BGSQD

HOMOCATS: Join The Party zine launch + reading (in person & live-streaming)
2025-01-17 18:30 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join artist J. Morrison and special guests for the NYC launch of
“HOMOCATS: Join The Party” at the Bureau!
HOMOCATS are excited to release the thirteenth zine in the series. “Join The Party” is created as a call to action to protest the incoming administration, while striving for community and togetherness in the difficult times we are living through.
The launch will also feature the updated HOMOCATS boxed set containing 12 zines from the series, as well as a selection of screen-printed apparel.
All the zines are created with original physical art and collages, and photocopied by hand by the artist.
Friday, January 17th
Check in at 6:30pm
Readings at 7:00pm

Featured HOMOCATS zine readers:
Dehlia Hennessy Brown
Jorge Clar
Carl Ferrero
Robert Hammond
Donnie Jochum
Lisa Levy
Douglas A. Martin
Eva Mueller
Lloyd Mulvey
Greg Newton
Xavier Smith
Christopher Stout
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Created by Brooklyn artist J. Morrison in 2010, HOMOCATS is a visual art and zine publication connecting the modern popularity of the feline with social politics.
Our mission aims to fight phobias, propose equal rights, combat cultural stereotypes, question social norms, resist T***pism, and make the world a better place.

Opening Reception for What Are You Looking At? (in person only)
2025-01-16 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
What are you looking at?
An art show in five acts
On view at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
January 16 – April 20, 2025
Opening Reception: Thursday, January 16, 2025, 6 to 8 PM
Daniel Cavanaugh :: Kelwin Coleman :: Norbert Garcia Jr. ::
Bouﬀant Bouﬀant :: Scott Mabe
There is a fantastic space where no one lives. It exists in between the subject and the artist. These five artists work with the photographic image to present this space—from the extraordinarily faithful to the imagined confessional. A Grecian urn houses the ashes of the dead while their story is festooned on its hide; John Keats asks in “Ode to A Grecian Urn,” What men or gods are these? Portraiture is our modern day Grecian urn. Within these works, masculinity is held inside the shape of loss, though its history remains immortalized upon the exterior. Comparably, Marsden Hartley’s Portrait of a German Officer presents the essence of this ideology. Often the emotional and representational implications of the work are overshadowed by its painterly formal aspects, which creates a disservice to the genre of portraiture. Hartley’s portrait of his lover Karl Von Freyburg, who went to war and died, is depicted through no human form. We see dramatic colors and brushstrokes outline both emotion and explanation. And now, daily, we consume portraits without question and make the absorption digestible, further simplifying the genre. This exhibition asks the viewer to see beyond the obvious. Yes, the artists are queer. Yes, there is queer celebration and contemplation.
Yes, there is sex but what is beyond the exterior?
What are you looking at?

RESISTING PROJECT 2025 PODCAST EPISODE 8: RESISTANCE 2.0: THE EMERGING PLAYBOOK TO FIGHTING PROJECT 2025 & T***P 2.0 (in person & live-streaming)
2025-01-15 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Resistance 2.0. What is it? Who is mobilizing? Who is on the frontlines? What’s being done to stop or put a brake on T***p 2.0 and the “Day One” weaponization of Project 2025?
Join us on January 15th at 7-8:30 pm for the official 2025 launch of our rebranded Resisting Project 2025 podcast (formerly Revisioning Democracy). We’re back for year two at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in NYC and streaming online. We’ve restructured our podcast as an all-team effort and convo with special regular features and special guests — focused on how we build and support community and broad resistance to Project 2025 and T***p 2.0 for the road ahead.
Campaign team: Anne-christine d’Adesky, Jay W. Walker, Sally O’Driscoll, Juno Rosenhaus, Saba Bando, Javier Morales.
Our relaunch takes places five days before the inauguration and three days before the planned People’s March in Washington, DC, on January 18th. We’ll be providing an overview and spotlight updates about what we’ve learned about the current scope and forms of Resistance 2.0 to the planned “Day One” weaponization of Project 2025 – which defines T***p 2.0. We’ll also talk about what our campaign plans for 2025. Tune in for a critical public conversation on resisting authoritarianism and defending our democracy.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Resisting Project 2025 Core Team
Anne-christine d’Adesky
FOUNDER
An award-winning independent journalist, author, feminist, longtime human rights, LGBTQIA+, gender equality, HIV and immigration activist. ACT UP member; co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers, PotoFanm+Fi in Haiti.
[Photo: Juno Rosenhaus]
Jay W. Walker
SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER
A queer Black leader, community organizer and longtime NYC activist on LGBTQIA+, HIV, and racial justice issues. Founding member, Rise and Resist; President, Gays Against Guns; Co-founder, NYC Queer Liberation March.
[Photo: Ryan McGinley Studios]
Juno Rosenhaus
WEBSITE MANAGER
Activist, artist, feminist, web designer. All things intergenerational, intersectional and Dyke. Founder of the Dyke+ ArtHaus in Philadelphia.
[Photo: Juno Rosenhaus]
Sally O’Driscoll
EDITORIAL TEAM
Writer, editor, and researcher. English literature PhD scholar, writer, feminist, proud lesbian, queer activist on feminism, sexual rights, reproductive health, transgender and other LGBTQ+ issues.
[Photo: Bob Hranichny]
Saba Bando
VOLUNTEER COORDINATOR
Executive and personal coach committed to disability rights, women’s rights, social justice, racial justice; first-generation immigrant, proud mother of a wheelchair-user. She resides in the Chicago-area with her husband and son.
Javier Morales
Latino Mobilization, Spanish translation.
Morales coordinates LATINX+, a US-based network of people of Latin descent living with HIV, fighting criminalization and stigma. He lives in Milford, PA, where he is Artistic Director for Pike Opera, with his husband, Sean Strub, and their dog Alfie.

lesbian book club
2025-01-11 11:00 - 12:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
We’ll be reading fiction and non-fiction — classic, contemporary, revealing and visionary. As a group we will decide what to read each month, focusing on lesbian authors and/or related topics. Co-founded by lesbian book lovers Judi Komaki and Piper Olsen.

For our January 11th meeting, we’ll read No Modernism without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (Head of Zeus, 2021, paperback, $15.95). To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.comwith “please reserve a copy of No Modernism without Lesbians” in the subject line. Purchase the book before January 11th and receive 15% off ($13.56 instead of $15.95).

And for our February 8th meeting, we’ll read Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians V. the Supreme Court, by Deb Price and Joyce Murdoch (Basic Books, 2002, paperback, $25.99). Unfortunately the Bureau is unable to offer a discount on this title because our distributor only offers this book at retail price, rather than wholesale. So if you’d like to purchase the book from us, please let us know as soon as possible and we’ll order a copy for you. Email us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please order a copy of Courting Justice for me” in the subject line.

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

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required.

Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis Colloquium with Judith Rustin (co-sponsored by the Program in Trauma Studies)
2025-01-10 19:30 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Judith Rustin Colloquium: “Beyond the Words: The Implicit Dimension of Psychoanalytic Treatment”
This presentation introduces some basic concepts from infant research and neuroscience. Infant research describes how very early memories are formed and encoded thereby providing access to how they might show themselves from birth onwards. The concepts from neuroscience used in this presentation are simple versions for the non-scientist. They are used to explain some basic functions of how the brain processes information with specific emphasis on memory formation and the mind/body connection. I argue that humans are “mindbodybrains.” Whereas psychoanalysis has privileged “mind” in its theories, this presentation offers additional knowledge and language to link it to “body” and “brains,” and to provide a way to communicate these links to patients. This language expands the clinical repertoire.
Learning Objectives

Be able to describe the three components of the Triune Brain and the function of each
Be able to describe the difference between explicit and implicit communication
Be able to describe the kinds of memories(s) infants are able to encode and how they might be expressed in adulthood
Be able to describe the two components of embodied communication

The Manhattan Institute is a NY State approved provider of continuing education hours for: LCSW, LMSW, LCAT, LMHC and Licensed Psychologists.
For in-person attendance you will receive an E-ticket through Eventbrite.
TICKETS: $50.00
please RSVP here
Students at other Institutes can purchase tickets for $25.00
(Proof of student status required)
MIP candidates can attend for free.
A Zoom link will be sent to everyone who signs up through Eventbrite for those who would like to join remotely.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Judith Rustin, LCSW, is Faculty and Supervisor at The Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity in New York City and a Consultant in the Trauma Certificate Program of Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. She has authored numerous papers and spoken nationally and internationally on the integration of Intersubjectivity Theory as defined by Robert Stolorow and Collaborators with Infant Research and Neuroscience. She is author of Infant Research and Neuroscience at Work in Psychotherapy: Expanding the Clinical Repertoire (2013) and co-author with B. Beebe, S. Knoblauch and D. Sorter (2005) of Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment. Judith is in Private Practice in New York City.

Closing Party for You Left a Mark on Me (in person only)
2025-01-05 17:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for the closing party for You Left a Mark on Me on the very last day of the exhibition!
Free and open to all! Free non-alcoholic beverages will be served.
About the exhibition:
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division presents You Left A Mark On Me, an exhibition highlighting Queer tattoo artists with an art practice outside of their tattoo work; and Queer artists who utilize tattoo imagery in their work. Curated by Zach Grear and Nelson Santos, the exhibition features paintings, drawings, ceramics, and embroidery work by Colton Ackerman, Alexandria Deters, Virginia Elwood, Evan Paul English, Zach Grear, Christian Lord, Dewey Rice, Lancelot Runge, Tamara Santibañez, and Zyra West.
You Left A Mark On Me looks at the close ties that mark-making and queer bodies connect communities and the creative outputs that come from it. The tattoo artists in this exhibition find alternative forms of mark-making beyond the flesh, whether it’s using their hands to mold clay (Christian Lord, Tamara Santibañez), building sculptures and painting with yarn (Virginia Elwood), or making broad and colorful paint strokes (Evan Paul English, Dewey Rice, Zyra West). On the other end of the spectrum, You Left A Mark On Me, brings together queer artists (Colton Ackerman, Alexandria Deters, Zach Grear, and Lancelot Runge) that are influenced by tattoo imagery, and use ink, thread, and found images to mark the body on paper, playing with iconic tattoo graphics and colorful patterns.
The curators, Zach Grear and Nelson Santos are also artists and collectors of tattoos, interested in how these queer communities intertwine and connect. There is often a deep connection when a queer body is marked by another queer body and the way art expresses this queer magic and beauty.

Closed for New Years Day
2025-01-01 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on
Wednesday, January 1st.
Happy New Year to all!

Closed for Christmas
2024-12-26, 2024-12-25 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on
Wednesday, December 25th
Thursday, December 26th
and
Wednesday, January 1st.

Happy holidays to all!

TELL: Fighting (in person & live-streaming)
2024-12-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 10 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.
The theme for December is Fighting, featuring storytellers Anthony Caronna, KAROLINE, and Fernando Vieira.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

Drae Campbell is the host and curator of TELL, an award winning podcast that can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Theater: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater & National Tour, Lortel Nominated), Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Teatro Circulo), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Storm Still (DirectorFest, Drama League), La Cage Aux Folles (Barrington Stage Company).
Film and TV: Senior Escort Service, Blunderpuss, It’s Very Common, TOW.
TV: Bull, New Amsterdam.
BFA, The University Of The Arts
Ig @draebiz and @tellqueerz

Anthony Caronna is a film director and creator known for HBO‘s “Last Call: When a serial killer stalked queer New York.” Caronna goes by they/them pronouns.

KAROLINE is a queer Chinese American actor and writer who goes by a mononym. They can currently be seen in the new Hulu series DEATH AND OTHER DETAILS and in A24’s A DIFFERENT MAN. Their theater credits include THE HARD PROBLEM at Lincoln Center, EXCLUSION at Arena Stage, and the world premiere of [VEIL WIDOW CONSPIRACY], for which The New York Times called them “terrific.” Their short film PIPPI, which they wrote and starred in, traveled the festival circuit to acclaim and is currently on a two year distribution deal. Karoline was born in Shanghai, grew up in Sweden, and raised in South Texas. They went to a pre-med high school, then Harvard, both of which are terrible party facts.

Fernando Vieira is a New York-based writer, director, and performer. As a multidisciplinary artist, Vieira balances their career as creator of stage and film works. Playwriting work includes the plays Goodbye, Little George (2020) and Anormales (2021). Vieira’s work has been presented at various theatrical companies and institutions such as BAAD!, Repertorio Español, IATI Theater, The Brick Theatre, Teatro Audaz, Chelsea Theater, Prelude Festival, The Tank, among others. Film work includes the documentary Unlabeled (2021) and the experimental short films Frenetic Journey Toward Muddledness (2023) and Las Olas (2024). Vieira earned a Master of Arts degree in Film Studies from CUNY Graduate Center.

OUTspoken: The Publishing Triangle’s Reading Series, December Edition (in person & live-streaming)
2024-12-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Publishing Triangle presents its monthly OUTspoken Reading Series as host Rob Byrnes welcomes Christopher Bram, Joy Ladin, Greg Herren, Christian Baines, Michael McKeown Bondhus, Finnian Burnett, Fiona Riley, and ‘Nathan Burgoine.

Join us as in-person or watch the live-stream to hear from some of queer literature’s most dynamic established and up-and-coming voices.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

You Left a Mark on Me Pop-Up Flash Tattoo Event (in person only)
2024-12-14 13:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
As part of programming for the You Left A Mark On Me exhibition, we are excited to present a Pop-up Flash Tattoo event. Tattoo artists, Dewey Rice (@good.boy.tattoo), Zyra West (@zyra_west), and Aisha the Goddess (@aisha_thegoddess) will be tattooing at the Bureau! Appointments and walk-ins are welcome (first-come, first-served). Scheduling and prices should be directly arranged with the artists. DM artists on Instagram for details (links above).

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

lesbian book club
2024-12-14 11:00 - 12:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
We’ll be reading fiction and non-fiction — classic, contemporary, revealing and visionary. As a group we will decide what to read each month, focusing on lesbian authors and/or related topics. Co-founded by lesbian book lovers Judi Komaki and Piper Olsen.

For our December 14th meeting, we’ll read The Price of Salt/Carol by Patricia Highsmith (W.W. Norton & Company, 2024, paperback, $15.95). To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of The Price of Salt” in the subject line. Purchase the book before December 14th and receive 15% off ($13.56 instead of $15.95).

And for our January 11th meeting, we’ll read No Modernism without Lesbians by Diana Souhami (Head of Zeus, 2021, paperback, $15.95). To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of No Modernism without Lesbians” in the subject line. Purchase the book before January 11th and receive 15% off ($13.56 instead of $15.95).
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required.

Left Turns In Brown Study: A Performative Conversation (in person only)
2024-12-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In celebration of Sandra Ruiz’s new book Left Turns In Brown Study, we will be joined by an illustrious panel featuring a menagerie of individuals who have appeared in Ruiz’s academic and creative orbit over the past two decades. The conversation will be moderated by downtown diva Dusty Childers. Sandra will also perform selections from the book.
Featuring contributions from: Melody Contreras, Zora Duncan, Erica Gressman, Laura Harris, Jess Kadish, Autumn Knight, Pedro Lopez, Jacqueline Loss, Carlos Sandoval De Leon, Julia Steinmetz, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, & Daniel Vernola.
To reserve a copy of Left Turns In Brown Study (Duke University Press, 2024, paperback, $24.95) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Left Turns in Brown Study for Dec. 13 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

This event will be recorded, and the video will be made available.

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Sandra Ruiz is an associate professor of English and Theatre at Illinois, and an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Program in Comparative World Literature, the Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, the Department of Dance, the Department of Asian American Studies, and the Department of Gender & Women Studies. Ruiz, a trained performance studies scholar, is the author of Ricanness: Enduring Time in Anticolonial Performance (NYU Press, 2019) and co-author with Hypatia Vourloumis of Formless Formation: Vignettes for the end of this World (Autonomedia Press, 2020). Ruiz is a co-editor with Shane Vogel and Uri McMillan of the book series Minoritarian Aesthetics (NYU Press, 2020). Currently, Ruiz is completing several writing projects such as Tears for Tears (NYU Press). Ruiz is the co-creator of the Brown Theatre Collective and creator of La Estación Gallery and the Minor Aesthetics Lab.

Dusty Childers (Dust Tea Shoulders/ @duddylynn) is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator who has been director, producer, dramaturgist, costumer, and stylist. Dusty’s body and body of work has graced the likes of The Guggenheim, St. Ann’s Warehouse, The Whitney, BAM, Parsons, The Public Theater, Pratt, Sundance, SXSW, Metrograph, International Center of Photography, Signature Theater, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Town Hall, Joe’s Pub, Abrons Art Center, NY Live Arts, The Wild Project, Dixon Place, Irving Plaza, Sony Music Hall, Bushwig, Judson Memorial Church,The MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, La MaMa, Gov Ball, Club Cumming, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, House of Yes and the Soho Playhouse (NY Fringe Festival). He has worked with MacArthur Genius Taylor Mac, cabaret superstar Justin Vivian Bond, performance artist Machine Dazzle, artist Nayland Blake, director Silas Howard, Bitch (of Bitch and Animal), drag artist Charlene Incarnate, performance artist/puppeteer Glenn Marla, director Stephen Winter, choreographer/singer Miguel Gutierrez and burlesque star World Famous *BOB* among others. Dusty and his work have appeared in Art In America, Artforum, OUT Magazine, TimeOut NY, Velour Magazine, Next Magazine, Aljazeera, NY Times and Gayletter.

Episode 7 of Revisioning Democracy: Resisting Project 2025 and Trump 2.0 (in person & live-streaming)
2024-12-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
A conversation with The New Republic journalist and author Nina Burleigh and podcast cohosts Anne-christine d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker of Stop The Coup 2025. Burleigh also has a new book out, They’ll discuss how Project 2025 may be implemented on “Day One” of the new Trump administration, what attacks are most likely, what Trump’s first Cabinet picks reflect, and how US progressives are mobilizing to resist Project 2025 radical Christian nationalist agenda. The conversation will also focus on US and global lessons in grassroots resistance and community survival.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Nina Burleigh is a US journalist, best-selling author, documentary producer, and publisher of a substack on politics called American Freakshow. A contributing editor at The New Republic and frequent contributor to the New York Times and New York Magazine, her journalism has been published widely including in translation in the Norwegian and Italian press. She’s also the author of eight books on an array of topics including archaeological forgery, scientists in 18th-century Egypt, James Smithson, Amanda Knox in Italy, and the Trump women, which were reviewed, excerpted or covered in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Nation, New York Magazine, BBC, ABC, MSNBC, and other media outlets.
She was born and educated in the Midwest, has been based in Washington, D.C., New York, Norway, Paris and Italy, traveled and reported extensively in the Middle East. She is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Arthur J. Carter Journalism Institute and Google Scholar says her work has been cited in hundreds of scholarly articles. She is a supporter of secular humanism and known for her support of women’s rights. Her latest book is Zero Visibility Possible (2024). She’s also written articles about Project 2025 for New York Magazine and The New Republic.

Journals and Diaries: Life, Privacy, and Literature: 4 week Brooklyn Institute for Social Research Course (in person only - registration required)
2024-12-10 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The December 10 class will be the fourth of four meetings.
See registration details below.
In 1973, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary: “In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.” What is the relationship between a writer’s lived experience and the works they present, crafted and bound, to the public? For Virginia Woolf, the diary was a place to reckon with the “oil well” of stories bubbling up inside her; for Roland Barthes, a space apart to wrestle with private loss and grief; for Annie Ernaux, the diary harbored the “raw and dark” material behind her fictions; and for Anaïs Nin, the distinction between fiction-writing and diary-keeping was difficult even to discern. On what sort of terms, then, can we take the writer’s diary? What kinds of insight does it promise—regarding literary craft, literary politics, artistic scenes, and creative processes? And how shall we approach this literary object—as a genre unto itself, distinct from other forms of life-writing such as autobiography, memoir, and auto-fiction?
In this course, we will read selections from writers’ diaries, beginning in the early 20th century and closing with Sheila Heti’s recent experimental work Alphabetical Diaries. Moving through time and space—from Woolf and Franz Kafka to Barthes and Nin to Sontag and Ernaux, with forays into Augustine’s 5th century Confessions and Rousseau’s 18th century work of the same name—we will ask how writers utilize their diaries in both their fiction and their criticism. Avoiding the “reduction” to which Sontag is rightly averse, we will explore how the diary—taken on its own terms—at once encourages and works against linear narrativization, and how it, perhaps uniquely, articulates anxieties of remembrance just as much as it does the fear of being forgotten.
Instructor: Danielle Drori
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
November 12 — December 10, 2024
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Tuesday, November 26th
$335.00
Click here to register for this course
Classes will meet at the
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210 of The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011

Publishing Triangle OUTSpoken Series Special: Gary Indiana (in person & live-streaming)
2024-12-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come join The Publishing Triangle as we read, reminisce, and admire the wide-ranging work of legendary gay writer, critic, and artist, Gary Indiana.
Featuring readings by Brian Alessandro, Christopher Bollen, Jason Napoli Brooks, Michael Bullock, Tobi Haslett, Sam McKinniss, Dale Peck, Nicole Rudick, and Christopher Stoddard.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Brian Alessandro has written for Interview Magazine, Newsday, PANK (co-founded by Roxanne Gay), Huffington Post, Galerie (Wes Anderson’s cult film streaming app), Lambda Literary, The Gay & Lesbian Review, Kirkus Reviews, and The Florida Review, and has recently co-adapted Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story into a graphic novel for Top Shelf Productions. Additionally, Brian co-edited Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs, an anthology of essays and interviews about Burroughs for Rebel Satori Press. Brian is also the co-founder and editor in chief of the literary journal, The New Engagement. His first novel, The Unmentionable Mann, was published in 2015 by Cairn Press and his first feature film, Afghan Hound, was produced by Maryea Media in 2011, and is streaming on Plex, Tubi, and Amazon. His second novel, Performer Non Grata, was published in 2023. Julian’s Debut, his new novel, will be published by Rebel Satori Press in March 2025. Brian also has a feature film and a limited series in development with an Academy Award-winning producer.

Christopher Bollen is a writer and editor based in New York City. He is the author of six novels, including his most recent, Havoc, out December 2024 from Harper. He contributes frequently to a number of publications, including Interview, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times.

Jason Napoli Brooks is an award-winning fiction writer and essayist whose work has appeared in various journals, anthologies, and media outlets in the U.S. and abroad. He was the author of the queer-spy-fiction zine Cock of the Walk (2011-2013, currently being translated into Spanish for publication in Mexico) and the multimedia play Soundstage (2018, directed by Rob Roth and starring Rebecca Hall). With author Jim Freed, he is the co-founder of the long-running reading series Enclave, which took place at various Manhattan nightlife venues from 2006 to 2020. Brooks is currently at work on his serialized novel, Paranoid Lines, the first issue of which will be released in January 2025. @jasonnapolibrooks

Michael Bullock is a Brooklyn-based writer, editor and documentary filmmaker focused on art, design and queer culture. He is the author of Roman Catholic Jacuzzi (Karma 2012) the editor of Peter Berlin: Artist, Icon, Photosexual (Damiani 2019), and co-editor of I Could Not Believe It: The 1979 Teenage Diaries of Sean Delear (Semiotext(e) 2023). Bullock serves as associate publisher of PIN–UP and The Whitney Review of New Writing and is a contributing editor to apartamento. For PIN–UP he co-directed Dream Homes, a commisioned work for the Cooper Hewitt’s Design Triennial, Making Home, currenlty on view through August 2025.

Tobi Haslett is a writer currently living in Berlin.

Sam McKinniss is an artist in New York and Connecticut. His paintings have been exhibited widely both stateside and abroad. His work has been written about everywhere, including an ARTFORUM cover story penned by Gary Indiana in 2019. McKinniss’s painting “Chrysanthemums (after Fantin-Latour)” graces the cover of Indiana’s novel Depraved Indifference, reissued by Semiotext(e) in 2020. In 2021, “Cop Car in Brooklyn” was used as cover art for Indiana’s collection Fire Season: selected essays 1984-2021 published by Seven Stories Press. The two men were close friends.

Dale Peck is the author of fourteen books, including Martin and John, Hatchet Jobs, Sprout, and Visions and Revisions. He first wrote about Gary Indiana in 2015, when Gary released the memoir I Can Give You Anything but Love, and published a tribute to him in the Baffler on the occasion of his death. He was Gary’s neighbor in the East Village for almost twenty years, and once played Cards Against Humanity with him. It wasn’t as salacious as you might think.

Nicole Rudick is the author of What Is Now Known Was Once Only Imagined: An (Auto)biography of Niki de Saint Phalle (Siglio) and the editor, most recently, of Joanna Russ: Novels and Stories (Library of America) and Spiral and Other Stories by Aidan Koch (New York Review Comics). Her writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books, Apollo, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, and in exhibition catalogues for the Drawing Center; the New Museum; the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design; and Gagosian gallery. She was managing editor of The Paris Review for nearly a decade.

Christopher Stoddard is the founding editor of Itna Press, notable for first reintroducing Gary Indiana’s literary works to contemporary audiences, including the acclaimed novel Do Everything in the Dark. Stoddard is also the author of four novels, including At Night Only (2018), which garnered praise from Kirkus Reviews and The Paris Review. He lives in Los Angeles.

Journals and Diaries: Life, Privacy, and Literature: 4 week Brooklyn Institute for Social Research Course (in person only - registration required)
2024-12-03 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The December 3 class will be the third of four meetings.
See registration details below.
In 1973, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary: “In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.” What is the relationship between a writer’s lived experience and the works they present, crafted and bound, to the public? For Virginia Woolf, the diary was a place to reckon with the “oil well” of stories bubbling up inside her; for Roland Barthes, a space apart to wrestle with private loss and grief; for Annie Ernaux, the diary harbored the “raw and dark” material behind her fictions; and for Anaïs Nin, the distinction between fiction-writing and diary-keeping was difficult even to discern. On what sort of terms, then, can we take the writer’s diary? What kinds of insight does it promise—regarding literary craft, literary politics, artistic scenes, and creative processes? And how shall we approach this literary object—as a genre unto itself, distinct from other forms of life-writing such as autobiography, memoir, and auto-fiction?
In this course, we will read selections from writers’ diaries, beginning in the early 20th century and closing with Sheila Heti’s recent experimental work Alphabetical Diaries. Moving through time and space—from Woolf and Franz Kafka to Barthes and Nin to Sontag and Ernaux, with forays into Augustine’s 5th century Confessions and Rousseau’s 18th century work of the same name—we will ask how writers utilize their diaries in both their fiction and their criticism. Avoiding the “reduction” to which Sontag is rightly averse, we will explore how the diary—taken on its own terms—at once encourages and works against linear narrativization, and how it, perhaps uniquely, articulates anxieties of remembrance just as much as it does the fear of being forgotten.
Instructor: Danielle Drori
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
November 12 — December 10, 2024
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Tuesday, November 26th
$335.00
Click here to register for this course
Classes will meet at the
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210 of The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011

The 3rd Annual Rebel Satori World AIDS Day Book Release and Reading (in person & live-streaming)
2024-12-01 15:00 - 16:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The 3rd Annual Rebel Satori World AIDS Day Book Release and Reading: the Rebel Satori imprint, The Library of Homosexual Congress, is honored to reprint the first American novel about the AIDS crisis, Facing It: A Novel About AIDS, by Paul Reed, from 1984. In addition to reading from Facing It, we will celebrate our initial World AIDS Day releases with memorial readings from Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski, edited by Micheal Bronski and Philip Clark, winner of the 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Poetry, and Allen Barnett’s classic short story collection, The Body and Its Dangers, from 1990.
Featuring readings by:
CHRISTOPHER BRAM
GERARD CABRERA
RON CALDWELL
PHILIP CLARK
PHILIP F. CLARK
DALE CORVINO
SCOTT HIGHTOWER
JP HOWARD
JERRY ROSCO

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Christopher Bram is the author of twelve books, including the novel that became the Academy-Award-winning movie, Gods and Monsters. He teaches at the Gallatin School of New York University.
Gerard Cabrera is the author of short fiction, poems, and the novel, Homo Novus, published by Rattling Good Yarns Press in 2022. His writing has appeared in literary journals such as the Acentos Review, JONATHAN, Kweli, Apricity, Digging Press, and Angel Rust. A naturalized Brooklynite, Gerard hails from the Puerto Rican community of Springfield, Massachusetts, the birthplace of Dr. Seuss, basketball, and the first American dictionary. He is a member of the Publishing Triangle Board of Directors.
Ron Caldwell is a writer, editor, and educator who was born in Texas and studied English literature at Rice University. He received a Master’s degree in Creative Writing: Poetry from Boston University, where his teachers were George Starbuck, Christopher Ricks, and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott. Ron has taught at Parsons School of Design since 1996, and is currently the coordinator of Integrative Seminar in the First Year program. He lives in Allen Barnett’s apartment.
Philip Clark is the co-editor of Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski, winner of the 2023 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His previous books are Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and In the Empire of the Air: The Poems of Donald Britton. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, he is completing a biography of H. Lynn Womack, a pioneering gay publisher from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. He lives near Washington, D.C.
Philip F. Clark is the author of the poetry collection, The Carnival of Affection (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017). He received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from City College in 2016, where he was an Adjunct Assistant Professor. His work is included in ‘On Becoming A Poet’, published by Marsh Hawk Press, 2020, and he has been published in various journals and anthologies.
Dale Corvino’s essays have appeared in Salon, the Rumpus, and the Gay & Lesbian Review. Bonds & Boundaries, his debut short story collection, was published in 2023 by Rebel Satori Press. His memoir of sex work, Afterlife of a Kept Boy, won the C&R Press Nonfiction Prize and is scheduled for publication in March 2025.
Scott Hightower’s newest collection of poems, Imperative to Spare, is from Rebel Satori, New Orleans. Part of the Bargain, his third book won the 2004 Hayden Carruth Award. Hightower lives in Manhattan and teaches at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study.
JP Howard is a poet, educator, literary activist, curator, and community builder. JP is a Learn with Lambda Literary 2023 workshop facilitator and was the Spring 2023 Brooklyn College Tow Mentor-in-Residence. Her debut poetry collection, SAY/MIRROR (The Operating System), was a Lambda Literary finalist. She is also the author of bury your love poems here (Belladonna*), Praise This Complicated Herstory: Legacy, Healing & Revolutionary Poems (Harlequin Creature) and co-editor of Sinister Wisdom Journal Black Lesbians–We Are the Revolution! JP has received fellowships and grants from Cave Canem, VONA, Lambda Literary Foundation, and Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). She curates Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon and her poetry is widely anthologized. JP is a general Poetry Editor for Women’s Studies Quarterly and Editor-At-Large of Mom Egg Review VOX online. http://www.jp-howard.com
Jerry Rosco is author of the biography Glenway Wescott Personally and editor of the Wescott journals Continual Lessons and A Heaven of Words.

Closed for Thanksgiving and Friday, November 29th
2024-11-29 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Bureau will be closed on both Thursday, November 28, and Friday, November 29.
We will re-open on Saturday, November 30th.

Closed for Thanksgiving and Friday, November 29
2024-11-28 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Thanksgiving Day,
Thursday, November 28
AND
Friday, November 29, 2024

The Bureau will be open on
Saturday, November 30, and
Sunday, December 1.

Queering Palestinian Literature with Raji Bathish (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-24 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Palestinian author and cinema critic Raji Bathish comes to the Bureau to read from his genre-hopping texts that combine fiction, poetry and other forms, followed by a discussion with his translator Suneela Mubayi and Rutgers literature professor Ben Koerber in a far-ranging dialogue that will touch on language, translation, gender and sexuality, what it means to be a Palestinian artist amidst an ongoing genocide, and to approach Palestine as a fundamentally queer cause.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Rather than soliciting donations for the Bureau, we will collect donations on behalf of Gaza Mutual Aid Solidarity. In their own words:
“We are volunteers with loved ones in Gaza. We give direct mutual aid to displaced & distressed families to meet their basic needs during these catastrophic times. Our main focus has been supporting multiple teams of our family members in providing clean water, food, tents, clothing, and direct cash to families in Gaza. We have also supplied clay ovens, repaired a sewer system, installed a water well, supported a revived school, and funded medical workers and civil defense crews. We are so grateful for the generous community support we have that has enabled us to continue to support these projects. Please keep pushing to stop the genocide, build community and organize to Free Palestine 🇵🇸”
Donate via GiveButter: https://givebutter.com/GazaSolidarity
or donate via GoFundMe: https://www.gofundme.com/f/support-gz

BATHHOUSE.PPTX by Jesús I. Valles - Book Release (in person only)
2024-11-23 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Release of 2024 Hit Play, BATHHOUSE.PPTX by Jesús I. Valles!
Presented by The Flea
Come celebrate the publication of Jesús I. Valles’s epic new play BATHHOUSE.PPTX which follows Presenter, a queer Latiné student, whose powerpoint presentation on the history of cleanliness and bathing quickly starts to burst at the seams with appearances from the ghosts of a bathhouse at the end of the world, A Conquistador! Wearing One of Those Hats!, A Very Real Twink and even Laura Linney. Valles describes it as, “a group project for perverts. Somewhere between lecture, re-enactment and cruising ground. A meditation on queer longing, queer grief and all our queer worlds that will come to pass, that will come to be.”
This event will feature words from the playwright, The Flea’s Artistic Director, Niegel Smith, a theatrical reading of excerpts by the cast, and a book signing.
To reserve a copy of BATHHOUSE.PPTX please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve BATHHOUSE.PPTX for Nov 23rd” in the subject line.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Please reserve your spot in this google form: https://forms.gle/GFuzpeqTbQ6ijmhe6

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

The Queer Artist who created the Most Iconic “Lesbian & Gay New York Historical Landmark” (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Maria Teresa Cometto, author of Emma and the Angel of Central Park, in conversation with Allen Ellenzweig.
The Angel of the Waters was the cover of the Guide to Lesbian & Gay Historical Landmarks New York, published about 25 years ago, and it is featured in the NYC LGBT Historic Sites Project‘s website. It is also the “favorite angel” of Prior Walter, the protagonist of Angels in America.
But almost nobody knows the queer artist who created the Angel of the Waters: the New Yorker Emma Stebbins. Maria Teresa will talk with Allen about the fascinating life of Emma: it was in the Rome of the Popes, between 1856 and 1870, that she created the Angel of the Waters, while living as the “wife” of the famous American actress Charlotte Cushman.
Emma was part of the “strange sisterhood of American ‘lady sculptors’ who at one time settled upon the seven hills in a white, marmorean flock,” as Henry James called the eight American women sculptors working in Rome at that time: four of them lived with a woman companion.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Maria Teresa Cometto, journalist, author, curator, was born in Novara, Italy. In 2000 she moved to New York with her family. She is a regular contributor to the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera. She has written several books including the biography Emma and the Angel of Central Park, La Marchesa Colombi (Life, Novels and Passions of the First Woman Journalist of Corriere della Sera), Brothers of the Mountains (Arturo and Oreste Squinobal from the Alps to the Himalayas), and Tech and the City (the making of New York’s startup community).
Allen Ellenzweig has published arts criticism and cultural commentary in magazines such as Art in America, The Village Voice, and American Photographer. He is a regular Contributing Writer to the bi-monthly Gay & Lesbian Review. His first book, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe, was a landmark historical study published by Columbia University Press. His recent biography, George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford University Press), is a life of the 20th Century gay American photographer George Platt Lynes (1907-1955).

Journals and Diaries: Life, Privacy, and Literature: 4 week Brooklyn Institute for Social Research Course (in person only - registration required)
2024-11-19 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The November 19 class will be the second of four meetings.
See registration details below.
In 1973, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary: “In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.” What is the relationship between a writer’s lived experience and the works they present, crafted and bound, to the public? For Virginia Woolf, the diary was a place to reckon with the “oil well” of stories bubbling up inside her; for Roland Barthes, a space apart to wrestle with private loss and grief; for Annie Ernaux, the diary harbored the “raw and dark” material behind her fictions; and for Anaïs Nin, the distinction between fiction-writing and diary-keeping was difficult even to discern. On what sort of terms, then, can we take the writer’s diary? What kinds of insight does it promise—regarding literary craft, literary politics, artistic scenes, and creative processes? And how shall we approach this literary object—as a genre unto itself, distinct from other forms of life-writing such as autobiography, memoir, and auto-fiction?
In this course, we will read selections from writers’ diaries, beginning in the early 20th century and closing with Sheila Heti’s recent experimental work Alphabetical Diaries. Moving through time and space—from Woolf and Franz Kafka to Barthes and Nin to Sontag and Ernaux, with forays into Augustine’s 5th century Confessions and Rousseau’s 18th century work of the same name—we will ask how writers utilize their diaries in both their fiction and their criticism. Avoiding the “reduction” to which Sontag is rightly averse, we will explore how the diary—taken on its own terms—at once encourages and works against linear narrativization, and how it, perhaps uniquely, articulates anxieties of remembrance just as much as it does the fear of being forgotten.
Instructor: Danielle Drori
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
November 12 — December 10, 2024
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Tuesday, November 26th
$335.00
Click here to register for this course
Classes will meet at the
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210 of The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011

TELL: Crying Out Loud (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 10 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.
The theme for November is Crying Out Loud, featuring storytellers Ronnie Mae Painter, rexylafemme, and Zo Tipp.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

Drae Campbell is the host and curator of TELL, an award winning podcast that can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Theater: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater & National Tour, Lortel Nominated), Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Teatro Circulo), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Storm.Still (DirectorFest, Drama League), La Cage Aux Folles (Barrington Stage Company)
Film and TV:Senior Escort Service, Blunderpuss, It’s Very Common, TOW.TV: Bull, New Amsterdam.BFA, The University Of The Arts. Ig @draebiz and @tellqueerz.

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.

rexylafemme (aka rex renée) is a trans, multi-gendered, multi-genre writer, actor, and healing practitioner from Jackson Heights, NYC. As a working class, gender-abundant artist, rexy’s work is a love letter to NYC and radical communities grounded in a politics of resistance, healing, and resilience. in all of rexy’s creative forms, he explores the power of revolutionary love in the face of loveless political structures. rexy is also a practitioner of multiple healing modalities and offers workshops and mentorship on spirituality and building intuition with a focus on healing as a revolutionary practice. rexy’s book of poems and illustrations, when there is no one and there is everyone is available from Magic Helicopter Press. They graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre in 2024.

Zo Tipp (they/them) is a Jewish Japanese American performer. TV: Only Murders in the Building, American Horror Story, Dickinson. NY Theater credits include INTAR, Playwrights Horizons, Pan Asian Rep, Cherry Lane, CSC/OSF Play On! Fest, Redbull, Rattlestick. Workshops at Roundabout Theater, NYTW, Breaking the Binary, Playwrights Realm, Pride Plays, The Actors Fund, and many more. Independent film and webseries appearances screened at Newfest and Outfest. Audio narration work for The New Yorker and New York Mag on Apple News. Zo has sung with a few opera companies in NY, as well as at Birdland, and Spectrum. They also teach the Feldenkrais Method. www.zotipp.com

HOTGLUE Pop Up Reading & Launch featuring Waltpaper with special introduction by Dianne Brill (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-15 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division invites you to join us for a very special Pop Up Reading & Launch for MORNING WHISPERS, the first installment of HOTGLUE, a new fiction series by celebrated artist and author, Waltpaper, who will be introduced by fashion and nightlife icon, Dianne Brill.
HOTGLUE explores the subcultural evolution of Generation X through the intimate stories of a gang of friends who meet at art school in 1990. As they move across multiple decades, drug, music and fashion trends shift their perception of themselves, each other and New York City.
Set against the backdrop of a raging nightlife turf war between Club Kids, Drag Queens and Transgender Voguers, MORNING WHISPERS introduces Hope Glennon, aka Hotglue, a gender queer street artist turned Club Kid, and their troubled but comical nightlife mentor, Sugar Skullz, on the morning after an apocalyptic night of clubbing. Their relationship dynamic and lifestyle is juxtaposed to Clarissa, an elaborate female fantasy creature that Hotglue is building on their balcony at The Dot, a run down bohemian residential hotel.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Waltpaper is an author and interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, New York. As a subcultural diarist, his explorative and allegorical work is rooted in first hand experiences with interlocking themes of identity, gender, sexuality, drugs, trauma and healing. He has published the books, NEW YORK: CLUB KIDS and THE CLUB KIDS, and is considered one of the foremost voices on New York City’s vibrant nightlife, art and street culture.

Dianne Brill is a renowned American fashion icon, model, author and television personality. Celebrated for her influential role in New York City’s nightlife scene of the 1980s and 1990s. She was deemed “Queen of the Night” and became the muse to a number of top designers and photographers, noted for her extravagant, avant-garde style and magnetic personality. She published her fist book, BOOBS, BOYS and HIGH HEELS, in 1992, offering a glimpse into her glamorous life and the dynamic world of fashion and entertainment.

OUTspoken: The Publishing Triangle’s Reading Series, November Edition (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Publishing Triangle presents its monthly OUTspoken Reading Series as host Rob Byrnes welcomes Donna Minkowitz, Jenifer Levin, Ruben Quesada, Lauren Melissa Ellzey, Samy Nemir Olivares, Ken Harvey, Judith Barrington, and Mercedes Lewis.

Join us as in-person or watch the live-stream (see below) to hear from some of queer literature’s most dynamic established and up-and-coming voices.

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Journals and Diaries: Life, Privacy, and Literature: 4 week Brooklyn Institute for Social Research Course (in person only - registration required)
2024-11-12 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In 1973, Susan Sontag wrote in her diary: “In ‘life,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my work. In ‘work,’ I don’t want to be reduced to my life.” What is the relationship between a writer’s lived experience and the works they present, crafted and bound, to the public? For Virginia Woolf, the diary was a place to reckon with the “oil well” of stories bubbling up inside her; for Roland Barthes, a space apart to wrestle with private loss and grief; for Annie Ernaux, the diary harbored the “raw and dark” material behind her fictions; and for Anaïs Nin, the distinction between fiction-writing and diary-keeping was difficult even to discern. On what sort of terms, then, can we take the writer’s diary? What kinds of insight does it promise—regarding literary craft, literary politics, artistic scenes, and creative processes? And how shall we approach this literary object—as a genre unto itself, distinct from other forms of life-writing such as autobiography, memoir, and auto-fiction?
In this course, we will read selections from writers’ diaries, beginning in the early 20th century and closing with Sheila Heti’s recent experimental work Alphabetical Diaries. Moving through time and space—from Woolf and Franz Kafka to Barthes and Nin to Sontag and Ernaux, with forays into Augustine’s 5th century Confessions and Rousseau’s 18th century work of the same name—we will ask how writers utilize their diaries in both their fiction and their criticism. Avoiding the “reduction” to which Sontag is rightly averse, we will explore how the diary—taken on its own terms—at once encourages and works against linear narrativization, and how it, perhaps uniquely, articulates anxieties of remembrance just as much as it does the fear of being forgotten.
Instructor: Danielle Drori
Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm ET
November 12 — December 10, 2024
4 sessions over 5 weeks
Class will not meet Tuesday, November 26th
$335.00
Click here to register for this course
Classes will meet at the
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210 of The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011

Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life (in person & live-streaming)
2024-11-10 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join anthropologist and artist Shaka McGlotten & drag king Maxxx Pleasure for the launch of Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life. Dragging is a book about artists and activists who use drag in Berlin, Israel/Palestine, and New York. It is also an autoethnographic account of illness, failing at being a good anthropologist, and losing out on love.
There will be a presentation that focuses on some of the Israeli and Palestinian figures featured in the book, followed by a discussion with drag king Maxxx Pleasure, and Q & A.

Anthropologist Esther Newton has described the book as “a fascinating mashup of memoir, interviews, ethnographic observation, and cultural theory, following on the work of José Munoz, Marlon Baily, Lauren Berlant, Eve Sedgwick and others.”

To reserve a copy of Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2021, paperback, $49.99), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Dragging for Nov. 10th event.”
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Shaka McGlotten is Professor of Media Studies and Anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of Media Studies and Gender Studies programs. An anthropologist and artist, their work stages encounters between black study, queer theory, media, and art. They have written and lectured widely on networked intimacies and messy computational entanglements as they interface with queer of color lifeworlds.
They are the author of Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life (Routledge, 2021), Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality (SUNY, 2013), and dozens of chapters and articles. They are also the co-editor of two edited collections, Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis, Palgrave, 2012) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones, McFarland, 2014). Their work has been supported by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and Data & Society.

Maxxx Pleasure is an award-winning drag king based in NYC. He shares advice for all kinds of drag performers and stories from his own drag journey (like performing at Bushwig, the Austin International Drag Festival, Sasha Velour’s Nightgowns, winning the Brooklyn Nightlife Award for Drag King of the Year, inspiring the short documentary MAXXX, and even more)! Maxxx also weighs in on LGBTQ+ issues and conversations, reviews tv shows, movies, books, and music videos, and can’t help but fangirl (fan-person?) over his favorite celebs.
