BGSQD

TELL 78: Overcome (in-person event)
2022-02-19 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, 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, making this TELL the eight-year anniversary edition!
Overcome is the theme of the 78th TELL, taking place in-person at the Bureau on Saturday, February 19, 2022, at 7 PM!
Guest-hosted by Calvin Cato and featuring storytellers Glo Butler, Anthony Oakes, Lois Thompson, and Elsa Eli Waithe.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau.
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 you can donate in advance on Eventbrite.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.

Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Glo Butler has performed all over the country, and was most recently featured in the New York Comedy Fest and Black Women In Comedy Festival. She was listed in 2019 Time Out Mag: “LGBTQ POC Comedians You Should Know” and Gold comedy “comedians to watch in 2022. She currently hosts and produce a bi-weekly POC/queer comedy show called Glo In The City live at Daily Press in Brooklyn. She also hosts Black Grits: a POC/queer comedy, burlesque and drag show once a month in Brooklyn.

Calvin S. Cato has performed all across the United States and has even crossed the border into Canada. His television appearances include the Game Show Network, Oxygen’s My Crazy Love, National Geographic’s Brain Games, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. His work has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Brooklyn Pride, Gotham Storytelling Festival and the Women in Comedy Festival. In addition, you may have heard him on Sirius XM or on the popular podcasts RISK!, Guys We F*cked, Las Culturistas, and Keith and the Girl. In 2017, Calvin was named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For. In 2021, Calvin contributed to Kweendom, an anthology of essays written by queer comedians.

Hailing from North Carolina, Anthony D. Oakes is a District of Columbia resident who is taking the comedy scene by storm. He is the winner of the 2021 DC Mayor’s Arts Award for Excellence in Performance. Anthony was a participant in the 2021 DC Comedy Festival and 2021 Sixth City Comedy Festivals, and 2021 Memphis Urban Laughs Festival.

For the past eight years, Lois Thompson has produced and hosted Blacklight Comedy Show at The Brooklyn Moon. Always an all-female line-up, Blacklight has become a must-do stage for NYC and visiting comedians alike. Since 2016, she has also produced the comedy portion of the Brooklyn Pride Celebration. When she not busy finding funny people, Lois helps people find their place in the world of real estate where she is a top-producing veteran of 18 years.

Elsa Eli Waithe is a Comedian, Actor, and Motivational Speaker from Norfolk, Virginia. She’s won the Virginia Beach Funnybone’s Clash of the Comics three times, has been featured on This American Life, and is a recurring guest on TELL.

Bushwick Book Club presents WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER by Hugh Ryan (in-person event)
2022-02-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come hear new songs, dance new dances and eat new snacks inspired by Hugh Ryan‘s WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER –– a groundbreaking exploration of the LGBT history of Brooklyn, from the early days of Walt Whitman in the 1850s up through the women who worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II, and beyond.
Author Hugh Ryan will give a reading, and 14 songwriters, performance artists and choreographers will perform new work celebrating this book and Brooklyn’s queer history.

Purchase Hugh Ryan’s When Brooklyn Was Queer (St. Martin’s Griffin, 2020, paperback) from the Bureau’s online store.
Promo code for 15% off: 091GYWU69FUK
Regularly $17.99 / $15.29 with promo code!
Click on “redeem your code” underneath the total at checkout.
Enter the code and hit “Apply”
When Brooklyn Was Queer is also available at the Bureau’s physical store — just mention the event to the volunteer when checking out for the 15% account.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

PERFORMERS:
JIM ANDRALIS
PENNY ARCADE
RAY BROWN
RALPH DENZER
PETER DIZOZZA
SEA GRIFFIN
SUSAN HWANG
JULIE LAMENDOLA
STEPHANIE LARIERRE
ST. LENOX
JOE MCGINTY
RISA MICKENBERG
CHARLES NIELAND
TROY OGILVIE

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Please arrive by 7 PM to make sure you get in–the performances begin at 7:30 PM.
We are limiting the number of audience members to 40.
First come first served!

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the performers (80%) and the Bureau (20%).
All are welcome to attend, with or without 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 you can donate in advance on this page.

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator. His first book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association. In 2019-2021, he worked on the Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in U.S. History curricular materials for the NYC Department of Education.

The Bushwick Book Club is a literature-inspired performance series and podcast that invites local songwriters and artists to plumb the depths of a chosen literary gem to create that rare and beautiful thing – a new song (or visual art, dance, film or snack). All songs are then performed at a live show. The Bushwick Book Club now has several branches all over the world, including Seattle, Portland, Oakland, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, New Orleans, Greenville, NC, London and Malmö, Sweden. The Bushwick Book Club podcast is available on iTunes and SoundCloud.

Anatomies of Want: Daniel W.K. Lee, Travis Montez, and Stephen S. Mills (in-person event)
2022-02-12 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Poets Daniel W.K. Lee, Travis Montez, and Stephen S. Mills guide us through the terrain of wanting—from carnal to familial, satiation to longing—reading from their oeuvres including works from their most recently published books Anatomy of Want (Lee), Objects In This Rearview Vol 03: Home/Again (Montez), and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (Mills).
This is an in-person event taking place at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, NYC.
If you are unable to join us at the Bureau, you can live-stream the event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without 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 you can donate in advance on this page.
Thanks for your support!

Copies of Anatomy of Want (Lee), Objects In This Rearview Vol 03: Home/Again (Montez), and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (Mills) will all be available for purchase at the event, and both Lee’s and Mills’s books are available for purchase on our online store.

Purchase Daniel W.K. Lee’s Anatomy of Want (Queer Mojo, 2019, paperback, $12.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

Purchase Stephen S. Mills’s Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018, paperback, $18) from the Bureau’s online store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Readers’ biographies:
Born in Kuching, Malaysia, Daniel W.K. Lee is a third-generation refugee going back to China via Vietnam and Malaysia. Raised in Chicagoland, Daniel moved to New York City in 1996 where he earned a BA at NYU and an MFA in Creative Writing – Poetry at The New School. Daniel relocated to Seattle in 2014 and after a little over five years in the Pacific Northwest, he and his whippet Camden moved to New Orleans in December 2019 soon after the publication of his debut collection of poetry Anatomy of Want by Queer Mojo/Rebel Satori Press. Find out more about him at danielwklee.com

Travis Montez is a writer, poet, professor and juvenile rights attorney, representing children in the Family Court system of New York City. Born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Montez came to NYC in the late 90s to attend NYU where he pursued degrees in Journalism and Africana Studies. It was there that he was first introduced to spoken word poetry. Since then, Travis Montez has performed in venues all over the world, released seven collections of poetry and a spoken word album. His latest release, Objects In This Rearview Vol 03: Home/Again is now out and will be available for purchase at the reading.

Stephen S. Mills (he/him/his) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012) as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014) and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018) all from Sibling Rivalry Press. He earned his MFA from Florida State University. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, PANK, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award and the 2014 Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. An excerpt from his play Men Like Us was featured as part of Pride Plays in June of 2020. He is on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at Goddard College. He lives in New York City with his partner and two schnauzers. Website: stephensmills.com

Underground Rebel: The Secret Lives of Lorraine Hansberry (in-person event)
2022-02-11 18:30 - 19:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Afro-American scholar James Wright will be presenting recent revelations concerning Lorraine Hansberry, famed author of A Raisin in the Sun. The focus of the talk will be Hansberry’s political activism as a member of the Communist Party and her authorship, using a pseudonym, of short stories depicting lesbian characters.

Books by and about Lorraine Hansberry on the Bureau’s online store and in the Bureau’s physical store:

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without 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 you can donate in advance on Eventbrite.

Craft Class & Reading with Kai Coggin (online event)
2022-02-05 11:00 - 13:30 | NY
Join us for a Virtual Craft Class & Reading with Kai Coggin

Craft Class will run from 11 AM-1PM EST. Followed by a reading from 1:05 PM-1:20 PM.
Registration on this page required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.
Once you have registered on this page you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to this page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
$10 suggested donation for the instructor (not required)

The Open Letter: What is an open letter?
An open letter is a letter, often critical, addressed to a particular person or group of people, but intended to be widely distributed to a wider audience. The letter does not usually get a reply, but it is written to shed light on a subject, an individual, or a group as a form of protest or grievance. It can also be used for praising and honoring something or someone.
In this workshop, Office Hours writers will read a selection of poetry with examples of the Open Letter. We will discuss various aspects of form, craft, and attention to figurative language used by the different poets in the packet, and finish with time to write an open letter poem from a selection of prompts provided by Kai. There will be time for sharing at the end.

Purchase Kai Coggin’s Mining for Stardust (Flowersong Press, 2021, paperback, $18) from the Bureau.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

KAI COGGIN (she/her) is the author of MINING FOR STARDUST (FlowerSong Press 2021), INCANDESCENT (Sibling Rivalry Press 2019), WINGSPAN (Golden Dragonfly Press 2016), and PERISCOPE HEART (Swimming with Elephants Publications 2014), as well as a spoken word album SILHOUETTE (2017). She is a queer woman of color who thinks Black Lives Matter, a teaching artist in poetry with the Arkansas Arts Council and Arkansas Learning Through the Arts, and the host of the longest running consecutive weekly open mic series in the country—Wednesday Night Poetry. Recently awarded the 2021 Governor’s Arts Award and named “Best Poet in Arkansas” by the Arkansas Times, her fierce and powerful poetry has been nominated four times for The Pushcart Prize, as well as Bettering American Poetry 2015, and Best of the Net 2016 and 2018. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in POETRY, Cultural Weekly, SOLSTICE, Bellevue Literary Review, TAB, Entropy, SWWIM, Split This Rock, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Review, Luna Luna, Blue Heron Review, Tupelo Press, West Trestle Review, and elsewhere. Coggin is Associate Editor at The Rise Up Review. She lives with her wife and their two adorable dogs in the valley of a small mountain in Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas.

Office Hours Poetry Workshop is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. The workshop fellowship culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are womxn-identified. Our Craft Classes are free and open to the public with RSVP.

Lance Ringel Reads from His Latest Novel, Floridian Nights, with Chuck Muckle (Online Event)
2022-02-03 19:00 - 20:15 | NY
Lance Ringel’s latest novel, Floridian Nights, unfolds against a background that at times, surprisingly, can feel as distant as the World War I France of his award-winning debut novel, Flower of Iowa.
August, 1988 – the hottest summer in more than a century in New York, a city shadowed by the AIDS epidemic. Gary Gaines is 35 years old and three years past losing, in the most sudden, unexpected, terrible way, the love of his life, Becker Barnes. And then again, he is not past it at all. One night, to forget their mutual pain, Gary and his best friend Julia Stern, an even more recent widow, venture out to a funky East Village restaurant. There Gary meets, in the most unlikely circumstances, Rick Fennell, a 22-year-old waiter freshly moved from the Midwest. Despite the generation gap between them, a relationship slowly begins to develop. But Gary cannot bring himself to take Rick seriously, and his tight circle of family and friends, all of whom adored Becker, share his skepticism. Abruptly, circumstances cause Gary to decamp from New York to his parents’ home in Florida. As the days and nights pass, he is forced to face the consequences of his paralyzing grief, and make decisions about the future.
Floridian Nights captures a unique moment in time – a pre-digital age, when easy public affection and equality in marriage remain faraway dreams, but an organized community has finally emerged into the sunlight, and a gay man can find complete acceptance within his own family. The terror and tragedy of a killer epidemic stalking the land will be all too familiar to contemporary readers, even as they enjoy a culture-clash romance that ricochets between the unexpectedly comic and the deeply poignant.
Reading followed by a Q&A

Registration on Eventbrite required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau.
You can make a donation when you register on this page. Thank you for supporting the Bureau!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.

Purchase Lance Ringel’s Floridian Nights (Distant Mirror Press, 2021, paperback, $16.95) from the Bureau’s online store!
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Lance Ringel’s debut novel Flower of Iowa, an epic love story between two soldiers in the First World War, won book awards spanning multiple categories. His recently published second novel, Floridian Nights, is a generation-gap gay romance set against the backdrop of the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Ringel’s works for the theater include the plays In Love with the Arrow Collar Man, based on the true story of famed illustrator J.C. Leyendecker and his lover Charles Beach, and the current production Flash/Frozen, also based on true historical events.
www.lanceringel.com

Chuck Muckle (director/playwright/actor/composer) directed IN LOVE WITH THE ARROW COLLAR MAN and MOURNING BECOMES RIDICULOUS at the New York New Works Festival. MBR was previously chosen as one of four finalists in the Manhattan Theatre Mission’s second annual musical showcase, where it won awards for best book, lyrics, actor and actress. He appeared in the National Tours of SOUTH PACIFIC and CAMELOT with Robert Goulet, the Eastern Tour of A CHRISTMAS CAROL with John Astin, and was in the feature film THE NIGHT BEFORE with Seth Rogen.

Bespoke for Lunar New Year for All (online event)
2022-02-02 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
This inaugural (virtual) BESPOKE NEXT GEN will feature readings by four fabulous writers, including poet/playwright Darrel Alejandro Holnes, novelist Nawaaz Ahmed, fiction/comic writer and playwright Emma Horwitz, and poet Beth Hightower, plus a small Q&A to follow.
As per past Bespoke events, our 02/02/2022 reading will serve as a fundraiser for “NYC Lunar New Year for All,” a community organization devoted to the safety and wellness of the queer AAPI population in celebration of the upcoming lunar new year.
Please make a donation when you register on Eventbrite. 80% of donations will go to “NYC Lunar New Year for All” and 20% will go to support our host, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
For utmost safety, the event will be hosted via Zoom and live-streamed via the Bureau’s YouTube channel!
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to the event on Zoom. All who register for the event can join by clicking on “access the event” on the event page on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Nawaaz Ahmed’s Radiant Fugitives (Counterpoint, 2021, hardcover, $27) from the Bureau.

Purchase Darrel Alejandro Holnes’s Stepmotherland (University of Notre Dame Press, 2022, paperback, $15) from the Bureau.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

NAWAAZ AHMED is a transplant from Tamil Nadu, India. He holds an MFA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and is a former Kundiman and Lambda Literary Fellow. “Radiant Fugitives,” his first novel, was longlisted for The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize (2021) and the 2022 Aspen Words Literary Prize. @nawaazonthenet

While at the University of California-Berkeley, BETH HIGHTOWER (Chinese/White) won the Joan Lee Yang Memorial Poetry Contest and received an honorable mention for the Academy of American Poets’ University and College Poetry Prize. They have read at UC-Berkeley’s Lunch Poems series, Spoonbill Studio’s Poetry 99, and the Home School. @bethtinshow

DARREL ALEJANDRO HOLNES is an Afro-Panamanian American writer and the author of Migrant Psalms (Northwestern University Press, 2021) and Stepmotherland (Notre Dame Press, 2022). He is the recipient of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, the Drinking Gourd Poetry Prize, and an NEA Literature Fellowship in Creative Writing (Poetry). He is an assistant professor at the City University of New York (CUNY) and a faculty member at New York University. @blackboytraveljoy

EMMA HORWITZ is a writer and educator from New York City. Her plays have been produced and/or supported by The Playwrights Realm (2021-2022 Writing Fellow), Williamstown Theater Festival (2020 Playwright-in-Residence), Page 73 (Semifinalist 2021 Playwriting Fellowship), Clubbed Thumb, New Georges etc. Her work in fiction and comics have been published in print and online at Spiral Bound, Moon Missives, Vol. 1 Brooklyn’s Sunday Stories, Joyland Magazine, Two Serious Ladies, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, etc. BA: Bard College, Written Arts. MFA: Brown University, Playwriting. @e_horwitz

Book Launch for John Keene's Punks: New & Selected Poems (online event)
2022-01-28 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Please join us online to celebrate the book launch of John Keene’s Punks: New & Selected Poems, featuring poetry readings by John Keene and Reggie Harris.
Registration on Eventbrite required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite. Thank you for supporting the Bureau!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.

Purchase John Keene’s Punks: New & Selected Poems (Song Cave, paperback, $20) from the Bureau’s online store!
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
(Book cover includes a detail of a photograph by Alvin Baltrop: The Navy (three men), n.d. (1969-72)

John Keene author photo by Nina Subin copy
John Keene is a writer, translator, professor, and artist who was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2018. In 1989, Keene joined the Dark Room Writers Collective, and is a Graduate Fellow of the Cave Canem Writers Workshops. He is the author of Annotations, and Counternarratives, both published by New Directions, as well as several other works, including the poetry collection Seismosis, with artist Christopher Stackhouse, and a translation of Brazilian author Hilda Hilst’s novel Letters from a Seducer. Keene is the recipient of many awards and fellowships—including the Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whiting Foundation Prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize, and the American Book Award. He teaches at Rutgers University-Newark.

Reginald Harris won the 2012 Cave Canem/Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize for Autogeography. A Pushcart Prize Nominee, recipient of Individual Artist Awards for poetry and fiction from the Maryland State Arts Council, and Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for 10 Tongues: Poems (2002), his work has appeared in numerous journals, anthologies, and online. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner where he pretends to work on another manuscript.

TELL 77: Lost (ONLINE EVENT)
2022-01-15 18:30 - 20:30 | online event
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 is the theme of the 77th TELL, on Saturday, January 15, 2022, 6:30 to 8:30 PM (EST) on Zoom! Featuring: Nonye Brown-West, Shane O’Neill, and Rachel Garbus.

Registration on Eventbrite required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.

Click here to register

Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.

Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Nonye Brown-West is a Nigerian-American comedian and writer. She has been featured in the Boston Globe’s Rise column as a Comic to Watch, NPR, PBS, ABC, Sway In The Morning, and the New York Comedy Festival. Nonye has two animated web series, Fairytales with Nonye and Gayby Jesus.

Rachel Garbus (She/Her) is a writer and performer based in Atlanta, Georgia. She’s the co-producer of the Atlanta LGBTQ+ History Project, which employs photography, archival material and oral history to share the incredible stories of Atlanta’s queer communities. Her fiancée is a primatologist and her dog is professionally anxious.

Shane O’Neill is a reporter and video maker for The New York Times. He is also the creator and performer of The Jane Johnson Convention with Jill Pangallo.

Bureau resumes regular hours
2022-01-05 13:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
On Wednesday, January 5, 2022, the Bureau resumes regular hours: Wednesdays-Sundays, 1 to 7 PM.

Bureau Closed through January 4th
2021-12-20 - 2022-01-04 | NY
The Bureau will be closed from December 20th through January 4th due to The Center’s restricted hours during this period.
We will resume regular hours, Wednesdays-Sundays, 1 to 7 PM, on Wednesday, January 5, 2022.
Here is the updated from The Center:
“Due to the rising COVID rates, we are seeking to reduce the density and people traffic at The Center. One way we are achieving this is by having all non-essential staff working remotely from now until January 2nd. This means we will be offering mostly virtual programs/services. We will also be expanding our Holiday schedule. We will be observing Holiday Hours from Thursday, Dec. 23rd through Sunday, January 2nd, 2022; on these days we will only be open from 5pm-9pm.”

TELL 76: Spreading Queer! Holigay Stories! (ONLINE EVENT)
2021-12-18 19:00 - 21:00 | online event
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.
Spreading Queer! Holigay Stories! is the theme of the 76th TELL, on Saturday, December 18, 2021, 7 to 9 PM (EST) on Zoom! Featuring: olaiya olayemi, Shomi Noise, Chewy May, and Calvin Cato.

Registration on Eventbrite required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
You can make a donation when you register on the Eventbrite page. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom–or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page for the event and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

olaiya olayemi is a blk/trans/femme/womxxxn/anti-disciplinary artist/educator/and organizer. she has performed at Brooklyn Arts Exchange, JACK, AAA3A, metaDEN, The Wild Project, The Langston Hughes House, Starr Bar, Mayday Space, and Dixon Place. she holds a b.a. in english/creative writing from depaul university and a m.f.a. in creative writing from emerson college where she was a recipient of the Dean’s Fellowship. she is a 2019-2020 Performance Fellow in Queer Art’s mentorship program, a Fall 2020 Brooklyn Arts Exchange Space Grantee, and a 2020-2021 American Woman Fellow in Dramatic Question Theatre’s American Woman Lab. she currently lives in philadelphia.

Shomi Noise is a musician, DJ, writer and storyteller with an established reputation in the Brooklyn queer underground scene. She uses music to share empowering messages with the world through creative sets that mix various genres & sounds ranging from Latin, punk, hip-hop, reggae, and pop. She is also the lead singer of the Selena Quintanilla punk tribute band Amor Prohibido.

Chewy May is a comic born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has over 20 years of social awkwardness under her belt which fuels her comedy mind and her perspective on life.
Has been featured on:
Brooklyn Pride Comedy Show (Brooklyn, NY) – 2016
Crosstown Comedy Festival (New York, NY) – 2016
Nasty Women Unite Fest (Queens, NY) – 2017
Stand Up NY Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
ThunderFest (Allston, MA) 2017
Harlem Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
She-Devil Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
Hell Yes Fest (New Orleans, LA) 2018

Calvin S. Cato has performed all across the United States and has even crossed the border into Canada. His television appearances include the Game Show Network, Oxygen’s My Crazy Love, National Geographic’s Brain Games, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. His work has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Brooklyn Pride, Gotham Storytelling Festival and the Women in Comedy Festival. In addition, you may have heard him on Sirius XM or on the popular podcasts RISK!, Guys We F*cked, Las Culturistas, and Keith and the Girl. In 2017, Calvin was named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For. In 2021, Calvin contributed to Kweendom, an anthology of essays written by queer comedians.

Holiday Book Signing with Linda Simpson at the Bureau
2021-12-18 14:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The legendary Linda Simpson will hold court at the Bureau on Saturday, December 18, 2021, from 2 to 5 PM! She’ll be signing copies of her book, The Drag Explosion (Domain Books, 2020, hardcover, $50). We’ll have copies of The Drag Explosion and Drag Explosion t-shirts available for purchase.

New York’s momentous drag scene of the 1980s and ‘90s reigns again in this volume of photos by Linda Simpson, who spent the era in the middle of the action taking just-for-fun snapshots. The vivid images capture wild nightlife, queer activism, pop-culture moments, and colorful characters galore as they joyfully pushed the boundaries of gender expression, including Lady Bunny, RuPaul, Lypsinka and Leigh Bowery. Ultimately, her collection is a tribute to a golden age, when drag transformed from an underground art form into a mainstream sensation, and paved the path for today’s drag renaissance.
Safety protocol: The Center requires all visitors to wear masks at all times.
It’s a miracle! After more than 30 years as a drag queen, Linda Simpson continues to dazzle her fans with her witty demeanor, fine-tuned camp sensibility and unique blend of sass and class. And let’s not forget her stunning appearance!
Since emerging from the East Village drag scene in the late 1980s, the multi-faced queen has racked up a mile-long list of creative endeavors, including nightlife work galore as a hostess and party promoter; publishing the “revolutionary gay magazine” My Comrade; writing and starring in four different plays; and extensive work as a journalist, often in cahoots with her male alter ego, Les Simpson.
Another of Linda’s roles is drag her-storian. Her acclaimed slideshow presentation, THE DRAG EXPLOSION, features her vivid photos of NYC’s drag subculture in the 1980s and ‘90s.
And can you say BINGO? Throngs of people have attended her weekly club gigs and special events featuring fabulous prizes!
Linda’s staying power has also helped make her a drag pundit of sorts, and she has been featured in oodles of articles, videos and documentaries.
The New York Times has called her “A worldly wit… A kind of mother superior of the New York drag scene,” while Paper considers her “The thinking woman’s drag queen.”
Yesterday, today and tomorrow, Linda enthusiastically embraces the role she was born to play— a reigning queen!

Office Hours Fall 2021 Showcase Reading (online event)
2021-12-17 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
The Office Hours Poetry Workshop Fall 2021 fellows will give a brief reading in celebration of another strong semester of poetry making, community building, and thriving in difficult creative times. Fellows will read the innovative poetry they’ve developed over the course of four workshop sessions, write ins, and a virtual book club.
About us: Office Hours is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. We provide continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are femme-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia. http://sarahmsala.com/office-hours

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to the event on Zoom.
Suggested donation of $5 to $10 to benefit Office Hours
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Readers:
Laura Cresté is the author of You Should Feel Bad, winner of a 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She holds an MFA from New York University, and is currently a 2021-2022 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review’s Poem of the Week series, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, and No Tokens.

J. Freeborn is a teacher and the anthology books managing editor at The Poetry Society of New York. They have recent work in Dream Pop, Occulum, Impossible Task, and elsewhere

James Fujinami Moore‘s debut collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022). His work has appeared in Barrow Street’s 4×2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received support from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.

Linda Harris Dolan is a Brooklyn-based poet, editor, and educator. As a teaching artist at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, she leads one-on-one writing sessions with pediatric patients. She holds an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where she was a Starworks Creative Writing Fellow, and an MA in English & American Literature from NYU. She is the recipient of fellowships for Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and the Ruth Stone House Next Galaxy Retreat. Her work is featured in Bellevue Literary Review, Pigeon Pages, Barrow Street, Brooklyn Review, Cordella, and No, Dear, among others. She can be found online at lindaharrisdolan.com

Carrie Hohmann Campbell lives in Northwestern Pennsylvania where she teaches writing at Edinboro University, writes poetry, raises chickens, bakes incessantly, and enjoys life with her husband, son, and pets. She earned her BA in English and Creative Writing from Allegheny College and her MFA in poetry from New York University. Her second chapbook Drawn to Extinction was published by Finishing Line Press in May 2018.

Megan Pinto is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Plume, RHINO, and elsewhere. In 2019, Megan attended Bread Loaf as a Work-Study Scholar and the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference as the Bill Ransom Founders Scholar. She received a 2019 Amy Award from Poets & Writers, a 2020 Emerging Woman Poet Honor from Small Orange, and a 2021 Voices of Color Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Megan’s chapbook length manuscript “These Contusions” was chosen by Joshua Bennett as a finalist for the 2021 PSA Chapbook Fellowship. Megan holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.

Sarah M. Sala is a queer poet of Polish-Lebanese descent. Her debut collection, Devil’s Lake (Tolsun 2020) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, and an Eric Hoffer Provocateur Award. She is the founder of the free poetry workshop, Office Hours, and Poetry Editor at the Bellevue Literary Review. She is a clinical associate professor in the expository writing program at New York University. Her work appears in BOMB, the Southampton Review, and the Los Angeles Review. www.sarahmsala.com

Noel Sikorski‘s poems and Artwork are featured in Painted Bride Quarterly, Georgetown Review, Action Spectacle, The American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, and The Bellevue Literary Review. She teaches writing at NYU.

Avia Tadmor is an Israeli-born writer and educator. She has been a member of the Office Hours Poetry Workshop since Spring 2021. Avia’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, The New England Review, The Adroit Journal, Apogee, and elsewhere. Her poetry received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation/Bread Loaf Writers’ Summer Workshop. Currently, Avia is a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University’s Expository Writing Program.

There Once Was A Muse... Poetry Reading and Q&A (In-Person Event)
2021-12-12 17:30 - 18:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
One of NYC’s favorite male figure models and boylesque performer, Sloppi Chulo will be reading a selection of his naughty limericks from his brand new chapbook, “There Once Was A Muse…” and discussing his work (both written and performative). “There Once Was A Muse…” is the brand new publication from the homoerotic art collective, Doable Guys. It pairs Sloppi Chulo’s limericks with artwork inspired by none other than the poet himself, in a deliciously narcissistic project! It features artwork by over 20 different artists.
Copies of “There Once Was A Muse…” will be available for purchase at the event.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you are unable to join in person, please visit the Bureau’s YouTube channel where we will live-stream the event.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without 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. Thanks for your support!

Sloppi Chulo was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. After collecting a couple of degrees from Yale University, he decided to make his parents and his alma mater proud by being a slutty slutty boy for a living. An accomplished figure model who has inspired visual artists and provided memorable drink-and-draw party experiences all over the tri-state area for over a decade, he has thousands of hours under his belt. As a performing artist and shameless exhibitionist, his leap into the world of burlesque was a natural one, debuting at the Stonewall Inn with Bad Apple Boylesque in 2015 and officially giving birth to the moniker Sloppi Chulo, a show-stealing clown who combines elements of musical theater, hip hop, physical comedy, and striptease. During the pandemic, like so many theater makers whose stages had disappeared, he transitioned to the virtual arena, starting an immediately successful OnlyFans account, where he continues to create content to make you laugh and blush, sharing artistic nudes from professional shoots as well as naughtier DIY fare, searching for the intersection between silliness and sexiness and having good dirty fun while doing it.
The event will be hosted by Kyle Anderson. He is the curator of Doable Guys, a homoerotic art collective showcasing and promoting a wide variety of styles of art from around the world. Doable Guys strives to celebrate the beauty of the male form and the Queer art community as a whole. That includes ALL queer artists, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, medium of choice or skill level.

The Journey to Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-Of-Age Story
2021-12-11 11:00 - 12:00 | NY
Join author and illustrator Stacey Chomiak for a reading and Q&A about her new queer memoir Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story. In this young-adult illustrated memoir, Stacey Chomiak tells the true story of her teenage and young-adult years: of heartbreak, family conflict, trying to become ex-gay, wrestling with her faith, and finding love.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to the event on Zoom.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us.

Thank you for your support!

Stacey Chomiak is currently an Art Director in the animation industry, getting her start on the well-loved series, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”. While she continues to lend her talents to various children’s animated shows, she also illustrates & writes kids books. She lives happily nestled with her wife and two kids amid the tall trees near Vancouver, Canada. Stacey identifies as a gay Christian, and loves to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and have conversations around faith and sexuality. When she isn’t furiously sketching, Stacey is likely to be out for a bike ride, critiquing her favourite film, or encouraging her children to dance with her to Whitney Houston.

HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA (online event)
2021-12-03 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Presented by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and What Would an HIV Doula Do?
Friday, December 3, 2021
4 PM PST / 5 PM MST / 6 PM CST / 7 PM EST
Online, Free (registration on Eventbrite required for Zoom link)
Two Writers… One title. Decades apart, and unbeknownst to each other, writers Berend McKenzie and Francisco Ibanez Carrasco both wrote very beautiful – and very different – short stories about community, connection, and HIV set in Vancouver in the late 20th century, with the same unique title: HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA.
For the first time, the two writers will come together for World AIDS Day to share their short stories, and talk with each other and an audience about living and creating with community, history, and HIV. Along the way they will also answer the question: What does hockey have to do with HIV anyway?
Berend´s story is part of the collection BETWEEN CERTAIN DEATH AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis.
Francisco´s story appeared in the underground publication, Diseased Pariah News (issue 11).
Hockey Night image: Juan Saavedra (knowjuan.com)
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome!
You can make a donation when you register for the event on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us.
Order Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021, paperback, $22.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

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

BIOS
Berend McKenzie (he/she/they interchangeably) is a Treaty 6 Edmonton Alberta, Canada based, award-winning playwright, producer, actor, screenwriter, and published author, known for their unflinching, first-person writing style while drawing from their own lived experiences as a black, mixed-race Canadian. Berend began writing short plays in 2004 for the Loud & Queer Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, leading to his first full-length play, Get Off the Cross Mary! In 2009, Berend premiered, NGGRFG (Would you say the name of this play?). Their published works include NGGRFG (Signature Editions), Tassels (Brindle & Glass), Hockey Night in Canada (Arsenal Pulp Press). Berend is the 2021 Catalyst Theatre Confluence Fellow as well as a part of the 2021 Warner Media Global Access Writer’s Academy.

Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco’s rags-to-(somewhat)-riches story started with migrating from Chile, from poverty and military dictatorship, to 1985 Canada at 22 years old, getting diagnosed with HIV in 1986, becoming an AIDS activist in 1989, and pursuing a thrilling combo of community work and qualitative social-behavioural research. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His fiction shows desperate measures for desperate time and oblique relationships. His memoir Giving It Raw was published in 2015 by Transgress Press, Oakland, CA. https://givingitraw.ca/ On December 1, World AIDS day, Francisco has been presented with a POZ Toronto Award from POZ Planet magazine for his fight to HIV-stigma – https://www.facebook.com/groups/POZPLANET/

Kristy Harcourt (she/her) is a member of the What Would an HIV Doula Do? Collective based in Edmonton, Alberta. A 2SLGBTQ community worker, social worker, therapist and writer, she is also a Sessional Instructorin Social Work and Gender Studies at MacEwan University. Kristy was a co-host and performer in the long running Loud’n Queer Cabaret (Guys in Disguise / Workshop West) and a contributor to Queering The Way: The Loud’n Queer Anthology (Touchwood Editions).

What Would an HIV Doula Do? is a community of people joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. We understand a doula as someone who holds space during times of transition. We understand HIV as a series of transitions that begins long before being tested, continues after treatment and beyond. We know that since no one gets HIV alone, no one should have to deal with HIV alone. We doula ourselves, each other, institutions and culture. Foundational to our process is asking questions. Learn more at hivdoula.work

Craft Class & Reading with Wo Chan (online class)
2021-12-02 18:30 - 20:45 | NY
Join us for a Virtual Craft Class & Reading with Wo Chan
Craft class: 6:30-8:30 PM EST
Followed by a reading from 8:35-8:45 PM
“I love you. I’m glad I exist”: Poems of Daily Gratitude and Dedication
How do we mark the days? How do we describe (with care) the mundane and charged experiences that fill our lives? In this class, we will be reading poems that track daily living, uplifting on-the-ground quotidian writing with deep, intimate epistolary to open up a space of vulnerability, immediacy, and care. We will think about poetry writing as a ritualistic practice—for mourning, for celebration, and for tedium. We will read poems by Marilyn Hacker, Aracelis Girmay, Nazim Hikmet, Fay Chiang, Sharon Olds, Gabrielle Calvorcoressi, Dorianne Laux, Wendy Cope, and more. Come ready to write about your life as you are today. No prior writing experience necessary.
Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to this event on Zoom.
Wo Chan is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Poets & Writers, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. They served as a program assistant for Poets & Writers and a communications assistant for Kundiman. They live in Brooklyn and are a member of the Brooklyn-based drag alliance Switch n’ Play.
Office Hours Poetry Workshop is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. The workshop fellowship culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are womxn-identified. Our Craft Classes are free and open to the public with RSVP.

Closed for Thanksgiving
2021-11-25 - 2021-11-26 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Thursday, November 25th, and
Friday, November 26th.
We will re-open on Saturday, November 27th.

TELL 75: Soft (IN PERSON!)
2021-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, 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.
Soft is the theme of the 75th TELL, on Saturday, November 20, 2021, 7 to 9 PM (EST) IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Melissa Rocha, Scotty Salame, and Nessa Norich.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 30. Proof of vaccination required. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 30 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please bring proof of vaccination with you. You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation here when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Nessa Norich is a queer Ashkenazi filmmaker, performance artist, creative coach, educator and producer living in Brooklyn. Her work addresses the spiritual deficiencies of Western culture by opening up sacred containers for deep joy and collective grief. Nessa has directed music videos, experimental films, webseries and short narrative films. She has written, directed and performed in dozens of critically acclaimed original plays, internationally, and has starred in several feature length and short films that have played in festivals around the country. Recent: Nessa just wrapped the first short narrative film that she wrote, directed and acted in. Her musical comedy short, MAKE HAPPY, which imagined a conversation between the spirit of RBG and Melania Trump, days before the 2020 election, was viewed over 12,000 times in the four days between its release and Election Day. From March 2020 to April 2021, Nessa’s artist collective, Well of Wills, co-produced and co-created The Ark, a hybrid documentary short that poetically captures the first 40 days of Shelter in Place, weaving together the video diaries of 26 filmmakers with the ancient myth of The Great Flood.
Nessa is an alum of Emerge NYC and the NY Neo-Futurists. She is a graduate of Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris and received her B.A from Barnard College. Her teaching credits include Columbia University, Parsons, The New School, The Generations Project and Crossingpoint Arts.

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

Scotty Salame is a New York based performer, Emmy nominated production designer, and visual artist. Past stage acting credits include One Love (Theatre for the New City), Parker & Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow (TNC), Fat Asses (TNC), and HAIR (Salem Theatre Company.) You can currently watch him on screen in titles including the comedy series Cady Did (YouTube), Pride: The Series (Amazon Prime Video) and the 2014 family film A Little Game. www.scottysalame.com

Trans...Back in the Day (online event)
2021-11-18 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Please join writer Alex Reeve, award-winning filmmaker Fiona Dawson, activist Blake Dremann, and actor Ash Palmisciano (of TV’s “Emmerdale”) for an exploration of trans life in the 19th century. FREE EVENT plus some TASTY DISCOUNTS. Join us November 18, 7pm (Eastern Time). In partnership with the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division.
Fiona Dawson emcees this special presentation, featuring an interview of author Alex Reeve and a dramatic reading by Ash Palmisciano. To close things up, Alex will take your questions in an Author Meets Reader event. Presented by Felony & Mayhem Press, in partnership with the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division.
Click here to register

Purchase the first two books in Alex Reeve’s Leo Stanhope series from the Bureau at a 25% discount courtesy of Felony & Mayhem!

George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (and the Daring Life)
2021-11-12 19:30 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
This PowerPoint presentation and interview will examine the fascinating life and work of the gay photographer George Platt Lynes, who grew up in New Jersey and the Berkshires but became a transatlantic cosmopolitan with a wide network of queer friends—artists, writers, and performers. After befriending Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas when he went to Paris at age eighteen in 1925, Lynes eventually took up photography in NYC. His highly theatrical studio work in portraiture, fashion, classical dance, mythological subjects, and especially the male nude, were influenced by Surrealism. For nearly fifteen years he shared his life with Monroe Wheeler, a publisher who became a prominent behind-the-scenes figure at the Museum of Modern Art, and the novelist Glenway Wescott, who lived with Wheeler in France in the 1920s and became a member of the influential literary Lost Generation. Their threesome was at the nexus of intersecting queer cultural circles and included such artists as Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French (PaJaMa), fiction writer Katherine Anne Porter, impresario Lincoln Kirstein, and the painter and illustrator Bernard Perlin. Lynes-Wheeler-Wescott aided Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research, and the Institute’s collection of Lynes’s male nudes preserves images almost never exhibited and rarely published in Lynes’s lifetime.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 30. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 30 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please note that we will post a video recording of the event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel a day or two after the event.

Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation on Eventbrite when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Pre-order Allen Ellenzweig’s George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford University Press, hardcover) from the Bureau at a 20% discount: $36 (marked down from $45)! Release date is November 9, 2021–shipments to go out as soon as we have copies in hand.
We hope to have copies in hand by November 12th, but we cannot guarantee that they will arrive on time for the event. We will update this page as soon as we have a confirmed date of arrival.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Allen Ellenzweig is a cultural critic and commentator who has published in numerous arts and general interest periodicals, including The Village Voice and Art in America, as well as the online journals Tablet, The Forward, and Poetry Magazine. His landmark history, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe, was published in 1992. He is a regular contributor to the Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide and teaches in the Writing Program of Rutgers University.

What Wasn’t I Thinking: Sebastian Stuart Talks with Stephen McCauley
2021-11-11 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
If you are having trouble registering on Eventbrite (the site isn’t working properly right now, Thurs., Nov. 11, at 2 pm), please email us at contact@bgsqd.com and we’ll send you the Zoom link you need to join us online tonight at 7 PM.

JoinSebastian Stuartas he reads fromWhat Wasn’t I Thinking?: A Memoir Of Rebellion, Madness and My Mother.The reading will be followed with a conversation between Sebastian and authorStephen McCauley.
“Sebastian Stuart’s dazzling memoir held me in its thrall like the best kind of novel. His mastery of suspense and his inherent humanity make for one electrifying read. And, like all good memoirists, he made me reexamine my own life along the way.” –Armistead Maupin
“A madcap and a captivating, deeply moving chronicle of madness—a combination ofThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,Franny and Zooey,andThe Bell Jar.” —Kevin Sessums, author ofMississippi Sissy
“A gripping read—as sad and sweet as life itself.” —Edmund White

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome.
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us!
Click on the following links to place an order on the Bureau’s online store:

Thank you for your support!

Sebastian Stuarthad a heady childhood. His brilliant, acerbic mother was the Entertainment Editor ofLifemagazine and his father was an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. James Baldwin was a dinner guest and Bette Midler paid a courtesy call. Yet beneath the glittering parties, the family was haunted by unspoken tragedy. By age fifteen Sebastian was dropping acid and turning tricks for money. He found friendship and solace with his cousin Tina, an aspiring poet and striking beauty who was signed by the Ford modeling agency. When Tina began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia, Sebastian was torn between a desire to save her and the fear of losing himself in her madness. From San Francisco in the ’70s to New York in the AIDS-ravaged ’80s, Stuart’s quest for self-discovery leads to a sad and shocking understanding of his family history and the price of grief denied. And, ultimately, it leads to redemption. By turns hilarious, irreverent and heartbreaking,What Wasn’t I Thinking?is an unflinching evocation of loss and forgiveness.
Sebastian Stuarthas published nine novels, including a national bestseller published in eight languages, a New York Times bestseller and a Book of the Month Club selection. His novelThe Hour Betweenwas an NPR Season’s Readings selection and won the Ferro-Grumley Award as best LGBT novel of the year. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Stephen McCauleyis the author of six previous novels, includingThe Object of My Affection,True Enough, andAlternatives to Sex. Many have been national bestsellers, and three have been made into feature films.The New York Times Book Reviewdubbed McCauley “the secret love child of Edith Wharton and Woody Allen”, and he was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. His fiction, reviews, and articles have appeared inThe New York Times,The Washington Post,Harper’s,Vogue, and many other publications. He currently serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University. He has several properties listed on Airbnb in Massachusetts and New York and owns a total of zero toss pillows.

EXCESS: Aesthetics, Gender, Performance. A Roundtable Discussion
2021-11-10 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
A Roundtable Discussion about how a new generation of Black and Latina girls, drag queens, and burlesque stars are employing excess as a political tool. Featuring scholars Jillian Hernandez (author of Aesthetics of Excess), Meredith Heller (author of Queering Drag), and Lynn Sally (author of Neo-Burlesque). Moderated by Joe E. Jeffreys.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is FREE, but we welcome donations to support the work of the panelists and the Bureau. You can make a donation when you register. Thank you!

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

Purchase Jillian Hernandez’s Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Duke University Press, 2020, paperback, $27.95) directly from Duke University Press

Jillian Hernandez is Associate Professor at the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research at the University of Florida. She created, Women on the Rise!, an outreach initiative that introduces contemporary art and artists and offers art-making praxis to young Black and Latina women in Miami. She discusses this in her critically-acclaimed book published by Duke University Press (2020), Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment.

Meredith Heller is a Senior Lecturer of Queer Studies in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Northern Arizona University. She specializes in queer theory and critical identity studies, with additional expertise in performance studies and digital media. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending won the Popular Culture Association’s 2021 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Book in LGBTQ Studies and was named one of NBC’s “10 LGBTQ books to watch out for in 2020.”

Dr. Lynn Sally is a scholar and practicing artist. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and MA in Gender Studies and Feminist Theory from The New School for Social Research. Her recent book Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation (Rutgers University Press, 2022) has been hailed “a smart,feminist tour de force…must read” by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. She also writes creative nonfiction at Medium and www.lynnsally.com.

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian. He teaches theatre studies at New York University and The New School and has video documented NYC’s vibrant drag and burlesque scenes for over a dozen years. See samples of his video work at https://vimeo.com/joejeffreys

Cruising into Age—Getting Older Queerly
2021-11-04 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
How do queers age gracefully — and queerly? How do they deal with traumatic pasts, which sometimes leave painful personal and physical legacies, and how do they do so while keeping desire and intimacy alive? Prolific queer author Jonathan Alexander discusses his two new Fall books, the critical memoirs Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot (Fordham University Press) and Bullied: The Story of an Abuse (Punctum) with fellow queer writer Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome!
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us!
Click on the following links to place an order:

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

To purchase Jonathan Alexander’s Bullied: The Story of an Abuse please visit the publisher’s website: punctumbooks.com.

Jonathan Alexander is a writer living in Southern California where he is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books. His cultural journalism has been widely published, especially in the Los Angeles Review of Books for which he is the Young Adult editor, where founding editor Tom Lutz called him one of “our finest essayists.” He lives with his husband and cat, and when not writing, dabbles in watercolors and plays piano in a music ensemble with friends. For more about Jonathan Alexander and his books please visit www.thecreeptrilogy.com and www.the-blank-page.com. Photo by Carla Wilson.

Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints, The Five Acts of Diego León, and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. He’s written for the LA Times, the NY Times Magazine, VQR, LitHub, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell as well as an American Book Award, he lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside.

Come Meet Musician and Poet Calvin Arsenia at the Bureau
2021-10-31 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come Meet Musician and Poet Calvin Arsenia at the Bureau on Halloween! Arsenia will be hanging out at the Bureau from 3 to 5 PM on Sunday, October 31st, to chat and to sign copies of Every Good Boy Does Fine.
To reserve a copy of Every Good Boy Does Fine (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2021, paperback, $14.99), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
About Every Good Boy Does Fine :
“Glowing with warmth, vulnerability, and a heavy heart, Arsenia’s intimate reflections depict the past and present wrestling within the individual as he endeavors to chart his own course in the world.”–Atwood Magazine
Both a journey of individual healing and a call for action, these poems show that, with a little love and acceptance, anyone can flourish.
From one of Kansas City’s most exciting singers Calvin Arsenia, comes a debut book of poetry and prose Every Good Boy Does Fine. Named for the classic mnemonic used to teach the lines of the treble clef (EGBDF), his collection speaks to his passion as a musician and also his deep and tumultuous history in the Evangelical community.
Arsenia includes elements of queer poetry, writings on racial awakening, Christian de-conversion, and sexual awakenings in a homophobic community with the hopes that, when finished reading, readers will feel ready to start their own journey of self-expression through music and performance.
A profoundly thoughtful and enlightening work, Arsenia uses his lyrical talent to show that there is always somewhere to go no matter where you are coming from.

About Calvin Arsenia:
Voted Kansas City’s Best Musician 2018 and 2019 (PitchKC), and featured on Billboard, NPR.org, NEWNOWNEXT, Pride.com, and GRAMMY.com, singer and harpist Calvin Arsenia has built a reputation for turning the arts world on its head.
Arsenia’s angelic, classically-trained voice soars over audiences, enchanting even the fussiest of fans, beckoning them to join him as he flirts between genres.
But the music is just one part of his prodigious performances, for Calvin believes the art is in crafting the perfect moment. His music is best
served live, with sensational performances and high fashion from the visually striking performer who stands at 6’6”.
Arsenia’s height, energy, and curated environments fill the often intimate spaces he performs in. Brought into 9 countries through public and private grants in less than a decade, Arsenia builds a scene for his audience and for himself, packed with beauty and lasting delight.
More at calvinarsenia.com

Gay Literature Icon Felice Picano’s Only New York Appearance
2021-10-30 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Felice Picano will read selections from his praised new novel, Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment and discuss the book and its companion volume, Pursued: Lillian’s Story, to be published in 2022. Both are fictional results of the author’s decades long research into gender and sexuality throughout history. Other periods of interest he is writing about are Pre-Homeric Greece, and 18th Century Naples. Picano will also discuss his Sci Fi Trilogy, City on a Star, and its first two volumes, Dryland’s End and The Betrothal at Usk.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of attendees to 20. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend in person.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 20 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please join us online as we livestream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.

Purchase Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment (paperback, $18.95) from the Bureau’s online store and have it shipped to you or pick it up at our physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
One of the founding fathers of Modern Gay Literature, and member of the ground-breaking Violet Quill, Felice Picano is the best-selling, prize-winning author of poetry, plays, screenplays, stories, novels, non-fiction, and memoirs translated into 17 languages.

Welcome to the Tori Vortex
2021-10-29 18:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Ksenia M. Soboleva, Samantha Nye, and Catalina Schliebener will discuss their collaborative project Raspberry Swirl: Dyke Views on Tori, which poses Tori Amos as a time-capsule into 1990s teenage rebellion, queer alienation, and femme aesthetics. Published by Lyeberry press, the eponymous artist-book is the culmination of their deep dive into queer Tori fandom, which they have coined the “Tori Vortex.” Led by Ksenia’s desire to theorize the lesbian obsession with Tori Amos, Sam and Cata reflect on the ways in which their adolescence was marked by the redhaired musician, and how these sensibilities have informed their current artistic practice.

Megan Milks will read from TORI AMOS BOOTLEG WEBRING, their personal history of early online Tori fandom. In this second volume of Instar Books’ new Remember the Internet series, Milks returns us to a world before “search” and “social media,” a world still inventing the rules for being with one another online. Teenage Megan takes us on a journey from early listservs and personal fan pages to the most elite Tori Amos tape trading webring of 1998, using their living room computer to navigate fandom friendships haunted with nascent queer meaning.

Stephen van Dyck will read from PEOPLE I’VE MET FROM THE INTERNET, a queer re-imagining of the coming-of-age narrative set at the dawn of the internet era, taking the form of a very long annotated list. The book spans twelve years, starting in 1997 when AOL is first entering suburban homes just as thirteen-year-old Stephen is coming into his sexuality, constructing selves, and cruising in the fantasyscape of the internet. Through strange, intimate, and sometimes perilous physical encounters with the hundreds of men he finds there, Stephen explores the pleasures and pains of growing up, contends with his mother’s homophobia and early death, catalogues popular culture (Shirley Manson, Annie Lennox, and Tori Amos), and searches for glimpses of utopia in the available world.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 we ask that all attendees bring proof of vaccination and we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 35. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend. You will need to show proof of vaccination at the door.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

KSENIA M. SOBOLEVA is a Russian-Tatar writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture, with a particular focus on lesbian (in)visibility. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.

SAMANTHA NYE is a painter, video installation artist and long-term Tori Amos lover living in Philadelphia. Samantha’s first solo show My Heart’s In A Whirl is currently on view at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

CATALINA SCHLIEBENER is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. Schliebener’s work draws on images, objects, and narratives associated with childhood and explores gender, sexuality, and class.

MEGAN MILKS is the author of Tori Amos Bootleg Webring, as well as Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body and Slug and Other Stories, both out this fall from Feminist Press.

STEPHEN VAN DYCK is the author of People I’ve Met from the Internet, out now from Ricochet Editions. Stephen lives in Los Angeles.

Conjuring the Sacred: Poets of the Diaspora
2021-10-28 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
We’re not sure what the problem is with registering on Eventbrite today, but please know that you can live-stream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzrAvfZM
Join us for a free virtual celebration of Black poets, living and writing in the diaspora. This magical lineup includes: Gbenga Adesina, Kemi Alabi, Romeo Oriogun and Candace Williams. These four contemporary scholars, storytellers and archivists, whose work expands the cannon, will perform poems and offer their favourite poetry prompts to the audience. The program will be moderated by Omotara James and is brought to you by City Artists Corps Grant & NYFA.
This event is FREE, but registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
Gbenga Adesina, Nigerian poet and essayist, is the author of Painter of Water, a haunting meditation on intimacy in the face of war and historical violence selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poets series. His work centers intimacy as a form of inquiry, and the sea as archive and brutal border around which orbits the questions of empire, migration, and exile. He was a Goldwater Fellow at NYU where he received his MFA, and was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. He was the 2020 Olive B.O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University, where he taught a poetry class called, “Song of the Human”. His work have been published in Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, and the New York Times. He’s the winner of the 2020 Narrative Prize. (Author photo description: A person with a beard. Description automatically generated with medium confidence).

Kemi Alabi was born on a Sunday in July. The author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy American Poets First Book Award, their work appears in Poetry, the Atlantic, Best New Poets 2019, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2, and elsewhere. Alabi is coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021) and lives in Chicago, IL. (Author photo description: A person wearing glasses-description automatically generated with low confidence.)

Romeo Oriogun is the author of Sacrament of Bodies, a finalist for the Lambda Award for Poetry. He currently lives in Ames where he is an Innovation Fellow at Iowa State University.

Candace Williams is a black queer nerd living a double life. By day, they’re a middle school English teacher. By night, they’re a poet. Their chapbook, Spells for Black Wizards, was a 2017 TAR Chapbook Series winner and published by the Atlas Review. The Dark Diary (formerly futureblack), their first full-length poetry manuscript, was a 2018 National Poetry Series finalist and is forthcoming from Grieveland.
They’ve earned a MA in Elementary Education from Stanford University, a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, Pushcart nominations, as well as workshop scholarships from Cave Canem and the Fine Arts Work Center. They were a 2017 Create Change Fellow at the Laundromat Project. They’ve read their poetry, given lectures, and devised original performances at many venues including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bushwick Starr Theater, Poetry Project, Eyebeam, Dixon Place, the New School, and the New Museum. They are a member of CityLore’s Homer 2 Hip Hop Advisory Committee. (Author photo description: A picture containing person, indoor. Description automatically generated.)

Moderator:
Omotara James is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and editor, based out of New York City. Her debut poetry collection is “Song of My Softening,” slated for release in 2022, with Alice James Books. (Author photo description: A picture containing person, glasses, indoor. Description automatically generated.)

Forget Burial Book Launch
2021-10-23 18:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Marty Fink and Alex Juhasz for an intergenerational conversation about the ongoing legacy of HIV caregiving to celebrate the launch of Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care.
Queer and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together to take care of each other in the face of state violence. This book uncovers how early HIV care-giving narratives actually shape how we continue to understand our genders and our disabilities today.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of attendees to 20. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 20 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please join us online as we livestream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation here when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Purchase Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (paperback, $29.95) from the Bureau to have shipped to you or to pick up at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Marty Fink is an Associate Professor of Professional Communication at X University. They are the author of Forget Burial: HIV Kinships, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (Lambda finalist in LGBTQ non-fiction, 2020) which investigates HIV activism past and present through the lens of caregiving. Fink’s work has appeared in journals including Television and New Media Studies, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Transgender Quarterly, and Jump Cut. Fink’s work draws on homo archives and trans literature toward prison abolition and defunding the police.
Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She makes and studies committed media practices that contribute to political change and individual and community growth. Author and/or editor since 1995 of scholarly books on activist media in light of AIDS (AIDS TV, 1995 and AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, 2020, Duke), black lesbian and queer representation (Sisters in the Life, Duke, 2018), feminism (Women of Vision, UMN, 2001), and digital culture (Learning from YouTube, MIT, 2011, Really Fake, with Nishant Shah, 2021, U MN Press), Dr. Juhasz also makes videotapes on feminist issues from AIDS to teen pregnancy as well as producing the feature fakes The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). Her current work is on and about fake news and radical digital media literacy (fakenews-poetry.org).
