OLNY Poly Movie Night: Y Tu Mamá También
2019-09-04 18:30 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
On September 4th, please join us for a viewing of Y Tu Mamá También , (2001), directed by Alfonso Cuarón and starring Maribel Verdú, Gael García Bernal, Daniel Giménez Cacho.
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: Best friends Tenoch and Julio, spending a last summer together before college while their girlfriends are traveling, try to impress Luisa, an older woman they meet, by inviting her to join them on a a road trip to a beautiful beach that they have invented. Unexpectedly, she agrees. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Reading the Iliad
2019-09-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-09-17 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-09-24 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-10-01 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
The Bureau is excited to partner with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research to bring you:
Reading the Iliad
Instructors: Bruce King, Laura Slatkin

The Iliad stands at the start of most histories of western literature, even as it remains enduringly strange—often, it seems, at odds with the very tradition it has been taken to inaugurate. In this course, we will read closely the entirety of Homer’s “poem of force,” attempting to recapture both some of its strangeness and its continued relevance. We’ll focus, too, on the following themes: the hero and his commemoration; the relations of men and women, of men and men, of humans, gods, and animals; exile and rebellion; violence and the making of epic art; the recompenses and failures of culture itself. How did an oral tradition of heroic poetry, enacted by singing bards for hundreds of years, coalesce into the written Iliad that we now know? How do the struggles of the Iliadic hero illuminate both consciousness itself and the borders of culture? How does the poem both commemorate and critique its own heroes? How might the struggle over the city of Troy illuminate our own national propensities toward war without end?
One of the strangest elements of the Iliad is its depiction of Achilles, who marks out a queer distance from the norms of heroic culture. Standing at the turbulent center of the poem, amidst great violence, deceit, and godly meddling, is Achilles’ love for his companion Patroclus. In Reading the Iliad, we’ll ask, among other questions: how are we to understand the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus? What, in the poem and in Homeric Greek culture, is the boundary between the homosocial and the homoerotic? What links eros and destruction? What, in reading the Iliad, is the content of a queer critique?
Our primary focus will be on the Iliad itself, but we will also take up a few key texts in Iliadic criticism: Plato, Aristotle, Milman Parry and Albert Lord, and Simone Weil.

Course Schedule
Tuesday, 6:30-9:30pm
September 10 — October 01, 2019
4 weeks
$315.00*
Registration is required. Please click here.
*Three scholarship spaces are reserved in each course because we realize that not everyone can afford to pay the full fee for our courses. Students who cannot pay the full fee should email us at info@thebrooklyninstitute.com to learn about our scholarship options. We will not ask questions about your financial situation but we do ask that you use the system in good faith and consider the needs of other students and faculty members.

Image: Exekias, Achilles and Ajax Playing a Board Game, 540-530 BCE, Detail of Terracotta amphora, Height 2 feet. Musei Vaticani, Rome.

Buy The Iliad of Homer, translated by Richard Lattimore, at the Bureau for only $15.
This translation will be used for the course.

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space hosted by The LGBT Community Center in Manhattan.

The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is an organization of young scholars in New York City, founded in November 2011 by a few then-graduate students at Columbia University with a shared interest in pedagogy and genuinely interdisciplinary conversation. We teach classes all over the city, record a regular podcast, run a digital humanities initiative to preserve rare and out-of-print academic texts, and in general work frantically at any given time on a broad range of other academic and para-academic projects. We are a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization.

Madden, Roxas-Chua, Schneiderman
2019-09-15 18:00 - 19:30 | NY
Join us for an evening of poetry with Ed Madden, Sam Roxas-Chua, and Jason Schneiderman.

Professor of English and director of gender studies at the University of South Carolina, Ed Madden is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Ark, a memoir in poems about his father’s last months in hospice care. His poems have appeared in Prairie Schooner, Crazyhorse, and other journals, as well as in Hard Lines: Rough South Poetry, and The Book of Irish American Poetry. In 2015 he was named poet laureate for the City of Columbia, SC, and in 2019 he was one of 13 poets nationwide to be named an Academy of American Poets Poet Laureate Fellow.

Sam Roxas-Chua is the author of Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater, Echolalia in Script, and Fawn Language. His poems, artworks, and asemic writings have appeared in journals including Narrative, December Magazine, Cream City Review and an essay/review of his two recent books appears in the Georgia Review and Rhino Poetry. His poetry sequence Diary of Collected Summers was awarded the Missouri Review’s Miller Audio Prize and most recently he was interviewed by Gulf Coast Journal. In his writing process, Sam is interested in discovering the invisible poem. These are images and thoughts conjured up by asemic writing—a writing practice using non-sensical script. Here’s how he described it in an interview: “In between stanzas of a poem, or when I can’t quite get to an image or a phrase, I pull out a piece of paper and start writing this nonsensical script. When I do this script and feel the texture of my wrist on the page, images open like a deck of cards.” Eventually, this work became an art form on its own for Sam, one that exists in conversation with his poetry. His books talk to each other across mediums as well, with the poems in Saying Your Name Three Times Underwater resurfacing in the poem that concludes Echolalia in Script, which is made up of phrases drawn from the poems in that book, making a new thing. And each visual art piece in Echolalia is, in turn, in conversation with a line from that work. Sam is a quadrilingual speaker with a multinational background, an adoptee, and a maker open to what happens in the ineffable interstices, the between. Sam has exhibited his visual works and read for PEN International Philippines and most recently at the Performatura literature and arts festival at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.

Jason Schneiderman is the author of four books of poems: Hold Me Tight (Red Hen Press 2020), Primary Source (Red Hen Press 2016); Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press 2010); and Sublimation Point (Four Way Books 2004). He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2016). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including American Poetry Review, The Best American Poetry, Poetry London, Grand Street, and The Penguin Book of the Sonnet. An Associate Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY, he lives in Brooklyn with his husband Michael Broder. His next book of poems, Hold Me Tight, will be out from Red Hen in 2020.

Red Hen Press at BGSQD with special guests!
2019-09-19 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Join fabulous Red Hen authors David Brendan Hopes, Jason Schneiderman, and Chloe Schwenke, alongside special guests Minnie-Bruce Pratt and Jerome Murphy, as they read their most recent work and celebrate queer literature!

TELL 56: Self Love and Riis Beach
2019-09-21 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Self Love and Riis Beach is the theme of the 56th TELL. Featuring stories by Sebastian J. Flowers aka Alkaline Sunboi, Kenny Hahn, and Jhani Miller.

Photograph by Grace Chu

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

Sebastian J. Flowers aka Alkaline Sunboi is a 1st generation immigrant and Brooklyn native, model, actor, and vegan in NYC. With indigenous roots in Belize and Honduras, Central America, practicing a life of peace, love, physical health and spiritual wellness has been a natural catalyst for his 15 years of activism in the LGBTQ and POC communities across the country. Despite incestuous sexual abuse as young as 7 years old, poverty, nearly dying twice due to gender affirming surgery, this female to male transgender has no sight of slowing down. Sebastian, 31 years old, has a large following on social media for his dance moves and positive messages and aspires to use it as a platform for his acting and modeling career. Sebastian dreams of being an international actor, successful philanthropist and investor. His most recent acting roles are on several episodes of POSE on FX (season 2), Law & Order: SVU on NBC, Blue Bloods on CBS, and independent short film Chasing Love. Feel free to check out Sebastian’s reality documentary series on YouTube, “LEGENDARY,” highlighting his life as an Afro Latino female to male transgender, dating, discussing mental health & wellness, cooking vegan on a low income, student financial advice, Vogue & Mua tips, traveling while Queer, and interviewing prominent Queer youth & Queer people of color in NYC and the world.
Instagram: @BelizeanVegan
Facebook: Facebook.com/BelizeanVegan
YouTube: Belizean Vegan

Kenny Hahn (he/She) is a queer actor, playwright, director, devised theatre-maker, comedian, and passionate pie-maker. His play, Love Me Tender, premiered at the Wild Project Theater in September 2018, he performed at NYWinterfest 2019 and the Prague Fringe Festival 2019 with the show “In The Woods Where the Men Work, and he will be competing in this years YAAASFest Comedy Festival at the Broadway Comedy Club. Her pies can be tasted at any Hahn family dinner, or if she likes you, your family dinner.
Instagram: @kennythehahn

photo credit: Alex Koones

Jhani Miller is an award winning scholar hailing from the south suburbs of Chicago. Their work relates to black femme existence, public service, and the millennial identity crisis. When they are not advocating for historically marginalized groups in libraries, they’re a pole-performance artist, lo-fi photographer, and geek culture researcher. You can find them at the Brooklyn Public Library where they are a Library Information Supervisor or reach out to them online on Instagram Librarian_shimmy.

Four Way Books & Friends Fall 2019 Reading
2019-09-22 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join us for a night of poetry featuring the amazing poets Jessica Jacobs (Take Me with You, Wherever You’re Going, Four Way Books 2019), Nickole Brown ( To Those Who Were Our First Gods, Rattle Magazine 2018), Philip Clark (The Carnival of Affection, Sibling Rivalry Press 2017) and Lauren Clark (Music for a Wedding, University of Pittsburgh Press 2017).

Jessica Jacobs is also the author of Pelvis with Distance (White Pine Press, 2015), a biography-in-poems of Georgia O’Keeffe, winner of the New Mexico Book Award in Poetry and a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her chapbook In Whatever Light Left to Us was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2016. Her poetry, essays, and fiction have appeared widely. Jessica is now the Associate Editor of Beloit Poetry Journal and lives, with her wife, the poet Nickole Brown in Asheville, North Carolina.

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister, first published in 2007 with a new edition reissued in 2018. Her second book, Fanny Says (BOA Editions), won the Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry in 2015. The audiobook of that collection became available in 2017. Currently, she is the Editor for the Marie Alexander Poetry Series and teaches at the Sewanee School of Letters MFA Program and the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNCA. She lives with her wife, poet Jessica Jacobs, in Asheville, NC, where she periodically volunteers at a four different animal sanctuaries. A chapbook called To Those Who Were Our First Gods won the 2018 Rattle Chapbook Prize, and a long sequence called The Donkey Elegies will be published as a chapbook by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2019.

Philip F. Clark‘s debut collection ‘The Carnival of Affection,’ was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2017. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing/Poetry at City College, New York, where he received his M.F.A in 2016. His poetry and poetry reviews have appeared widely.

Lauren Clark is the author of MUSIC FOR A WEDDING (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

Perry Brass: 50 Years Of In Your Face Gay Liberation
2019-09-25 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
A Rare and Very Important Intergenerational Dialogue Between August Bernadicou (25) and Perry Brass (71).

August Bernadicou is the founder of the LGBTQ History Project. Since he was 14 years old, August has been recording and transcribing interviews with gay elders from the 1950s through the AIDS Crisis. To date, he has done 100 interviews (over 250 hours of recordings).

Perry Brass shaped our community and helped create LGBTQ life. Perry was an early member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-edited their revolutionary magazine, Come Out! Later, he co-founded The Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic (Callen-Lorde), the first clinic for gay men on the East Coast. He is a celebrated porn writer and author.

Edojah: Risking It All for Freedom
2019-09-26 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Edojah: Risking It All for Freedom is a play about Edafe, a gay man from Nigeria and his relationship with his grandmother was special. “There are several things that go unspoken between us, but in the silences, I feel that she gets me and believes in my ability. But if I flee Nigeria what will be the price I pay to save myself?” An African man’s journey to seek asylum in the United States.

Copies of Edojah: Risking It All for Freedom and Bed 26 will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Edafe Okporo, was born in Warri Delta state Nigeria, currently residing in New York City, Edafe is a Writer, and Orator, Author of Bed 26: Memoir of an African Man’s Asylum in the United States and the Executive Director of RDJ Refugee Shelter In Harlem. Edafe self identify as a member of the LGBT+ community that led to his displacement in 2016. Edafe is now a refugee of the United States of America and founder of The Pont LLC.

Opening Reception and Book Release: We collect together in a net
2019-09-27 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
We collect together in a net

Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Exhibition: September 20 – October 27, 2019
Opening Reception and Book Launch: September 27, 2019, 6 to 9 PM
With readings by Kerry Downey, Jaime Shearn Coan, and Shala Miller at 7 PM
Download press release.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is proud to present We collect together in a net, a series of new works on paper and a publication by Kerry Downey. Concentrating countless operations at the surface—from rubbing to cutting, from sanding to pressing down, from embossment to chine collé—these works draw parallels between paper’s surface and our skin, playing at the intersection of materiality and identity. Like skin, the works are pocked and porous; they act as thresholds between the personal and the social, the psychological and the embodied. Paper is a site of encounter, one defined by material relations between subjects, objects, and bodies. Facture at the surface, or, paper’s fleshiness, indexes a repertoire of gestures enacted in the work’s production. Paper takes stock of these operations, of accumulated forms of touch, holding them in store as trace memories. Like a net—a central figure in Downey’s work—paper contains and disperses, locating our entanglements in the world, and reflecting the interdependent structures that produce the many ways we inhabit our bodies and access forms of power.
The exhibition is accompanied by a publication featuring works in the series alongside newly commissioned texts by Jaime Shearn Coan, Jeanne Vaccaro, Ryan Wong, and Layla Zami. Designed by Erik Freer and edited by Rachel Valinsky, the book is published by Brooklyn-based non-profit reading room, writing space, and independent publisher, Wendy’s Subway.

Kerry Downey (b.1979, Ft. Lauderdale) is an interdisciplinary artist and educator based in New York City. Downey’s work explores relationality through the many ways we inhabit our bodies and access forms of power. Downey’s practice includes video, printmaking, drawing, writing, and performance. They’ve recently had a solo show at CAVE in Detroit and two-person shows at Danspace Project, Knockdown Center and 20|20 Gallery in New York City. They have exhibited at the Queens Museum, Flushing, NY; the Hessel Museum at Bard College, Annandale, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; Cooper Cole, Toronto, CA, and Taylor Macklin, Zurich, CH. Downey is a recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant. Artist-in-residencies include Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Madison, ME; Triangle Arts Association, Brooklyn, NY; SHIFT at EFA Project Space, New York, NY; the Drawing Center’s Open Sessions, New York, NY; Real Time and Space, Oakland, CA; and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. Downey participated in the Queer/Art/Mentorship program in 2013. Their work has been in Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Washington Post. Downey holds a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Hunter College.

Image: Kerry Downey, We collect together in a net, 2019, monotype, 11 x 15 in.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: When Two Won't Do
2019-10-02 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
On October 2nd please join us for a viewing of When Two Won’t Do (2002), a documentary by Maureen Marovitch and David Finch.
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: Maureen and David are Canadian filmmakers and romantic partners who explore opening their relationship while interviewing multi-partner families and attending conventions. CW: suicide. Running time: 57 minutes.

The Whole Megillah
2019-10-03 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
If You Blink, You’ll Miss It: An Intergenerational Dialogue Between August Bernadicou (25) and Rumi Missabu (71)

Rumi Missabu was an original member of the radical theater troupe, the Cockettes. He left the group after a year and a half, moved to New York and then returned to San Francisco. For 35 years, he lived completely off-the-grid.

August Bernadicou is Rumi Missabu’s official biographer. He is the founder of The LGBTQ History Project. Since he was 14 years old, August has been recording and transcribing interviews with gay elders from the 1950s through the AIDS Crisis.

A Celebration of Lou Sullivan
2019-10-05 19:30 - 21:30 | NY
In celebration of the publication of the edited diaries of the great gay transsexual activist, a roster of writers and filmmakers share work that celebrates transmasculinity, intimacy, and freedom. Featuring Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Davey Davis, Jamie DiNicola, Chris Berntsen, An Duplan, Stephen Ira, and Serge Rodriguez–as well as readings from Lou himself through noted spiritualist medium Zach Ozma.

Copies of We Both Laughed in Pleasure: The Selected Diaries of Lou Sullivan (Nightboat Books, 2019) will soon be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Queer Women Writers Bloom Panel at The Rainbow Book Fair
2019-10-12 13:15 - 14:15 | NY
Queer womyn writers and literary curators of color, all members of Women Writers in Bloom Poetry Salon, on the importance of curating and supporting queer literary spaces. This interactive panel of queer writers and literary organizers will discuss their community activism in the literary community, including the importance of centering queer/lgbtq writers and artists both now and in the future. Each writer will also share an excerpt of their own powerful literary work.
Featured panelists/writers: R. Erica Doyle, María Fernanda, JP Howard, & Nicole Shawan Junior

Queer Women Writers Bloom Panel is part of the 10th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair 2019, taking place on the first and third floors of
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011
From noon to 6 PM on Saturday, October 12, 2019

Queer & Trans Zine Reading: NYC Feminist Zinefest
2019-10-12 16:00 - 17:30 | NY
NYC-based zine and comics creators – – JB Brager (My Gender is Saturn Return), Cassandra Leveille, J Hansen (Queerly Sober), Quinn Milton (The Pope is Trans), Zefyr Lisowski & Charles Theonia (Femmescapes), and Ximena Izquierdo – – will read from their work, a spectacle of queer visions and reckless imagination.

NYC Feminist Zinefest was started in 2012 by Elvis Bakaitis and Kate Angell, as a way to showcase the works of feminist-aligned creators and marginalized voices. FZF is one of the city’s largest and longest running zine events, and will be held in March 2020.

Cassandra Leveille has been contributing to zines since 2012, including hoax, On Struggling and Jealouzine. Cassandra has also authored two zines of her own, Secondhand Emotion, a zine about the politics of attraction under late capitalism, and CUT, a zine about shaving her head and the politics of black hair in 2018. She is currently working on a compilation zine on how care work functions as a superpower, the final zine in the Secondhand Emotion series, and a zine called Fictive Kinships on the traumas wrought by 2016.

J Henry Hansen is a writer, performer, queer + sober traveler, activist and ordained minister whose adventures are chronicled on the Queerly Sober blog. J recently wrote and performed in the solo show, “The Escape Artist”.

Zefyr Lisowski is a femme sun/femme moon/futch rising living in New York. She’s a poetry co-editor at Apogee Journal, a 2019 Tin House Summer Workshop attendee, and the author of Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press 2019); more information online @zefrrrrrrr and at zeflisowski.com.

Charles Theonia is a poet from Brooklyn, where they’re at work externalizing interior femme landscapes. They’re the author of art book Saw Palmettos, on hormones, community, and the brain-time continuum (Container, 2018), and chapbook Which One Is the Bridge (Topside Press, 2015). With ray ferriera and Abigail Lloyd, they edit Femmescapes, a magazine of queer and trans affinities with femmeness.

The Queer & Trans Zine Reading is part of the 10th Annual New York Rainbow Book Fair 2019, taking place on the first and third floors of
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NY, NY 10011
From noon to 6 PM on Saturday, October 12, 2019

Violet Ghosts
2019-10-18 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Acclaimed queer authors Trebor Healey and Craig Laurance Gidney explore the veil between worlds in their newest books, Falling and A Spectral Hue. These are stories of artists making contact with a metaphysical or mystical reality, expanding and queering our understanding of the world we live in. Healey and Gidney’s work portrays the otherworldliness of the southern border and America’s misunderstood African-American past. Their work is an invitation to an America that could be in the wake of an America that was, an America haunted with the promise of ghosts that cannot be forgotten and that can in fact enrich us. An America not so banal to call itself great, but one that can call itself whole.

Reception at 7 pm, followed by reading at 7:30 pm

Copies of Gidney’s A Spectral Hue and Healey’s Falling will be available for sale. To reserve books please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Craig Laurance Gidney is the author of the collections Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories (Lethe Press, 2008), Skin Deep Magic: Short Fiction (Rebel Satori Press, 2014), Bereft (Tiny Satchel Press, 2013) and The Nectar of Nightmares (Dim Shores, 2015). He lives in his native Washington, DC. His new novel, A SPECTRAL HUE, is out from Word Horde. Website: craiglaurancegidney.com. Instagram, Tumblr & Twitter: ethereallad.

Recipient of a Lambda Literary award, two Publishing Triangle awards and a Violet Quill award, Trebor Healey is the author of A Horse Named Sorrow, Faun and Through It Came Bright Colors, as well as a poetry collection, Sweet Son of Pan and three collections of stories — A Perfect Scar, Eros & Dust and the recently-released Falling. He co-edited (with Marci Blackman) Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco and co-edited (with Amie Evans) Queer & Catholic. He lives in Mexico City. www.treborhealey.com

Tell Us How You Really Feel, 2019 New Masculinities Festival
2019-10-19 13:00 - 18:00 | NY
Listen up to Tell Us How You Really Feel, at the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, at the 2019 New Masculinities Festival.

Creator Remy Ramirez writes: “The Tell Us How You Really Feel Project was born out of a deep frustration in my search for meaningful connections with men. After years of dating, I couldn’t understand who men were, why they behaved the way they did, or if they actually loved women. So I went out into the world and interviewed 25 cisgender, heterosexual men of varying ethnicities, ages, and relationship statuses, asking nearly 40 questions, like: What does loneliness look like to you and how often do you experience it?; What does vulnerability mean to you?; Have you ever fantasized about falling in love, having children, or getting married? This project is the collection of those responses.”
The Bureau offers a special listening station for a curated set of Remy’s interviews, during the 2019 New Masculinities Festival. Also on display find a curated selection of books and zines interrogating masculinity.
Learn more and get your festival tickets here.
No ticket required to visit Remy Ramirez’s listening station inside the Bureau (room 210 of The LGBT Community Center).
See the full lineup of performances at www.manquestion.org/festival
Illustration: Azmi Mert Erdem and Michael Wilson
The 2019 New Masculinities Festival is produced by Man Question and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center
With the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division

TELL 57: My Masculinity
2019-10-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.

My Masculinity is the theme of the 57th TELL in conjunction with the New Masculinities Festival taking place at The LGBT Community Center in room 301 and in the Bureau on the same day, Saturday, October 19, 2019. Featuring stories by Topher Gross, Marcus Hicks, Sammie James, and Milo Jordan.

Photograph by Grace Chu

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

Topher Gross (photo by Asher Torres)

Topher Gross is a born and bred Brooklyn kid who learned the art of storytelling from his Jewish grandma, Edith. He is an appearance enhancement artist aka hairstylist, party thrower+ yenta, aspiring cartoon voice over actor and marijuana dispensary owner. Topher has performed stories at Tell, Tell It, at various burlesque shows, dinner tables, on live journal and a blog for original plumbing magazine. He was featured on the Graham Norton show as the “big gay following” of Kylie Minogue.

Marcus Hicks is a Brooklyn based designer, tailor and humorist. Born and raised in Bakersfield, CA, Hicks studied Black Studies at San Francisco State University before moving to New York to start a career in fashion.

Sammie James is a comedian and story teller from New Jersey; where she hosts and produces The LGBT showcase Queerly Comedic. Sammie also hosts the podcast All Of My Friends Are Animals and The NYC Trans Variety show We Are Trans. She performs all over the country; including past appearances at Cinder Block Comedy Festival, Charm City Comedy Festival and Bechdal Test Fest; and she is soon to be your favorite disabled, nerdy, butch trans woman in comedy.

Milo Jordan is a non-binary performer, singer, and gymnast. Previously seen in such classics as “Prudence” in Nutritional Yeast and “Vampire Potter” in My Immortal: a DRAMATIK Reading, Milo also professionally dopplegangers “Aiden Abett” from America’s Favorite All-Boy Band. When not on stage, he can be found in his recurring role of “That Dog Walker” in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. [Exit, stage left, pursued by six dogs.]

Poetry and Memoir: the Transformative Power of Art
2019-10-20 17:00 - 19:00 | NY
Please join us for a reading by poets Dean Kostos and Alan Baxter in celebration of their recently published books: The Boy Who Listened To Paintings and A Second of Eternity.

“THE BOY WHO LISTENED TO PAINTINGS offers much to ponder concerning topical issues like family dysfunction, bullying, homophobia, sexual harassment, and the failure of our society to support its young people. Tragedy here has a good outcome, though, when the victim finds his way out of the infernal maze.” Alfred Corn

Copies of Kostos‘s The Boy Who Listened To Paintings and Baxter‘s A Second of Eternity will both be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Dean Kostos‘s eight poetry collections include PIERCED BY NIGHT-COLORED THREADS and THIS IS NOT A SKYSCRAPER (recipient of the BENJAMIN SALTMAN Poetry Award, selected by Mark Doty). Kostos’s anthology, POMEGRANATE SEEDS, had its debut reading at the United Nations.

His poems, criticism, and translations have have appeared in over 300 journals, including Boulevard, The Cincinnati Review, Southwest Review, The Western Humanities Review, Oprah Winfrey’s website Oxygen.com, and The Harvard University Press website. Kostos also received a Rockefeller Foundation Cultural Innovation Grant.

Having been a mainstay of the New York City Poetry Circuit for the last twenty years, Alan Baxter has read as a featured poet in Evie Ivy’s Dance of the Word at the Bowery Poetry Club and has also read his material at ABC No Rio, The Green Pavilion, and the Brownstone Poets. He has had his poems published in Nomad’s Choir, the Stained Sheets, and four of his works included in the poetry anthologies Dinner with the Muse and The Venetian Hour. He hosted the Kairos Poetry Café in Manhattan for almost eighteen years, and in 2010 published his first book of poetry Shall We Have Magic? He now assists Chester Johnson with the poetry program at Trinity Wall Street Church in New York City, as well as reading poetry at St. Johns and at The Church of the Village in Greenwich Village.

Alan Baxter is not only a film-maker who has co-produced many independent movies, but he is also the founder of AB Film Productions, which a number of years ago mounted the award-winning film Barriers, which Mr. Baxter personally directed. He is also the producer of the documentary Artwatch, which contains interviews with leading art historians who have appeared many times on the famous TV show 60 Minutes. Mr. Baxter also wrote the play Juan and Emmett which Ivy Theatre produced in a small theater in New York City. He has taught literature and basic writing at The College of New Rochelle and Ramapo College.

Professor Baxter was brought up in Silver Spring, Maryland, right outside Washington, DC, and later graduated from the College of William and Mary. He did his graduate work at American University. Right now he lives in both Greenwich Village, New York City and in Montreal, Canada.

Good Hot Stuff: The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau - Book Presentation with Q&A
2019-10-24 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
The Bureau is excited to partner with Éditions Moustache to bring you:

Good Hot Stuff – The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau
Book Presentation, including a Q&A with Robert Alvarez (Editor of the Hand In Hand Films and longtime partner of Jack Deveau) and Jeffrey Escoffier

The films of Jack Deveau and his production company Hand In Hand once were praised both by audience and critics as the perfect symbiosis of legit feature films, underground avant-garde and explicit all-male adult movies. During the Golden Age of Porn, Hand In Hand was an essential and acclaimed part of the New York art circles and its Independent film scene. The early death of Jack Deveau, the AIDS-crisis and the video revolution changed the porn film industry forever. All this happened at the same time and within a couple of years the Hand In Hand heritage – which should be recognized today as an important chapter of the upcoming queer film movement – was almost forgotten. This book bundles very personal interviews with most of the remaining people that worked as cast and crew members on the films of Hand In Hand, or somehow have been part of the circle around Jack Deveau. GOOD HOT STUFF tells the story of Hand In Hand in fragments, carefully put together from many – totally different – perspectives and memories. It is a story about a filmmaker who had a vision way ahead of his time and the freedom to develop an individual auteur style within the limitations of the early gay adult film industry. Besides the actual conversations, the reader can also learn about the production process and the history of the films – based on hundreds of images, most of them never published in public before; among them original artworks, company ephemera, behind the scenes footage, private snapshots, and numerous magazine articles.

Copies of Good Hot Stuff – The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Good Hot Stuff – The Life and Times of Gay Film Pioneer Jack Deveau
$34.99
Éditions Moustache, 2019
Paperback, 1.19″ H x 11.0″ L x 8.5″ W (2.97 lbs) 590 pages
Making of Ballet Down The Highway

Behind The Scenes of Fire Island Fever

A Reading by Samuel Ace and Miller Oberman
2019-10-25 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Poets Samuel Ace and Miller Oberman will perform from their recent books, as well new work, at the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division on Friday, October 25 at 7 p.m. Please join us!

Copies of Samuel Ace‘s Our Weather Our Sea and Meet Me There: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash. and Miller Oberman‘s The Unstill Ones are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve copies of any of these titles please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Samuel Ace is a trans/genderqueer poet and sound artist. He is the author of several books, most recently OUR WEATHER OUR SEA (Black Radish 2019), and the newly re-issued MEET ME THERE: Normal Sex & Home in three days. Don’t wash., (Belladonna* Germinal Texts 2019). He is the recipient of the Astraea Lesbian Writer Award and the Firecracker Alternative Book Award in Poetry, as well as a two-time finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the National Poetry Series. Recent work can be found in Poetry, PEN America, Best American Experimental Poetry, Vinyl, and many other journals and anthologies. He currently teaches poetry and creative writing at Mount Holyoke College in western Massachusetts.

Miller Oberman is the author of THE UNSTILL ONES, Princeton University Press, 2017. Poems and translations from The Unstill Ones appeared in Poetry, The Nation, London Review of Books, Tin House, Berfrois, and Harvard Review. Miller teaches writing at Eugene Lang College and lives with his family in Queens, New York.

Office Hours Presents: Craft Class and Reading with Paco Márquez
2019-10-26 11:00 - 14:30 | NY
Office Hours Poetry Workshop presents: “If You Love a Poem Translate It!”— a FREE translation craft class and reading with author Paco Márquez.
“If you love a poem and want to get closer to it, translate it. Curious about translation but don’t know where to begin? In this workshop we will practice some basic approaches to translation – versions, translations, extrapolations. When to capture the essence more than the literal? When and how to let loose? With exercises, dictionaries in hand, and translation theories, we will also discuss the art of translation and its relationship to our own work. No prior translation experience or knowledge of another language necessary. (Bring a poem or stanza that you would like to try translating into English, either from another language you know or with a bilingual dictionary of that other language.)”
The craft class takes place from 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM.
A public reading will follow from 1:30 PM-2:30 PM.
Spaces for the craft class are limited to 17 persons so please RSVP in advance to sarahmariesala@gmail.com and include your full name, relationship to writing, and a brief bio.

Office Hours Poetry Workshop provides post-MFA poets access to continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. The workshop culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are woman-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia.

Paco Márquez is a poet based out of Manhattan, author of the chapbook Portraits in G Minor (Folded Word Press, 2017). As Spanish Editor for William O’Daly, he assisted in translating Pablo Neruda’s initial book, Crepuscualrio, for the first time into English as, Book of Twilight, (Copper Canyon Press, 2017). He is currently working with Mexican poet Coral Bracho to translate her work into English. Paco’s work has been supported by The Center for Book Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and New York University, where he acquired an MFA in creative writing and was poetry editor of Washington Square. Paco has poems forthcoming in Fence, and previously published in Apogee, Ostrich Review, Live Mag! and Huizache. Originally from León, México, he’s spent most of his life in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. pacomarquez.net

Queer Critical Generosity with Holly Hughes and David Román
2019-10-26 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join the Bureau and NOGO Arts for an evening with Holly Hughes and David Román. Hughes and Román will discuss the history of LGBTQ art and performance over the past 40 years to highlight the idea of Critical Generosity. In addition to talking about their own work as performers, writers, and professors, they will also talk about ways we can engage historical and contemporary work from a queer point of view to allow for an empathic experience as viewer/audience member/critic. Come hear these two important figures and share in a conversation about how we might respond to aesthetics in a different way. Limited seating!

David Román is Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Southern California. He is the author of two books: Acts of Intervention: Performance, Gay Culture, & AIDS and Performance in America: Contemporary US Culture and the Performing Arts, and several edited volumes. Professor Román’s research focuses on theatre and performance studies, with an emphasis on contemporary US culture, and American studies, with an emphasis on race, sexuality, and the performing arts. His current projects include an edited volume of essays on the plays of Tarell Alvin McCraney, Tarell Alvin McCraney: Theatre, Performance, Collaboration (Northwestern UP, 2020) and an edited volume of essays on the career of Taylor Mac, The MacBook (University of Michigan Press, 2021). He is also currently working on two book-length projects, Reviving Broadway, on the cultural politics of Broadway from the 1930s to the present, and Remembering AIDS, on the early AIDS years in the United States. He is a former editor of Theatre Journal and a founding editorial member of GLQ. He’s served as the scholar-in-residence at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles under the leadership of founding artistic director Gordon Davidson and he was the chair of the board of directors at Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles under the leadership of founding artistic director Tim Miller. He has previously taught at Macalester College, Pomona College, the University of Washington-Seattle and Yale University. He’s won multiple awards for his scholarship, teaching, and service.

Holly Hughes is an internationally acclaimed performance artist whose work maps the troubled fault lines of identity. Her combination of poetic imagery and political satire has earned her wide attention and placed her work at the center of America’s culture wars. Hughes was among the first students to attend The New York Feminist Art Institute, an experiment in progressive pedagogy launched by members of the Heresies Collective. While there, she worked with feminist artists such as Miriam Schapiro and Mary Beth Edelson and participated in performance work at A.I.R. gallery. In the early ’80s, Hughes became part of the Women’s One World Café, also known as the WOW Café, an arts cooperative in the East Village established by an international group of women artists. As the Village gradually became a magnet for the avant-garde art world, WOW served as an incubator for a generation of artists. Hughes has performed at venues across North America, Great Britain and Australia including the Walker Art Center, the Wexner Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Yale Repertory, the Drill Hall in London, and numerous universities. She has published two books: Clit Notes: A Sapphic Sampler and O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance, co-edited with Dr. David Roman. In addition, her work has been widely anthologized and has served as foundational material for performance studies, queer studies and feminist performance studies. Hughes has received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council, the Ford Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others. She is the recipient of two Village Voice Obie awards, a Lambda Book Award, a GLAAD media award, and a Distinguished Alumni Award. In addition to teaching at the University of Michigan, Hughes is co-editing Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café, with Alina Troyano for the University of Michigan Press, and is creating a new solo piece entitled The Dog and Pony Show (Bring Your Own Pony). She has also been commissioned by the U-M Institute for Research on Women and Gender to create a new performance piece in celebration of the organization’s tenth anniversary.

Opening Reception for How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care
2019-11-01 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care
Exhibition: November 1, 2019 – January 9, 2020
Opening Reception November 1, 2019, 7 to 10 PM
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and Queer|Art|Mentorship are proud to present How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care, the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual Exhibition, curated by current Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro. This special exhibition will present new work by the graduating Fellows of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship program, Queer|Art’s celebrated year-long intergenerational creative and professional development program, now entering its ninth year.
The exhibition will include new works of film, literature, performance, and visual art by J. Bouey, Candystore, Daniel Chew, Xandra Clark, Sarah Creagen, Cristóbal Guerra, Russell Perkins, Ripley Soprano, and Natalie Tsui. Many of the artworks on view will be shown as fragments of larger bodies of work or works still in process, offering glimpses of each artist’s broader practice in ongoing formation.
A central theme of the exhibition targets the process of cultivating intimate and collective forms of access. In Vaccaro’s words, this has meant “building trust by being honest about what we need to make art and be together, what we can and can’t tolerate, what holds us back, and what can propel us forward. It is about the work it takes to manage togetherness across difference and through desire. It is about making transparent the everyday and historical as sites of possibility and reinvention, and it is about needing each other—all of us—to do the work of transforming our aesthetic and political worlds.” The Annual will be accompanied by a publication, designed by Jade Marks, edited by Jeanne Vaccaro, and produced by Queer|Art.
Works:
Candystore: I’m Sitting on My Butthole (installation)
Sarah Mihara Creagen: Sex, Botany, and BDSM (works on paper)
Cristóbal Guerra: Otro Archipielago / Another Archipielago (mixed media)
Nancy Brooks Brody & Russell Perkins: A Different Light (proposal documents and archival materials)
Russell Perkins: Monday 22 July 2019 (newsprint)
Ripley Soprano: harmreduxxcommunism (harm reduction materials)
Natalie Tsui: Me, Or Perhaps Someone Else (video installation)
How do we know what we need you to know is a component of Queer|Art’s 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual Exhibition, which opens on November 1 in conjunction with the 2019 Queer|Art|Prize, and continues through January 9 at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Community Center in the West Village (208 W 13th St). The two-month exhibition includes multiple components in a variety of gallery-based and time-based art formats, including a special presentation of the 2019 Queer|Art Community Portrait Project, featuring more than 40 newly commissioned portraits of Queer|Art’s diverse and vibrant intergenerational artist community by photographer Lola Flash.
The 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual kicks off with The Annual Party on Friday, November 1 from 7-10pm, hosted by theater artists Mashuq Mushtaq Deen and Xandra Clark, who have worked closely together throughout the past year as Mentor and Fellow. The evening will also include the awards announcements for the 2019 Queer|Art|Prize, now entering its third year with support from HBO. Queer|Art|Prize annually awards two artists, selected through a national nominating process, with $10,000 prizes (one for Sustained Achievement and the other for Recent Work). The night will conclude with a dance party as DJ Jasmine Infiniti brings the epic night of queer revelry and celebration to a close.
The Annual Party will take place in room 301 of The LGBT Community Center.
RSVP is required for The Annual Party, tickets here
QUEER|ART|MENTORSHIP supports a year-long exchange between emerging and established artists in five different creative fields: Film, Literature, Performance, Visual Art, and Curatorial Practice.
Tickets are NOT required to attend the opening reception at the Bureau.
Please note that the Bureau will be closed from 6 to 7 PM on Friday, November 1, 2019, for a Q|A|M VIP preview of the exhibition.
Image: Nancy Brooks Brody and Russell Perkins, A Different Light, Proposal for the Courtyard of The LGBT Community Center, NYC, 2019 gouache on inkjet print

Exhibition-related programs:
Tuesday, November 5, 7 PM: Russell Perkins & Nancy Brooks Brody: A Different Light
Thursday, November 7, 7 PM: Cristóbal Guerra, Ripley Soprano, and Candystore: How We Need
Thursday, January 9, 2020 6 PM: Closing Reception: Queer|Art Karaoke Party

Russell Perkins & Nancy Brooks Brody: A Different Light
2019-11-05 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A conversation with Current Queer|Art|Mentorship Fellow Russell Perkins and his Mentor Nancy Brooks Brody (Fierce Pussy), along with Jeanne Vaccaro and Caitlin McCarthy, The Center’s Archivist about the legacy of art embedded in the working life of the LGBT Community Center, and a proposal for a new work by Nancy Brooks Brody and Russell Perkins, titled A Different Light, celebrating Leslie Feinberg and hir trailblazing labor to articulate marginalized queer histories and identities.
—
This event is part of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual, curated by current Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro and titled “How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care.” The exhibition will present across multiple formats and locations (including The LGBT Community Center, Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, Movement Research, and La MaMa E.T.C.) new work by the graduating Fellows of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship program: J. Bouey, Candystore, Daniel Chew, Xandra Clark, Sarah Creagen, Cristóbal Guerra, Russell Perkins, Ripley Soprano, and Natalie Tsui. Learn more at www.queer-art.org/qam-annual

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About A Different Light
A Different Light is an artwork about margins and in-between spaces. As a permanent, site-specific installation at The Center, Nancy Brooks Brody and Russell Perkins propose to engrave a small constellation of marks on the exposed undersides of the stone stairs of Stairwell C. These marks are drawn from handwritten notes found in writer, activist, and trans historian Leslie Feinberg’s personal library; culled from texts on political science, history, and poetry, they testify to moments of questioning, critical engagement, and discovery in Feinberg’s reading and writing practice.
The work is inspired by the legacy of art embedded in the working life of The Center. Joining the installations by Thomas Lanigan-Schmidt and Susan Strande that already share the liminal space of the stairway, it is meant to be viewed by passing through. The old stone steps resonate with the collective movements of the many bodies that have used them. Similarly, the heavily marked-up book pages—which we found as a result of our research in The Center archives—resonate with Feinberg’s trailblazing labor to articulate marginalized queer histories and identities.
In both cases, one senses an indexical contact with the past that cannot be translated into any single statement or message, but which speaks to physical processes of community in formation. By proposing an analogy between the transitional space of the stairway and the intertextual space of the margin, the work suggests that the viewer is participating in a story that is still being written.
As part of A Different Light, Nancy Brooks Brody and Russell Perkins propose to paint the lights in The Center’s outdoor courtyard pink. The lights’ coloring will be visible in both the day and night; once the sun has set and the lights are turned on, the space will be bathed in a warm, pink glow. The piece contrasts the weight and interiority of the proposed stairway engraving; both works, however require the viewer to look up in order to notice them. Because the windows on each floor landing of Stairwell C look out into the courtyard, the two works are also visible to one another.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: We 3/Os 3
2019-11-06 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
On November 6th please join us for a viewing of We 3/Os 3 (2011), directed by Nando Olival, starring Gabriel Godoy,
Victor Mendes, and Juliana Schalch.
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: College housemates Cazé, Rafael, and Camila agree not to date each other while they live together, but when they are offered the chance to participate in their own reality show to market products for a large company, things get complicated. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes, in Portuguese with English subtitles.

Cristóbal Guerra, Ripley Soprano, and Candystore: How We Need
2019-11-07 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A reading and performance on November 7 by Queer|Art|Mentorship artists Cristóbal Guerra, Ripley Soprano, and Candystore will activate works on display in the Bureau. Guerra presents a three-dimensional iteration of their book La Señal, about the historical narratives that have shaped colonial resistance in the islands currently known as “Puerto Rico.” Soprano performs poems and sound collages as part of their installation harmreduxxcommunism. Candystore screens a video collaboration with Jake Brush about the anus as a portal for self-discovery, universality, and connection via poetic and performative sensibilities.
—
This event is part of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship Annual, curated by current Fellow Jeanne Vaccaro and titled “How do we know what we need you to know: Intimate access and collective care.” The exhibition will present across multiple formats and locations (including The LGBT Community Center, Bureau of General Services – Queer Division, Movement Research, and La MaMa E.T.C.) new work by the graduating Fellows of the 2018-2019 Queer|Art|Mentorship program: J. Bouey, Candystore, Daniel Chew, Xandra Clark, Sarah Creagen, Cristóbal Guerra, Russell Perkins, Ripley Soprano, and Natalie Tsui. Learn more at www.queer-art.org/qam-annual
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About Cristóbal Guerra
Cristóbal Guerra is an interdisciplinary artist from Puerto Rico. Their work combines experimental video, documentary film, visual art, and text to explore ideas of “home”, el caribe, queerness and belonging. Through an interdisciplinary practice Cristóbal aims to explore the lived experience of being raised queer in the colony of PR in conversation with an evolving identity shaped by diasporic experience. Through research, experimental video, and text they look for the political in the personal. Intimate archival footage and documentary work seek to articulate present processes through a type of closure with the past, while poetry, prose, and other texts sets its sights on imaginaries that take into account the “canon”—and what was excluded from it—during the artist’s process of learning their own history as a colonial subject. Cristóbal work commonly deals with memory, language, new media and its relations to the Boricua diaspora. And more recently, the idea of non-corporeality and post-nationalistic thought informs the wrting of “La Señal”, a book the artist has developed during their time at Queer|Art|Mentorship.
About Ripley Soprano
Ripley Soprano is an organizer and writer based in Brooklyn, New York. They have been organizing for over a decade around racial and economic justice issues. They co-founded New York 2 New Orleans Coalition (NY2NO), New York Students Rising, Youngist: young people-powered media, and the fundraising collective “Shadowbanned” that materially supports sex workers facing criminalization. They are an editor and co-owner of Mask Magazine, and are currently co-authoring a book on the social history of incest for TigerBee Press alongside Sophia Giovannitti. Ripley has been published in Mask, AlterNet, The Nation Magazine, the New York Times, and Salon.
About Candystore
Imagine you are staring at a naked butt. On the left cheek is the letter “J” and on the right cheek are the letters “O” and “Y”. The ethos of Candystore’s artistic practice is to spread JOY. She-he thinks labels are short-sighted / obnoxious and art is more powerful when it is made accessible and in collaboration. Like many before shimher, Candystore has been cursed to consider the world poetically (ugh) and is at least trying to have a little fun with that. She-he was a 2018-2019 artist-in-residence with Shandaken: Governor’s Island. In 2019, she was one of four recipients of the Shannon Michael Cane Award from Printed Matter, which allowed shimher the opportunity to self-publish her debut book of poetry, Hi Angels. Candystore’s writing and art have been published in PAPER Magazine, Phile Magazine, Riot of Perfume, Precog Mag, RFD, and others. She-he has performed around New York City, most notably at MoMA PS1, though it was only in the book store. Candystore also performs every time she-he uses a public restroom. She-he loves dick and lives in Brooklyn, NY in a pink room.

Blood Box: A Book Launch and Reading
2019-11-08 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join host Jesse Rice-Evans and readers Joey De Jesus, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson, Spencer Williams, Chase Berggrun, and Zefyr Lisowski to launch Zefyr Lisowski’s debut murder grief lesbian short collection of poetry, Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019). From the publisher:
Blood Box, the deliciously haunting debut short collection from poet Zefyr Lisowski, takes us inside the infamous 1892 axe murders of Abby and Andrew Borden through twenty-six wide-ranging, stylistically experimental persona poems. Lisowski re-introduces us to mythologized spinster Lizzie Borden as we’ve never seen her before: a girl wielding an axe, yes, but also a girl trapped—in the boxes of age, of hunger, of loneliness, of blame. Lizzie, who was acquitted of the double murder of her father and stepmother, yet continues to haunt our cultural psyche over a hundred years later. Even now, “Violence dances with us like ghosts.”
In these pages, the notorious crime and its cast of characters serve as a jumping-off point for a textured exploration of inherited violence, queer intimacy, and the way family can be “another geometry, another violence too.” Blood Box is Lizzie’s story, but it’s also the story of grief, of selfhood, of trans and queer becoming. Lisowski’s Lizzie Borden is as sweet, sad, spooky, and haunted as a girl with an axe ever can be.
This event will run from 7 – 9 PM, with readings starting by 7:30. Come and be spooky!

A NOTE ON ACCESS: The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is on the second floor of The LGBT Community Center, with a working elevator; the building and Bureau are both wheelchair accessible, and chairs with backs will be provided. Wine, beer, & soft drinks will be provided by donation. Please refrain from wearing scented products.

Copies of Blood Box will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

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ON THE READERS:
Zefyr Lisowski is a trans & queer Southerner, the author of Blood Box (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and a Pisces. She’s a poetry co-editor at Apogee Journal and has received support from Tin House Writers Workshop, Sundress Academy for the Arts, The CUNY Graduate Center, and elsewhere. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Muzzle, DIAGRAM, Literary Hub, Nat. Brut., and the Texas Review, among other places. She’s currently working on Wolf Inventory, a collaborative film about ghost stories, ritual, and feminized sexual violence in the South, with filmmaker and artist Candace Thompson. Find her and more of her work online at zeflisowski.com.

A fat femme from NC, Jesse Rice-Evans is a former waitress and current doctoral student. She teaches workshops on digital writing and access-centered pedagogy. Read her poetry and essays in WUSSY, Nat. Brut, honey & lime, and others.

Joey De Jesus is the author of HOAX (Operating System, 2020), NOCT- The Threshold of Madness (The Atlas Review, 2019), and co-author, alongside Sade LaNay, of Writing Voice into the Archive vol. 1, organized and edited by Jennifer Tamayo with support from UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender. Joey formerly co-edited poetry at Apogee Journal, is an Advisory Board Member at No, Dear Magazine. Joey received the 2019-20 BRIC ArtFP Project Room Commission and 2017 NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship in Poetry. Poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day, Bettering American Poetry, BOAAT, The Brooklyn Rail, The Literary Review, and several other venues and installed at Artists Space, The New Museum, Franklin Street Works and elsewhere. Joey is running for New York State Assembly of District 38 in 2020 and needs your support.

Chase Berggrun is a trans woman poet. She is the author of R E D (Birds, LLC, 2018). Her work has appeared in American Poetry Review, jubilat, Poetry, and elsewhere. She received her MFA from NYU.

Cyree Jarelle Johnson is a librarian and writer from Piscataway, New Jersey. They hold a MS in Library and Information Science from Drexel University and an MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University. He is the author of two books, SLINGSHOT (2019) and How Greek Immigrants Made America Home (2018). Cyree’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Boston Review, Rewire News, The Root, and MOTHERBOARD/Vice. They have given speeches and lectures at The White House, TEDxColumbia University, Brown University, The University of Pennsylvania, community organizations, churches, festivals, and conferences throughout the United States. His work has been supported by Davis Putter Scholarship Fund, Astraea Foundation, Leeway Foundation, Disabled Writers, Culture/Strike, and the donations of countless community members who believe in what he does.

Spencer Williams is from Chula Vista, California. She is the author of the chapbook Alien Pink (2017, The Atlas Review Chapbook Series) and has work featured in Apogee, [PANK], Bat City Review, Pacifica, and IndieWire. In her spare time, she forgets to utilize the avocados she’s bought until it’s too late and they’ve all gone soft. She has at least seven Neopets accounts she forgot the passwords to, and received a BA in English and Cinematic Arts from University of Iowa. She’s currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Rutgers-Newark.
