BGSQD

38 WITNESSED HER DEATH, I WITNESSED HER LOVE: THE LONELY SECRET OF MARY ANN ZIELONKO (Kitty Genovese Story) A One-Act Play Written and Performed by LuLu LoLo
2014-03-12 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Based on personal interviews with Mary Ann Zielonko
A Staged Reading to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Death of Kitty Genovese
38 WITNESSED HER DEATH, I WITNESSED HER LOVE: THE LONELY SECRET OF MARY ANN ZIELONKO (Kitty Genovese Story) written and performed by LuLu LoLo is a four part/three character drama in which LuLu portrays “The Chorus of 38”; the New York Times City Editor A.M. Rosenthal recalling the murder and the Times headline story; Winston Moseley testifying at his trial which convicted him of the murder; and Kitty’s lover Mary Ann Zielonko reminiscing after 40 years of silence about gay life in New York in the 60’s, her life with Kitty, the murder, the trial, and its aftermath
Herstory:
Fifty years ago on March 13, 1964, Kitty Genovese was brutally murdered in Kew Gardens, Queens, NY. Forty years later it was revealed that Kitty was a lesbian and living with her lover Mary Ann Zielonko at the time of her death. At the time of Kitty’s murder, the New York Times reported that 38 people witnessed her being attacked in three separate incidents—38 people heard her cries for help—And not one person called the police or came to her aid. Her death and the silence of the witnesses became a worldwide symbol of the apathy of the modern city.
In 2004, LuLu LoLo was granted an interview with Mary Ann Zielonko which LuLu developed into the “Mary Ann Monologue” that was first performed at the Gay and Lesbian Theatre Festival in Columbus, Ohio in 2004. Due to popular demand, LuLu in 2006 developed this monologue into a one-act play to include a portrayal of The New York Times Editor, A.M. Rosenthal, and Kitty’s murderer Winston Moseley. In 2009 LuLu incorporated choreography by Jody Oberfelder and her dance company into the production which was performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Mary Ann Zielonko attended the first performance of this production.
Quotes from reviews:
“The performance that steals your heart…I was moved to tears…”. Bill Kaiser, On the Purple Circuit
”This deeply affecting play features performance artist LoLo as multi-character monologist in the brilliant Anna Deveare Smith vein…” Eva Yaa Asantewaa Infinite Bodyblogspot.com
“This is riveting theater, with intensity and passion..” Elizabeth Ahlfors www.curtainup.com
Biography:
LuLu LoLo is a playwright/actor, international performance artist, and multi-disciplinary artist. LuLu has written and performed seven one-person plays Off-Broadway highlighting her Italian immigrant family heritage, her passion for historical research and social justice especially as pertaining to the dramatic struggle of women in New York City’s past on such subjects as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire; the lesbian lover of murder victim Kitty Genovese; the murder of Helen Jewett; women who fought in the Civil War disguised as men; and Aaron Burr’s tragic relationship with his daughter Theodosia Burr Alston. Her latest play portrayed the shameful treatment of the women consigned to the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland. LuLu recently performed on 14th Street for Art in Odd Places as “Loretta the Telephone Operator” in “Remembrance of Phone Numbers Past” attempting to connect passers-by on the street with the earliest phone numbers they remember. LuLu’s current projects are “Obits” a play based on lives revealed in obituaries, and a book based on the letters written to the late controversial East Harlem Congressman Vito Marcantonio. LuLu was a Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Writer in Residence, and has been named a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow, www.abladeofgrass.org
www.lululolo.com
LuLu LoLa’s fan page on Facebook

The Values Perform at the Bureau
2014-03-08 20:00 - 22:00
The Values
This fresh Brooklyn-based rock band wants to open your eyes to stellar music. Hailing from China, Nashville, and Los Angeles, the three-piece band sweeps sizzling dance tracks into sultry ballads and electrifying blues. Let your heart skip over the sidewalk. Damocles, drama queens, everyone’s invited! The Values are your friends!
thevalues.bandcamp.com

Images from a Different Path
2014-03-06 19:00 - 22:00
Join photographer Efrain John Gonzalez for a presentation of 30 years of his photography, a slideshow of his photographs of the golden era of the Meat Packing District’s gay and fetish scenes. The presentation draws from an incredible collection of images from the Hellfire Press archives. Come and relive a hidden past.

Efrain John Gonzalez is a photographer who’s talents with a camera bend to the unusual, the erotic, the unique, the wild and slightly crazy, from the world of body modifications to the universe of radical S&M, from sensual beauty of the flesh, to raw sexual desires. An internationally published photographer who for the past 30 years has been seeking real life images that tell a story of people finding the path to their souls, finding their bliss, with piercing, branding, cuttings, tattoos, latex, implants, leather, and a whole lot of radical sex and sexuality. He has traveled from coast to coast to find images of people exploring their limits, discovering and living with their own self-defined cultural tribes of beauty, pleasure, joy, and self-realization. People who take the forbidden, and turn it into an empowering statement of their own. People who see their bodies as a blank canvas, and allow their imaginations and dreams to come to life upon a living canvas. Whether that canvas be painted with ink, pierced and molded by blade, or covered in latex and leather of colors that would put the peacock to shame

Much of his photographic imagery was taken at events such as Living in leather (Portland, Chicago), The Fetish Factor (East Village), the SMACK parties, Wigstock (Tompkins Square), The Eulenspiegel Society (New York City), Mayday (Seattle), The Black Rose (Washington D.C). The Power Exchange, and The Fetish Fantasy Flea market (Boston). Some of his work has been compared to that of other famous photographers, such as Robert Mapplethorpe, and Helmut Newton, but he prefers to see his work more in the light of such photographers as Weegee, W. Eugene Smith, and Erich Salomon. Their dedication and artistry allowed them to use the camera to capture the living core of human experiences.

What the artist tries to tell us through his lens is the idea that these forms of radical play and alternate cultures are not the symptom of some bizarre mental illness, not anti-social behavior, or a sign of society disintegrating into degeneracy that it has so long been perceived to be by those who fail or refuse to understand or accept it, but that these cultures are a natural outreach of the curious and an exploration of the self by those chosen few who’s inner voices dare them to walk down forbidden paths to seek an inner truth.

Photograph: Efrain John Gonzalez. Beautiful Francis working the old West Side Highway. Circa 1986. Photo from the Hellfire Press Archive.

TELL
2014-02-28 19:00 - 22:00
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. Magic is the theme of the first installment of TELL.

Featuring special guests: Heather María Ács, Merrie Cherry, Mizz June, Foxy Squire, and Judy Yu.

This event is free. We will pass a hat on behalf of the performers.
The Bureau is not wheelchair accessible–up one flight of stairs.
The Bureau has a gender-neutral bathroom.

Heather María Ács is a performing artist, activist, curator, educator and high-femme troublemaker. Her work has been featured in festivals, theatres, galleries, conferences, and universities internationally. She is the Co-Director of Heels on Wheels, a queer femme-inine spectrum, all genders performance group. Heather has worked with Mx. Justin Vivian Bond, Nao Bustamante, Lois Weaver, J. Ed Araiza (SITI Company), and Paula Pell (SNL). Film credits include Building No. 7, dir. Steven Soderbergh; blink, dir. Silas Howard; Sunset Stories (SXSW); and Michelle in Valencia (the movies): Chapter 9 based on the novel by Michelle Tea. Heather has worked as a teaching artist in NYC public schools for over a decade. heatheracs.com, heelsonwheelsroadshow.com

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Besides winning the 2011 Miss LEZ title, 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, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in fesivals globally. Drae was dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell throws a monthly party in Brooklyn called PRIME. Check her out online and around town. www.draecampbell.com

Photo by Santiago Felipe
Merrie Cherry reigns over the Brooklyn drag community with a sweet hand. She hosts, MCs, and plans events in the popping community and beyond. The creator of the Brooklyn Nightlife Awards she was set a new meaning of what is means to be a drag queen. With no plans to stop we can expect so much more from this cherry. Stay tuned!

Mizz June got her start in activism and musical theater. As a resident young artist at The Henry Street Settlement and, as a founding member of the youth activist group- FIERCE! She was the first black transwoman to be a guest cast member on “All My Children”. Her previous band, “Mizz June and the Housewives” was a “drag punk”/punk rock/pro-feminist band ala the Riot Grrl movement. She was a featured member of the video chorus for Theater Transgression/House of Yes’ trAntigone- A Genderqueered Act of Resistance and most recently “Lez Miz” (Dixon Place) and “These Pieces Won’t Fit/The Waldorf Hysteria” (Mix 26 Art and Film Festival). She will be featured in two soon to be released music videos. Justin Vivian Bond’s “The Golden Age of Hustlers” and Tamar-kali’s “Pearl”. She is currently working on her debut EP- release date TBA.

After completing the burlesque class series by Deflouered Productions, Foxy Squire gathered her wits and talent to begin performing. Though, she is a resident performer at Rivers of Honey Cabaret, she had performed both nationally and internationally in London, Connecticut, California, Philadelphia, and NYC. Foxy’s first headliner performance was in May 2013 at the DC Gurly Show (Washington, DC). This year, she will be performing in Georgia (DragonCon) and North Carolina (Heavy Rebel Weekend). Her motto is EMBRACE YOUR SPECTACLE. Now, she shares her love for deviant art and dark beauty through burlesque and performance art.

Judy Yu writes stories on the number 2 or 3 train from Brooklyn to Harlem, and advocates for LGBTQ youth in the youth justice system at the Juvenile Justice Project of the Correctional Association of NY. She has lived in New York for over 20 years and calls Brooklyn home. She has an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence and an MPH from Hunter.

Dirty Looks NYC and Animal Shelter Present The Adventures of Sylvia Couski
2014-02-26 20:30 - 23:00
We are proud to welcome Dirty Looks back to the Bureau!
Dirty Looks NYC and Animal Shelter are teaming up for a screening of Les intrigues de Sylvia Couski (The Adventures of Sylvia Couski), 1974 by Adolfo Arrieta. Editor of Animal Shelter Hedi El Kholti will introduce the film.
Suggested donation of $8 to cover film rental costs
Arrieta’s first feature stars famed Parisian transsexual, Marie France, and has been called “the first Parisien underground militant film.” The plot revolves around the ex-wife of a famous sculptor who convinces her lover to removed one of the sculptures of her ex-husband and replace it with a live model, on the eve of the show’s opening.
A small insert about Marie France (including a new introduction by Semiotext(e)’s Hedi El Kholti and two period interviews) will accompany the current issue of Animal Shelter, which features contributions by Tisa Bryant, Michael Carroll, Jean Eustache, Pierre Guyotat, Richard Hawkins, Guy Hocquenghem, Cookie Mueller, Grace Ndiritu, Dalia Rosetti, Heathcote Williams, Melissa Barrett, Robert Dewhurst, Tony Duvert, Iris Klein, Fernanda Laguna, Lodovico Pignatti Morano, Jean-Jacques Schuhl, Noura Wedell, Gary Lee Boas, Shannon Durbin, Matt Fishbeck, Kathryn Garcia, Mim Goodman, Peter Hujar, Eli Langer, Tracy Nakayama, Grace Ndiritu, Warren Neidich, A. L. Steiner. This issue is available at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division.

Launch Party for Future Perfect
2014-02-21 19:00 - 22:00
Join the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division in a celebration of the book we produced for our fundraiser last year: Future Perfect. Edited by Andrew Durbin and published by Publication Studio, Future Perfect includes contributions from
Penny Arcade
Felix Bernstein
Stephen Boyer
Lonely Christopher
Nicole Eisenman
Bad Grammar
Bruce Hainley
Ed Halter
Juliana Huxtable
Ted Kerr
Kevin Killian
Wayne Koestenbaum
Rachel Levitsky
Trisha Low
Stephen Motika
Eileen Myles
Tim Trace Peterson
Luther Price
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Pamela Sneed
Max Steele
Laurie Weeks
If you donated $50 or more to the Bureau’s fundraiser and you selected Future Perfect as a perk we welcome you to claim your book at the event. Several of the contributors will be at the event, some of whom will read their contributions.
Andrew Durbin, Pamela Sneed, Max Steele, Juliana Huxtable, and Justin Allen of BDGRMMR (pronounced Bad Grammar) will read at 8 PM. Yulan Grant of BDGRMMR will screen her short film Black Atlantis—inspired by Allen’s poem The First Born of the Black Atlantis, which is included in Future Perfect alongside stills from Grant’s video. Brandon Owen, also of BDGRMMR, will DJ before and after the readings!

Emanuel Xavier Reads from Nefarious
2014-02-20 19:00 - 21:00
The Bureau is pleased to welcome Emanuel Xavier, who will read from his most recent book of poetry, Nefarious (Queer Mojo, 2013).

Photograph by Sophia Wallace
Emanuel Xavier is an acclaimed writer–often referred to as one of the first openly gay Nuyorican poets and founder of contemporary “mariposa lit.” With heartfelt honesty and humor, Nefarious is a poetry collection that welcomes the reader into the second act of a former underage prostitute.
This book captures insights into his private world; relationships, heartbreaks, life as a spoken word artist, time spent with his cat, aging. With a dose of dark humor, Xavier’s pleasure in the written word and his passion makes this an engaging collection.
Featured guest David Iglesia will also share a few of his poems.

Undesirable Elements: New York City's Gay Press Before Stonewall, 1960-1969: A Talk with Ben Miller
2014-02-15 19:00 - 21:00
Undesirable Elements: New York City’s Gay Press Before Stonewall, 1960-1969
In July 1969, readers of the New York Mattachine Newsletter (put out by New York Mattachine, the city’s largest and oldest formal gay group) found five mimeographed sheets inserted into their copies of the magazine. Titled, “The Hairpin Drop Heard Around The World,” the article summarized the events of the Stonewall riots: the 1am bar bust, the accumulating crowd, and the decision to fight back, concluding with the following declaration: “Homosexuals are tired of waiting. After all, we can’t be put off with the old line that things will improve in the next generation and our children will lead better, happier lives. Most of us aren’t going to have children, and we have to struggle to make our own lives better. If the traditional means of winning reform cannot work in this age…then possibly the only place for those of us who care about reform is in the streets.” How did the gay movement arrive at this point, and how did periodicals like the New York Mattachine Newsletter aid in the construction of physical communities and constitute communities in themselves? This talk will explore those questions by examining periodicals aimed at gay men in New York City during the 1960s, discussing how physique magazines cloaked their queer objectives while creating consumer communities, and how organizations used public and private periodicals to bolster physical communities and create communities of print.

Ben Miller is a New York-based writer and student of history. Current projects include thesis research on early gay activist Harry Hay that has taken him to archives in California and conferences from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, an adaptation of an early Mozart libretto for performance at Carnegie Hall, and new short fiction influenced by his historical research. His teachers in history and writing have included Linda Gordon, K. Kevyne Baar, Marcelle Clements, and Jonathan Safran Foer. His academic writing has appeared in Historian, College Film and Media Studies, and the Chicago Journal of History; and his short fiction has appeared in Brio, Studio on the Square, and West 10th. He is editor or co-editor of several publications, co-founder of Squid Ink Magazine (launching soon), and serves on the communications committee of the New York City Anti-Violence Project. He tweets @benwritesthings.

Anal Magazine at the Bureau
2014-02-14 19:00 - 22:00
Ricardo Velmor of Anal Magazine is visiting NYC from Mexico City, and the Bureau is happy to welcome him. Ricardo will talk about Anal Magazine and the work that they do in Mexico at 8 PM.
Anal Magazine is a printed publication addressed to the gay male community that is interested in getting to know art, design, photography, literature, fashion, eroticism, and many other Mexican and international creative expressions. This magazine is about the work of artists who experiment with masculinity in a wide threshold. Our main goal is to create a solid, intelligent yet appealing magazine for all our readers. The publication coexists with exhibitions, videoart shows and parties within the whole Anal universe.
Anal Magazine Vol. 2
In this second issue we feature a text by Pedro Brizuela about the psychological implications of group sex; an essay by Pável Granados that deals with the subtle homoerotic speech in Mexican boleros music; a story by Rob Morris; an interview to Gerardo Delgado, founder and film director in Mecos Films, the only mainstream Mexican gay porn company; an essay about the work of Japanese shunga artist Gengoroh Tagame; image portfolios of work by artists Tony Solís, SUPERM (Brian Kenny & Slava Mogutin), Héctor Belloc; and erotica by Christian Castañeda. Plus an intervention by Carlos Amorales made specially for the magazine.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.
Anal Magazine Vol. 3
Features a fiction by writer and publisher Alfredo Núñez Lanz; an interview by Clarisse Mérigeot & Pauline Magnenant to Alan Charlesworth about his series of a “bear” community; an essay about the work of General Idea and their retrospective solo show at Musée D’art Moderne in Paris; poetry by Sergio Téllez-Pon; image portfolios by painter Taner Ceylan, videoartist Ricardo Nicolayevsky and photographers Omar Gámez and Rick Castro. Our classic “Chico Anal” erotica series + an illustrated story by Dino Vanko and Ricardo Velmor.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.
Anal Magazine Vol. 4
Our newest issue comes in a numbered and certified edition of only 1000 copies. It features and essay by Alfredo Nuñez Lanz about the work of Japanese Samurai Era writer Ihara Saikaku with two of his texts in full version, both illustrated by Hideki Koh; a fictional story by Wenceslao Bruciaga; art portfolios by artists David Romero, Rafa Esparza and Luis Marquez Romay; more “Chico Anal” series than in any other issue; a “Colour Me” porn and a Frotispiece specially made for this issue with guys from an open call.
96 full color pages. Texts in English and Spanish.

Perry Halkitis and Guests Present The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience
2014-02-12 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for a presentation by Perry Halkitis of his new book The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience. Halkitis will be joined by five of the men he interviewed for this book: Jim Alba, Erik Bartley, Sean McKenna, Lee Raines, and Steve Schalchlin. After the presentation, the author and the five interviewees will engage the audience in discussion.
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience examines the strategies for survival and coping employed by these HIV-positive gay men, who together constitute the first generation of long-term survivors of the disease. Through interviews conducted by the author, it narrates the stories of gay men who have survived since the early days of the epidemic; documents and delineates the strategies and behaviors enacted by men of this generation to survive it; and examines the extent to which these approaches to survival inform and are informed by the broad body of literature on resilience and health.
The stories and strategies detailed here, all used to combat the profound physical, emotional, and social challenges faced by those in the crosshairs of the AIDS epidemic, provide a gateway for understanding how individuals cope with chronic and life-threatening diseases. Halkitis takes readers on a journey of first-hand data collection (the interviews themselves), the popular culture representations of these phenomena, and his own experiences as one of the men of the AIDS generation.
This riveting account will be of interest to health practitioners and historians throughout the clinical and social sciences — or to anyone with an interest in this important chapter in social history.
The AIDS Generation: Stories of Survival and Resilience is available at the Bureau.

Perry N. Halkitis, PhD, MS, MPH is Professor of Applied Psychology and Public Health (Steinhardt School), and Population Health (Langone School of Medicine), Director of the Center for Health, Identity, Behavior & Prevention Studies, and Associate Dean (Global Institute of Public Health) at New York University. Dr. Halkitis’ program of research examines the intersection between the HIV epidemic, drug abuse, and mental health burden in LGBT populations, and he is well known as one of the nation’s leading experts on substance use and HIV behavioral research. Dr. Halkitis hold degrees in psychology, education, and public health.

Dictionary: Featuring Amanda Davidson, Dia Felix, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Nick Comilla, Norhan Hassan, Oki Sogumi, Sophy Naess, and Tennessee Jones
2014-02-11 20:00 - 22:00
Dictionary is a reading/performance/film/whatever-yr-medium showcase curated by Stephen Boyer, hosted by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. This month Amanda Davidson, Dia Felix, Kaitlyn Greenidge, Nick Comilla, Norhan Hassan, Oki Sogumi (skyping in from the Bay Area), Sophy Naess, and Tennessee Jones will be sharing work.
Dictionary will begin promptly at 8pm, but the bookstore will be open all day so come early, warm up, grab a drink, browse for a new book and save yourself a seat!
Amanda Davidson never knew how much she could love one small dog. partedinthemiddle.wordpress.com.
Dia Felix is a writer and filmmaker. Areas of interest include romance, celebrity, obsession, decadence, 2013, and rock and roll. She has written for many blogs and online channels and self-published some number of booklettes. Her novel “Nochita” will be published through City Lights/Sister Spit in early 2014. She is founder and editor of “Personality Press.”
Felix has worked for many museums and arts institutions as a digital media producer, with a particular emphasis in exploring the desires and obsessions which drive extraodinary creative accomplishments.
She also works with young people as a filmmaking instructor and mentor.
Born and raised in Southern California, Felix now lives mostly in New York.
Kaitlyn Greenidge is a writer based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in American Short Fiction, The Believer, At Length Magazine, Green Mountains Review, The Feminist Wire, Out History, and Afrobeat Journal among other places. She was a 2011 Visiting Emerging Writer at Johnson State College in Johnson, Vermont and is currently an Artist in Residence at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Workspace. She is also an editor at the Tottenville Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and she has received scholarships to Breadloaf Writers’ Conference. Her interview with Victor LaValle can be found in McSweeney’s Press’s Always Apprentices: The Believer Magazine Presents Twenty-Two Interviews Between Writers.
Nick Comilla: Born on a military base turned ghost town in Rome, NY, Nick Comilla currently lives in NYC. His poems have appeared in Assaracus, Poetry is Dead, Lambda Literary and HOMO Magazine. He is a poetry/fiction MFA student at The New School where he is currently working on his first book project, Ghosts of Montreal.
Norhan Hassan, a problem child. She goes to the New School for politics and urban design. She makes pamphlets and zines for the streets. She uses performance and writing to further a dialogue about social reproduction and the process of feminizing the body for different forms of labor.
oki sogumi (b. Seoul, South Korea) watches k-dramas, writes into small white boxes on the internet, and stays warm in the Bay Area. Her poems have appeared in Claudius App, Hi Zero, and LIES Journal. She is currently working on something like a novel.
Sophy Naess is a painter and diarist based in New York. Her publications are available at Printed Matter and sophynaess.com. She was a 2013 artist in residence at the Shandaken Project.
Tennessee Jones is the author of the Lambda Literary Award nominated collection Deliver Me From Nowhere, a “cover” of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska. He is the recipient of awards from the Jacob K. Javits Foundation, the Christopher Isherwood Foundation and Hunter College, where he received his MFA in Fiction in 2010. He was also the George Bennett Fellow (Writer in Residence) at Philips Exeter Academy 2010-11, and the Philip Roth Writer in Residence at Bucknell University (2013). His current novel in progress is about generational trauma in an Appalachian town known for two brutal incidents: the hanging of an elephant and the expulsion of its black population. He grew up in the hollers of East Tennessee and currently lives in Brooklyn.

Poetry Reading with Claudia Cortese, Joy Ladin, Trace Peterson, and Grey Vild
2014-02-09 19:00 - 21:00
Claudia Cortese, Joy Ladin, Trace Peterson, and Grey Vild share a love of poetry and each other that cannot be contained. They are thrilled to read their work together—please come be their beautiful audience.

Trace Peterson is author of Since I Moved In (Chax Press) and numerous chapbooks. The Editor/Publisher of EOAGH, she also recently co-edited the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics (Nightboat Books). She lives in Brooklyn.

Claudia Cortese’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2011, Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review Online, and Rattle, among others, and her essays and book reviews have appeared in Devil’s Lake, Mid-American Review, and Iowa Review. Her first book of poems—which explores trauma, myth, fairy tales, and girlhood—is currently traveling the land of book contests and has been a semifinalist for prizes from the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry, Persea Books, and the University of Wisconsin Press. A recipient of awards from RHINO Poetry, Baltimore Review, and Kent State University, Cortese lives and teaches in New Jersey.

Joy Ladin, Gottesman Professor of English at Yeshiva University, has published six books of poetry, including 2012’s The Definition of Joy, Forward Fives award winner Coming to Life, and Lambda Literary Award finalist Transmigration. Her memoir, Through the Door of Life: A Jewish Journey Between Genders, was a 2012 National Jewish Book Award finalist. Her work has appeared in many periodicals, including American Poetry Review, Southern Review, Prairie Schooner, Parnassus: Poetry in Review, Southwest Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, and North American Review, and has been recognized with a Fulbright Scholarship.

Grey Vild’s work has been best described as sitting in a closet, dittling itself, and, like, you know, frying baloney on a light bulb.

Opening Reception for Manorama - Collages & Drawings by René Smith
2014-02-07 18:00 - 21:00
Manorama – Collages & Drawings by René Smith
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
83A Hester St., between Orchard and Allen Sts.
NY, NY 10002
Friday, February 7th, through Sunday, March 30th Thursday, April 10th
Join us for a discussion with René Smith about her work on Sunday, March 30th, at 4 PM

“This body of work is a sincere ode to longing and the beauty of men’s bodies, but it also contains small jokes, ideas about history, and references to our relationship to photography. The project is about men’s bodies seen through a woman’s eyes – the woman’s gaze – the man’s body – the body as landscape with hills and valleys to roam. The collages are made from vintage magazines from the 60’s and 70’s – a time when the male nude in widely circulating publications was new, and the idea of a woman appreciating the male nude was radical. The paintings and drawings are based on my own photographs of friends and professional models and take on the same subject – still fairly uncommon from a woman’s point of view.” René Smith

René Smith lives and works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, New York. She was a Visiting Lecturer in Painting at Chiang Mai University in Thailand, and has also been an artist in residence at The Gil Society in Iceland and Vermont Studio Center. She has shown her work at The Bangkok Art & Culture Center, Koi Gallery (Bangkok), NoSpace Gallery (Bangkok), BKK Art House (Bangkok), The Chiang Mai University Art Museum (Thailand), and Aljira Contemporary Art Center (New Jersey). René Smith was born in Philadelphia and received her M.F.A. in Painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia and Rome and her B.A. in Painting from Bennington College in Vermont. She teaches painting at St. Thomas Aquinas College.

Frank Spinelli Reads from His Memoir Pee-Shy
2014-02-05 19:00 - 21:00
Part family memoir, part love story, PEE-SHY by Frank Spinelli gives readers an inspiring message of empowerment with the page-turning suspense of true crime.
In 1978, eleven-year-old Frank Spinelli’s parents signed him up for Boy Scouts. Soon after, he was taken under the wing of Scoutmaster Bill Fox, a cop who sexually and mentally abused him for two years. When Frank told his family, they were convinced to do nothing. Frank blamed himself for everything. That year he also became pee-shy.
Thirty years later, Frank has a thriving medical practice and a comfortable home in Manhattan’s gay community, but still struggles to overcome the physical reminder of his past trauma. Then he learns his former Scoutmaster and abuser has adopted fifteen boys in the decades since they last crossed paths. One adoption had even earned Bill a national Father of the Year Award and a book deal.
This shocking discovery gives Frank the opportunity to overturn thirty years of confusion and self-blame—for himself, and for other boys like him. During the course of the next three years, he confronts the man who stole his childhood and brings him to justice.

Advance praise for Pee-Shy
“Spinelli deftly portrays his years as a chubby, awkward adolescent and the complexity of his reaction to the molestation. Spinelli’s refreshing honesty as a protagonist make this memoir an important testament to a reality that is too often concealed by shame or fear.” – Publishers Weekly
“Intensely bracing reading…an engrossing memoir about overcoming childhood sexual trauma.” – Kirkus Reviews
“With raw honesty [Dr. Spinelli] makes us understand that monsters do exist and a child’s innocence is precious.” – Whoopi Goldberg
“A devastatingly heart-breaking look at life after childhood abuse, with wit and piercing insight that can only come from a place of brutal honesty.” – Josh Kilmer-Purcell, author of The Bucolic Plague and star of The Fabulous Beekman Boys
“This is a memoir about a grown-up boy’s generous—and healing—heart.” – Kevin Sessums

Frank Spinelli -Photo Credit Chad Schroer
DR. FRANK SPINELLI is a licensed and board certified internist and sits on the board of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis Center, the oldest HIV organization. His memoir, PEE-SHY, recounts his childhood of sexual abuse as a young Staten Island Boy Scout, his decision 30 years later to pursue his abuser, and how he ultimately had the Scoutmaster who molested him – and many other boys over the years – put in prison. Spinelli is also the author of Advocate Guide to Gay Men’s Health and Wellness (Alyson Books, 2008), was the host of Ask the Doctor on Advocate.com, and appeared as the medical expert on Threesome on here TV. Dr. Spinelli has been featured in two documentaries; Positive Youth and the Emmy nominated 30 Years from Here, and has appeared on several episodes of Sesame Street. Currently, Dr. Spinelli appears monthly on Sirius Radio’s Morning Jolt. He has made several appearances on ABC News, NBC Nightly News, the Today Show, MTV and Veria TV. For more information, please visit: www.FrankSpinelliMD.com

NEWFANGLED
2014-02-01 19:00 - 21:00
Robert Siek introduces poets Jeffery Berg, Jerome Murphy, and Justin Sherwood.

JEFFERY BERG grew up in Six Mile, South Carolina, and Lynchburg, Virginia. He received an MFA from New York University. His poems have appeared in Court Green,Map Literary, MiPOesias, the Gay & Lesbian Review, and Harpur Palate. He has written reviews for Lambda LiteraryReview and the Poetry Project Newsletter. A Virginia Center of the Creative Arts fellow, Jeffery lives in New York and blogs at jdbrecords.

JEROME MURPHY received an MFA from New York University, where he currently acts as Program Administrator at the Creative Writing Program. He assisted Diane Middlebrook in researching Her Husband: Hughes and Plath, a Marriage. His reviews have appeared in the column Outwords, which he authored for Next Magazine from 2010 to 2011, and in The Brooklyn Rail.

JUSTIN SHERWOOD’s poems and essays have appeared in ILK, H_NGM_N, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and New Criticals, among others. He is a graduate of the New School MFA Creative Writing Program, where he was selected for the 2012 Paul Violi Prize in Poetry. He lives in Astoria.

ROBERT SIEK is a poet who lives in Brooklyn and works as a production editor at a large publishing house in Manhattan. His poems have appeared in journals such as The Columbia Poetry Review, Court Green, Mary, Assaracus, Chelsea Station, and The Nervous Breakdown. In 2002, the New School published his chapbook Clubbed Kid, and in 2007, his short story “Sixteen” appeared in the short-fiction anthology Userlands: New Fiction Writers from the Blogging Underground. His first full-length collection of poetry, Purpose and Devil Piss, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in late 2013.

Ariel "Speedwagon" Federow Presents Mädchen in Uniform
2014-01-31 19:00 - 21:00
Friend of the Bureau Ariel “Federow” Speedwagon introduces the 1931 lesbian cult film from Germany Mädchen in Uniform, directed by Leontine Sagan. Lively discussion will follow the screening.
IMDB page for Mädchen in Uniform.
Check out B. Ruby Rich’s “Maedchen in Uniform: From Repressive Tolerance to Erotic Liberation,” published in Jump Cut, no. 24-25, March 1981, pp. 44-50 (copyright Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, 1981, 2005).

Ariel “Speedwagon” Federow is a writer/performer, dancer, clown, and the former Miss JewSA. She’s worked with, among others, Jenny Romaine, Susana Cook, Katy Pyle, and Coral Short. Notable stages: Dixon Place, LaMama, WoW Theater, the Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics’ Encuentro in Sao Paulo, HEY QUEEN!. Company member: Butch Burlesque, Katy Pyle’s Ballez, Aftselokhis Spectacle Committee. Ariel is one of the Squirts in Dan Fishback’s Squirts: New Voices in Queer Performance at La Mama, January 3-12.

When is White Girl – a Public Reading
2014-01-30 19:00 - 21:30
Hilton Als’s latest book, White Girls, is an essay collection (personal and critical) that takes the idea of “white girl” and twists it through the lens of American culture.

It is a book that defies an easy read, or contemplation in solitude. Is it a mess, a mockery, and brilliant? Is it confusing, contradictory, and liberating? Does it serve identity politics to itself on a platter? Is it post racial? Is it fierce?
Join curators and artists Malene Dam, Bridget de Gersigny, and Ted Kerr for a public conversation on the book. Participants will be invited to read passages that stuck with them and that they want to discuss, and as a group we will engage in a conversation about the book, its impacts and possible meanings.
When is White Girl is part of “NO NARRATIVE PRECEDED US” an ongoing collaboration between Dam, de Gersigny, and Kerr started in Oct. 2013 with public conversations and performances in New York and at CCS Bard. Using the format of a reading group the collaboration explores the intersections of identity politics with shared queer and feminist histories across time.
White Girls is available for purchase at the Bureau.

Bios:
Malene Dam is a Danish born artist and curator currently a student at the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. She engages in an array of issues related to contemporary society, most recently with a strong focus on queer temporality, histories of feminism, education, and conflict. Her research-based practice addresses temporal and spatial notions of cultural collectivizations, inquiring how discourses situate themselves as knowledge. She holds a BFA from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and a MFA in Photography and Media from CalArts.

Bridget de Gersigny is a South African born, visual artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Her work draws upon political history and technological communications, often related to shifting ideologies, through a post-colonial and queer lens. She is a 2014 Queer/Art/Mentorship Fellow and recently completed her MFA at ICP-Bard. She holds a BA degree from the University of Cape Town, in Psychology and Literature, and Art History from University of South Africa.

Canadian born Ted Kerr is a New York based artist, writer and organizer whose work focuses on queerness, HIV/AIDS and community. He was the 2011 Artist in Residence at the Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary, and is currently the programs manager at Visual AIDS.

The Mancaster Interviews Destiny Devine
2014-01-28 19:00 - 21:00
Destiny Devine began her career in 2009 when she landed a starring role in a show called “ICONS” in which she impersonated BEYONCE KNOWLES, JANET JACKSON,TINA TUNER, WHITNEY HOUSTON, RUPAUL, and NICKI MANAJ.
The Show ran in Provincetown Massachusetts for the summer of 2009 and 2010. The show quickly became a huge success, garnering awards including “Best new show of the summer” and Destiny was re-booked for the 2010 Season of ICONS, in the fall of 2010 Icons then hit the off-Broadway stage at the SNAPPLE CENTER in New York City.
Destiny Devine is constantly working on new and fresh projects.
The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

The Mancaster Interviews Eli Lewis
2014-01-26 14:00 - 16:00
ELI LEWIS is a New York City-based ballet and contemporary dancer, porn performer, blogger, Rentboy, and pocket Gaysian. He is originally from the great country of Texas – specifically Austin – and has since toured and collaborated with renowned dance companies and choreographers, worked in a variety of events from New York Fashion Week to kink and adult performances at Folsom Street Fair and HustlaBall, go-go danced at some of the hottest bars and clubs around the States, and writes about how his adventures and sexcapades have shaped him into the man he is today. Whoever said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it too clearly hasn’t met this boy on fire!

The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

Sean Strub Presents His New Book Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival
2014-01-24 19:00 - 21:00
The Bureau is proud to host Sean Strub for a reading from his new book Body Counts: A Memoir of Politics, Sex, AIDS and Survival (Scribner, January 14, 2014). Following the reading, Strub will engage in a discussion with the audience.
BODY COUNTS is a powerful report from the front lines, a deeply personal testament from a veteran AIDS activist. Not merely a nostalgic look backwards, Strub’s book assesses today’s AIDS epidemic and offers powerful strategies for curbing new transmissions, while also demanding an end to AIDS criminalization.
As personally powerful as Paul Monette’s Borrowed Time and as historically important as Randy Shilts’s And The Band Played On, Body Counts provides invaluable insight into where we are today in the AIDS epidemic, how we got there and what must be done next. Body Counts has already drawn plaudits from prominent LGBT community historians Martin Duberman, John D’Emilio, and Jonathan Ned Katz, as well as Gloria Steinem, Mary Frances Berry, John Berendt, Lily Tomlin, Judith Light, Bill T. Jones and Rory Kennedy, among others.
In 1976 at the age of 17, Sean Strub left his native Iowa and arrived in Washington, D.C., to take a patronage job running a “Senators’ Only” elevator in the U.S. Capitol building. He was charming and precociously ambitious. As he explored the corridors of power in D.C., he also was drawn to another, hidden DC: the super-closeted world of powerful gay men in the nation’s capital. The subterfuge was ultimately untenable for an idealist who yearned to live his life openly, so Strub moved to New York City in 1979.
As a Manhattanite, Strub immersed himself in metropolitan life — from partying at Studio 54 to the liberating demimonde of gay bathhouses. He discusses his swift rise in business circles as a visionary direct-mail marketer and award-winning theatre producer. In BODY COUNTS, the author fondly recalls the friends and lovers who enriched his days and nights as a New Yorker. Significantly, Strub recounts the life-changing experience of being one of the first on the scene when John Lennon was murdered at the Dakota in 1980.
Not long after the first reports of a “gay cancer” surfaced, Strub launched into action. Strub became a pivotal force in AIDS activism through volunteering and fundraising for organizations. These included GMHC, the PWA Coalition and ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). For the street activist group, Strub raised crucial funding and took part in their most notorious demonstrations. Strub was involved in putting a giant condom on then-U.S. Senator Jesse Helms’ house (an event funded by David Geffen) and took part in the infamous 1989 protest inside St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He would become, in 1990, the first openly HIV- positive person to run for the U.S. Congress, and later become founder, publisher, and executive editor of the groundbreaking POZ magazine. BODY COUNTS documents the author’s own near-death struggle with AIDS and his Lazarus-like recovery in the mid-1990s after the discovery of protease inhibitor therapy.
We watch Strub build a life and legacy that sees him crossing paths with a veritable who’s who of prominent gay men, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Andy Warhol, Keith Haring, Vito Russo and Larry Kramer.
The author’s tale names names, identifying the villains and hypocrites who thrived during this era, and acknowledges the heroes who battled ignorance and apathy to bring the AIDS epidemic to the forefront. The author spares nobody in his assessment, offering a candid critique of where America fell short in its vision for ending the epidemic, including the government, the gay community and the so-called AIDS, Inc.
BODY COUNTS is a portrait of one man driven by passion and principle to make a difference in the world during a tumultuous era of great change and tragedy.

Sean Strub is an activist, writer, and executive director of the Sero Project, which combats the criminalization of people with HIV. He founded POZ magazine, the leading publication providing information about HIV, and is a frequent speaker about HIV/AIDS, selfempowerment, and the intersections of sex, public health, and the law. A native of Iowa City, Strub attended Georgetown and Columbia universities. He and his partner, Xavier Morales, live in New York and Milford, Pennsylvania, where he co-owns the historic Hotel Fauchère and is active in historic preservation.

Praise for Body Counts
“Strub paints a striking picture … A valuable document that gives an insider’s view into AIDS activism.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Sean Strub has written more than just a memoir. Body Counts pulls back the curtain on a hidden half-century of American history…. The tale of a life lived in high-resolution, high-intensity, saturated Technicolor.” —Ari Shapiro, NPR White House Correspondent
“Radicalized by the AIDS crisis and plunged into political activism for the LGBT community, Iowa-born Catholic-raised Strub chronicles the crucial years of AIDS awareness since the early 1980s, which parallels his own coming-of- age….Strub frankly and openly speaks about these painful and inspiring early years of the gay and lesbian movement, how the AIDS epidemic devastated the newly emergent community and ushered in a terrible backlash against gays.” —Publishers Weekly
“Read Body Counts by Sean Strub and share one American’s story of growing up with an instinct for justice, then finding oneself in an epidemic whose tragedy is multiplied by bias. As a man who survived sexual abuse, rape and an HIV diagnosis, Strub embodies the shared interest of women and men who fight for human rights, and against any government or person intruding on our bodies. By taking us with him on his journey from a conservative family in Iowa to the heart of a global movement for human rights, Sean Strub gives us ideas, strength and heart in our own journey.” —Gloria Steinem
“An absorbing read. It not only vividly recounts the personal odyssey of one man’s struggle with AIDS, but places it—with remarkable objectivity—within the larger story of those years. Strub is a dispassionate, reliable guide whose directness and honesty create considerable impact. Anyone would profit from reading this book.” —Martin Duberman, author of Stonewall
“This is the most personally powerful and authentic portrayal of our collective history that I have read since Paul Monette’s On Borrowed Time.” —Judith Light
“Body Counts is a powerful account of the epidemic’s early years and the subsequent three decades…a page-turner with moving insight and fresh analysis told in a compelling and highly personal style.” —Lily Tomlin
“Sean Strub’s Body Counts is an important document…fresh and compelling.” —Bill T. Jones
“This is the compelling life and near-death story of Sean Strub, of thousands lost to HIV-AIDS, and thousands more living with it whom his activism helped save. Wow.” —Andrew Tobias, author of The Best Little Boy in the World
“This take-no-prisoners memoir has the quality of a suspenseful page-turner, and will keep you reading until the final sentence.” —John D’Emilio, author of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America
“From early struggles against AIDS to later collective acting up, Sean Strub’s lively, gossipy memoir is also deeply moving history.” —Jonathan Ned Katz, author Gay American History
“Strub’s memoir, like Strub himself, is an inspiration.” —Richard McCann, author of Mother of Sorrows
“The education and evolution of Sean Strub is a riveting and moving tale that needed to be told, and has life-lessons for us all. Body Counts is an important document in the history of our era that challenges conventional wisdoms and speaks truth to power.” —Doug Ireland, veteran political journalist
“A gripping story of a movement that changed the soul of our world.” —Kathy Boudin, Columbia University School of Social Work
“A compelling page-turner… To understand today’s HIV epidemic, read Body Counts. Sean is a born activist, widely revered by people with HIV and I’m glad he’s finally told his story.” —Rory Kennedy
“Elegantly written, moving and powerful, this book from one of the most important advocates for people with HIV/AIDS is eye-opening.” —Mary Frances Berry, Geraldine Segal professor of American Social Thought, University of Pennsylvania; past Chair U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
“This is obviously Sean Strub’s story and a very particular and personal history, but it’s also our story and our history. He is a wonderful storyteller … I very much admire his writing—how clean and powerful it is.” —Will Schwalbe, author of The End Of Your Life Book Club

The Mancaster interviews Bill Thomas, founder of New York City Gay Craft Beer Lovers
2014-01-22 19:00 - 21:00
The Mancaster interviews Bill Thomas, founder of New York City Gay Craft Beer Lovers

Bill Thomas is the founder of the New York City Gay Craft Beer Lovers group. A beer enthusiast who enjoys seeking out local beers where he goes, he lamented the dearth of quality beers at bars and restaurants catering to LGBT clientele, so in response he started the group to share his love of beer and create a comfortable, open and welcoming environment for beer education and fellowship.

The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

Reading by Elliot DeLine and Musical Performance by Audrey Zee Whitesides
2014-01-17 19:00 - 21:00
Join Elliot DeLine and Audrey Zee Whitesides for an evening of stories and songs at the Bureau!

Elliott DeLine (born 1988) is an independent writer from Syracuse, NY. He is the author of the novel Refuse and the novella I Know Very Well How I Got My Name. His work has been featured in several publications, including the Modern Love essay series of The New York Times (2011),The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard, and a blog for the magazine Original Plumbing (2012-present). Elliott attended Purchase College and graduated from Syracuse University in 2012 with a BA in English. Elliott currently lives in Syracuse, where he is involved with several local advocacy groups, volunteers at a queer youth center, and is hoping to open a used bookstore/cat cafe. He is the co-founder, promoter, and general coordinator of Queer Mart, an LGBTQ arts and crafts fair.

AUDREY ZEE WHITESIDES is a poet and musician born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Her poetry and cultural writing has appeared in/on Autostraddle, WONDER, and Bone Bouquet among others, and she’s the author of several DIY chapbooks, most recently i’m the POTE. She also leads Brooklyn trans punk band Little Waist.

Dictionary--Stephen Boyer presents ben rosenberg, Clara Lipfert, Chelsea Tadeyeske, David J. White, edwin r. perry, Kayla Morse, Lara Weibgen, and Tommy "Teebs" Pico
2014-01-14 20:30 - 22:30
Dictionary is a reading/performance/film/whatever-yr-medium showcase curated by Stephen Boyer, hosted by the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division. This month ben rosenberg, Clara Lipfert, Chelsea Tadeyeske, David J. White, edwin r. perry, Kayla Morse, Lara Weibgen, and Tommy “Teebs” Pico will be sharing their work.

Please note: The Bureau will be closed on Tuesday, January 14th, but we will open at 8 pm for this event.

Barry Stewart Levy reads from his book European Son: a novella
2014-01-11 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for a reading with Barry Stewart Levy from his book European Son: A Novella.
Barry Stewart Levy is a former English teacher who also worked as a Literary Artist for the Cultural Council Foundation/CETA Artists Project, co-authoring the topical revue “New Living Newspaper, Vol. 1, No. 2” (Playwrights Horizons), writing poetry for the anthology “Words to Go” and conducting interviews for the publication Art Workers News. He was a reporter for Gotham Newsmagazine and a freelance game show writer for NBC’s “Shoot for the Stars.” He is the recipient of the Clarence Kline Essay Prize and was a semi-finalist in the Writers Guild of America, East, Fellowship Competition. “European Son: a novella” is his first work of fiction.

Lonely Christopher's DEATH & DISASTER SERIES Launch with Uche Nduka and Ariana Reines
2014-01-08 19:00 - 21:00
Monk Books is proud to present the launch event for Lonely Christopher’s debut poetry collection, Death & Disaster Series. Join Lonely Christopher, Uche Nduka, and Ariana Reines for a poetry reading at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division, with revelrous partying to follow!

YOUR READERS:
Uche Nduka was born in Umuahia, Nigeria. He earned a B.A. in English from the University of Nigeria. His volumes of poetry include Flower Child (1988), Second Act (1994), The Bremen Poems (1995), Chiaroscuro(1007), for which he was awarded the Association of Nigerian Authors Poetry Prize, If Only the Night (2002),Heart’s Field (2005), Eel on Reef (2007), Tracer (2010), Ijele (2012), and Nine East (2013). His work has been translated into German, Serbo Croatian, Romanian, Spanish, and Dutch. He is a member of the Association of Nigerian Authors and American PEN. He lived in Germany and Holland for over a decade and was the recipient of a Goethe Institut Fellowship and Heinrich Böll Haus Guest Author Fellowship. He currently lives in Brooklyn.
Ariana Reines is author of The Cow (2006), winner of the Alberta Prize from Fence Books, Coeur de Lion(2007), and Mercury (2011). Her play Telephone was produced at the Cherry Lane Theater and won several Obie awards. Her translations include a version of Baudelaire’s My Heart Laid Bare (2009); Jean-Luc Hennig’s The Little Black Book of Grisélidis Réal: Days and Nights of an Anarchist Whore (2009); and Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials Toward a Theory of the Young-Girl (2012). Reines was 2009 Roberta C. Holloway Lecturer in Poetry at the University of California Berkeley; she has taught master classes at Pomona College, the University of California Davis, and the University of Pittsburgh.
Lonely Christopher is a poet and filmmaker. He is the author of the poetry collection Death & Disaster Series(Monk Books, 2014) and the short story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse, which was a 2011 selection of Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery imprint of Akashic Books. His plays have been produced in New York City and China. He wrote and directed the feature film MOM (Cavazos Films, 2013) and his stories have been adapted for the screen in Canada and France. He lives in Brooklyn.

THE BOOK:
Lonely Christopher’s debut poetry collection is a sprawling and melancholic confrontation of death in the context of late capitalism. The poet writes through the premature end of his mother’s life and the aftermath, investigating and raging against tragedy and loss. Infused with grief, sorrow, and anger, the series is a raw and deeply personal reckoning with the romantic and profoundly dark themes that crawl under the surface of quotidian awareness, waiting to bleed forth in the wake of death and disaster. Arch and penetrating, these poems collapse attraction and repulsion, joy and misery, origination and destruction—ultimately portraying some of the most underlit elements of our human experience with imaginative clarity.

“Aesthetically and polemically these poems heft joy and grief and fury. Politics, romance, wonder suffuse them. Lonely Christopher is a fearless poet par excellence. ‘I am the star of my own truncated privacy’ says the poet. What choice do we have but to heed his appeal: ‘Do not face eternity with your brain.'” – Uche Nduka (author ofIjele and Nine East)

“OH GOD, I’ve started this blurb so many times! HOW TO SAY HOW essential this writer Lonely Christopher is for our lives!? It’s all between the words, this pressure he builds behind the eyes. Stand anywhere you want with this book inside our headache age of information fatigue, ‘anything in the orange light / of my word for you / anything / to excuse / all the pain.’ DON’T BE STUPID you know as well as I do these poems boil to the top of the gravy!!” – CAConrad (author of The Book of Frank and A Beautiful Marsupial Afternoon)

“‘I/ don’t belong in America I belong/ in love,’ says this provocative poet, but it’s not true: at the same time minimal and raw, smart-set knowing and uninhibited weird, Lonely Christopher belongs anywhere that his poetry can be read. He knows too much and wants to reveal it all (fans of Ariana Reines, or of Eileen Myles, take note). The lines get rough and bloody, rehearsing and repurposing queer revolutions. This book lays bare secrets of our time, halfway between the compression of (say) Robert Creeley and the unmade bed at 3am, from which he looks out the window at (variously) the blank walls that model his free verse, the window of the day before, and the fire across the ledge, the one he almost ‘started/ as a conduit for my love/ and rage.'” – Stephen Burt (author of Close Calls with Nonsense: Reading New Poetry)

Stories & Queer with Steven Cordova, Shelley Ettinger, Christopher Soto, and Rosebud Ben-Oni
2014-01-06 19:00 - 21:00
Stories & Queer will hold its first event in NYC at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division on Monday, January 6, 2014 at 7:00pm (EST). The event will feature Steven Cordova, Shelley Ettinger, Christopher Soto, and Rosebud Ben-Oni.
The live event will be streamed and archived to our YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCR-34__YD3WJ9FTGh_E1pwg?feature=
The virtual components of this series are unique and allow us to reach beyond the local borders of the event.
S&Q is a traveling reading series that aims to provide a space for local & national readers/listeners to connect with queer & queer-friendly writers. Our mission is to provide a space for underrepresented voices to be heard and to connect writers and audiences no matter where they are. This series makes a positive contribution to the literary and LGBTQ community by encouraging all people to tell their stories without shame or fear.
S&Q is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization.
Please note: the Bureau is closed on Mondays, but we will open at 6 pm for this event.

Steven Cordova is the 2012 first-place winner of the International Reginald Shepherd Memorial Poetry Prize. His first full-length poetry collection, Long Distance, was published by Bilingual Review Press in 2010, and his poems have appeared in many journals and anthologies. A selection from Long Distance was recently set to music for the AIDS Quilt Songbook. Steven lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Shelley Ettinger‘s work has been published in Nimrod, Cream City Review, Liberation Lit, Blithe House Quarterly, Lodestar Quarterly and other journals. She has been awarded residencies at the Saltonstall Foundation Arts Colony, Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and Norcroft Writing Retreat for Women, and, in 2007, a full scholarship to the first Lambda Literary Foundation Writers’ Retreat. An activist all her adult life, Shelley is a partisan of political poetry and fiction. She’s currently working on a novel suggested by the famous death and secret lesbian life of Kitty Genovese.

Christopher Soto (aka Loma) is a queer latin@ punk poet who is concerned with dismantling patriarchy and white supremacy. They are currently curating Nepantla, an e-journal dedicated to queer poets of color, in collaboration with The Lambda Literary Foundation. They have work forthcoming from Columbia: A Journal, Acentos Review, Anti-, Wilde Magazine and more. They are an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.

Born to a Mexican mother and Jewish father, Rosebud Ben-Oni is a 2013 CantoMundo Fellow. A graduate of the 2010 Women’s Work Lab at New Perspectives Theater, her plays have been produced in New York City, Washington DC and Toronto. Her work is forthcoming or appears in American Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Bayou, Puerto del Sol, among others. Her debut book of poems SOLECISM was published by Virtual Artists Collective in March 2013. Rosebud is a co-editor for HER KIND (herkind.org) at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts (vidaweb.org). Find out more about her at 7TrainLove.org

The Mancaster Talks with the Organizers of 20SOMETHING
2014-01-04 14:00 - 16:00
The Mancaster will be talking with the organizers of the Meetup group Gay 20Somethings of NYC. Listen to their chat about the group’s history and what their plan is for the future!
20SOMETHING is a social events organization for young lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender people in New York City, aged 18 to 33. We are focused on providing a safe space at the LGBT Center for the discussion of topics relevant to people in and around their 20s. Topics vary widely, but the discussion is always lively. While we are based at the LGBT Center, we also host a plethora of other social activities such as movie outings, dinners, coffee, and bar nights.
The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

Launch Party for Quito Ziegler's Zine THROUGH
2013-12-19 18:00 - 21:00
In conjunction with the photography exhibition QUEEN OF HEARTS and in the general spirit of Getting Shit Done before the year ends, Quito Ziegler (recently proclaimed hermit artist of the year by SF’s Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art) will miraculously complete a zine they’ve been writing for over a year and read selections from it, along with other stories from the Queen of Hearts.
In early 2011 Q.Z. came out as trans, experienced trauma, abruptly stopped taking pictures, became a hermit and hit the road in an unmarked white van called the Pony, taking occasional breaks to organize large-scale queer art happenings with an amazing cast of characters. Beyond these pretty pops of public glamour, their time was mostly spent wandering off in an anti-social haze, generally going through it.
THROUGH is the story-behind-the-story of these past three years, an attempt to articulate their complicated evolution from person to tranimal and the lessons they learned in the process. What begins as an individual story of crisis and resilience evolves into a series of reflections on queer interdependence, structural transphobia, physical transition, and DIY recovery strategies.The writings emerged during travels through dark corners of Brooklyn and Berlin and the sunny meadows of Vermont, with a stint at the fancy MacDowell Colony in winter.
Reading at 7 PM.
A limited-edition zine of this story will be available for sale at the event.
This event is in support of QUEEN OF HEARTS, a photography exhibition at the Bureau.
Darkly glam and quietly intense, The Queen of Hearts, Quito’s upcoming book of photography and writings, is set in the nightclubs and fire escapes of Brooklyn before dawn.
The images were shot over one year, 2010/11, as a collection of queer artists and performers coalesced in the dark – contributing to the cultural explosion we are living through now. Relying on the moon and the disco ball for light, the images are grainy and seductive, dreamy and tender. B&W prints were subsequently hand-painted, hand-sewn, and are presented in hand-made frames.
Images will be on view at the Bureau from December 9 – 31.
after-party : punk/queercore/goth/powerpop gala @ Hank’s!
https://www.facebook.com/events/690092554349186/

Mancaster interviews actor, director, and nightclub performer Joshua Warr
2013-12-18 19:00 - 21:00
Join us for Mancaster‘s interview of Joshua Warr
The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

Joshua Warr is an actor, director, and nightclub performer who lives in NYC. Joshua most recently directed the NYC premier of David Schulner’s An Infinite Ache which had a limited run downtown at the Access Theatre and garnered rave reviews. He can also be seen in the gay hit web series ‘Hunting Season’ guest starring as “Harris.” He’s a recipient of a 2013 Fruitie Award for his work in the Fresh Fruit Festival premiere of Patrick McCarthy’s Pride River Crossing and is a MAC Award and two time BroadwayWorld Award nominee for his nightclub acts. EntertainmentWeekly.com calls him “wickedly funny”, watch out, this Warrior shows no signs of slowing down.

For more information about The Mancaster click here.

Mancaster interviews Stephen Boyer and Nicholas Wilson
2013-12-17 19:00 - 21:00
Join Chad Edmonds and Eddie Cuneo of The Mancaster for interviews with and performances by writer, performer, artist, and activist Stephen Boyer and violinist Nicholas Wilson. The evening will be recorded for a podcast.
The Mancaster is a series of podcast interviews with the “mom & pop” business owners, the behind-the-scenes workers, the musicians, the artists, the drag queens, the go-go boys, those who make entertainment possible; hear their voices and listen to their journeys.

Stephen Boyer, photograph by Amos Mac
Stephen Boyer is a writer, performer, curator, painter, activist, etc…. best known for working in porn, working to compile the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, and for their novel Parasite, available at the Bureau. For more about Stephen, visit their blog Minor Progression.

Nicholas Wilson began studying violin at 10 years old. He studied throughout middle school and in high school was accepted into an arts program called Governor’s School, which focused its curriculum on each artist’s respective art.
Nicholas earned his Bachelor’s degree from George Mason University, majoring in Music. During and after his degree the Washington Metropolitan area afforded opportunities in performance and education. Nicholas has been teaching privately for 8 years.
Nicholas moved to NYC 6 months ago and will be applying for his Master’s degree soon.
