BGSQD

Union Square Slam presents STEVEN WILLIS and *NEW SH*T* Slam (Open Slam 3.5)
2016-03-29 19:00 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | NY
We are beyond thrilled to welcome Steven Willis to the Union Square Slam stage!!! And don’t miss our very last New Shit slam of the season!!
6:00pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7:00pm: Sign-ups
7:30pm: Open Mic and Feature
8:20pm: Poetry Slam
All Ages // $5
Please note: the Bureau opens at 6 pm on Tuesdays for the Union Square Slam.

About our Feature:
Born and raised in Chicago Illinois, 23 year old Steven Willis uses his creative writing background to poetically reflect on the pop culture issues of our time. With art heavily influenced by urban life and religion, Steven mixes elements of hip hop and classic literature to help express his eclectic personal narrative. A recent graduate of Manhattanville College in Purchase, Willis began doing spoken word at the age of 15 as a participant of Louder Than A Bomb and has performed on stages with the likes Jasmine Mans and Joshua Bennett. Steven was Louder Than A Bomb University’s 2014 Individual Champion, is a contributing writer to the BreakBeat Poets Anthology and Manhattanville College’s Graffiti Magazine, a member of Nuyorican Poetry Team 2015, an Individual World Poetry Slam finalist and this past summer worked as assistant poetry writer for the film CoCo starring Jill Scott, Common, and Azelia Banks set to be released in Spring 2016.
About our Slam:
::NEW SHIT SLAMS::
New Shit is defined as:
– any piece of work that has not been heard on the USS mic.
– any work that has been on the USS mic that has been overhauled/edited (at least 50% new material)
We will take up to 8 poets in each New Shit Slam. The points you earn will be added to your total in the quarter (1,2 or 3) and help you in qualifying for that semifinal. Your participation in one New Shit slam, regardless of placement/score, meets your requirement for Final Stage Participation.
All slammers who are competing to represent Union Square Slam nationally in 2016 and beyond, at either IWPS, WOWPS, or as part of the Union Square Slam Nationals Team, MUST participate in BOTH a New Shit Slam and a Theme Slam at any point during the slam season. (9/14/15 – 4/28/15). You may compete in any or all of these slams, whether or not you intend to go out for the team, however, preference may be given to competitors that have qualified for Semis or Finals.

Queers4Change! A 2-Day Sale @ the Bureau!
2016-03-27 13:00 - 19:00, 2016-03-26 13:00 - 19:00 | NY
Save the dates! The Bureau is having a big two-day sale on Saturday, March 26th, and Sunday, March 27th, during our regular store hours: 1 to 7 PM!
Deals and steals!

Piss Elegant
2016-03-25 18:00 - 21:30 | NY
STH Editions and the Bureau Present:
Piss Elegant
Art & Artifacts from Straight To Hell Conspirators
Luke Abby • Michael Alago • Brian Brennan (Latino Fan Club) • Matthew Burcaw • Walt Cessna • Christopher Clary • Wayne Coe • Thomas Dozol • Michael Economy • Greg Endries • Danny Fields • Ryan Foerester • Torrey Grobes • David Hurles (Old Reliable) • Erik Hanson • Charles Hovland • Steve LaFreniere • Patrick Lee • Yeni Mao • Bobby Miller • Slava Mogutin • Bob Nickas • Josh Olsen • Joe Ovelman • Christopher Schulz • Terry Smith • Daniel Trese • Anthony Viti • Jan Wandrag • Cornelius Washington • William Wood • Jimmy Wright • et autres
Curated by Billy Miller, editor of Straight To Hell.
Live Performance @ 7:00 PM
Piss Elegant will remain on view at the Bureau from Friday, March 25, through Sunday, May 29, 2016.

Event image: Limited edition print from unique a 1960s Polaroid by Danny Fields

Red Hen Press Presents Poetry of the Unconventional
2016-03-24 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join Red Hen Press for a reading with poets who focus on writing about experiences often looked over by conventional writing and media. National Book Award recipient and queer writing pioneer Mark Doty is accompanied by Jason Schneiderman, whose work challenges not only hetero-normative ideas, but the forms in which they are understood. Salon writer Heather Aimee O’Neill will also be reading from her new selection of poetry that confronts news and facts with poetic deconstruction. These writers are joined by America Hart, whose work is both a hybrid and genre-bending challenge to identity and the past.

Photograph by Star Black
Mark Doty is the author of several collections of poetry, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which received the 2008 National Book Award.

Jason Schneiderman is Associate Editor of Painted Bride Quarterly and Poetry Editor of Bellevue Literary Review. His poetry collection Primary Source (Red Hen Press, forthcoming April 2016) won the 2014 Benjamin Saltman award, and his poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry,The Poetry Review, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and lives in Brooklyn.

Heather Aimee O’Neill is the award-winning author of the poetry collection Memory Future (Gold Line Press, 2011), and co-author with Jessica Piazza of her new collection, Obliterations (Red Hen Press, forthcoming April 2016). She teaches creative writing at CUNY Hunter College and the Sackett Street Writers’ Workshop. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner and two sons.

Born and raised in Colorado, America Hart lived in Boston and New York City before moving to London, where she received her PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies. She is the author of the genre-bending poetry-prose novel into the silence: the fishing story (Red Hen Press, 2014). She directs the MA Creative Writing Program at London Metropolitan University and lives in London with her partner, Seraphim.

Beijing Comrades Launch Party
2016-03-23 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join The Feminist Press and translator Scott Myers to celebrate the first English translation of Beijing Comrades. Written pseudonymously and posted on the Internet in 1998, Beijing Comrades by Bei Tong is among Mainland China’s earliest and most influential contemporary gay novels. It tells the story of Chen Handong and Lan Yu, two men from very different social classes. Handong is a wealthy businessman in his late twenties, the spoiled offspring of elite Communist Party officials with a string of male and female lovers. Lan Yu is a university student from a working-class background who has just arrived in Beijing. Naïve but by no means dim, Lan Yu finds himself in Handong’s bed when he is alone in the capital and unable to make ends meet.

Narrated by Handong, the story chronicles the joys, hardships, and no small amount of sexual bliss the men share as they navigate the uncharted terrain of a same-sex relationship at the end of the twentieth century in the People’s Republic of China. Beijing Comrades is a groundbreaking work in what has been called tongzhi or gay/queer fiction from the PRC.

Union Square Slam presents EBONI HOGAN and Open Slam 3.4
2016-03-22 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
WOOOOOOOO YOU KNOW WHAT? EBONI HOGAN, THAT’S WHAT!!! Come on out and get your life!!
6pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7pm: SIgn-ups for Open Mic and Slam
7:30pm: Open Mic
8:00pm: Feature
8:20pm: Slam

Please note: the Bureau is closed on Tuesdays. We open at 6 PM for the Union Square Slam.

208 W 13th St, Rm #210
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible // $5

About our Feature:
Eboni Hogan is a Brooklyn-based poet, playwright, screenwriter, actress and arts educator. She studied theater at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. In 2012, her play “Foreign Bodies” was produced by the Culture Project and Poetic Theater Productions as part of the Women Center Stage Festival at The Living Theater. Her most recent play “30,000 Teeth” had its first reading at the National Black Theatre of Harlem as a part of their I Am Soul reading series. As a performance poet, she has toured extensively, performing in over 65 U.S. cities, as well as internationally in Germany, Austria, India and Ghana. In 2010, she was crowned the Women of the World Poetry Slam champion. As an actress, she has appeared in the indie film “Moon & Sun” and the short film “Where You Go” which will be screened at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. The pilot episode of her web series “The Pudding Club” is currently available online. Eboni is also the English Language Arts Curriculum Coordinator for Fresh Ed (Urban Arts Partnership). When she isn’t writing curriculum or making art, she’s trying to convince her 3.5 year old son to eat actual food.

About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are 3 quarters of competitive poetry slam, each culminating in a Semifinal. Each quarter consists of six open slams (one or more of which is a New Shit slam — competition in New Shit slams counts towards your total points!)
Each open slam will :
consist of up to 8 poet competitors
have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
will go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
At the end of each quarter, the poets with the 8 highest cumulative scores FOR THE QUARTER, are invited to compete in Semifinals. If a qualified poet opts out, then the next highest ranking poet qualifies. Semifinals are run using the same rules as the Open Slams. The top two highest ranked poets in each Semifinals bout will advance to Finals Stage, along with the top two winners of the Last Chance slam.

Arab Queers Reject Pinkwashing
2016-03-19 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
As the events of the revolutionary uprisings across the Arabic world were unfolding, the (neo)liberal western media was concerned with the situation of gays in the Arabic world. Identities of Arab queers and the rhetoric of their struggles were (and have always been) imposed on them by the western media ultimately to undermine the revolutionary uprisings for freedom. Arab queers are portrayed by the media without the Arab queers themselves being the painter of this portrait. Arab queers are continuously done, undone and distorted by either western media or their societies in which they live. Either immigrants or living in their home countries, Arab queers are continuously sculpted by an external force, either tradition or religion or neocolonial rhetoric. Pinkwashing the revolutionary uprisings made the Arab queers part of the neocolonial plan to impose a cultural hegemony over the Arabic world.
Being queer and Arab ourselves, many questions cross our minds: “Do we have an identity that we made ourselves? Are we always identified by another outside entity? Can we resist identification by the west? How can we do this act of resistance? Do we have to import the neoliberal hegemonic culture to define our queerness? Isn’t this some kind of slavery to the west? Are Arab queers aware of the distortions they are exposed to? Are Arab queers seeking asylum in places other than their home countries aware of the rigid identification they are exposed to? Are Arab queers definable at all? How can we address ourselves then?”
In the midst of all these dilemmas, we are traumatized and displaced from ourselves. We internalize both the malaise of our societies that we were uprooted from and employ survival strategies to live and get by in the white supremacist society. Pinkwashing does not only become an external political strategy but it becomes a psychological internalized strategy that provides many of the lies we tell ourselves. We change our names from Mohammed to Moe, We try hard not to speak our “native” languages, We become racist towards blacks, We distance ourselves from our heritage, We follow the latest “white” fashion, we become a nothingness, we become ahistorical, we become zombies. All in the name of our ultimate infatuation with the white supremacist society.

Please join Ahmed El Hady, Abed Haddad, & Khalid for a discussion and presentation on the sources, effects, and current resistance against Pinkwashing.

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

(Event photo: Graffiti in Ramallah reads “Queers passed through here.” Image courtesy of Al-Qaws)

Ahmed El Hady is a neuroscientist at Princeton university. He is a queer activist interested in queer knowledge production in the middle east and the premise of revolutionary movements. He has been one of the founding members of the Egyptian Women Union and has actively participated in the Egyptian uprising that unfolded & still unfolding in the past years. Moreover, he is one of the founders of the Egyptian Student Young Pugwash , an organization that advocates for safe use of technology. He has given several international talks on the issue of neuroscience and its implication on human security.

Abed Haddad is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the City College of New York, and from Jackson, Mississippi where he graduated from Millsaps College. Before that, he lived in the suburbs of Louisiana, having immigrated there from Amman, Jordan at age 14. Abed is an active volunteer at BGSQD and loves the strong gin and tonics at Julius’.

Khalid is a Chicago based Palestinian social artivist. They perform under monikers “Basita Khaled” and “Miss Leading”. They use these characters for story telling using music, gender stretching and visual/theatric performance art as mediums. Their works carry the narrative and commentary on North African/Middle Eastern queerness, queer Islamic spirituality, dismantling patriarchy reversing assimilation and reclamation of brownness. They can be found on Instagram @miss_leadin

Ian Spencer Bell: Marrow
2016-03-18 20:00 - 21:30, 2016-03-17 20:00 - 21:30 | NY
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The LGBT Community Center host dancer, choreographer, and poet Ian Spencer Bell in a solo performance of Marrow, Thursday, March 17 and Friday, March 18 at 8 p.m. at The Center, 208 West 13th Street, Room 101.
$15 suggested donation to support The Center’s youth programs and the Bureau. Tickets at gaycenter.org/marrow
Following the performance, please join Ian Spencer Bell for a reception in the Bureau, room 210.

In Marrow, Bell’s most recent work since Holler, Bell dances 10 poems about self, place, family, dancing, and what it was like growing up queer in rural Virginia. Several of the poems are retellings of folk stories and gossip Bell heard as a young person. The short, confessional narratives explore love, death, art, and home. Bell often speaks to himself as he dances. Other times, he addresses his parents or moves in silence. “I have tried to say the things I am most afraid to say,” Bell says. The program runs about 25 minutes.
In an essay for CultureRover.net about Bell’s 2015 Poetry Foundation performance of Holler, historian Michael J. Kramer wrote that Bell danced “both outside the poems looking in at them and within their poetic and musical infrastructures … he neither merely illustrated his words, nor only accompanied the poems with dance—but instead lingered in a space between the two.”
Bell has been the recipient of grants and fellowships from Atlantic Center for the Arts, Lambda Literary, Summer Stages Dance, Virginia Commission for the Arts, and Jacob’s Pillow, where he performed with his group on the Inside/Out Stage. He trained at North Carolina School of the Arts, School of American Ballet, and Pacific Northwest Ballet, and graduated from Sarah Lawrence College. Bell studies in the MFA in poetry program at NYU.
For more information, please contact ianspencerbelldance@gmail.com.

Dying Words: The AIDS Reporting of Jeff Schmalz and How It Transformed The New York Times
2016-03-16 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Dying Words: The AIDS Reporting of Jeff Schmalz is a multi-media project consisting of a book and public radio documentary about the New York Times reporter who covered the AIDS epidemic in the early 1990s as he was dying of the disease. It is also, in part, the story of The New York Times and, by extension, American journalism, during a much less tolerant time for LGBTQ journalists in major news organizations.
This presentation by Samuel Freedman and Kerry Donahue, collaborators on the book and radio documentary, will include a a Power Point of historical photographs and audio excerpts of Jeff talking about and reading from his most famous articles.
This independently produced and financed radio documentary was released on December 1, 2015 to honor World AIDS Day. It was distributed by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange and aired on more than 140 public radio stations in the United States between November 16, 2015 and December 27, 2015. A lengthy excerpt of the hour-long documentary was also carried by NPR’s On The Media show, which is syndicated to more than 400 member stations. It is expected that even more stations will air the documentary for Pride Month in June 2016.
The book, published by CUNY Journalism Press, has hailed by such significant gay figures as Barney Frank, Andrew Sullivan, and Terrence McNally. It was excerpted in Poz and Columbia Journalism Review online.
As for the story of Dying Words:
Jeff Schmalz was a prodigy. Born in 1953, he grew up in a lower middle-class, single-parent home in suburban Philadelphia. In his first year at Columbia University, he started as a copyboy at the Times. In early 1973, he dropped out of Columbia to work full-time as a copy editor. He rose through the ranks of the Times quickly, from copy editor to deputy metropolitan editor, from general reporter to bureau chief in Albany and then Miami to deputy national editor, all by age 37. All the while, Jeff was open to peers, subordinates, and friends about his homosexuality, yet, he stayed closeted to newsroom management, especially A.M. (Abe) Rosenthal, the brilliant editor of the Times from 1977-1986, who was also known for his homophobia.
Jeff’s life changed on a Friday afternoon in late December 1990. He had a seizure at his desk in the newsroom. When he was diagnosed weeks later with AIDS, the prognosis was dire — his T cell count was just two and he had PML, a AIDS related brain infection often fatal within months. To everyone’s astonishment, Jeff responded well to AZT, the primary treatment available at the time.
Jeff returned to the Times in the fall of 1991 on a mission: to report and write a series of articles about the human toll of the AIDS epidemic. The self-described “consummate Timesman” broke away from the formula. He wrote deep and searching profiles of people living and, like himself, working with the disease — AIDS doctor Marcus Conant, basketball star Magic Johnson, Republican AIDS activist Mary Fischer, authors Randy Shilts and Harold Brodkey, and others. The Times standards all but forbade use of the first-person in its news columns, yet Jeff wrote a wrenching essay about having AIDS while covering the disease. In his final year, he despaired not only that AIDS remained uncured, but that it was falling off the national radar. His posthumous essay, “What Ever Happened to AIDS?,” appeared in the New York Times Magazine on November 28, 1993, just weeks after his death.

Samuel G. Freedman is the author of seven non-fiction books prior to Dying Words, a columnist for the New York Times, and a professor for more than two decades at the Columbia Journalism School. (Earlier in Freedman’s career, he worked for Jeff Schmalz as a metro desk reporter for the Times.)

Kerry Donahue is a former executive producer at WNYC and is the current director of the radio program at Columbia Journalism School.

Union Square Slam presents SAM RUSH and Open Slam 3.3
2016-03-15 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Hang on to the seat of your pants, because Sam Rush is about ready to rocketlaunch you into the heart of the universe!! Come tell us all about it on our open mic or poetry slam!! Get ready for launch at our free poetry workshop before the show!!
6:00pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7:00pm: Sign-Ups and Socializing
7:30pm: Open Mic
8:00pm: Feature
8:30pm: Poetry Slam
Please note: the Bureau is closed on Tuesdays. We open at 6 PM for Union Square Slam.
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

About our Feature:
Sam Rush was raised in South Florida, but now makes poems and songs in and around New Hampshire. Sam got to writing poems after developing progressive hearing loss as a teenager and noticing how many words each word could be. They represented the venue Slam Free or Die in the 2014 and 2015 National Poetry Slam and the 2014 and 2015 Women of the World Poetry Slams (WOWPS), preforming on finals stage at WOWPS 2015. Sam has work published or forthcoming in The Offing, Snacks, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and We Can Make Your Life Better (U of Hell Press) and currently works for a non-profit focused on empowering youth from cultures in conflict.
About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are 3 quarters of competitive poetry slam, each culminating in a Semifinal. Each quarter consists of six open slams (one or more of which is a New Shit slam — competition in New Shit slams counts towards your total points!)
Each open slam will :
– consist of up to 8 poet competitors
have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
– will go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
– be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
At the end of each quarter, the poets with the 8 highest cumulative scores FOR THE QUARTER, are invited to compete in Semifinals. If a qualified poet opts out, then the next highest ranking poet qualifies. Semifinals are run using the same rules as the Open Slams. The top two highest ranked poets in each Semifinals bout will advance to Finals Stage, along with the top two winners of the Last Chance slam.
Last Chance Slam will be INVITATIONAL only to include the top 8 poets who have the highest cumulative scores over the entire season/all three quarters, but who didn’t not otherwise qualify for FINALS.

Queer Collage Party
2016-03-12 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
The Queer Collage Party is back! Friends of the Bureau Paul VanDeCarr and David Christie bring you the third Queer Collage Party at the Bureau on Saturday, March 12th, at 7 PM. We provide the glue sticks and paper, you provide the pictures. Everyone who attends should bring at least one magazine or book or a bunch of pictures that you’ll contribute to the group. Each person can make their own collage(s), or team up with others! You can keep your own collage(s), but don’t expect to walk away with your magazine intact! The spirit here is fun and sharing. Attend for part or all of the evening. You are encouraged but not required to bring a little snack to share — chips, tangerines, grapes, hummus, whatever. We’ll have music playing (not live, though). Beer, wine, and sparkling water will be available for cash donations.
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

LGBT-V: A Reading from "Rabbit Ears: TV Poems"
2016-03-11 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join Editor Joel Allegretti and six contributors to Rabbit Ears: TV Poems for a poetic tribute to the small screen. Rabbit Ears is the first anthology of poetry about television. The Boston Globe called it “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.”

LGBT-V will star Austin Alexis, Guillermo Filice Castro, Matthew Hittinger, Dean Kostos, Lynn McGee, and Elaine Sexton.

Rabbit Ears is in the Fales Collection at NYU and the archives of the University of Rochester, SUNY Buffalo, and Ohio State University.

To reserve a copy of Rabbit Ears please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau.
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Canceled: Bi Book Club discusses The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes
2016-03-10 18:30 - 20:00 | NY
The Bi Book Club meeting on March 10th has been canceled. The next meeting is on Thursday, April 14th.
The Bi Book Club meets on the second Thursday of each month to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise.
Dinner after nearby (so far, we always go to Village Den.)
On March 10, The Bi Book Club will finish discussing:
The Lunatic, the Lover, and the Poet by Myrlin A. Hermes
Shakespeare turned topsy turvy: a clever bisexual mashup between a sexy young Hamlet and characters from the sonnets. Very readable–no olde English. Note: The Sonnets, and Shakespeare, were bisexual.
Pick out some phrases, paragraphs or scenes that you’d like to discuss, give us your critique of the book: what worked, what didn’t, how was bisexuality represented? If you haven’t had the chance to read the book, come anyway because we read passages aloud for discussion. As usual, we’ll also be using the text as a jumping off point to further discussion of bisexual issues and personal experiences.
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.
RSVP on meetup.com (not required)

20Something Monthly Manhattan Meetup
2016-03-09 20:00 - 21:30 | NY
If you are new to the city, recently out, just looking for friends, or whatever experiences brought you to us – we offer a safe space where we can mingle and talk about our experiences as an LGBT person in New York City. We hold our meetings on the second Wednesday of every month from 8-10 PM at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. We recommend this 20Something Meetup to anyone who is looking for a more casual space to explore their sexual/gender identity. There will be light refreshments. Bring friends!
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau and 20Something. No one turned away for lack of funds.
20Something is the largest social events organization for young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in New York City, aged 21 to 30. We hold a monthly social, and two monthly icebreaker/discussion groups at the Brooklyn Pride Center and at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, the queer cultural center and bookstore on the second floor of The LGBT Community Center, in Manhattan. With more than 2,500 members, we engage young adults across all 5 boroughs with a safe, confidential, and respectful platform to meet other LGBT folk. Many of our members have made long lasting friendships, relationships, and have been connected to important LGBT services and resources. Whether you are new to the city, recently out, or just looking to make friends – 20Something offers a space for you to pave the way to your own adventures in New York City – and make living here a little easier. Become a member: meetup.com/20SomethingNYC

‎Union Square Slam presents CAMONGHNE FELIX and Open Slam 3.2
2016-03-08 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Wha Wha WWWHHHAAAAATTT?! TOO MUCH!! ALL THE THINGS!! Come hear Camonghne Felix tell it like it is!! Sign up for our open mic or poetry slam to tell US how it is!! Join us for that free poetry workshop to figure out how it is!!
6:00pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7:00pm: Sign-ups and Socializing
7:30pm: Open Mic
8:00pm: Feature
8:30pm: Poetry Slam

Please note: the Bureau is closed on Tuesdays. We open at 6 PM for Union Square Slam.

About our Feature:
Camonghne Felix is a poet, political speechwriter and essayist. She is an MA Candidate in Arts Politics at NYU, a 2012 Pushcart Prize nominee, and the 2013 recipient of the Cora Craig Award for Young Women. You can find her work in various spaces, including Youtube, and in publications like Apogee, Union Station, and Poetry Magazine. She is also the author of the chapbook Yolk, published via Penmanship Books in March 2015 and in May of that year was listed by Black Youth Project as a “Black Girl From the Future You Should Know”
About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are 3 quarters of competitive poetry slam, each culminating in a Semifinal. Each quarter consists of six open slams (one or more of which is a New Shit slam — competition in New Shit slams counts towards your total points!)
Each open slam will :
– consist of up to 8 poet competitors
have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
– will go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
– be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
At the end of each quarter, the poets with the 8 highest cumulative scores FOR THE QUARTER, are invited to compete in Semifinals. If a qualified poet opts out, then the next highest ranking poet qualifies. Semifinals are run using the same rules as the Open Slams. The top two highest ranked poets in each Semifinals bout will advance to Finals Stage, along with the top two winners of the Last Chance slam.
Last Chance Slam will be INVITATIONAL only to include the top 8 poets who have the highest cumulative scores over the entire season/all three quarters, but who didn’t not otherwise qualify for FINALS.

A Paper Cuts Zine Reading
2016-03-06 17:00 - 19:30 | NY
Paper Cuts is an exploration of the contemporary world of zines and DIY publishing that airs on Clocktower.org. In 2015, Paper Cuts took the show on the road in a monthly reading series that’s touring independent bookstores in New York. We feature writers, zinesters, artists, and performers who typically share their work in print, on paper, and in small editions. This series is a cross section of the varied landscape and rich history of publishing and the institutions that support it. Listen to voices that would normally live in your hands and demand your eyeballs.
Readers:
Paul Moreno
Arno Mokros
Posture // Winter Mendelson and M. Lamar
Sy Abudu
Nicholas Boggs

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Event image: Drawing by Paul Moreno

Sy Abudu is from Los Angeles and lives in Brooklyn, where she creates visual art and zines under the moniker great/grand/golden. Her work, which has been shown at the Black Lesbian DIY Fest, the Feminist Zine Fest, and the Allied Media Conference, features archival images from the Library of Congress “remixed” into new pieces that explore themes of visibility, African-American identity, and relationships through the lens of historical imagery. Sy earned her BFA in film & television from NYU, where she now works as a multimedia producer.

Nicholas Boggs is writing a book about his search for the untold story of James Baldwin’s collaboration with French painter Yoran Cazac, which has been supported by fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell and grants from the Camargo and Jerome foundations. Co-editor of a forthcoming new edition of Baldwin and Cazac’s “child’s story for adults,” Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood, his writing has appeared in the journals PANK and Callaloo and in the anthologies James Baldwin Now, The Cambridge Companion to James Baldwin, and Best Gay Stories 2013. He teaches in the Department of English at New York University.

Arno Mokros is a writer and contributor to Paper Cuts. Informed by the personal as political, his zines often incorporate confessional writing and social commentary. He writes about queerness, visual culture, and how histories are written. He is currently at work on a long-term writing project interrogating the continuity of “self” through time and is developing a project interweaving personal diary, oral histories, and gonzo journalism, which explores identity, family, belonging, and symbolic geographies of homeland. He graduated from Smith College in 2013, and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Paul Moreno was born in Sparks, NV. Studied Literature at University of San Francisco and then moved to New York to attend the Gallatin School of Independent Study at NYU. After an early departure from a program in Critical Thought, Paul pursued careers as a Gallerina, a Home-maker, and most recently, a set and prop stylist. Throughout these careers, Paul, a self taught visual artist, has been making drawings, paintings, and zines that deal with sexual positions, tropes of masculinity, and notions of beauty. Paul, in collaboration with Charlie Welch, is the creator of KNOWSGAY, a zine that takes an artistic approach to gay iconography. Paul lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Posture is an online and print arts publication that explores identity, sexuality, and gender through artistic practice. The publication features extraordinary LGBTQI and allied individuals who seek to simultaneously address and overcome oppression. They believe that visual activism, fashion, and artistic practice are powerful forces that can further cultural progress and build community. Posture’s audience is unified by the shared interpretation of queerness as a lifestyle that is defined by an openness to possibility rather than exclusions or boundaries.
Posture’s featured artist for the Zine Reading is M. Lamar.

NYC Launch of GLITTER & GRIT: Queer Performance from the Heels on Wheels Femme Galaxy
2016-03-05 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join the editors and authors of GLITTER & GRIT as we present our book in Manhattan for the first time! There will be readers, a slideshow, and special surprises!

Featuring HOW members
Shomi Noise
Hana Malia
Glenn Marla
Samantha Galarza
Zachary Wager-Scholl

Doors 7pm – show 7:30 *sharp*
Suggested donation of $10 to $15 to benefit Heels on Wheels and the Bureau (no one turned away for lack of funds).
Reserve a copye of GLITTER & GRIT by emailing the Bureau at contact@bgsqd.com.

Heels on Wheels is a group of interdisciplinary performing artists who create performance-based cultural works and community events produced from sites of femme/inine-positive queer embodiment to reveal power in under-represented communities.
Our mission is to use theatre to incite wonder, joy, critique, and dialogue; to bring visibility and complexity to diverse experiences; and to strengthen LGBTQ cultural communities in NYC and across the USA. As a multiracial & working-class led queer organization, we commit to anti-oppression and activism as art, as well as in our art.

DREAM CLOSET: Meditations on Childhood Space
2016-03-04 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Dream Closet: Meditations on Childhood Space is a new anthology of poetry, essays, and visual art edited by Matthew Burgess and published by Secretary Press. Contributors reflect on enclosures from their own childhood—the closet, the fort, the tent of bed sheets, the inverted cardboard box—and explore their various meanings. Whether found or made, these spaces are often sites of privacy, of escape, of aesthetic or erotic self-discovery, and of queer self-identification. This event will include a reading from selected contributors and a short Q&A.

Event image by Aram Jibilian.

Check out the Dream Closet book trailer created by friend and contributor, Matthew Sandager.

Melissa Febos is the author of the memoir, Whip Smart. Her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Glamour, Post Road, Salon, New York Times, Dissent, Bitch Magazine, and elsewhere. Her essays have won prizes from Prairie Schooner, Story Quarterly, and The Center for Women Writers, and she is the recipient of fellowships from Bread Loaf, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, The Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and The MacDowell Colony. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Monmouth University, MFA faculty at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and serves on the Executive Board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts.

Luis Jaramillo is the author of The Doctor’s Wife, winner of the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Contest, an Oprah Book of the Week, and one of NPR’s Best Books of 2012. His work has also appeared in Tin House Magazine, Open City, H.O.W. Journal, and the Chattahoochee Review, among other publications. He is the director of the Creative Writing Program at The New School, where he teaches fiction and is the co-editor of The Inquisitive Eater: New School Food.

Christina Olivares is the author of No Map of the Earth Includes Stars, winner of the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press Book Prize, of the 2015 chaplet Interrupt, produced by Belladonna* Collaborative, and of Petition, winner of the 2014 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Competition. She is the recipient of two Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grants, a Teachers and Writers Fellowship, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

Jason Zuzga is currently finishing a PhD in English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the Other Editor of Fence and the author of the poetry collection HEAT WAKE to be published by Saturnalia Books in March 2016.

Lara Mimosa Montes is a writer based in Minneapolis and New York. Her poems and essays have appeared in Fence, Triple Canopy, BOMB, recaps, and elsewhere. She currently teaches feminist and queer theory at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

Ian Hatcher is a writer, programmer, and sound artist living in NYC. He is the author of Prosthesis (Poor Claudia 2015), The All-New (Anomalous 2015), and, with Amaranth Borsuk and Kate Durbin, co-creator of Abra, a conjoined artist’s book and iOS app supported by the Center for Book and Paper Arts (Columbia College Chicago). > ianhatcher.net

Ryan Skrabalak is a poet currently living in his hometown of Bethlehem, New York. You can find past works of his in Slice, Stone Canoe, The Brooklyn Review, By The Overpass, and the two zine series Having A Whiskey Coke With You and Post-Apocalyptic Poets of Deep Brooklyn. Would you like to be friends with him? Then we can stay up all night and listen to jazz music.

Margaret Douglas is a poet, playwright, and fiction writer currently studying at Brooklyn College. Selected as 2015 Rosen Fellow, Douglas is now experimenting with motion and poetry while hiking sections of the Appalachian Trail and exploring the great wilderness areas of New England. Having grown up in New Hampshire, Douglas is an avid outdoorswoman and tent connoisseur. She now lives as close to Prospect Park as absurd rent costs will allow with her dog, Little Paw, and her cat, Guillermo.

Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, and Christopher Soto: tour to end queer youth homelessness
2016-03-03 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Please join Natalie Diaz, Ocean Vuong, and Christopher Soto for a reading celebrating the launch of Soto’s first chapbook Sad Girl Poems on the national TOUR TO END QUEER YOUTH HOMELESSNESS.

Natalie Diaz was born in the Fort Mojave Indian Village in Needles, California. She is Mojave and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian community. She earned a BA from Old Dominion University, where she received a full athletic scholarship. Diaz played professional basketball in Europe and Asia before returning to Old Dominion to earn an MFA. She is the author of the poetry collection When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012), which New York Times reviewer Eric McHenry described as an “ambitious … beautiful book.” Her honors and awards include the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry, the Louis Untermeyer Scholarship in Poetry from Bread Loaf, the Narrative Poetry Prize, and a Lannan Literary Fellowship.

Ocean Vuong‘s first full-length collection, Night Sky With Exit Wounds, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press (2016). He is also the author of two chapbooks: No (YesYes Books, 2013) andBurnings (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2010), which was an American Library Association’s Over The Rainbow selection. A 2014 Ruth Lilly fellow, Ocean has received honors and awards from Poets House, the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, and a Pushcart Prize. His poetry and fiction have been featured in Kenyon Review, The Nation, New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Poetry, and the American Poetry Review, which awarded him the Stanley Kunitz Prize for Younger Poets. His work has been translated into Albanian, Arabic, Bulgarian, Cantonese, French, Italian, Hindi, Spanish, and Ukrainian. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he resides in New York City and is currently at work on his first novel.

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a queer latinx punk poet & prison abolitionist. They were named one of “Ten Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know” by Remezcla. They were named one of “Seven Trans and Gender Non-Conforming Artists Doing the Work” by The Offing. Poets & Writers will be honoring Christopher Soto with the “Barnes & Nobles Writer for Writers Award” in 2016. They founded Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color with the Lambda Literary Foundation. They cofounded The Undocupoets Campaign in 2015. Their poetry has been called political surrealist and focuses on domestic violence, queer youth homelessness, and mass incarceration. For more information, visit christophersoto-poet.com

Juliana, the novel (Vol 1: 1941-1944): A Dramatic Reading with Vanda, the Author, and Actors
2016-03-02 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Vanda, author of Juliana, the novel (Vol 1: 1941-1944) will be joined by actors in a dramatic reading from the new novel. Juliana is the story of dreams, the dreams of two women who randomly, inevitably cross paths, of stage stardom and soulful songs amid the deceptions required in a 1940s New York City, where love was presumed to be straight, and destiny was supposed to be written in the stars.

Alice “Al” Huffman comes from the potato fields of Long Island with her beau, her best girlfriend and her girlfriend’s beau to make it on the Broadway stage only to find she has no talent. On the kids’ first day in New York City, they meet Maxwell P. Hartwell III, a failed nightclub owner and Broadway producer, who, according to Al, looks a little like Clark Gable. He invites them to a nightclub where Al hears Juliana, the glamorous, perpetually-on-the-brink-of stardom nightclub singer, sing for the first time. Al is instantly drawn to her and seeks her out. Juliana, a sexual risk-taker, easily reels in the mesmerized Al.

Al is increasingly pulled into a secret gay underworld of men who wear dresses and women who smoke cigars, while her childhood friends continue in their “normal” lives. Al glides easily between the two worlds until these worlds begin to collide.

To reserve copies of Juliana, please write to us at contact@bgsd.com

After the reading refreshments will be served and there will be an opportunity to talk with the author and the actors.

Union Square Slam presents GEOFF KAGAN-TRENCHARD
2016-03-01 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Well, here we are! A fresh new quarter on our Brand New Day: as of this show, Union Square Slam has officially moved to TUESDAYS!! Take note, then get your Art Hearts down here for the indominable Geoff Kagan-Trenchard, and our very first open slam in our last quarter!!
6:00pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7:00pm: Sign-ups
7:30pm: Open Mic
8:00pm: Feature
8:30pm Poetry Slam
About our Feature:
Geoff Kagan-Trenchard is a nationally recognized poet and theater artist. His work has been featured on HBO, All Def Poetry, TEDx, and Upworty. His poems have been published in published in numerous journals including Word Riot, Muzzle, Union Station Magazine and Freeze Ray. He has received commissions for theatrical work from the National Performance Network, Dance Theater Workshop, The Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the City of Oakland. He is also a lawyer with the Court Square Law Project. His work can be found at kagantrenchard.com/geoff
About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are 3 quarters of competitive poetry slam, each culminating in a Semifinal. Each quarter consists of six open slams (one or more of which is a New Shit slam — competition in New Shit slams counts towards your total points!)
Each open slam will :
– consist of up to 8 poet competitors
– have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
– will go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
– be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
At the end of each quarter, the poets with the 8 highest cumulative scores FOR THE QUARTER, are invited to compete in Semifinals. If a qualified poet opts out, then the next highest ranking poet qualifies. Semifinals are run using the same rules as the Open Slams. The top two highest ranked poets in each Semifinals bout will advance to Finals Stage, along with the top two winners of the Last Chance slam.
Last Chance Slam will be INVITATIONAL only to include the top 8 poets who have the highest cumulative scores over the entire season/all three quarters, but who didn’t not otherwise qualify for FINALS.

Keith Taylor Presents
2016-02-27 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Keith Taylor presents an encore screening of his short film “The Last Day,” directed by Infinite, followed by an acoustic musical performance by YouTube sensation Rockstar Sissy (Catherine Taormina), and displays of art work by visual artists Trevon Latin (as S. Relentless) & Catherine Taormina.

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Keith Taylor is a poet, artist and actor.

He has exhibited pieces of his art in showcases at The AICH Community House Exhibition “ Rain Is Love-Honoring Water” 2010 “The 3rd Annual Night of the Arts” at The LGBT Community Center 2012, MCCNY’s Jackson Hall Gallery, “Autumn & Art in New York” 2013, and recently at the “OMNIA VANITAS – All Is Vanity / LIFEbeat Fundraiser” at The Chelsea Eye Art Gallery 2014 and has recited his poetry at The Fresh Fruit Festival 2013, All Out Poetry at Nuyorican Poets Café, Queens Book Festival “A Borough Without Borders Reading Series” 2015, V Henny Presents The Art Of Muzic Showcase 2015
Keith has his 1st role in The Hardest Love movie as Chapo winner of The 2014 Manhattan Film Festival Buzz Award & winner of International Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival 2014 Peoples Choice Award. Keith has been featured in movies such as The Brave One, The Other Guys, The Back-up Plan and The Bounty Hunter and has also been a recurring background actor & featured on TV shows Law and Order SVU, How To Make It In America, Blue Bloods, Elementary, Power and Person of Interest, HBO’s Crime.
Keith has also acted in music videos by LGBT artists such as Greg Scarnici, Sherry Vine and Lovari.
Keith has recently played “The Ref” in A Story of Time at The Black Spectrum Theatre Company and now has completed his first short poetry/music film The Last Day which is his first original Keith Taylor production.

Catherine Taormina is a full time performer, producer, actor-artist and content creator. Performance includes playing a young Olympia Dukakis in the Paul Reiser movie “The Thing About My Folks” and as Rockstar Sissy singer-songwriter-guitarist pop-rock funk-punker. She produces shorts, enters creative contests (winning some – check them out!) music videos for her songs and also produced a downloadable feature film of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” having also designed and made most of all of the costumes, directed, edited, acted in and composed music for the film. Visit her website www.catherinetaormina.com for links to all!

Trevon Latin A.K.A. Shaturqua Relentless (b. 1987, Houston, Texas) is a Houston Interdisciplinary artist and Painting BFA graduate from the University Of Houston School Of Art. His paintings have been exhibited in the annual student show s of 2014, and 2015.His/their imagery feeds off the literal and Imaginative. “As a black, gay, femme, American male , my experience invites me to tell stories through my eyes and allows me to dive into the worlds I know often to inform outsiders of unfair and unjust treatment. “His current work takes on the main story of a history that is both true and imaginary. Using a mixture of media, from hand sewn pieces to a more traditional medium, He/they are Journeying through identity and self-exploration of what it means to be gay, black and having a “feminine side” in today’s society.

TELL 21: My Passion
2016-02-26 19:00 - 22:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014. Come celebrate the second anniversary of TELL!
My Passion is the theme of the twenty-first installment of TELL. Featuring Aviya Eschenazi, Tanisha Thompson, Jess Tell, and Jacob Tobia.
$10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

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

Aviya Eschenazi also goes by “Vi” and is a graduate of the Sarah Lawrence BA Theater program.
She has performed her poetry, monologues, and stories in Spanish, French, and Italian. She has narrated stories for a live online news broadcast called Wochit.
Her passion is finding strength in odd identities, as she feels she has been too many at once!
Growing up queer in a family of Colombian, Jewish, Italian, and Israeli-Egyptian immigrants, her work is always about finding root in the right ground. Her writing often deals with Jewish Orthodoxy, drug addiction, and having been a young gay boy who is now a proud gay girl.
She is most obsessed with lesbian history, poetry, and spaces around the world.

Jess Tell loves dad jokes & complicated multi-ingredient desserts. Jess grew up in Pittsburgh with a wacky queer family of two lesbians, a flaming queen, nine cats & a rotating cast of hippies & burnouts. Jess moved to NY in 2003; he throws dinner parties, fanboys for Brooklyn Transcore projects, sits on fashion panels & match-makes people to poems. Jess currently runs the meals program at the Ali Forney Center, an organization that supports homeless & vulnerable LGBTQ youth.

Tanisha Thompson is a Brooklyn based performer. Most recently performed in the OBIE award winning Fire This Time Festival plays Slavesperience, (Stacey Rose)Time in the Penn(Keelay Gibson), and You Mine, (Nia Witherspoon). As a member of the Hotel Savant Theatre Co. her roles include Dryope in Men Go Down- Part 3 (PS 122) and Alas, the Nymphs… (BAM Next Wave Festival 2015), Fury #2 in Funeral Games (The Public Theater), The Shady Maids of Haiti (Walker Space) and the title role of Mercurious (HERE). Other roles include, Richmond in Richard III (Judith Shakespeare Co.), Josie in “The Skriker” (WOW Café), and Moll a swashbuckling prostitute Moll in “The Roaring Girl”. She has also collaborated with Michelle Matlock (The Mammy Project), Lee Frisari(sez.me) and Becca Blackwell (Untitled Feminist Show), on an exploration of gender, race and punk rock in the piece Sum of Us at (Dixon Place).

Jacob Tobia is a leading voice for genderqueer, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming folks, ensuring that everyone is able to live their truth and feel their cute.
In 2014, Jacob made their debut on the national stage when they were interviewed by Laverne Cox as part of MTV’s The T Word, and in 2015, Jacob was profiled by MTV in an hour-long episode of True Life: I’m Genderqueer. A Point Foundation Scholar, Harry S. Truman Scholar, and recipient of the Campus Pride National Voice and Action Award, Jacob has captivated audiences at college campuses, national conferences, and corporate events across the country with their message of gender empowerment and social change. Their writing and advocacy have been featured on MSNBC, MTV, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Guardian, and Jezebel, among others.
Originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, Jacob currently lives in Brooklyn and has worn high heels in the White House twice.

NYC Revolutionary Feminism Study Group
2016-02-25 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join us for week 17, the final week of the Fall-Winter 2015/2016 NYC reading group of Revolutionary Feminism: Communist Interventions, vol. III, a reader from the Communist Research Cluster. All NYC Revolutionary Feminism meetings are open and welcoming to the public. Week 17 will look at social reproduction, reading an article by Johanna Brenner.
The reader can be found online here: https://communistresearchcluster.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/crc_ci_vol_three_1_1.pdf

Celebrating Queer: A Reader for Writers, featuring Editor Jason Schneiderman, and contributors Charles Rice-Gonzalez (moderator), Justin Vivian Bond, Mark Doty, & Ebony Smith
2016-02-24 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join us for the launch of Jason Schneiderman‘s anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers, the first freshman composition reader built entirely around queer topics. Charles Rice-Gonzalez moderates a discussion amongst fellow contributors Justin Vivian Bond, Mark Doty, Ebony Smith, and Schneiderman.

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Photograph by David Kimelman
Mx Justin Vivian Bond is a writer, singer, painter, and performance artist. Bond’s debut Cd Dendrophile was self-released on WhimsyMusic in 2011, and was followed by FCA-supported Silver Wells in 2012. In 2011, Bond’s art exhibition The Fall of the House of Whimsy was presented at Participant Inc., New York. Bond’s theatrical endeavors include starring as Warhol Superstar Jackie Curtis in Scott Wittman’s production of Jukebox Jackie: Snatches of Jackie Curtis (2012) as part of La Mama E.T.C.’s 50th Anniversary Season; originating the role of Herculine Barbin in Kate Bornstein’s play Hidden: A Gender (1991); touring with the performance troupe The Big Art Group, and appearing in John Cameron Mitchell’s film Shortbus (2006). Bond’s memoir TANGO: My Childhood, Backwards and in High Heels, was published by The Feminist Press in (2011). With funds from V’s Grants to Artists, Bond made a down payment on V’s lease and was able to self-release the CD, Silver Wells(2012).
Bond has held performances at The Kitchen, Abrons Art Center, Performance Space 122, The Zipper Factory, The Delacorte Theater, Central Park, New York; The Sydney Opera House, Australia; Soho Theater, London, Helen Hayes Theater, New York and the Royal Albert Hall, London.
Prior to V’s 2012 Grants to Artists, Bond received a an Obie Award for Kiki & Herb: Jesus Wept (2000), a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Choreographer/Creator Award for Kiki & Herb(2004), The Ethyl Eichelberger Award (2008), and The Peter Reed Foundation Grant (2011). Bond received a B.F.A. from Adelphi University (1985), and an M.A. from Central St. Martins College in London (2006).

Photograph by Star Black
Mark Doty is the author of several collections of poetry, including Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems, which received the 2008 National Book Award.

Photo-by-Marisol-Diaz
Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel Chulito(Magnus Books 2011) has received nearly a dozen awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association and a “Small Press Highlights” mention from the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture/Lethe Press 2011) and his award-winning play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology (Duke Press 2016). He serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.

Jason Schneiderman is Associate Editor of Painted Bride Quarterly and Poetry Editor of Bellevue Literary Review. His poetry collection Primary Source (Red Hen Press, forthcoming April 2016) won the 2014 Benjamin Saltman award, and his poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry,The Poetry Review, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. He is an Assistant Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and lives in Brooklyn.

Ebony Smith, originally from California, is currently a student at the Borough of Manhattan Community College and a member of the Phi Theta Kappa honors society. She is studying liberal arts while exploring psychology and criminal justice. Ebony loves to travel and has visited countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe. She enjoys writing and hopes to publish a book in the future. She is a very strongly opinionated, artistic, and creative young woman who has dreams of helping others and flourishing in the career she desires.

Union Square Slam presents FRANNY CHOI and SEMIFINALS #2
2016-02-22 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
It’s that time of the year again! Time for Union Suare Slam’s top poets to duke it out for the next two spots on our first Finals stage ever this May, with none other than the legendary Franny Choi!!!
6pm: Free Poetry Workshop with Sara Emily Kuntz
7pm: sign-ups (open Mic Only)
7:30pm: Open Mic
7:50pm: Feature
8: 20pm: Semifinals Slam (invite only)
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.
About our Feature:
FRANNY CHOI is a writer, performer, and teaching artist.
She is the author of Floating, Brilliant, Gone (Write Bloody, 2014) and a Rhode Island State Council on the Arts Fellow. She has been a finalist for multiple national poetry slams, and her work has appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Journal, PANK, The Rumpus, and others. She is a Project VOICE teaching artist, a Co-Director of the Providence Poetry Slam, and a member of the Dark Noise Collective.
About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are 3 quarters of competitive poetry slam, each culminating in a Semifinal. Each quarter consists of six open slams (one or more of which is a New Shit slam — competition in New Shit slams counts towards your total points!)
Each open slam will :
consist of up to 8 poet competitors
have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
will go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
At the end of each quarter, the poets with the 8 highest cumulative scores FOR THE QUARTER, are invited to compete in Semifinals. If a qualified poet opts out, then the next highest ranking poet qualifies. Semifinals are run using the same rules as the Open Slams. The top two highest ranked poets in each Semifinals bout will advance to Finals Stage, along with the top two winners of the Last Chance slam.
Last Chance Slam will be INVITATIONAL only to include the top 8 poets who have the highest cumulative scores over the entire season/all three quarters, but who didn’t not otherwise qualify for FINALS.
HOST: Thomas Fucaloro

Newfangled 9: Robert Siek hosts Yanyi Luo, Sam Ross, and Nomi Stone
2016-02-20 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for the 9th installment of Newfangled, poetry readings by emerging poets hosted by Robert Siek. Newfangled 9 will feature Yanyi Luo, Sam Ross, and Nomi Stone.

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Yanyi Luo enjoys a masc edge. She is the recipient of a 2015 Poets House Fellowship and works as a contributing editor and poetry reader at Nat. Brut. Her poems have appeared in [PANK] and The Cortland Review, among others. She lives in Brooklyn.

Sam Ross’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The New Republic, Southern Humanities Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, Guernica, Indiana Review, and other journals. He has received fellowship support from Columbia University, Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is co-editor of Circumference: Poetry in Translation and poetry editor of Blunderbuss Magazine.

Nomi Stone is the author of the poetry collection Stranger’s Notebook (TriQuarterly, 2008), an MFA candidate in poetry at Warren Wilson College, and a PhD candidate in cultural anthropology at Columbia University. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in Best American Poets 2016, Poetry Northwest, Blackbird, Guernica, Drunken Boat, Plume, and elsewhere. Stone is currently working on Kill Class, a manuscript based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork conducted within combat simulations in mock Middle Eastern villages erected by the US military across America.

ROBERT SIEK is the author of the poetry collection Purpose and Devil Piss (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and the chapbook Clubbed Kid (New School University, 2002). He works at a large publishing house in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn.

Benjamin Fredrickson in Conversation with Hunter O'Hanian
2016-02-18 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
In conjunction with the Bureau’s exhibition Benjamin Fredrickson: Salon, the Bureau hosts a conversation between Benjamin Fredrickson and Hunter O’Hanian, Director of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art.
Benjamin Fredrickson: Salon organized by Daniel Cooney Fine Art. On view at the Bureau January 20 – March 20, 2016.
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau.
No one turned away for lack of funds.

Image: Benjamin Fredrickson. EJ Sleeping, 2015, 10 x 8” Gelatin silver print from paper negative. Edition # 1/3.
