and assimilation. At Collegiate School Atamian was a National Merit Scholar. He received his B.A. in Literature, Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University before completing his education at USC Film School and Columbia Business School where he received the school’s highest honor, the Samuel Bronfman Scholarship. Apart from creative endeavors and professional activities as a senior executive in leading media companies and consultancies, Atamian has concentrated on community activism. He is the former President and a current board member of AGLA New York and in 2004 founded Nor Alik, a non-profit cultural organization responsible for producing the First Armenian International Film Festival. He also co-produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise in 2006, directed by Elyse Singer, as well as several music videos and short films. Atamian was selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale on the basis of his video Sarafian’s Desire and received a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He continues to contribute critical pieces to leading publications such as The New York Times Book Review and The Huffington Post, while working on other creative endeavors in film and theater. Atamian’s poetry has appeared in The Hye-Phen Magazine, The Armenian Poetry Project, Groong Online, and Mes Arménies. Into the Woods was adapted as a rock song by musician Anne Hirschfeld.

Pop Gym Pop Up: Free Self-Defense Workshop at the Bureau
2018-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Palm Heels for the people! Don’t get that joke? No worries! Come by this FREE Pop Up workshop to learn some introductory skills that will keep you feeling safe. We’ll be covering the basics: stretching, conditioning, technique, and theory, with the hope that participants will leave with some super useful foundations that will aid them in the day-to-day. Mix that in with some sweat and some movement, and you’ll have an accessible and confidence-boosting good time for all. Whether you are a beginner, or someone with experience, come work it out with us!

Open to all ages! We’ll be moving around, so participants should wear clothing in which they are comfortable stretching and sweating.

#POPGym is a new project, working towards opening a physical space in Brooklyn that offers free self-defense, fitness, and skill share classes 7 days a week. As we continue planning, we invite you to come by any of our events this summer! Our workshops have been described as, “fun”, “holistic” and “empowering”, and for any questions, comments, or inquiries for future workshops for you or your organizations, email us at info@popgym.org #popup

Annie Lanzillotto & Erica Cardwell Read
2018-05-13 16:00 - 17:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Pride Comes Early! Annie Rachele Lanzillotto reads from her new double book “Hard Candy” and “Pitch Roll Yaw.” Erica Cardwell reads new work. Special guests include: Gabriella Belfiglio, Clare Ultimo, Rosette Capotorto, Zhaleh Afshar.

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is the author of the books: Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning, and Stage Light and Pitch, Roll, Yaw (Guernica World Editons 2018); L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY Albany Press 2013, LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist); and Schistsong, poems, (Bordighera Press 2013.) Lanzillotto is the singer/songwriter of the albums: Never Argue With a Jackass (2017); Swampjuice: Yankee with a Southern Peasant Soul (2016), Carry My Coffee (2012), Eleven Recitations (2011); and Blue Pill (2010.) For more info on her books, audiobooks, albums, films, and performance works, visit www.annielanzillotto.com.

Erica Cardwell is a writer and radical educator based in New York. Her writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Believer, Rewire, and forthcoming for Green Mountain Review. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was awarded a nonfiction fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2015. She teaches English and Literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Erica lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their turtle, Smiley Mousa.

TELL 44: Intimacy
2018-05-12 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Intimacy is the theme for the 44th installment of TELL. Featuring Darlinda Just Darlinda, Mieke Dee, Sarah Fonseca, and Dylan Stephen Levers.
$10 suggested donation to support the Bureau and the performers. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in with Rebecca Drysdale, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in festivals globally. Drae won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. She once reigned as Miss LEZ and also got dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell hosts and curates a monthly queer storytelling show called TELL at BGSQD. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.

The Village Voice calls DARLINDA JUST DARLINDA a “Mastermind of Bizarre Extravaganza” and she has been working as a Burlesque Performer Performance Artist and Producer since 2004 locally (NYC) and internationally (Australia, China, Finland, Germany, France, England, Canada, and most of the USA including Alaska!) Darlinda is one half of the Burlesque duo The Schlep Sisters, co producing such shows as The 11th Annual Menorah Horah and The Burning Bush vs. The Second Coming. Darlinda has produced shows, The New York Times calls “shockingly explicit.” Darlinda has also performed Off Broadway and on television; she performed with Taylor Mac in The Lily’s Revenge (Obie), The 29th Annual Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center,Celebrate Brooklyn and 24 Decades of Popular Music (Obie). She can be found on television, in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and The Other F Word Series. She’s lectured for Yale’s infamous Sex Week. She’s made performance art with her year long “life as art” projects Year in Dance and Year in Rainbow and is co-founder of LadyBox Theater currently creating Untitled Rainbow Project. Darlinda is a current faculty member at the New York School of Burlesque and also teaches internationally. The Sundance Channel made Darlinda a “Top 10 Badass Burlesque Babe,” she was voted in the Top 50 International Burlesque Industry Figures of 2011-2014! Darlinda is the recipient of the Golden Pastie Award for The Most Innovative and Creative and The first ever Brooklyn Nightlife Award Winner for Best Burlesque! USA Today says “It’s hard to top Darlinda.”

Mieke Dee

Sarah Fonseca is a publicly-educated writer who lives in New York City via the Georgia foothills. Her essays, criticism, filthy ideas, and their overlapping iterations have appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 2018, The Lambda Literary Review, Math Magazine, Posture Magazine, and Slate. She’s currently working on a series of essays on women and strength pursuits.

Dylan Stephen Levers is an NYC-based filmmaker. His film “this is a film about Tom and Maddy.” was a Vimeo staff pick and can be seen on Short of the Week and NoBudge.com. Short shorts, his collection of minute-long films, can be seen at https://vimeo.com/shortshorts.

Indie Presses Evening: Find Out How to Publish Your Book
2018-05-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Indie Presses Evening: Find Out How to Publish Your Book
Thursday, May 10, 2018, 7 pm
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, room 210 in The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th Street, New York, NY
Participating Presses: Gaudy Boy, Indolent Books, Poets Wear Prada, and Querelle Press

Indie publishers and editors speak about the exciting diversity of their presses and publications. They also read from representative published works of LGBT interest. The talks are followed by Q&A. Come and find out more about the writing and publishing scene.

Indolent Books publishes work by underrepresented voices writing innovative, provocative, and risky poetry addressing urgent racial, social, and economic justice themes. Indolent was founded in 2015 by Michael Broder, who now serves as board treasurer and managing editor. In 2017 the press became an imprint of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity Indolent Arts Foundation.

Querelle Press is an independent LGBT book publisher whose mission is to celebrate and challenge how we view our lives as LGBT people. Querelle’s namesake is Jean Genet’s bold and distinctive novel, and the press aspires to publish in the book’s outspoken spirit. Under the guidance of publisher and editor Don Weise, and in partnership with writer and philanthropist Chuck Forester, Querelle publishes two new titles per year.

Have you had your poetry today? Get your brain fuel from Poets Wear Prada. Publishing beautifully designed volumes of well-crafted poetry—and now, fiction—you want to read, since October 2006. Founded by former Wall Street banker Roxanne Hoffman with her late husband, retired Hollywood agent Herbert Fuerst. John “Jack” Edward Cooper took over for Herb as co-editor from October 2011. Based in Hoboken, New Jersey with European office in Salazac, France.

From Latin gaudium meaning joy, Gaudy Boy publishes books and media that delight readers and listeners with the various powers of art. Helmed by publisher Jee Leong Koh and managing editor Kimberley Lim, Gaudy Boy brings literary works by authors of Asian heritage to the attention of an American audience. We publish poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction of exceptional merit.

Wo Chan, Lonely Christopher, Rami Karim, & Emji Saint Spero!
2018-05-04 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Emji Saint Spero is in town from Oakland, which is more than enough reason to throw a Spring Thing at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division! Wo Chan, Lonely Christopher, and Rami Karim join the celebration.

Wo Chan is a nonbinary drag performer and poet based in Brooklyn. They are the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation of Arts, Kundiman, and the Asian American Writers Workshop. Their writing centers on personal narratives of immigration, race, and gender in text and stage performance. They are a standing member of Brooklyn-based drag/burlesque collective Switch N’ Play and currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University.

Lonely Christopher is the author of the poetry collections Death & Disaster Series (Monk Books, 2014) and The Resignation (Roof Books, forthcoming 2018). His short story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse was a 2011 selection of Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery imprint of Akashic Books and his first novel, THERE, was published by The Writers’ Collective of Kristiania in 2017. His plays have been presented in Canada, China, and the United States. His film credits include several international shorts and the feature MOM, which he wrote and directed. He lives in Brooklyn.

Rami Karim is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. They are a 2017 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and graduate of the Brooklyn College Creative Writing MFA, where they received the Rose Goldstein, Himan Brown, and Carole Lainoff awards in writing. Their work has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Apogee, Makhzin, The Margins, and Tagvverk, among others, and they are the author of Smile & Nod (Wendy’s Subway, 2018).

Emji Saint Spero is a queer performance artist and writer living in Oakland. They are an editor at Timeless, Infinite Light and the author of almost any shit will do. Their work occupies a hybrid space between poetry and prose, weaving together somatic ritual, performance, and collaborative experimentation. They work closely with other writers and artists, stretching the potential of creative intimacies, sociality, and the poetics of relation. They are currently working on the Exhaustion trilogy, a series of books obsessed with exploring and challenging Jose Muñoz’s notion that “utopia exists in the quotidian.”

Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs
2018-05-03 18:30 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Please join us Thursday, May 3 to celebrate Lyle Ashton Harris’ monograph Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs with an evening of conversation with Lyle Ashton Harris, Thomas Allen Harris, and Alex Fialho.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections by additional contributors coalescing in a presentation of what Harris has described as “ephemeral moments and emblematic figures… against a backdrop of seismic shifts in the art world, the emergence of multiculturalism, the second wave of AIDS activism, and incipient globalization.” The Ektachrome Archive “constructs collective and private narratives to comment on identity, desire, sexuality, and loss” and was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

Copies of Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs (Aperture Foundation, 2017) are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. Harris has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) among many others, as well as at international biennials (São Paulo, 2016; Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville, 2006; Gwangju, 2000). His work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums, most recently The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014 Harris joined the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and was recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.). In 2016 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was appointed a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. Having studied at Wesleyan University, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Harris is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at New York University.

Born in the Bronx and raised in New York City and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Thomas Allen Harris began his career as a photographer before producing for public television, for which he received several awards including two Emmy nominations (in 1991) for his work as a staff producer at WNET (New York’s PBS affiliate) on THE ELEVENTH HOUR. Harris is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a 2015 NAACP Image Award, United States Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, A Blade of Grass Fellow as well as a Tribeca Film Institute’s Nelson Mandela Award. Harris has taught, written and lectured widely on media.<
Harris is the founder and President of Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Chimpanzee’s innovative and award-winning films have received critical acclaim at International film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty and Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish Broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. In addition, Harris’ videos and installations have been featured at museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Biennial, Corcoran Gallery, Reina Sophia, London Institute of the Arts and the Gwangju Biennale. He has held positions as Associate Professor of Media Arts at the University of California San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Film and New Media at Sarah Lawrence College.

Alex Fialho is a curator and arts writer based in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Artforum, and Programs Director at Visual AIDS, where he facilitates projects around both the history and immediacy of the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, with particular stakes intervening against recent widespread whitewashing of HIV/AIDS cultural narratives.
Fialho has worked closely with Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris in multiple capacities. In the context of Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art programs, Fialho collaborated to commission new short videos from the artists: Lyle Ashton Harris’ Selections from the Ektachrome Archive was featured in Day With(out) Art 2014 ALTERNATE ENDINGS and Thomas Allen Harris’ About Face: The Evolution of a Black Producer was featured in Day With(out) Art 2017 ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett. Fialho’s 6 hour oral history with Lyle Ashton Harris will be included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s “Visual Art & The AIDS Epidemic Oral History Project” and Fialho covered Lyle Ashton Harris’ Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs: Selections from the Eckachrome Archive for Bookforum. Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris will be honored alongside Steed Taylor with the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award on May 21, 2018.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
2018-05-02 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, and celebrating 2 years of Poly Movie Night!

Please join us for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017), written and directed by Angela Robinson and starring Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall, and Bella Heathcote. The movie was widely praised as one of the most positive portrayals of polyamory in modern American film to date.

Wednesday, May 2 – 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
208 W 13th St, Rm 210
New York, NY 10011

We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The more people come, the more likely we’ll continue the event! The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.

Synopsis: Based on the true story of the creator of the character Wonder Woman, Harvard psychologist Dr. William Marston’s polyamorous relationship with his wife and their lover was more provocative than any adventure he had ever written. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes.

Beautiful to Look At But Painful to Touch: Marco DaSilva in conversation with Travis Chamberlain
2018-04-29 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Marco DaSilva for an intimate conversation about his artistic process with Travis Chamberlain, Managing Director at Queer|Art, where DaSilva is a fellow in QUEER|ART|MENTORSHIP for 2017-2018. DaSilva’s paintings, collages, and sculptures are currently on view in No Reason To Be Careful through June 10th at the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division. This program is free and open to the public.

Marco DaSilva is a native New Yorker whose symbol-based paintings explore hybridity through the intersections of his Brazilian-American, queer identity and manic experience. He has exhibited work at IMAGE Gallery, Heath Gallery, and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. He is also a NYFA Artist as Entrepreneur Fellow. He creates work at his studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Marco has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY New Paltz.

Travis Chamberlain is a curator whose work encompasses performances, residencies, exhibitions, and community organizing, with a focus on the excavation of marginalized cultural histories and the advancement of emerging queer voices. Major projects have included work with artists Ishmael Houston-Jones, Dennis Cooper, Karen Finley, Julie Tolentino, Wu Tsang, Jack Ferver, Tina Satter, Young Jean Lee, and Jennifer Monson, among others. Formerly Associate Curator of Performance at the New Museum and Artistic Director of Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, Chamberlain is now Managing Director at Queer|Art, a New York-based non-profit that supports the creative and professional development of LGBTQ artists through models of mentorship and community exchange.

Cuarenta y Nueve book launch celebration in New York!
2018-04-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cuarenta y Nueve‘s 3rd and final book launch party is in New York City. Please join us to celebrate this beautiful coffee table book dedicated to the 49 lives lost in the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre. Many of the 49 artistic contributors will attend. Readings, book signings, performers + celebrating the love and light of our rainbow community. Please join us on this ‘pride full’ occasion!
Cuarenta y Nueve means 49 in Spanish. This beautiful coffee table book is an artistic homage to the 49 lives lost on June 12, 2016, at the Pulse Nightclub massacre, in Orlando Florida. Writers of every discipline & genre, photographers, artists, and even an Executive Chef have come together to create this must have tribute. By 49 and for 49, Cuarenta y Nueve was the vision of (and curated by) best selling author Joie Lamar, who has also arranged for 100% of the proceeds to be donated to positive LGBTQ+ organizations, specifically Pride School Atlanta & GLAAD.

Pauline Gloss: Lullabies for the Psychotic and Other Recent Work
2018-04-26 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Literary sound-artist Pauline Gloss will present an evening of new and recent work in the text-sound / sound-poetry tradition. She will present her new cycle for solo voice, “Lullabies for the Psychotic” and screen her record (with accompanying video from Nicolas Bermeo) “Greetings from Here: Audio Postcards in Transition,” from 2016.

Pauline’s current body of work is concerned with how the smallest bits of language— in both their sonic and meaning-making dimensions— can, through repetition, variation, and syntactical rewiring, create temporary sonic and semantic meaning-making structures.

Her work investigates and foregrounds the physicality of language by rendering it architecturally. She makes of its discreet bits semantic and sonic building-blocks whose stability is always already in question.

With the character and reach of this tool set, she attempts to form a language in which the boundaries and traditional formations of selfhood are plied, questioned, and reformed.

Pauline Gloss is a writer and literary sound-artist based in Los Angeles. Her language-sound work attempts to dramatize and expand language in its timbral, rhythmic, textural, and meaning-making dimensions.

She runs Spoken Records, a label specializing in the release of work in the Text-Sound tradition. She has been written about favorably in art and music publications and has performed or had work shown in Los Angeles, London, and New York at institutions including MoCA Geffen, Cal Arts, Human Resources (LA), Resonance FM (London), Poetic Research Bureau, The Lambda Literary Festival, Automata, Betalevel, and others.

Publishing Triangle Awards Finalists Reading
2018-04-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join nine of the best LGBT writers of 2017 on Wednesday, April 25, at 7 PM, at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division as they read from their work, all of which are finalists for the prestigious Publishing Triangle and Ferro-Grumley awards to be announced on Thursday, April 26, at the Publishing Triangle Awards Ceremony & Reception, at New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 63 Fifth Avenue, in Greenwich Village, New York.

Copies of the nominated books are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy of one or more of the books please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Featuring:

Frank Bidart, Half-Light: Collected Poems, 1965-2016, (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry

Frankie Edozien, Lives of Great Men (Team Angelica Publishing), Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

Peter Gajdics, The Inheritance of Shame (Brown Paper Press), Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

Catherine Hernandez, Scarborough (Arsenal Pulp Press), Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

Matthew Lansburgh, Outside is the Ocean (University of Iowa Press), Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction

Paula Martinac, The Ada Decades (Bywater Books), Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction

Maureen N. McLane, Some Say (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry

Alistair McCartney, The Disintegrations (University of Wisconsin Press), Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction

Charif Shanahan, Into Each Room We Enter Without Knowing (Southern Illinois University Press), Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry

Bespoke
2018-04-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Dressed smart like a London bloke, before he speak his suit bespoke. – Kanye West. Change “he” to “she” and “his” to “their,” and you’ve found the all-inclusive spirit of Bespoke at the Bureau.

Feeling a bit drab in your literary lifestyle? Craving some chic with your geek? Save the date: On Tuesday, April 24, the Bureau will feature Eileen Myles, Joe Okonkwo, Diana Oh and one “wild card” to inaugurate Bespoke, a bimonthly queer series where featured readers dress fun, fancy, or flirtatious, supporting the Bureau and resisting fascism. Our sinfully sartorial series presents fashionable femmes, dapper dykes, chic twinks, trendy trans* folk, & frothy FTMs. Featured writers are encouraged to suit up or dress down : readers’ choice.

Your hosts are the dangerously deviant trio Christina “CQ” Quintana (writer/playwright/dyke about town), Jerome Ellison Murphy (poet, critic and NYU Creative Writing Program administrator) and Tim Murphy (longtime LGBTQ journalist, activist and author of the novel Christodora), who invite you to turn out in your Tuesday best (dress up is welcome & encouraged, not mandatory) every other month for drinks and chat before & after our reading.

Writers! When else will you join a lineup of such stylish stature? Cast your name into the Bespoke rainbow top hat for your chance at being the featured “wild card” reader, and give your CV a makeover! Be ready with a short & sassy selection.

Coming down the runway:

Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, performer and art EILEEN MYLES. Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, performer and art journalist who needs no introduction! Their twenty books include Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 re-issue of Cool for You and I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, and the Shelley Prize from the PSA. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. Currently they teach at NYU and Naropa University and live in Marfa, TX and New York.

Joe Okonkwo is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and editor, whose debut novel Jazz Moon won the Publishing Triangle’s prestigious 2016 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction. Set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and glittering Jazz Age Paris, it was published by Kensington Books in 2016. Joe’s short stories have appeared in Promethean, Penumbra, CooperStreet, Storychord, LGBTsr.org, Chelsea Station, and Shotgun Honey. His work has been anthologized in Love Stories from Africa (his first fiction published outside the U.S.), Best Gay Love Stories 2009, and Best Gay Stories 2015.

Diana Oh is an actor/singer-songwriter/theatremaker/performing artist. She is the inaugural 2016 Van Lier Fellow in Acting with the Asian American Arts Alliance, one of Refinery 29’s Top 14 LGBTQ Influencers, the First Queer Korean American interviewed on Korean Broadcast Radio, Creator of #AsianPeopleareNotMagicians on Mic.com, Creator of {my lingerie play}: a concert & installation series in lingerie staged in an effort to provide a saner, safer, more respectful world for women to live in featured in People, on stage at EST, The Lark, Joe’s Pub, All For One, and on stage at Rattlestick Theatre September 2017 in co-pro with Ma-Yi. She will be in concert in April 2017 at The Center (www.gaycenter.org). The Wall Street Journal & Upworthy call her “badass.” mylingerieplay.com

Let's Read: Pray The Gay Away
2018-04-22 15:00 - 17:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Michael and Zach Zakar for a reading and signing from their new book Pray the Gay Away
Copies of Pray the Gay Away are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you! The Zakar twins will happily sign your copy.

“Mom knows.” A simple text that would change two twin brothers’ lives forever. Coming out is hard. The struggle is ongoing, a daily part of life whether to a new friend, a co-worker, or most importantly yourself. Pray the Gay Away chronicles Michael and Zach as they face awkward sexual encounters, drug-fueled escapades, coming out to each other, and their biggest foe – Mom, a woman who gave birth to what she calls not just one regret – but two. The memoir hilariously and poignantly explores what it’s like growing up as gay, Iraqi twins in modern America. Pray the Gay Away was inspired the night Mom snuck into their bedroom and force fed them “holy grapes,” determined to “de-gay” them. The Zakar Twins are new voices speaking out against generations, particularly within the Iraqi culture, who look down on being gay. This book is not only for the LBGTQ community, but for young adults, looking to achieve normalcy.

Patty Schemel Discusses and Reads from her Memoir, HIT SO HARD
2018-04-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Patty Schemel reads and discusses her recent memoir HIT SO HARD, described as a “stunningly candid and inspiring memoir of recovery from addiction and the ’90s.”

Patty Schemel was a drummer at the epicenter of the Seattle grunge scene in the early ’90s, best known for her work with the alternative rock band Hole.

Copies of Hit So Hard are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Photograph by Darcy Hemley.https://darcyhemley.com
Hit So Hard begins with stories from a childhood informed by the AA meetings Schemel’s parents hosted in the family living room. Their divorce triggered her rebellious adolescence and first forays into drinking at age 11, which coincided with her passion for punk rock and playing drums. Her efforts to come to terms with her sexuality further drove her memorably hard playing, and by the late ’80s Schemel was performing regularly in well-regarded bands in Tacoma, Seattle, and Olympia. She met Kurt Cobain at a Melvins show, pre-Nirvana, and less than five years later she would be living with him and his wife, Hole front-woman Courtney Love, at the height of his fame and on the cusp of hers. As Hole’s new drummer, Schemel contributed memorable, driving drum parts to hits like “Beautiful Son,” “Violet,” “Doll Parts,” and “Miss World.” But the band was plagued by tragedy and addiction, and by the time Hole went on tour in support of their ironically titled and critically acclaimed album Live Through This in 1994, both Cobain and Hole bassist Kristen Pfaff were dead at age 27.

With surprising candor and wit, Schemel intimately documents the events surrounding her exit from the band in 1998 that lead to her dramatic descent into a life of homelessness and crime on the streets of Los Angeles and the difficult but rewarding path to sobriety after over twenty serious attempts to get clean. Hit So Hard chronicles the extraordinary coming of age of a musician and an addict during the last great era of rock ‘n’ roll excess.

Office Hours Spring Showcase Reading
2018-04-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Check out sizzling new writing at the Office Hours Spring Showcase! The workshop provides post-MFA poets access to continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing, culminating in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase stellar new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are woman-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia.

Featuring: Marty Correia, Caitlin Grace McDonnell, Paco Márquez, Holly Mitchell, Sarah Sala, Sanj Nair, and Yanyi.

Marty Correia’s work has appeared in The Mailer Review, FUSE, Punk Soul Poet, Lady Business (Sibling Rivalry Press) and Flock. The New York Department of Cultural Affairs and Venus Biennale funded Marty to produce the reading series A Tribe Called Butch. Correia has worked a steady union job for the past twelve years while writing poetry, short stories and her first book, Bridgeport Con. Marty earned her MFA in Creative Writing at New York University and is now represented by Ellen Geiger at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency. Marty has lived in the East Village with her spouse Kate Conroy since 1996.

Caitlin Grace McDonnell was a New York Times Fellow in poetry at NYU and has received fellowships from Yaddo, Blue Mountain Center and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems and essays have been published widely, most recently in Salon, and she has two published books of poems, Dreaming the Tree (belladonna 2003) and Looking for Small Animals (2012). Currently, she’s an English teacher and lives in Brooklyn with her six-year-old daughter, Kaya Hope.

Paco Márquez is author of the chapbook Portraits in G Minor (Folded Word Press, 2017). His work has appeared in Apogee,Ostrich Review, Live Mag! and Huizache, among others. As Spanish Editor for William O’Daly, he assisted in translating Pablo Neruda’s initial book, Crepusculario, for the first time into English, Book of Twilight, (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). One of his poems went up on a public mural through Sacramento’s Del Paso Words & Walls Project. His work has been supported by New York University, The Center for Book Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Originally from México and Northern California, Paco lives in New York City with his partner of 12 years.

Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky. A winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and a Gertrude Claytor Prize from the Academy of American Poets, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College. Her manuscript Farm Centos was a finalist for the 2017 Atlas Review Chapbook Series, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Baltimore Review, Juked, Narrative Magazine, and Paperbag, among other journals.

Sarah Sala’s debut poetry collection, Devil’s Lake, was a finalist for the 2017 Subito Press Book Prize, and her chapbook The Ghost Assembly Line was published by Finishing Line Press in 2016. Her poem Hydrogen was featured in the Elements episode of NPR’s hit show Radiolab in collaboration with Emotive Fruition. Sarah is the series facilitator for Office Hours, a free poetry workshop for adjunct instructors and co-produces AmpLit Fest with Lamprophonic and Summer on the Hudson. Her poems appear in Atlas Review, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and Poetry Ireland Review, among others. Visit her at SarahSala.com.

Sanj Nair writes, paints and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. Previously work has appeared in Spoon River Poetry Review and Fence Magazine and she has work forthcoming in JuxtaProse Literary Magazine and The Equalizer, the former including a piece written in a new form she’s worked out. Part of a performative series in New York City called Emofru, she’s also written The Lady Apple, a collaboration between poet and composer that’s performed at Tribeca’s Flea Theater as well as featured on NPR’s Soundcheck. Currently on Sabbatical, she’s a full-time professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice with CUNY.

Yanyi is the recipient of the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize in Poetry, awarded by Carl Philips, and his first book, THE YEAR OF BLUE WATER, will be published by Yale University Press in 2019. He is a 2017-2018 Asian American Writers Workshop Margins Fellow and associate editor at Foundry. The recipient of a 2015 Emerging Poets Fellowship from Poets House, Yanyi’s poems and criticism have recently appeared in The Margins, Memorious, and Model View Culture.

TELL 43: Higher Learning
2018-04-14 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Higher Learning is the theme for the 43rd installment of TELL. Featuring Jude Dry, Jimena Lucero, Mindy Raf, and Pauline Park.
$10 suggested donation to support the Bureau and the performers. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in with Rebecca Drysdale, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in festivals globally. Drae won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. She once reigned as Miss LEZ and also got dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell hosts and curates a monthly queer storytelling show called TELL at BGSQD. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.

Jude Dry is a writer and performer living in Brooklyn by way of Vermont. By day, Jude writes about queer film for IndieWire. By night, they ponder the meaning of a life well lived. Jude is currently single.

Jimena Lucero is a poet and activist born and raised in NYC. She was a 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee.
She is co-organizer of the TransisMagick Collective which pushes for trans liberation through art & community building. Jimena’s work appears in EOAGH and Blueshift Journal.

Mindy Raf is a comedian, actress, writer and musician based in Brooklyn, New York. Mindy has contributed to MTV’s GIRL CODE, COLLEGEHUMOR, TNT, VH1, The Daily Comedy Network, and the MY PARENTS WERE AWESOME anthology. Mindy’s debut young adult novel The Symptoms of My Insanity (DIAL/Penguin) is out now. Her critically acclaimed solo comedy show NOT THE ONE: a love story was named an “LBGT Best Bet by Time OutNew York, “hilariously quirky” by Theatre Is Easy, “Barrier Breaking” by The Edinburgh Reporter, and “cheeky and infectious” by Ed Fest Magazine. Recently debuting Off Broadway at 59e59 Theatre and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, it is now playing monthly in NYC at Theaterlab: next show April 18. For more info please visit: mindyraf.com

Pauline Park (paulinepark.com) is chair of the New York Association for Gender Rights Advocacy (NYAGRA), which she co-founded in 1998, and president of the board of directors of Queens Pride House, which she co-founded in 1997. Pauline also co-founded the Out People of Color Political Action Club, the first political club by and for LGBT people of color in New York City, which she co-founded in 2001, serving as co-president of the club from 2007-2010. And she co-founded Iban/Queer Koreans of New York in 1997, which she served as coordinator of from 1997-1999. Pauline led the campaign for passage of the transgender rights law enacted by the New York City Council in 2002. In 2005, she became the first openly transgendered grand marshal of the New York City Pride March. Pauline participated in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour of Palestine in 2012 and was the keynote speaker at the Queer Korea Festival/Seoul Pride Parade, the largest event in the history of the LGBT community of Korea up until that point. Pauline did her B.A. in philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, her M.Sc. in European Studies at the London School of Economics and her Ph.D. in political science at the University of Illinois at Urbana.

An Evening at The Mudd Club with Richard Boch
2018-04-12 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Richard Boch, the author, is an artist who was the doorman of the legendary, New York City club. The place was more than just a venue for bands, it was a true ‘club’ for artists of all disciplines, and the relationships and collaborations made then still bear fruit today. Though it lasted only from 1978 to 1983, its influence is pervasive-it was, essentially, the birthplace of the Eighties.

Keith Haring was in charge of the ‘gallery.’ Anna Sui debuted her designs there. The Talking Heads, and other seminal no wave/new wave bands found their start at the Mudd Club.

Fab Five Freddy (Fred Braithwaite) said this about Richard and The Mudd Club: “More than the well-known doorman of the Mudd Club, Richard Boch played a pivotal role in why it was the coolest club in the world back then. Richard was the crowd curator, carefully only letting in the right mix of the wildly creative downtown movers and shakers who made it our hangout, leaving the squares and the unhip outside in the cold. Richard is now letting everyone into the Mudd Club by way of this well-written book that details the who’s who and all the fun we had while infiltrating, changing and disrupting pop culture.”

The Mudd Club is filled with anecdotes about and memories of coming to terms with sexuality, drugs, and how one becomes an artist in a time and place that is overripe with creative energy. Richard’s stories are personal yet are populated by the now famous (and infamous) denizens of New York’s artistic community.

Richard Boch will be introduced by Marc Jacobs.

Copies of The Mudd Club are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Author photograph by Kate Simon.

Recent pieces about The Mudd Club:

NY Times- “A vivid tell-all”

Dazed & Confused

Bust Magazine- “The Mudd Club comes to life in a fascinating tell-all memoir.”

Merry Jane Magazine- “The book is a thing of wonder — funny, ferocious, masterfully written and assembled.”

Richard Boch is an artist, writer and lifelong New Yorker. He was born in Brooklyn, grew up on Long Island and studied printmaking and painting at The University of Connecticut and the Parsons New School for Design.

In 2016 Boch narrated a slide presentation at HOWL Projects related to the New York club scene. Recent exhibitions of his work include a group show at McDaris Fine Art, a suite of multimedia prints titled A Throwback Thrown Forward, and a series of “Page Paintings” as part of No Wave Heroes. He was interviewed and quoted at length for High On Rebellion, the story of Max’s Kansas City by Yvonne Sewall Ruskin, New York in The 70s by Allan Tannenbaum, Edgewise: A Picture of Cookie Mueller by Chloé Griffin, Born This Way, the story of Gia Carrangi by Sacha Lanvin Baumann and Life and Death on the New York Dance Floor by Tim Lawrence. In addition Boch is currently editing Bobby Grossman’s Low Fidelity: Still Photographs 1975 – 1983 and recently contributed a sidebar to Tannenbaum’s Grit and Glamour. In November 2015 he served on the host committee of the Mudd Club Rummage Sale Benefitting the Bowery Mission, the first Mudd-related event in over thirty years. The New York Times referred to Boch as making “live or die decisions” as the club’s “longtime alpha doorman.”

Book Launch: Martin Duberman’s The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976–1988, with Larry Mass
2018-04-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join us for the launch of Martin Duberman’s The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression, and Then Some, 1976–1988 (Duke University Press, March 2018). Following Duberman’s reading, he will be joined in conversation by Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) co-founder Larry Mass.

Copies of The Rest of It will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

For many, the death of a parent marks a low point in their personal lives. For Martin Duberman—a major historian and a founding figure in the history of gay and lesbian studies—the death of his mother was just the beginning of what became a twelve-year period filled with despair, drug addiction, and debauchery. From his cocaine use, massive heart attack, and immersion into New York’s gay hustler scene to experiencing near-suicidal depression and attending rehab, The Rest of It is the previously untold and revealing story of how Duberman managed to survive his turbulent personal life while still playing leading roles in the gay community and the academy.

Despite the hardships, Duberman managed to be incredibly productive: he wrote his biography of Paul Robeson, rededicated himself to teaching, wrote plays, and coedited the prize-winning Hidden from History. His exploration of new paths of scholarship culminated in his founding of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, thereby inaugurating a new academic discipline. At the outset of the HIV/AIDS epidemic Duberman increased his political activism, and in these pages he also describes the tensions between the New Left and gay organizers, as well as the profound homophobia that created the conditions for queer radical activism. Filled with gossip, featuring cameo appearances by luminaries such as Gore Vidal, Norman Mailer, Vivian Gornick, Susan Brownmiller, Kate Millett, and Néstor Almendros, among many others, and most importantly, written with an unflinching and fearless honesty, The Rest of It provides scathing insights into a troubling decade of both personal and political history. It is a stimulating look into a key period of Duberman’s life, which until now had been too painful to share.

To read Larry Mass’s review of The Rest of It click here.

Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, at City University of New York, where he founded and directed the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. He is the author of numerous histories, biographies, memoirs, essays, plays, and novels, which include Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey; Paul Robeson; Stonewall; Midlife Queer: Autobiography of a Decade, 1971–1981; Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community; The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein; Jews/Queers/Germans; and more than a dozen others. His biography of Charles Francis Adams won the Bancroft Prize, and his coedited anthology Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past won two Lambda Literary Awards. He won a third Lambda Award for Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS. Duberman received the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Historical Association, as well as two honorary degrees: Doctor of Humane Letters from Amherst College, and Doctor of Letters from Columbia University. He was also a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. Duberman lives in New York City.

Lawrence D. Mass, M.D., wrote the first press reports on AIDS and is a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis. He is the author-editor of Dialogues of The Sexual Revolution, Volumes I and 2; We Must Love One Another or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer; and a memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite: Being Gay and Jewish in America. His reviews and essays, and sequences of On the Future of Wagnerism, his in-progress sequel to Confessions, have appeared on Huffington Post.
