From Gay to Z Booksigning with Justin Elizabeth Sayre (in person & live-streaming)
2022-05-15 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
With their new book, From Gay to Z, playwright and performer Justin Elizabeth Sayre brings a funny and far-reaching take on Queer Culture. Based on their series of shows, The gAy-BC’s, the new book is a huge accomplishment. A witty and wise take on the queer culture that has come before and the culture that may yet to be.
Sayre will be joined in conversation by Shane O’Neill!
The Bureau is thrilled to welcome these dear friends back to our space!

From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium (Chronicle Books, 2022, hardcover, $24.95) is also available for purchase at the Bureau.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Join this event in-person at the Bureau
OR watch the live-stream of the event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Safety protocol (for those joining in person)
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Justin Elizabeth Sayre is a playwright and performer who Michael Musto called, “Oscar Wilde meets Whoopi Goldberg.” Sayre is a fixture of the Downtown Cabaret Scene in New York, first with their long-running variety show, The Meeting (Bistro Award-winning & 2 MAC nominations). They are currently in residency at Joe’s Pub at the Public with their new variety show, Assorted Fruit. As a playwright, Sayre’s work has appeared at Dixon Place, The Wild Project, The Celebration Theatre, Dynasty Typewriter, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Their 12-part-epic Ravenswood Manor, a Camp-Horror-Soap-Opera, called “a sharply written and well-acted exemplar of the horror-comedy genre,” by the LA Times and is currently being developed with Sony Television and Rupaul. Sayre has written a series of YA Novels, Husky, Pretty, and Mean, released by Penguin Books, and the book, From Gay to Z: A Queer Compendium, just released by Chronicle Books. Sayre has written for Television, working with Michael Patrick King on his Hit CBS comedy, 2 Broke Girls and Fox’s The Cool Kids. Sayre also appeared on HBO’s The Comeback with Lisa Kudrow.

Shane O’Neill is a reporter for the Styles desk at The New York Times. During his tenure at the Times he has profiled “Jeopardy!” champion Amy Schneider, produced the short documentary “Who Threw The First Brick at Stonewall?”, produced and edited the internet culture series “Internetting With Amanda Hess,” covered the Black trans community’s response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and edited the pop music video series “Diary of a Song.” He starred in the animated short documentary “The Shawl” which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2020.

Tom Daley Visits the Bureau!
2022-05-18 14:30 - 15:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come get a copy of Tom Daley‘s new memoir, Coming Up for Air, and have Tom sign it for you!
Tom Daley is one of the most beloved athletes of our time, having competed as a diver in four Olympics, garnering medals and finally, in 2021 in Tokyo, winning gold. But few people know the realities of his life beyond the pool–his struggles, his secret triumphs and the mindset he needed to cultivate to become a champion.
A deeply personal and inspiring memoir from the celebrated Olympic gold medal diver and LGBTQ+ advocate
Please note that if you purchase Coming Up for Air online and you’d like to have Tom sign it for you, we must receive the order BEFORE 2:30 PM on Wednesday, May 18th. Please enter your name exactly as you’d like Tom to sign it in the comments section when you check out.
If you’d like us to hold a copy for you at the Bureau, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

Let The Record Show (in person only)
2022-05-18 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join author Sarah Schulman to celebrate the launch of the paperback edition of LET THE RECORD SHOW: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF ACT UP NEW YORK, 1987-1993.
In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities, and backgrounds, changed the world. Armed with rancor, desperation, intelligence, and creativity, it took on the AIDS crisis with an indefatigable, ingenious, and multifaceted attack on the corporations, institutions, governments, and individuals who stood in the way of AIDS treatment for all. They stormed the FDA and NIH in Washington, DC, and started needle exchange programs in New York; they took over Grand Central Terminal and fought to change the legal definition of AIDS to include women; they transformed the American insurance industry, weaponized art and advertising to push their agenda, and battled—and beat—The New York Times, the Catholic Church, and the pharmaceutical industry. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them.
Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members and rich with lessons for today’s activists, LET THE RECORD SHOW is a revelatory exploration—and long-overdue reassessment—of the coalition’s inner workings, conflicts, achievements, and ultimate fracture. Schulman, one of the most revered queer writers and thinkers of her generation, explores the how and the why, examining, with her characteristic rigor and bite, how a group of desperate outcasts changed America forever, and in the process created a livable future for generations of people across the world.
No registration required.
Seating is first come, first served.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau.
All are welcome to join, 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.

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
All attendees are required to wear masks.

To reserve a copy of the paperback edition of Let The Record Show (released from Picador on May 17, $22), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Copies will be available for purchase at the event.
Or pre-order a copy from our online store to have the book shipped to you after May 17th.

Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, and The Gentrification of the Mind), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace.

Launch: Melanie Mitzner's Slow Reveal & Ken Harvey's Book of Casey Adair (on Zoom only!)
2022-05-19 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
U.S. Launch of queer American/Canadian Authors: Melanie Mitzner‘s novel Slow Reveal, set in 1990s New York and Ken Harvey‘s novel The Book of Casey Adair, set in 1980s Madrid, Boston and New York.
WITH FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE FROM THE CANADA COUNCIL FOR THE ARTS THROUGH THE WRITERS’ UNION OF CANADA
Please note that this event will take place on Zoom only.
Click here to join this event on Zoom
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
You can make a donation on the Eventbrite page for this event
Registration not required to attend–only to make a donation.

Purchase Melanie Mitzner’s Slow Reveal (Inanna Publications & Education, 2022, paperback, $22.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

Purchase Ken Harvey’s The Book of Casey Adair (U of Wisconsin Press, 2021, paperback, $18.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

Both books are also available at our physical store as well.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Melanie Mitzner was awarded an Edward Albee Fellowship for her play Personal Effects. Her screenplay Dodge and Burn was a finalist in the Writers Guild East Foundation Fellowships. In the Name of Love and Out to Lunch were finalists in the Houston Film Festival Screenwriting Competition. She received a fellowship from M.E.T. Theater and fiction grants from Vermont Studio Center and Summer Literary Seminars. An excerpt of her novel Too Good to Be True was published in Harrington Lesbian Quarterly. She’s written for Vol1Brooklyn, Wine Spectator, Hamptons, The Groovy Mind, Society for Curious Thought, Broadcast Week, Millimeter and Bloom. She appeared on Best of Women’s Fiction podcast. You can follow her on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. For more information, visit her website: www.melaniemitzner.com. She lives in Montréal and New York.

Ken Harvey is the author of two award-winning books: a short story collection (If You Were With Me Everything Would Be All Right) and a memoir (A Passionate Engagement). He’s been published in over twenty U.S. and international literary magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, Consequence, and The Buenos Aires Review. He’s read his work on National Public Radio in the United States and in Italy and has been granted writing residencies at the Wurlitzer Foundation and the Millay Colony. A book reviewer for Lambda Literary, Ken holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Bennington College. A native of Boston, he now lives in Toronto with his husband and basset hound, Lily Tomlin.

Office Hours Poetry Spring 2022 Showcase Reading (online only)
2022-05-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join us Friday May 20th at 7:00 PM EDT for the Office Hours Spring 2022 (Virtual) Showcase Reading! Our current fellows will give a brief reading in celebration of another strong semester of poetry making, community building, and surviving in difficult creative times.
Suggested donation to benefit Office Hours Poetry Workshop: $5 – $10
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Click here to register

Abba Belgrave is an avid writer based in Brooklyn. She is also a recent graduate of the Juniper Summer Writing Program at University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Danielle Cowan is an electoral organizing fellow born and raised in New York City. You can find her foraging for free lectures, queer feminist theater and great cake, or, on a healthier day, a hiking trail she can conquer with her cane.

Laura Cresté is the author of You Should Feel Bad, winner of a 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. A 2021-2022 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Kenyon Review, The Yale Review‘s “Poem of the Week” series, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, Cero Magazine and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from New York University.

J. Freeborn is a social worker and the anthology books managing editor at The Poetry Society of New York. They have recent work in Impossible Archetype, Stone of Madness, Voicemail Poems, and elsewhere.

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

Emily Hockaday’s first full-length collection, Naming the Ghost, will be out with Cornerstone Press in November 2022. Her second full-length collection, In a Body, is forthcoming from Small Harbor Publishing. She has five chapbooks of poetry—Beach Vocabulary, Space on Earth, What We Love and Will Not Give Up, Starting a Life, and Ophelia: A Botanist’s Guide. Her work has appeared on Radiolab and in a number of literary journals. She was a 2022 poetry resident at Bethany Arts Community and the recipient of City Artist Corps and Cafe Royal Cultural Foundation grants. www.emilyhockaday.com.

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

Megan Pinto is a poet living in Brooklyn. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Guernica, The Massachusetts Review, Plume, and elsewhere. She has received scholarships and fellowships from Bread Loaf, the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference, and an Amy Award from Poets & Writers. She holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.

Sarah M. Sala is the author of Devil’s Lake (Tolsun Books 2020). The founding director of Office Hours Poetry Workshop, and assistant poetry editor for the Bellevue Literary Review, she teaches expository writing at New York University. She has a dapple dachshund named Remy who begs her for food during all her Zoom calls.

Noel Sikorski’s poems and artwork appear in Painted Bride Quarterly, Georgetown Review, Action Spectacle, The American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets.

Shakeema Smalls is a writer from South Carolina. She has had her work published in various outlets including Free Black Space, Tidal Basin Review, PANK, Rigorous, and Radius Lit, among others.

GAYS IN HOLLYWOOD IN THE GOLDEN AGE - A Talk by Felice Picano in-person
2022-05-22 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
A talk by author, Felice Picano, with many vintage photos from Ansel Adams’ estate as well as numerous Hollywood Studio promotional photos and theatre cards showing the surprising dominance of LGBT film actors, writers, & directors in the 1930’s through 1950.
Better known as a novelist and memoirist, Felice Picano was called to Hollywood in 1977 to work for Cary Grant’s Brut Productions. Between writing novels in New York, Picano lived and worked in L.A., writing film and TV scripts for various directors. An out gay man, he soon met the cream of Hollywood LGBT set, and when he moved there “The Brassy Old Dames of Hollywood,” all of whom told him what Queer Life and work was like.
Books by Felice Picano are available for purchase at the Bureau!

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Sweat: A Decades Long Convo on the Queer Body (in-person & live-streaming)
2022-05-28 18:30 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Celebrating the publication of Lucy Jane Bledsoe‘s NO STOPPING US NOW and Alison Bechdel‘s THE SECRET TO SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH, the two will continue their decades-long conversation about what it means to live, play, work, and be an activist in a queer body.
Join this event in-person at the Bureau
OR watch the event on Zoom:
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Meeting ID: 897 8623 1161
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Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kBgi6NCT

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Purchase Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s No Stopping Us from the Bureau.

Purchase Alison Bechdel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength from the Bureau.
Both books are also available at our physical store and will be available at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Safety protocol (for those joining in person):
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe‘s newest novel, NO STOPPING US NOW, is based on her own experience bringing her hometown into compliance with Title IX. She’s the author of several novels, including A THIN BRIGHT LINE, and the recent story collection, LAVA FALLS. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, a Yaddo Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. She’s a three-time finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award and a six-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Ms. called her work “fabulous feminist fiction” and the New York Times said her work “triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances.”

Alison Bechdel is the author of the beloved comic strip, DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR, and the graphic memoir, FUN HOME: A FAMILY TRAGICOMIC, which Time magazine named the Best Book of 2006. The book was adapted into a musical by the playwright Lisa Kron and the composer Jeanine Tesori. It opened on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater on April 19, 2015, and won five Tony Awards, including “Best Musical.” Her most recent book, THE SECRET TO SUPERHUMAN STRENGTH, is about her lifetime relationship to the spiritual, philosophical, and physical challenges of fitness. The Atlantic called the book “quietly astonishing.” She has been awarded Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellowships.

Precocious Queer Politics: Sodomy Law Reform in Early 19th c. Britain (in person only)
2022-06-01 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The first parliamentary debates over the immorality of the death penalty for sodomy occurred in Britain in the early nineteenth century, as part of a fragmented and largely forgotten political effort to lessen the penalties for sex between men. This talk explains how a form of queer politics was possible before modern homosexual identity, recounting the new discoveries published in “Beyond the Law”: The Politics Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain (Temple University Press, 2021). Jeffrey Weeks, author of the first landmark works of LGBTQ history for nineteenth century Britain, has called this research “a triumph of historical detective work… [that] is genuinely breaking new ground.” Join the author, Charles Upchurch, and eminent historian of LGBTQ history, Jonathan Ned Katz, for an illustrated presentation and discussion of this new research.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Suggested donation $5 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Safety protocol (for those joining in person)
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times in The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Purchase Charles Upchurch’s “Beyond the Law”: The Politics Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain (Temple University Press, 2021, paperback, $35.95) from the Bureau’s online store (click on title).
Copies of “Beyond the Law”: The Politics Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain are also available at the Bureau’s physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Charles Upchurch is an Associate Professor of British history at Florida State University. His latest book, “Beyond the Law”: The Politics of Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain, was published 2021 by Temple University Press, and recounts the previously untold story of the parliamentary effort to end the death penalty for sodomy in the early nineteenth century. His first book, Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain’s Age of Reform, explores the ways in which family and class influenced the interpretation of same-sex desire in the period between 1820 and 1870. He has served as a Distinguished Academic Patron of LGBT History Month in the United Kingdom, and he is currently the President of the Southern Conference on British Studies.

Jonathan Ned Katz is an Independent Scholar, history activist, and visual artist. He has published five books on the history of sexuality and intimacy and a brief memoir, Coming of Age in Greenwich Village (2013). His most recent book is The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (2021). Earlier books are Love Stories: Sex Between Men Before Homosexuality (2001); The Invention of Heterosexuality (1995); Gay/Lesbian Almanac (1983), and Gay American History: Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. (1976).

Nicole Melleby in conversation with A.J. Sass (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-02 18:00 - 19:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join author Nicole Melleby as she discusses her new novel, THE SCIENCE OF BEING ANGRY, in conversation with author A.J. Sass.
From the acclaimed author of Hurricane Season, an unforgettable story about what makes a family.
Eleven-year-old Joey is angry. All the time. And she doesn’t understand why. She has two loving moms, a supportive older half brother, and, as a triplet, she’s never without company. Her life is good. But sometimes she loses her temper and lashes out, like the time she threw a soccer ball—hard—at a boy in gym class and bruised his collarbone. Or when jealousy made her push her (former) best friend (and crush), Layla, a little bit too roughly.
After a meltdown at Joey’s apartment building leads to her family’s eviction, Joey is desperate to figure out why she’s so mad. A new unit in science class makes her wonder if the reason is genetics. Does she lose control because of something she inherited from the donor her mothers chose?
The Science of Being Angry is a heartwarming story about what makes a family and what makes us who we are from an author whose works are highly praised for their presentation of and insights into the emotional lives of tweens.
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Purchase Nicole Melleby’s The Science of Being Angry (Algonquin Young Readers, 2022, hardcover, $16.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

Purchase A. J. Sass’s Ellen Outside the Lines (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, 2022, hardcover, $16.99) from the Bureau’s online store.
These books are also available for purchase at the Bureau’s physical store.

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

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Nicole Melleby, a New Jersey native, is the author of highly praised middle-grade books, including the Lambda Literary finalist Hurricane Season. She lives with her wife and their cat, whose need for attention oddly aligns with Nicole’s writing schedule. (Author photo: Elizabeth Welch)

A. J. Sass (he/they) is the author of Ana on the Edge and Ellen Outside the Lines. A. J. is the co-author of Camp QUILTBAG* (Algonquin, 2023) and a contributor to anthologies such as This Is Our Rainbow (Knopf Books for Young Readers) and Allies (DK/Penguin Random House). When he’s not writing, A. J. figure skates and travels as much as possible. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his partner and two cats who act like dogs. Visit him online at sassinsf.com and follow him @matokah on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. (Author photo: Deven Sass-Cao)

TELL 81: FIRED! Postponed to June 4th! (IN PERSON)
2022-06-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
FIRED! is the theme of the 81st TELL, on Saturday, June 4, 2022, 7 PM IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Heather Lynn Johnson, Elizabeth Koke, & Justin Sayre.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.

Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Elizabeth Koke is a writer, performer, and organizer from NYC. She has participated in readings and performances at Dixon Place, Wild Project, Brooklyn Museum, Joe’s Pub, and other assorted venues, backyards, and dive bars. She is currently Creative Director for Housing Works where she enjoys a healthy balance of thrift shopping and hell raising. She lives in the Lower East Side where she spends time at her favorite local bar, the Parkside Lounge, with her rescue dog, Onyx.

Justin Elizabeth Sayre is a playwright and performer who Michael Musto called, “Oscar Wilde meets Whoopi Goldberg.” Sayre is a fixture of the Downtown Cabaret Scene in New York, first with their long-running variety show, The Meeting (Bistro Award-winning & 2 MAC nominations). They are currently in residency at Joe’s Pub at the Public with their new variety show, Assorted Fruit. As a playwright, Sayre’s work has appeared at Dixon Place, The Wild Project, The Celebration Theatre, Dynasty Typewriter, and La MaMa Experimental Theatre. Their 12-part-epic Ravenswood Manor, a Camp-Horror-Soap-Opera, called “a sharply written and well-acted exemplar of the horror-comedy genre,” by the LA Times and is currently being developed with Sony Television and Rupaul. Sayre has written a series of YA Novels, Husky, Pretty, and Mean, released by Penguin Books, and the book, From Gay to Z: A Compendium of Queer Culture just released by Chronicle Books. Sayre has written for Television, working with Michael Patrick King on his Hit CBS comedy, 2 Broke Girls and Fox’s The Cool Kids. Sayre also appeared on HBO’s The Comeback with Lisa Kudrow.

Heather Lynn Johnson is an artist and poet living in Brooklyn whose work is characterized by its lyricism and cultural critique. Heather’s formal approach to the narrative, whether visual or poetic, is distinguished by her willingness to lay bare her own existence. Centered around Black American liberation and culture with an emphasis on objectification and lost histories, Heather uses an autobiographical framework and considers her work self-portraits, imbued by her lived experience as a butch Black lesbian. The 2019 Leslie-Lohman Museum Fellow and 2017 Literary Fellow for Queer|Art|Mentorship, Heather is the author of “The Survival Guide For Queer Black Youth” (Inpatient Press, 2017).

New Work from Amy Hoffman, Estela González & Christopher Anstee (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-05 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Kick off your LGBTQ Pride Month with this reading from three newly published books. Christopher Anstee will read from his memoir Polish the Crown, about growing up queer in a coal-mining town in Wales; Estela González will read from Arribada, about the intersections of family, sexuality, and environmental preservation; and Amy Hoffman will read from Dot & Ralfie, about a lesbian couple facing the physical, emotional, and relationship challenges of aging.
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

These books are also available for purchase at the Bureau’s physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Christopher Anstee is an author and poet from Wales, U.K. Christopher is passionate about storytelling and the celebration of ordinary lives in art and literature. The eradication of LGBTQ+ bullying is very close to Christopher’s heart, along with youth empowerment and the healing power of true self expression. Christopher is a fiery, strong, vulnerable, compassionate freedom fighter and a lover of life, art and people. A dreamer, always searching for new adventure and yet hopeful that one day he will be the eccentric old man who lives down the street, with a thousand books, 5 dogs and a million stories.

A binational and bilingual writer from Mexico, Estela González tells stories from both sides of the border in English and Spanish. Her work about race, sexuality, gender, and environmental justice is featured in the Barcelona Review, Best of Solstice, Coal Hill, Flash Frontier, Latino Book Review, LatineLit, Revista de Literatura Mexicana Contemporánea, Sinister Wisdom, Feminine Rising, and Under the Volcano. Arribada was a finalist for Feminist Press’s Louise Meriwether Award. Estela divides her time between Mazatlán, Mexico, and Vermont, where she teaches Latin American literature, culture, and creative writing in Spanish.

Amy Hoffman has published two novels: Dot & Ralfie and The Off Season; and three award-winning memoirs: Hospital Time; An Army of Ex-Lovers: My Life at the Gay Community News; and Lies About My Family. Her articles have appeared in the Boston Review, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and many other journals. She was the longtime editor of Women’s Review of Books, and teaches in the Solstice low-residency MFA program. When she is not writing, she enjoys working for social justice; reading; cooking for her honey, Roberta Stone; biking with friends; and playing the violin.

Opening Reception for Near Miss: Katja Farin
2022-06-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join us for the opening reception of Near Miss, a solo exhibition of Katja Farin‘s paintings curated by Ashton Cooper.
Thursday, June 9, 2022, 6-9 PM
Exhibition dates: June 9 – September 11, 2022
Download a PDF of the press release
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is proud to present Near Miss, a solo exhibition of new paintings by Katja Farin, curated by Ashton Cooper. In Farin’s paintings, depictions of physical contact (or the absence thereof) are often the sites of explorations of their relationships to people, the environment, and other beings. Hands in particular are used to visualize care and attempts at forging bonds with others or one’s self. They are also emblematic of emotional states, enacting bodily languages of togetherness, alienation, and everything in between.
In their repeated emphasis on scenarios wherein touch and physical intimacy are key, Farin is a chronicler of both human and interspecies relations, using their works to imagine and work through scenarios of attachments made or missed. Recently they’ve probed circumstances of a “near miss,” what happens when the possibility of connection is there, but it doesn’t quite materialize, like a shot that barely misses its target. In Near Miss, 2022, two figures pass on a house-lined street—one turns back toward the other as they walk toward the edge of the frame, a final separation imminent. Farin’s works speak to the complexity of social interaction, the improvised performance of self, the minutiae of observing others and the self, and the difficulties of observing the self through others.
In new works, Farin moves from what they have described as “relationships and their complexities” to the complexity of one’s relationship with one’s self. Six paintings, all 2022 and measuring 4 x 6 inches, isolate the hands in individual vignettes. In each, a single hand or pair of hands engages in an action—extinguishing a candle, clutching a set of playing cards, twisting a tendril of hair, putting flowers in a vase, making a shadow puppet, or wielding scissors. Each is an everyday occurrence infused with theatricality and many are suspended moments of transition, saturated with the frisson of anticipation: a flame about to be extinguished, a poker hand lost or won, a string severed. Others foreground the haptic: the feeling of hair strands between fingers, flowers’ supple petals and hairy stems, or the heat of a flame. The various activities of the hands are presented in scenes that allow us to consider the actions, inactions, gestures, and signals that compose our physical and emotional existence in the world. Farin’s work, at its core, investigates the formation of the self, but underpinned by the principle that change is constant and the “I” never arrives fully formed. Often, understanding yourself feels like a near miss.
Image: Katja Farin, Near Miss, 2022, Oil on Canvas, 30 x 40 in.

Katja Farin (b. 1996) lives and works in Los Angeles. They received a BA in Fine Art from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2018. They have had solo presentations at Era Gallery (Milan), Lubov (New York) and in lieu (Los Angeles) and have been included in group exhibitions at Eve Leibe Gallery (London), Wilding Cran (Los Angeles) and Nicodim (Los Angeles).

Ashton Cooper is a writer, curator, and Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Art History at the University of Southern California. She has organized exhibitions at the Leslie-Lohman Museum Project Space, Maccarone, Jack Hanley Gallery, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, Larrie, and the Knockdown Center, all in New York, and Cooper Cole in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in Artforum, ArtReview, Mousse, Contemporary Art Review LA, and others. Her in-progress dissertation explores liberation politics and the remaking of painterly expressionism in 1970s New York.

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space that opened in New York City in 2012 and has been hosted by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center since 2014. We aim to foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community by offering books, publications, and art and by hosting a wide variety of cultural events, including readings, performances, film screenings, book discussion groups, and workshops. We provide local and visiting queers and friends with an open and inclusive space for dialogue and socializing.

Book Launch--Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for the launch of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity. Author Paisley Currah will be joined by Kendall Thomas, the Nash Professor of Law and the Director of the Studio for Law and Culture at Columbia University, for a discussion of the book. Every government agency in the United States, from Homeland Security to Departments of Motor Vehicles, has the authority to make its own rules for sex classification. Many transgender people find themselves in the bizarre situation of having different sex classifications on different documents. Whether you can change your legal sex to “F” or “M” (or more recently “X”) depends on what state you live in, what jurisdiction you were born in, and what government agency you’re dealing with. In Sex Is as Sex Does, noted transgender advocate and scholar Paisley Currah explores this deeply flawed system, showing why it fails transgender and non-binary people.
Co-sponsored by the Department of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (New York University Press, 2022, hardcover, $28) is available for purchase from our online store.
Sex Is as Sex Does is also available for purchase at the Bureau’s physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Suggested donation $5 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Currah has written widely on transgender issues, including on topics such as discrimination, sex reclassification, and the transgender rights movement. He is the co-founder of the leading journal in transgender studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. Currah has advocated for transgender rights at all levels of government. He was a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, served on the founding board of directors of Global Action for Trans Equality, and sat on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Program.

Kendall Thomas is the Nash Professor of Law and the Director of the Studio for Law and Culture at Columbia University, where he has been a member of the faculty since 1984. He teaches and writes about law and culture, gender, sexuality and law, and critical race theory. He is a co-editor of Critical Race Theory: Key Writings that Founded the Movement (New Press, 1995). A scholar-activist, Thomas is a co-founder of Amend the 13th, a social justice literacy initiative allied with the movement to amend the 13th Amendment and end enforced prison labor. Thomas is also a vocalist who has performed in several solo shows at Joe’s Pub at the New York Public Theater and at MoMA PS 1 (the New York Museum of Modern Art).

Chasers: Stephen Ira, Liam O’Brien, Kay Gabriel, Caspar Heinemann (in person event)
2022-06-11 19:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Stephen Ira, Kay Gabriel, Liam O’Brien, Caspar Heinemann: old leftist trans poet friends together at the reading podium for the first time. O’Brien, Ira, and Gabriel, former editors of the landmark trans poetry magazine Vetch, come together with their friend Heinemann as he arrives from across the Atlantic from Glasgow. Together, they’ll read poems, reminisce, and celebrate the recent release of Ira’s chapbook Chasers on New Michigan Press.

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.
Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Stephen Ira is a poet and performer raised in LA and living in New York. His chapbook Chasers recently came out on New Michigan Press. Favorite appearances include Poetry (Chicago), the Sundance Film Festival, and the American Poetry Review.

Liam O’Brien grew up on a small island outside Seattle. He has recent work in New South and Electric Literature, and is a co-founder of Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. He received his MFA at the Iowa Writer’s Workshop.

Kay Gabriel is a poet and essayist. With Andrea Abi-Karam, she co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat, 2020). She’s the author of Kissing Other People or the House of Fame (Rosa Press, 2021) and A Queen in Bucks County (Nightboat Books, 2022).

Caspar Heinemann is a poet, artist, and academia-adjacent independent researcher based in Glasgow. Their research interests include critical mysticism, gay biosemiotics, illegitimate communisms, and professional irreverence.

HUNKS TWINKS THUGS (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-12 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Charles Hovland (aka Chuck) shares his experiences of over 20 years of photographing models for Mandate, Honcho, Torso, Playguy, Inches, Black Inches, & Latin Inches. Hovland will present his photographs and talk about individual models that are in his newly published book Hunks Twinks Thugs, which is available for purchase at the Bureau.

Hovland photographed for Mandate, Honcho, Torso, Playguy, Inches, Black Inches, & Latin Inches from 1986 to 2009, when these magazines closed.

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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Book Launch: The Teachers' Room by Lydia Stryk (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join playwright, Lydia Stryk, in celebrating the launch of her first novel, THE TEACHERS’ ROOM, with a presentation by the author and a discussion of its themes with legendary activist/scholar Karla Jay and the historian of gender, sexuality and education, Rachel Rosenberg.
It is 1963, one of the most turbulent years in American history. The escalating tensions and conflicts in society at large are playing out in classrooms, principals’ offices, and school boards across the country, along with the first stirrings of social transformation, though the past still holds its suffocating grip. And behind the closed door of the teachers’ room in one small Midwest town, two teachers set eyes on each other and find it hard to look away.
“The Teachers’ Room is a remarkable novel. The presentation of the setting is beautifully evocative, truly recreating an era. And the historical background—1963 in the Midwest, teachers who had to be closeted or risk everything—was such an important and pivotal time in American social history. But The Teachers’ Room is never dry history. The plot will make the reader keep turning the pages. Most of all, The Teachers’ Room is a wonderful read—engaging, vivid in its depictions, deeply interesting in its characterizations, and very moving.” —Lillian Faderman, renowned scholar of lesbian and LGBT history and literature
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
Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Purchase The Teachers’ Room (Bywater Books, 2022, paperback, $17.95) from the Bureau’s online store (click on the title).
The Teachers’ Room is also available for purchase at the Bureau’s physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.
Award-winning playwright Lydia Stryk was born and raised in DeKalb, Illinois, birthplace of barbed wire and flying ears of corn. After high school, she trained at the Drama Centre in London and pursued an acting career in New York for exactly one year before returning to school to study History and Education. While completing a Master’s degree in Journalism, she wrote a first play, and went on to complete a Ph.D. in Theatre. Her dissertation, “Acting Hysteria: An Analysis of the Actress and Her Part”, was her attempt to understand why acting the woman’s role onstage felt pathological. She has taught in the New York City public school system and in colleges, and her plays have been produced across the country and beyond. She also writes essays, including her latest, “A Playwright Crosses the Border into Fiction”. The Teachers’ Room is her first novel.
Karla Jay, PhD is Distinguished Professor Emerita of English, Women’s & Gender Studies, and Queer Studies at Pace University in New York City. She has written, edited, and translated ten award-winning books, the most recent of which is Tales of the Lavender Menace: a Memoir of Liberation. The first woman chair of the Gay Liberation Front and a co-founder of Radicalesbians (the Lavender Menace action), she has been a Grand Marshal of New York’s Pride March twice.
Rachel Rosenberg is a scholar of US gender and sexuality history and history of education. Her work focuses on the policing, experiences, and activism of women teachers in the 20th century. She is a former sixth grade teacher and is currently a PhD candidate in history at Yale University.

Writing Our Own Queer Histories: Jonathan Alexander & Pamela Sneed (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-16 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In this reading and conversation, Pamela Sneed and Jonathan Alexander talk about their recent writing as well as what it’s like to work with memory in writing about queer lives. From grappling with the legacies of AIDS to connecting with ongoing histories of class and racial trauma, Sneed and Alexander discuss the power of writing queerly about our lives, loves, communities, histories, and futures.
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Jonathan Alexander is a writer and podcaster living in Southern California. His previous creative nonfiction includes Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology, a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in 2018; Bullied: The Story of an Abuse; and Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot. He is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine.

Pamela Sneed is a New York-based poet, performer, visual artist, and educator. She is the author of Funeral Diva (City Lights Books, 2020), Sweet Dreams (Belladonna*, 2018), KONG (Vintage Entity Press, 2009), Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery (Holt, 1998), and others. Sneed has performed the Whitney Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Poetry Project, The High Line, the New Museum, and the Toronto Biennale. She appears in Nikki Giovanni’s “The 100 Best African American Poems,” and has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes.

Affirmative Laughter (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come celebrate Pride with some laughter! Your favorite queer comedy show is back in your favorite queer comedy space. Host Elsa Eli Waithe is bringing some of the city’s best queer comics from Hulu, BET, and MTV.
Jes Tom
Calvin Cato
Maggie Scrudder
Mila Myles
Wanjiko Eke
Doors at 6pm, Show at 7pm and as always $5 suggested donation to benefit the Bureau and the performers!
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.
Watch the livestream on the Bureau’s YouTube channel!
Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
All attendees required to wear masks.

Bad Gays with Ben Miller & Grace Lavery (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us to celebrate Bad Gays: A Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller, hosts of the eponymous podcast. Author Ben Miller will be joined by writer and professor Grace Lavery. Too many popular histories seek to establish heroes, pioneers and martyrs, but the past is filled with queer people whose sexualities and/or dastardly deeds have been overlooked. Everyone remembers Oscar Wilde, but who speaks for Bosie? What about those “bad gays” whose un-exemplary lives reveals more than we might expect? With characters such as the Emperor Hadrian, anthropologist Margaret Mead, and notorious gangster Ronny Gray, Bad Gays tells the story of how the figure of the white gay man was born, and how he failed. According to The Washington Post, “Bad Gays succeeds in its goals in every way, offering an infuriating, thoughtful, deliciously judgmental history of the very worst we had to offer.”
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Ben Miller is a writer and researcher. He is a Doctoral Fellow at the Graduate School of Global Intellectual History at the Freie Universität Berlin, has taught on queer history, literature, and visual cultures at the Humboldt Universität and The New Centre for Research & Practice, and has collaborated with artists including Elijah Burgher and AA Bronson. A regular contributor to the Arts and Leisure pages of The New York Times, Ben’s essays, criticism, and fiction have been additionally published in Literary Hub, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Jacobin Magazine, SAND, Apogee Journal, and Tin House. Since 2018, Ben has been a member of the board of the Schwules Museum, one of the world’s largest independent institutions dedicated to archiving and exhibiting queer histories and visual cultures.
Grace Lavery is Associate Professor in the Department of English at UC Berkeley, and affiliated faculty in the Department for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and the Program in Critical Theory. Her research focuses on the history of interpretation during the period of modernity, with particular focus on the relations between three figures: the psychic device, the transsexual body, and the aesthetic phenomenon. Otherwise, she works across genres of writing and of cultural object, publishing scholarly monographs, experimental memoir, and genre fiction. Her first book, Quaint, Exquisite: Victorian Aesthetics and the Idea of Japan, won the North American Victorian Studies Associations Best Book of the Year award in 2020. Her second, Please Miss: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Penis, explores the literary and cultural forerunners of the transition memoir, especially through readings and détournements of Hardy, Wilde, and Dickens. Her third, PLEASURE AND EFFICACY: FEMINISM, PSYCHOANALYSIS, AND TRANS EMBODIMENT, explores the history of trans feminist techniques of physical and mental transition, from George Eliot to Kevin Rowland. She is currently completing a book-length essay on the American sitcom, and a campus whodunnit. Her scholarly essays have been published in Critical Inquiry; Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Criticism; Transgender Studies Quarterly; PMLA; Social Text, and elsewhere. She is a former editor of Transgender Studies Quarterly, and writes publicly for multiple readerships, occasionally reviewing films for Bitch and Catapult, books for The Guardian, and publishing personal essays in them.us, Gay Magazine, Autostraddle, and many others.

Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs Book Launch (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join editors Brian Alessandro & Tom Cardamone and multiple contributors as they launch the anthology Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs. Inexplicably, William S. Burroughs has not been embraced by the LGBTQI community as one of our own, even though his queerness was central to his life and work. Fever Spores serves as an appreciation and reclamation project. The collection includes interviews and essays from emerging and established writers, filmmakers, musicians, artists, and critics, many of whom will be on hand tonight to share their work.
Readers include contributors Laura Schleifer, Charlie Vazquez, Xan Price, Peter Dubé, Timothy Young, Dennis Leroy Kangalee, Jason Napoli Brooks, Sam Desmond, & Sven Davisson
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Brian Alessandro is a writer, artist, and filmmaker. His work has appeared in Newsday, Interview Magazine, Bloom, PANK, Huffington Post, Turtle Point Press, Lambda Literary, Edmund White: By the Book, and (Re): An Ideas Journal. He has also written and directed the feature film, Afghan Hound, founded the literary journal, The New Engagement, and wrote the novel, The Unmentionable Mann. He recently co-adapted Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story into a graphic novel for Top Shelf Productions. He holds an MA in clinical psychology from Columbia University and has taught the subject for twelve years.
Tom Cardamone is the editor of Crashing Cathedrals: Edmund White by the Book, and is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as the erotic fantasy The Lurid Sea and other works of fiction, including two short story collections. Additionally, he has edited The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered.

Anthology Reading: I Wanna Be Loved by You: Poems on Marilyn Monroe (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
LGBTQ+ contributors will read their poems on Marilyn Monroe, as well as additional selections from their work.

Featuring editors Susana H. Case & Margo Taft Stever, & contributors Joel Allegretti, Patricia Carragon, Alexander Cavaluzzo, Robert Anthony Gibbons, Matthew Hittinger, Lynn Mcgee, Elaine Sexton, & Bruce E. Whitacre

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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Editors:
SUSANA H. CASE is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently The Damage Done (Broadstone Books, 2022). Dead Shark on the N Train (Broadstone Books, 2020) won a Pinnacle Book Award for Best Poetry Book and a NYC Big Book Award Distinguished Favorite and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Book Award. She is also the author of five chapbooks. Her first collection, The Scottish Café (Slapering Hol Press) was re-released in a dual-language English-Polish version, Kawiarnia Szkocka (Opole University Press). She is a co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. (www.susanahcase.com)
MARGO TAFT STEVER‘s latest of three full-length poetry collections are Cracked Piano (CavanKerry Press, 2019), which was shortlisted and received honorable mention for the 2021 Eric Hoffer Award Grand Prize, and The End of Horses, Broadstone Books, 2022. Her latest of four chapbooks is Ghost Moose (Kattywompus Press, 2019). She is currently an adjunct assistant professor in the Bioethics Department of the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University. Stever also teaches a poetry workshop at Children’s Village, a residential school for at-risk children and adolescents. She is founder of the Hudson Valley Writers Center and founding and current co-editor of Slapering Hol Press. (www.margotaftstever.com)

Readers:
JOEL ALLEGRETTI is the author of, most recently, Platypus (NYQ Books), a collection of poems, prose, and performance texts, and Our Dolphin (Thrice Publishing), a novella. His second book of poems, Father Silicon (The Poet’s Press), was selected by The Kansas City Star as one of 100 Noteworthy Books of 2006. He is the editor of Rabbit Ears: TV Poems (NYQ Books). The Boston Globe called Rabbit Ears “cleverly edited” and “a smart exploration of the many, many meanings of TV.” (www.joelallegretti.com)

PATRICIA CARRAGON‘s poem Paris the Beautiful won Poem of the Week from great weather for MEDIA. Her latest book from Poets Wear Prada is Meowku and her debut novel, Angel Fire, is from Alien Buddha Press. Patricia hosts Brownstone Poets and is the editor-in-chief of its annual anthology. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. (www.patriciacarragon8.wordpress.com)

ALEXANDER CAVALUZZO is an East Village-based writer and artist. His writing has appeared in publications ranging from Newsweek to Andy Warhol’s Interview Magazine. (www.alexandercavaluzzo.com)

ROBERT ANTHONY GIBBONS, a native Floridian, came to New York City in 2007 in search of his muse Langston Hughes and found a vibrant contemporary poetry community. His first book, Close to the Tree, was published by the New York-based Three Rooms Press. He is a Cave Canem Fellow (2019–2021) and has received residencies from the Norman Mailer Foundation and the DISQUIET International Literary Program. In 2018, he completed his MFA at City College.

MATTHEW HITTINGER is the author of The Masque of Marilyn (GOSS183), The Erotic Postulate and Skin Shift, both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbooks Platos de Sal (Seven Kitchens Press), Narcissus Resists (GOSS183), and Pear Slip (Spire Press). He received his MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where he won a Hopwood Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, has been adapted into art songs, and in 2012 Poets & Writers Magazine named him a Debut Poet on their eighth annual list. Hittinger lives and works in New York City. (www.matthewhittinger.com)

LYNN MCGEE‘s poetry collections include Tracks (Broadstone Books), Sober Cooking (Spuyten Duyvil), and two award-winning chapbooks: Heirloom Bulldog (Bright Hill Press) and Bonanza (Slapering Hol Press). A children’s book, Starting Over in Sunset Park, co-written by Lynn McGee and José Pelauz, was published by Tilbury House Publishers and distributed by W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. (www.lynnmcgee.com).

ELAINE SEXTON‘s most recent collection of poetry is Drive (Grid Books). She teaches at the Sarah Lawrence College Writing Institute, serves as the visual arts editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. She is an avid bookmaker and micro-publisher, and founder of the 2 Horatio poetry seminars. (www.elainesexton.org)

BRUCE E. WHITACRE has completed master workshops with Jericho Brown, Alex Dimitrov, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, and Mark Wunderlich. He holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and lives in Forest Hills, Queens. (www.brucewhitacre.com)

Queer Liberation March! (Bureau closed for Pride)
2022-06-26 | Foley Square, Lafayette Street Worth Street, Centre St,, New York, NY, 10013, United States
The Bureau will be closed for Pride, Sunday, June 26th.
We encourage you to join the the 2022 Queer Liberation March for Trans and BIPOC Freedom, Reproductive Justice, and Bodily Autonomy. The March will start in Foley Square and march north up 6th Avenue to Washington Square Park for a community gathering. For additional information, explore the links on this webpage, especially the Accessibility page.

A Pride Sunday annual event since Stonewall 50 in 2019. We dispense with parading, in our effort to reclaim Pride from the corporations, the cops and self-promoting politicians.
As members of the LGBTQIA2S+ communities, we will make our voices heard, and celebrate our resilient and historical drive towards liberation for all.
When we gather as community, we acknowledge our cultural and other very human differences… We ask those with the privilege and the access to assist us in making the march a direct lifting up of those who suffer more greatly because of the way stigma & oppression are normalized in our society.
Marshals and volunteers are encouraged to signup and make this effort a reflection of what we want Queer community to look like.
All the signup links are here
https://ReclaimPrideNYC.org/links

SMAHTGUY: Barney Frank's legacy, graphically (in person & live-streaming)
2022-06-30 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come meet cartoonist Eric Orner (The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green) talk about his latest book Smahtguy, The Life & Times of Barney Frank. NPR says “Smahtguy isn’t just a great story, it’s an enveloping visual experience crafted by a terrific artist with an amazing line. Even if you were to page through this book without looking at any of the words, it would still be a great read.” Carlo Quispe, a talented NYC-based, queer cartoonist will be MC-hosting the event, swapping stories of the cartooning life with Eric, and showing his own work as well.
Carlo will be sharing from his 2020 comic strip PACO and he will have free copies to give out!
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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

Copies are also available at our physical store and can be purchased at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Check out this review of Smahtguy in SGN: Seattle’s LGBTQIA+ News & Entertainment Weekly:
https://www.sgn.org/story.php?ch=arts__entertainment&sc=books&id=316555

Carlo Quispe is a Peruvian born cartoonist living in Brooklyn and is the creator of the experimental Queer comic Uranus, published by Printed Matter. He is the author of CARLITO and SuperManuel and is currently making the third volume of Uranus Comics with collaborator and cartoonist Mike Diana.

Eric Orner is a former staff counsel to former Congressman Barney Frank, and speechwriter for Congresswoman Maxine Waters. He is also the acclaimed author of The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green, which during its 15-year run was one of the country’s most widely published gay comic strips. The comic strip was adapted into a feature film (of the same name) in 2005. Eric Orner has also published cartoons and illustrations in the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, and the San Francisco Chronicle as well as in Houghton Mifflin’s Best American Comics. During the Aughts he did a tour of duty as a storyboard artist at Disney TV animation and other studios in Los Angeles. He is a native Chicagoan and a former Bostonian, who now resides in New York. Eric frequently illustrates the fiction of his brother, novelist Peter Orner. Smahtguy, the Life and Times of Barney Frank is his first graphic novel.

Closed on Sundays in July & August
2022-07-03, 2022-07-10, 2022-07-17, 2022-07-24 | NY

Carlos Allende presents Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love (in person & live-streaming)
2022-07-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us on Wednesday, July 6 at 6:00 PM at the Bureau as we welcome Carlos Allende, author of Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love, in a conversation with Jonathan Vatner, author of The Bridesmaids Union.

ABOUT COFFEE, SHOPPING, MURDER, LOVE: Despite everything you know and value, Carlos Allende’s new novel Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love will make you root for its bitter, spectacularly superficial, and highly immoral protagonists. The story is a savagely camp, relentlessly unsentimental, incisive account of our worst impulses and our current deranged political moment. It’s a brilliant, laugh-out-loud work of dark comedy.

Set in Los Angeles, a year before same-sex marriage became legal, the novel follows the misadventures of two gay men for whom it didn’t get better: Jignesh Amin, an overweight, angry Indian-American working as a bookkeeper, and Charlie Hayworth, a socially inept white guy from Leitchfield, Kentucky. After Jignesh murders the beautiful office intern because she insults his writing, and Charlie starts dating Jignesh because he wrongly believes he’s rich, the two men embark on a madcap journey that includes a few other deaths, a money-laundering scheme, a gay cruise, and an ass-backward trip to Los Cabos, Mexico.

Coffee, Shopping, Murder, Love will leave you cackling while also weeping at what shame does to the psyche, how social media demolishes the spirit, and how much fun it is to conjure abject moral decrepitude.

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

Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.

CARLOS ALLENDE is a media psychology scholar and a writer of fiction. He has written two previous novels: Cuadrillas y Contradanzas (CBH Books, 2008), a historical melodrama set during the War of Reform in Mexico, and Love, or the Witches of Windward Circle (Rare Bird, 2015), a horror farce set in Venice, California. Based on his research on narrative persuasion and audience engagement, he developed the course The Psychology of Compelling Storytelling, which he teaches in the Writers’ Program at UCLA Extension. He lives in Santa Monica with his husband.

JONATHAN VATNER is the author of THE BRIDESMAIDS UNION (St. Martin’s Press, 2022) and CARNEGIE HILL (Thomas Dunne Books, 2019). His fiction has earned praise from People, Town & Country, The New York Post, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. He is the managing editor of Hue, the magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology, and teaches fiction writing at New York University and the Hudson Valley Writers Center.

To: All The Friends I Killed with Joshua Bookman & Cary Alan Johnson (online event)
2022-07-07 19:00 - 20:15 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join us online to celebrate the launch of Joshua Kent Bookman‘s second novel To: All The Friends I Killed along with writer Cary Alan Johnson.
After the death of his best friend, a young man vanishes from the United States, seeking a fresh start in France. He stumbles upon work at a vineyard, and thinks he has found a way out in a land of ancestral beauty.
But he quickly discovers Europe alone can’t solve his problems. Haunted by his past, he has to come to terms with his own and his society’s expectations of adulthood. Dark enchanted truths about love and friendship complicate the story of how he lost his best friend- a sister, a girlfriend, a lodestar.
In this coming-of-age novel, we are faced with the life choices of the millennial generation, the postponement of traditional benchmarks in our twenties, and the queer or asexual attitude towards contemporary loneliness.
Registration on Eventbrite required in order to gain access to the Zoom link.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite. Thank you for supporting the Bureau!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access the event.” But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
Otherwise you can watch the live-stream of the event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.

Copies of To: All The Friends I Killed are also available at the Bureau’s physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Joshua Kent Bookman (1990) was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and reformed by life and work in Sweden, France, and Italy. Previous published works include Fruits of Mer (Paulette Éditrice), close to elsewhere, Hitom, and Some Reverse American Dreams (LYS Förlag). To: All The Friends I Killed is Bookman’s second novel.
Cary Alan Johnson is an author, activist and Africanist raised in Brooklyn. He has a Bachelor’s degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a Master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. A long-time innovator in queer politics and cultural activism, he was a founder of several ground-breaking organizations, including the Blackheart Collective, Gay Men of African Descent, Other Countries, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. A public health and HIV specialist, Cary is currently the country director for Population Services International in Burundi.

CANCELED!
2022-07-22 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
WE REGRET TO ANNOUNCE THAT AFFIRMATIVE LAUGHTER WILL NOT TAKE PLACE IN JULY. WE WILL ANNOUNCE FUTURE DATES ONCE CONFIRMED.

The July edition of Affirmative Laughter brings you host Elsa Eli Waithe and comedians:
Alex Babbit
Megan Broussard
Chewy May
Carolyn Bergier
Jax Dell’osso
Doors at 6pm, Show at 7pm and as always $5 suggested donation to benefit the Bureau and the performers!
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register.
Watch the livestream on the Bureau’s YouTube channel!
Safety protocol
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
All attendees required to wear masks.
