BGSQD

Gay Novels of James Baldwin (in person & live-streaming)
2024-08-10 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us on the occasion of James Baldwin’s 100th birthday for an exploration of Baldwin’s gay novels: Giovanni’s Room (1956), Another Country (1962), and Just Above My Head (1979). Hosted by Afro-American scholar James Wright with guests Dominic Ambrose and Donnie Jochum.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

lesbian book club (in person only)
2024-08-10 11:00 - 12:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
We’ll be reading fiction and non-fiction — classic, contemporary, revealing and visionary. As a group we will decide what to read each month, focusing on lesbian authors and/or related topics. Co-founded by lesbian book lovers Judi Komaki and Piper Olsen.

For August 10th, we’ll be reading Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (Mariner Books Classics, 2007, paperback, $18.99).

Purchase Fun Home from the Bureau before August 10th and receive a 15% discount ($16.14 instead of $18.99)! Just mention the lesbian book club when you purchase the book. Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Revisioning Democracy podcast - Lessons in fighting right-wing criminalization and Project 2025 (hybrid in person & live-streaming)
2024-08-08 17:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
YOU ARE INVITED TO JOIN THE CONVERSATION!
WHAT DO WE WANT IN AMERICA NOW?
HOW DO WE FIGHT RIGHT-WING ASSAULTS & CRIMINALIZATION OF GENDER?
What: Revisioning Democracy video podcast launch with guest Allan Maleche, Executive Director of KELIN in Kenya, and other guests

Who: Co-hosts Anne-christine d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker of Stop The Coup 2025 campaign
When: Thursday August 8, 2024, 5-7 PM EDT

Where: The Bureau, room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC (and live-streaming at youtube.com/@bgsqd)

Why? Because we are facing unrelenting attacks and must fight back. We must vision ourselves into a better future – for America & the world.
Strap yourselves Down! Tighten your seat belts! You’re invited to join the launch of Revisioning Democracy – a new video podcast Public Conversation about the times and challenges we face right now in America – and globally — to defend our democracy and rights – and revision the world we want. This Public Conversation will examine the escalating attacks on our civil rights, authoritarianism, and our lessons, resistance, and commitment to the unfinished project of our democracy and our visions for a better future. That includes dissecting Project 2025, the conservative blueprint to destroy our democracy and impose a Christian theocracy on America – and how we fight back. Join us to be inspired by leading activists and voices from the trenches.

stopthecoup2025.org

We will not live in a Christian fundamentalist Handmaid’s Tale! We have a greater vision!
Revisioning Democracy will examine the challenges we face in America from a queer and feminist lens, and engage activists, change-makers, and thought leaders on the frontlines of the political and cultural wars.
Our second guest is African human rights activist Allan Maleche, Executive Director of The Kenya Legal & Ethical Issues Network on HIV and AIDS (KELIN), in conversation with cohosts Anne-christine d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker of the Stop the Coup 2025 campaign to fight Project 2025. Other guests may be added.

Info: stopthecoup2025@gmail.com

Lost & Found (in person literary workshop)
2024-07-28 11:30 - 12:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Lost & Found is a literary workshop designed to provide an opportunity for writers to read, review, and receive constructive criticism of their work, especially projects or pieces that are still works-in-progress or have hit a roadblock. Participants are required to bring one page (up to both sides) of material of any genre they’re working on to read aloud. Then, as a group, we workshop the piece—asking questions, providing feedback, offering solutions, and so on. The goal is to provide writers with a framework for creative development and a consistent network of feedback.
This will be the fifth of six sessions scheduled on alternating Sundays.
The final session will take place on: 8/11
RSVP here for the fifth session!

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

Questions? Contact moderator Mark Alan Burger here:
markalanburger@gmail.com

Moderator bios:

Mark Alan Burger is a writer, poet, publisher, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Fallible House. His work has appeared in Hello Mr., Interview Magazine, and Vanity Fair, and has received support from FAWC. He lives in Brooklyn.

Cortez is a poet and short fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate at Stony Brook University where she also teaches an undergraduate section of Intro to Creative Writing. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Honeybee Literature Prize in Fiction, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail and The Good Life Review.

Poetry for the Apocalypse (In Person & Live Streaming)
2024-07-18 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us on July 18th (6pm) for Poetry for the Apocalypse—a celebration of art making in the face of destruction to commemorate the publication of C. Russell Price’s “oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems” (Northwestern University Press). From the New York Times: “This debut by an ‘Appalachian genderqueer punk writer’ is as playful and provocative as you might guess: One poem is titled ‘My Sexual Identity Is a Toaster in a Bathtub.’” Price will be joined by NYC darlings of the literary scene Omotara James, Joseph Osmundson, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, and Robert Wood Lynn. A $10 suggested donation to the Bureau is greatly appreciated and punk af.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD
C. Russell Price is originally from Glade Spring, Virginia, but now lives in Chicago. They are a Lambda Fellow in Poetry, a Ragdale Fellow, a Windy City Times 30 Under 30 honoree, an essayist, and a poet. They are the author of a chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other. Their work has appeared in the Boston Review, Court Green, DIAGRAM, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lambda Literary, Nimrod International, PANK, and elsewhere. Their debut collection oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems was published by Northwestern University Press. They are a poet in residence with the Chicago Poetry Center and work with the Ragdale Foundation, Story Studio Chicago, and The Anarchist Review of Books. Their current project Bisquick: Seance Poems is about a ghost cowboy and his ghost, blue horse.
Omotara James is a writer, editor and visual artist. She is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a recipient of the 2019 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She earned her BA from Hofstra University and received her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. She is a fellow of Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants and currently lives in New York City.
Joseph Osmundson is a scientist and writer based in New York City. He has a PhD from The Rockefeller University in Molecular Biophysics. His book of essays, VIROLOGY, is forthcoming in 2022 from W.W. Norton. His research has been supported by the American Cancer Society, published in leading biological journals including Cell and PNAS, and he’s currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biology at NYU. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Gawker, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, The Lambda Literary Review, and The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere, too.
Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Pushcart-nominated poet, editor, organizer, activist, and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series partnered with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop that raises funds for transnational relief efforts, bail funds, and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Sundog Lit. A recipient of the Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his work has appeared or will soon in the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla.
Robert Wood Lynn is a writer from Virginia. His debut poetry collection Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press) was named a Best Book of 2022 by the New York Times and the New York Public Library. His chapbook How to Maintain Eye Contact was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, his writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, New Ohio Review and other journals, as well as been included in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia. A 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, he splits his time between in Rockbridge County, Virginia and New York City, where he co-hosts the DGN Reading Series. He teaches creative writing at Juilliard and at Brooklyn Poets.

Lost & Found (in person literary workshop)
2024-07-14 11:30 - 12:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Lost & Found is a literary workshop designed to provide an opportunity for writers to read, review, and receive constructive criticism of their work, especially projects or pieces that are still works-in-progress or have hit a roadblock. Participants are required to bring one page (up to both sides) of material of any genre they’re working on to read aloud. Then, as a group, we workshop the piece—asking questions, providing feedback, offering solutions, and so on. The goal is to provide writers with a framework for creative development and a consistent network of feedback.
This will be the fourth of six sessions scheduled on alternating Sundays.
Future sessions will take place on: 7/28, and 8/11
RSVP here for the fourth session!

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

Questions? Contact moderator Mark Alan Burger here:
markalanburger@gmail.com

Moderator bios:

Mark Alan Burger is a writer, poet, publisher, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Fallible House. His work has appeared in Hello Mr., Interview Magazine, and Vanity Fair, and has received support from FAWC. He lives in Brooklyn.

Cortez is a poet and short fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate at Stony Brook University where she also teaches an undergraduate section of Intro to Creative Writing. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Honeybee Literature Prize in Fiction, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail and The Good Life Review.

A Good Sport Signing with Soizick Jaffre (in person & live-streaming)
2024-07-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
French cartoonist Soizick Jaffre will be signing copies of her graphic memoir A Good Sport at the Bureau, on Wednesday, July 10th at 7:00 PM. Jaffre will discuss her work and her experiences representing France in the 2018 Gay Games. She will also read excerpts from her latest work.
A Good Sport is a graphic memoir written and drawn by Soizick Jaffre, detailing her participation in the 2018 Gay Games, her lifelong love of athletics, and her own personal search for freedom. This memoir is visually rich with Jaffre’s colorful, expressive illustration style that runs the gamut from realistic portrayal to eye-popping surrealism. A Good Sport deftly balances both personal and world history to paint a picture of feminist triumph and queer self-determination.

To reserve a copy of A Good Sport (Stacked Deck Press, 2024), please write to contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of A Good Sport for July 10” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

Soizick Jaffre is an author and comics artist born in Angoulême, France in 1978. She has published fiction, poetry, comics, and autobiographical stories in various independent publications in North America and Europe, such as ALPHABET (Stacked Deck Press) and Drawing Power (Abrams Books). Her typical style combines strong colors and surrealistic details.

Closed July 4th and 5th
2024-07-05, 2024-07-04 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Center will observe holiday hours on both Thursday, July 4th, AND Friday, July 5th: 5 PM to 9 PM.
The Bureau will be closed on both dates: July 4th and July 5th.
The Bureau will be open on Wednesday, July 3rd; Saturday, July 6th; and Sunday, July 7th: 1 to 7 PM.

Rebel Satori Pride Reading (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-28 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Since 2002, Rebel Satori has been committed to releasing cutting edge fiction, poetry, and creative non-fiction, with a focus on amplifying LGBTQIA+ voices and promoting diversity through its press and imprints Queer Mojo, Queer Space, Arabi Manor, and the Library of Homosexual Congress. Please join a bevy of our writers as they read work new and recently resurrected.
Featuring readings by:
ANTONIO ADDESSI
BRIAN ALESSANDRO
TOM CARDAMONE
LARRY CLOSS
DALE CORVINO
SVEN DAVISSON
SCOTT HIGHTOWER
DAVID NAZARIO

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

Antonio Addessi is a poet and writer living in New York City. His debut full-length book of poetry was published by Rebel Satori in Spring 2022. This year he was the Witter Bynner Poetry Foundation’s visiting poet at the New Mexico School for the Arts.

Brian Alessandro is a novelist, essayist, literary critic, and screenwriter. He has co-adapted Edmund White’s A Boy’s Own Story into a graphic novel, co-edited Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs, and his third novel, Julian’s Debut, will be published by Rebel Satori Press in March 2025. He also has a second feature and limited series in development.

Tom Cardamone is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as other works of fiction. Additionally, he edited Crashing Cathedrals: Edmund White by the Book and co-edited Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs. Currently he is co-curating the Rebel Satori Press imprint The Library of Homosexual Congress, dedicated to returning works of gay literature back into print -with a focus on the AIDS crisis. He will be reading from Allen Barrett’s The Body and Its Dangers, originally published in 1990 to great acclaim.

Larry Closs is the author of the novel “Beatitude” (Rebel Satori), described by Kirkus Reviews as “A realistic and engaging love story in a finely illustrated setting,” and winner of a Gold Independent Publisher Book Award. As a journalist, photographer and videographer, Closs has contributed to NBC, CNN, Daily Mail, The Huffington Post, USA Today, TV Guide, HarperCollins, Out Magazine, The Columbia Reader on Lesbians and Gay Men in Media, Society, and Politics, The Travel Channel and The Wildest, among many others.

A 2021 Lambda Literary Emerging Fellow in nonfiction, Dale Corvino’s essays have appeared in Salon, the Rumpus, and the Gay & Lesbian Review. Bonds & Boundaries is his debut collection of short stories. His memoir of sex work, Kept Boy in the Afterlife, won the 2023 Nonfiction Prize from C&R Press and will be released in September.

Sven Davisson is the innovative force behind Rebel Satori Press, an independent publishing house dedicated to pushing boundaries and amplifying marginalized voices. Under his stewardship, Rebel Satori continues to be a beacon for groundbreaking literature that resonates
with readers seeking fresh perspectives. In his latest book, Breeding Devils in Chaos, Davisson delves into the enigmatic realms of traditional witchcraft, infusing them with a postmodern and requeered perspective. The book navigates the intricate landscapes of male mysteries, offering a provocative exploration that challenges heteronormative notions.

Scott Hightower is the author of five books of poetry in the US and two bilingual collections in Spain. His awards include a Copper Canyon Hayden Carruth Book Award and a Barnstone Translation Prize. Originally from Texas, he has itinerantly sojourned in Spain, Italy, and India. He now works and teaches in Manhattan.

David Nazario is a poet, educator, and author with no writing schedule. They write when they feel. They write when they love. They write when they lose love. They write when they travel. They write for change and growth. They write for healing – their own and the world’s. Sometimes they write before crying uncontrollably. When they write, teach, and perform poetry, they aim to share their unique perspective as an Afro-Puerto Rican gay man living and loving in New York City and beyond. Their third book of poetry, Cum On Your Heart will be published by Rebel Satori Press in 2025.

Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join author Amin Ghaziani for a discussion of Long Live Queer Nightlife: How the Closing of Gay Bars Sparked a Revolution with writer and curator Hugh Ryan.
In this exhilarating journey into underground parties, pulsating with life and limitless possibility, acclaimed author Amin Ghaziani unveils the unexpected revolution revitalizing urban nightlife.
Far from the gay bar with its largely white, gay male clientele, here is a dazzling scene of secret parties—club nights—wherein culture creatives, many of whom are queer, trans, and racial minorities, reclaim the night in the name of those too long left out. Episodic, nomadic, and radically inclusive, club nights are refashioning queer nightlife in boundlessly imaginative and powerfully defiant ways.
Drawing on Ghaziani’s immersive encounters at underground parties in London and more than one hundred riveting interviews with everyone from bar owners to party producers, revelers to rabble-rousers, Long Live Queer Nightlife showcases a spectacular, if seldom-seen, vision of a queer world shimmering with self-empowerment, inventiveness, and joy.

To reserve a copy of Long Live Queer Nightlife (Princeton University Press, March 26, 2024, hardcover, $29.95), please write to contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Long Live Queer Nightlife for June 27” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

Amin Ghaziani is professor of sociology and Canada Research Chair in Urban Sexualities at the University of British Columbia. He is the award-winning author of The Dividends of Dissent, Sex Cultures, and There Goes the Gayborhood? (Princeton). His work has been featured widely in international media outlets, including the New Yorker, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Guardian, USA Today, and British Vogue.

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator, and most recently, the author of The Women’s House of Detention: A Queer History of a Forgotten Prison, which won the American Library Association’s Stonewall Book Award for Nonfiction and the W.A. Percy Foundation’s William Johansson Award. His first book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, won a New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He has been honored with the Allan Bérubé Prize from the American Historical Association, multiple grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Duberman Fellowship at the New York Public Library, and residencies at Yaddo and Watermill. He teaches in the MFA Program at Bennington College.

CURATOR TOURS: Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau (in person only)
2024-06-27 13:00 - 14:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Juno Rosenhaus, co-curator and founder of the Dyke+ ArtHaus, for an in-person tour of the over 60 artworks by Dyke Artists 40 and elder in the Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau exhibition. Learn about the Dyke+ ArtHaus, the exhibiting artists, and where this exhibition sits in the lineage of Dyke Art Shows. This is the final Curator Tour in June.
Check out the exhibition website at:

dykearthaus.org/dyke-arthaus-visits-the-bureau

Lost & Found (in person literary workshop)
2024-06-23 11:30 - 12:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Lost & Found is a literary workshop designed to provide an opportunity for writers to read, review, and receive constructive criticism of their work, especially projects or pieces that are still works-in-progress or have hit a roadblock. Participants are required to bring one page (up to both sides) of material of any genre they’re working on to read aloud. Then, as a group, we workshop the piece—asking questions, providing feedback, offering solutions, and so on. The goal is to provide writers with a framework for creative development and a consistent network of feedback.
This will be the third of six sessions scheduled on alternating Sundays.
Future sessions will take place on: 7/14, 7/28, and 8/11
RSVP here for the third session!

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

Questions? Contact moderator Mark Alan Burger here:
markalanburger@gmail.com

Moderator bios:

Mark Alan Burger is a writer, poet, publisher, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Fallible House. His work has appeared in Hello Mr., Interview Magazine, and Vanity Fair, and has received support from FAWC. He lives in Brooklyn.

Cortez is a poet and short fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate at Stony Brook University where she also teaches an undergraduate section of Intro to Creative Writing. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Honeybee Literature Prize in Fiction, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail and The Good Life Review.

Launch for Michael Nott’s new biography of Gunn, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life (in person only)
2024-06-22 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for a celebration of the poet Thom Gunn and Michael Nott’s new biography of Gunn, Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life. Michael Nott will be joined in conversation by writer Tom Sleigh.Thom Gunn was not a confessional poet, and he withheld much, but inseparable from his rigorous, formal poetry was a ravenous, acute experience of life and death.

Raised in Kent, England, and educated at Cambridge, Gunn found a home in San Francisco, where he documented the city’s queerness, the hippie mentality (and drug use) of the sixties, and the tragedy and catastrophic impact of the AIDS crisis in the eighties and beyond. As Jeremy Lybarger wrote in The New Republic, the author of Moly and The Man with Night Sweats was “an agile poet who renovated tradition to accommodate the rude litter of modernity.” Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life chronicles, for the first time, the largely undocumented life of this revolutionary poet. Michael Nott, a coeditor of The Letters of Thom Gunn, draws on letters, diaries, notebooks, interviews, and Gunn’s poetry to create a portrait as vital as the man himself.
Nott writes with insight and intimacy about the great sweep of Gunn’s life: his traditional childhood in England; his mother’s suicide; the mind-opening education he received at Cambridge, reading Shakespeare and John Donne; his decades in San Francisco and with his life partner, Mike Kitay; and his visceral experience of sex, drugs, and loss. Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life is a long-awaited, landmark study of one of England and America’s most innovative poets.

To reserve a copy of Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, June 18, 2024, hardcover, $45), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Thom Gunn for June 22” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD
Praise for Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life:
“Thoroughly engaging . . . Nott’s accounts of Gunn’s experiences at each dramatic stage in his life are rewarding to read, while his drug-infused sexual and poetic experiments are, by turns, shocking and sublime.” —Raúl Niño, Booklist (starred review)
“The great achievement of Nott’s biography is that it shows how poetry influenced Gunn’s life and how his life influenced his poetry, discussing, for instance, how reading Shakespeare and Stendhal made Gunn feel “as if anything were possible” and how he intended his 1971 collection, Moly, to be “an invitation to discuss homosexuality and LSD.” The result is a triumphant celebration of a larger-than-life writer.” —Publishers Weekly
“This is the Thom Gunn I came to know the last 20 years of his life and the world he inhabited. I find it startling that such a young scholar and writer who never crossed the man’s path succeeds in bringing the subject in all his emotional and intellectual complexity so vividly back to life. I was deeply moved. But that is Michael Nott’s rare gift, the artistry of the master biographer with genuine feeling for the man and his art he finds, justifiably, compelled to portray.” —August Kleinzahler, author of Snow Approaching on the Hudson
“Thom Gunn was the most exciting poet of his generation, and he lived an exciting life. He loved adventure, but he was also self-disciplined and blessed with acute intelligence. If these sound like contradictions, they don’t seem to flummox Michael Nott, who, though he never knew Gunn, gets him exactly as I remember him: kindly, courteous, self-deprecating, daring, playful, and a master of words. Nott’s skill as a biographer is exactly suited to his subject. Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life is gripping from the start and beautifully written.” —Clive Wilmer, author of New and Collected Poems

Michael Nott is the author of Photopoetry, 1845–2015: A Critical History and an editor of The Letters of Thom Gunn. He was a Fulbright fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellow at University College Cork. He lives in England.

Tom Sleigh, author of The King’s Touch, is an award-winning poet, journalist, and essayist. He is the author of eleven books of poetry and has worked as a journalist in the Middle East and Africa. Sleigh lives in Brooklyn, NY and is a Distinguished Professor in the MFA Program at Hunter College.

Dyke Artists in Conversation: Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-21 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Artists in the current Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau exhibition will discuss what participating in this show means to them, why it matters to the larger Dyke-identified artist community, and how it continues the lineage of lesbian artist exhibitions including A Lesbian Show (1978, NYC), Great American Lesbian Art Show (1980, Los Angeles), and Rebel Dykes Art and Archive Show (2021, London).
We will discuss considerations in identifying as a Dyke artist, and the importance of centering artists over 40 years old.
ARTISTS EXPECTED TO ATTEND:
★ adrians black
★ Allison Michael Orenstein
★ Angela Muriel
★ Anne Keating
★ Caroline McAuliffe
★ E. Lombardo
★ Elisabeth Jacobsen
★ Erika Kapin
★ eva r. barajas
★ Jeanise Aviles & Kenzi Crash
★ Julie Lindell
★ Juno Rosenhaus
★ Karsen Heagle
★ Kate Conroy
★ krissy mahan
★ Liz Ensz
★ liz margolies
★ Maya Alam
★ Melissa Wilkinson
★ Michelle Schapiro
★ Nancy Rodrigo
★ Sarah E. Brook
★ Shelley Marlow
★ Valarie Walker
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

Check out the exhibition website at:

dykearthaus.org/dyke-arthaus-visits-the-bureau

Book Launch: Unsettling Queer Anthropology, Margot Weiss with Martin Manalansan and Shaka McGlotten (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-20 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join editor Margot Weiss and contributors Martin F. Manalansan IV and Shaka McGlotten for the launch of Unsettling Queer Anthropology. A brief reading will be followed by a conversation about new queer of color, decolonizing, and abolitionist approaches to queer studies and queer ethnography.

About the book:
A field-defining volume, Unsettling Queer Anthropology foregrounds the brilliance of a queer anthropology grounded in decolonial, abolitionist, Black feminist, transnational, postcolonial, Indigenous, and queer of color approaches—and accountable to the vitality of queer and trans life.

“If you think you know queer anthropology, think again: Margot Weiss and the contributors to this volume shake up, mess with, and reinvigorate conversations about the possibilities and limits of queer anthropology for the twenty-first century. Unsettling Queer Anthropology is a timely, vital, and very necessary read for anyone engaged in queer and/or anthropological studies.”
— David A.B. Murray

To reserve a copy of Unsettling Queer Anthropology (Duke University Press, May 17, 2024, paperback, $29.95), please write to contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Unsettling Queer Anthropology for June 20” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

Margot Weiss is the editor of Unsettling Queer Anthropology: Foundations, Reorientations, and Departures, which came out in May 2024 from Duke University Press. Her other books include Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality and Queer Then and Now: The David R. Kessler Lectures (coedited with Debanuj DasGupta and Joseph Donica). She is currently finishing a book entitled Desiring Otherwise: Transformative Knowledges of Queer Left Activism. She teaches anthropology and queer studies at Wesleyan University.

Martin F. Manalansan IV is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora and the forthcoming Queer Dwellings: Mess, Mesh, Measure. He has edited several collections, including Q&A: Voices from Queer Asian North America and Beauty and Brutality: Manila and Its Global Discontents. He is the president of the Association for Asian American Studies, and Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University. Before his academic career, he worked for ten years at the Asian Pacific Islander Coalition on HIV/AIDS and the Gay Men’s Health Crisis.

Shaka McGlotten is the author of Dragging: Or, in the Drag of a Queer Life and Virtual Intimacies: Media, Affect, and Queer Sociality, as well as coeditor of Black Genders and Sexualities (with Dana-ain Davis) and Zombies and Sexuality (with Steve Jones). Their work has been supported by Data and Society, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. They teach media studies and anthropology at Purchase College-SUNY, where they also serve as Chair of the Gender Studies program.

CURATOR TOURS: Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau (in person only)
2024-06-20 13:00 - 14:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Juno Rosenhaus, co-curator and founder of the Dyke+ ArtHaus, for an in-person tour of the over 60 artworks by Dyke Artists 40 and elder in the Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau exhibition. Learn about the Dyke+ ArtHaus, the exhibiting artists, and where this exhibition sits in the lineage of Dyke Art Shows. Curator Tours will occur on the following dates:
● Thursday, June 20, 1-2pm (also with co-curator Lola Flash)
● Thursday, June 27, 1-2pm

Check out the exhibition website at:

dykearthaus.org/dyke-arthaus-visits-the-bureau

Closed for Juneteenth!
2024-06-19 | NY
Happy Juneteenth! Both the Bureau and The Center will be closed for the holiday on Wednesday, June 19th.

Revisioning Democracy: The #StopProject2025 Podcast, Episode 1: Queers Confronting Autocracy: A Conversation with Sarah Schulman (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Strap in your seat belt! You’re invited to join the launch of Revisioning Democracy – a new video podcast Public Conversation about the times and challenges we face right now in America to defend our democracy and rights – and revision the world we want. This Public Conversation will examine the escalating attacks on our civil rights and our resistance, including our commitment to the unfinished project of our democracy and our visions for a better future. That includes dissecting Project 2025, the conservative blueprint to destroy our democracy and impose a Christian theocracy on America – and how we fight back.
Revisioning Democracy will examine the challenges we face in America from a queer and feminist lens, and engage activists, change-makers, and thought leaders on the frontlines of the political and cultural wars. Our first guest is well-known author, journalist, and lesbian activist Sarah Schulman, in conversation with cohosts Anne-christine d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker of the Stop the Coup 2025 campaign to fight Project 2025. Info: stopthecoup2025@gmail.com

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation $10 for the Stop the Coup 2025 Campaign

Podcast Guest: Sarah Schulman
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer, AIDS historian, public intellectual and proud lesbian activist. She is the author of 20 books, including novels in multiple genres: historical fiction, literary fiction, experimental
Co-Hosts: Anne-christine (AC) d’Adesky and Jay W. Walker.
Anne-christine d’Adesky founded GenDemocracy in October 2023, then launched its Stop The Coup 2025 campaign in December 2023. She is an award-winning independent journalist and author, feminist, longtime human rights, gender equality and HIV activist, and author of four books.
Jay W. Walker is the social media manager for GenDemocracy’s Stop The Coup 2025 campaign. A queer Black leader and community organizer, he is a longtime New York City activist on LGBTQ+, HIV and racial justice issues, founding member of Rise and Resist, President of Gays Against Guns, and cofounder and lead organizer of NYC’s Queer Liberation March.

Michael Andor Brodeur presents SWOLE: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle (in person only)
2024-06-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for a discussion of Michael Andor Brodeur’s debut book, Swole, in which he shares why brawn deserves our serious consideration.
A memoir and researched cultural history of bodies from ancient mythology, Renaissance art, to the current fascinating world of manfluencers, Swole signals a fresh examination of the meaning of manhood in the 21st century and the outsized role our bodies play in defining one’s true strengths. As Kirkus notes in their starred review, the book succeeds as “A memoir, history, and critical essay in one, sure to captivate anyone who’s ever pumped—or dreamed of pumping—iron.”
Michael Andor Brodeur will be joined in conversation by pianist Adam Tendler.

To reserve a copy of SWOLE: The Making of Men and the Meaning of Muscle (Beacon Press, May 28, 2024, hardcover, $28.95), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Swole for June 13th” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Michael Andor Brodeur has been the classical music critic at the Washington Post since 2020. Previously, he held editorial and staff-writer positions at the Boston Globe and Boston’s Weekly Dig. His essays, humor, and criticism have also appeared in Nylon, Thrillist, Entrepreneur, Medium, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and other publications. He has also released 5 music albums under different monikers, most recently writing and performing electronic music under the name New Dad.

Adam Tendler has played the piano since the age of 6, but still sometimes can’t believe the piano is a thing—like, this big machine that makes a very particular sound that people take quite seriously, as if that sound is important and essential, eternal, timeless and primordial, like wind, waves, or volcano fire. But really it’s an accumulation of taste and preference, the sound of a piano, and a rather modern invention, right? So he thinks about that a lot. He also often can’t believe he plays the piano, particularly before a concert, and sometimes gets lost in the thought that Bach and Brahms and so many other composers never once heard the sound of, say, an airplane.
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GETTING IN: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s, David Kennerley in conversation with Ernie Glam (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join queer culture historian David Kennerley and Club Kid Ernie Glam for a discussion about David’s new book, GETTING IN: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s.
The 1990s in New York City was a heady time for clubgoers, especially those with a queer bent. Massive dance clubs like the Roxy, Palladium, Limelight, and Tunnel drew fiercely passionate crowds. But the plucky smaller venues like Splash, Crowbar, Pyramid, and Sound Factory Bar were just as vital. David ventured into these now-legendary clubs. And when it was time to leave, promoters handed out flyers for the next week’s parties. Most people tossed them on the sidewalk, but he saved each and every one.
GETTING IN spotlights over 200 of the most eye-popping, culturally resonant examples from his collection. The invites are not only visually stunning –– depicting flamboyant Club Kids, shirtless hunks, and sassy drag queens –– but tell a story of a unique moment in history when the LGBTQ community was reeling from the AIDS crisis and nightspots provided a refuge.
With a foreword by nightlife guru Michael Musto, it features essays and quotes from denizens from the decade, like drag doyenne Lady Bunny, DJ Larry Tee, go-go boy Mark Allen, photographer Sean Kahlil, and, of course, Club Kid Ernie Glam. Ernie will share memories of his personal exploits at the clubs, especially his association with the infamous “party monster,” Club Kid ringleader, Michael Alig.

To reserve a copy of Getting In: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s (2023, hardcover, $49), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Getting In for June 12th” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

David Kennerley is a journalist, archivist, and historian specializing in LGBTQ culture. For nearly two decades, he has been an Arts & Entertainment reporter for Gay City News, the NYC-based LGBTQ newspaper and website. Examples of his nightclub ephemera collection have been exhibited at The New-York Historical Society. His fully illustrated book, GETTING IN: NYC Club Flyers from the Gay 1990s, was published by DAKEN Press in August 2023.

Ernie Glam is a journalist, author, creator and New York City nightclub personality. He became involved in the club kid scene at the Tunnel nightclub in 1988, which led to a series of gigs at many nightclubs. He designs nightclub accessories under the AttentionShifter brand on his Etsy store. He was born and raised in Sacramento and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. He lives in the Bronx and his favorite nightclub in 2024 is Basement underneath the Knockdown Center.

Lost & Found (in person literary workshop)
2024-06-09 11:30 - 12:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Lost & Found is a literary workshop designed to provide an opportunity for writers to read, review, and receive constructive criticism of their work, especially projects or pieces that are still works-in-progress or have hit a roadblock. Participants are required to bring one page (up to both sides) of material of any genre they’re working on to read aloud. Then, as a group, we workshop the piece—asking questions, providing feedback, offering solutions, and so on. The goal is to provide writers with a framework for creative development and a consistent network of feedback.
This will be the second of six sessions scheduled on alternating Sundays.
Future sessions will take place on: 6/23, 7/14, 7/28, and 8/11
RSVP her for the second session!

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

Questions? Contact moderator Mark Alan Burger here:
markalanburger@gmail.com

Moderator bios:

Mark Alan Burger is a writer, poet, publisher, and the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Fallible House. His work has appeared in Hello Mr., Interview Magazine, and Vanity Fair, and has received support from FAWC. He lives in Brooklyn.

Cortez is a poet and short fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. She is a current MFA candidate at Stony Brook University where she also teaches an undergraduate section of Intro to Creative Writing. She was named a finalist in the 2023 Honeybee Literature Prize in Fiction, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Brooklyn Rail and The Good Life Review.

The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports (in person)
2024-06-08 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In December 1935, Zdeněk Koubek, one of the most famous athletes in women’s track-and-field sports, announced that he was going to be living as a man.
Overnight, Koubek became a global celebrity. For a brief moment, he seemed to be ushering in a new paradigm for sports. Readers flooded popular magazines with letters asking how a gender transition was possible. Doctors wrote op-eds urging the public to accept him. Queer Americans wondered how they, too, could follow a similar path.
In this conversation, Michael Waters and Julie Kliegman will discuss the lost stories of Koubek and other prominent queer athletes from this era. They’ll also chart the origins of anti-trans and anti-intersex policies at the Olympics today, showing how these policies were crafted, without public support, by a few reactionary sports officials.
To reserve a copy of The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, June 4, 2024, hardcover, $30), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Other Olympians for June 8th” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Julie Kliegman is a writer and editor in Queens, New York. She is the author of Mind Game: An Inside Look at the Mental Health Playbook of Elite Athletes. Her work has appeared in outlets including Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, Bookforum, The Ringer, BuzzFeed News, Vulture, The Verge, and Washington Monthly.

Michael Waters is a writer whose work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Baffler, and other publications. He’s the author of The Other Olympians: Queerness, Fascism, and the Making of Modern Sports. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

THE QUEEN OF STEEPLECHASE PARK: DAVID CIMINELLO IN CONVERSATION WITH BLAIR FELL (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author David Ciminello presents his novel The Queen of Steeplechase Park. He will be joined in conversation by Blair Fell, author of The Sign for Home (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2022).
To reserve a copy of The Queen of Steeplechase Park (Forest Avenue Press, May 7, 2024, paperback, $20), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Queen of Steeplechase Park for June 7” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @BGSQD

About THE QUEEN OF STEEPLECHASE PARK:
THE QUEEN OF STEEPLECHASE PARK is the absolutely, positively, practically, almost-true story of infamous burlesque queen and magic meatball maker Belladonna Marie Donato.
Pregnant at fifteen after gleefully losing her virginity to pansexual neighborhood strongman Francis Anthony Mozzarelli, Bella is robbed of her baby by a pack of nefarious nuns and her embittered papa has her sterilized without her consent (legal in 1935). With the help of a besotted Francis, her newfound family of queercentric outcasts, and a top-secret meatball recipe, a devastated Bella embarks on a riotous quest through Depression-era Coney Island sideshows, the tawdry world of peekaboo striptease routines, a doomed mob marriage, and a tasty collection of wisdom-filled recipes to find her lost child, herself, and maybe even true love. It all leads Bella back home, to the scene of her original sin, where she boldly faces matters of life and death, questions of forgiveness, and a holy mess only the healing properties of great Italian cooking can fix.

“David Ciminello has written a great big rollercoaster of a novel. . . . Read this book! Hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.”
—Fannie Flagg, author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe

“Ciminello is a master of delicious wordplay. His lusciously cinematic story is a veritable carnival ride culled from his family’s kitchen history. The Queen of Steeplechase Park is a tasty tale of love, sex, and the holy magic of homemade Italian cooking.”
—Blair Fell, author of The Sign for Home

“Open your mouth and ready your heart because Belladonna Marie from The Queen of Steeplechase Park is about to serve you some unforgettable tales of love and loss, with a side of meatballs. David Ciminello has re-animated Depression era Coney Island with such vivid and dazzling detail that I wanted to laugh, cry, eat a hot dog, and go for a swim all at once. A phenomenal story of a Burlesque queen searching for her lost baby in the glitz, ooze, and hum of sideshows from Brighton to Gravesend. I couldn’t put it down.”
—Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust

“Meet Belladonna Marie, the force of nature plucked from the historical and culinary passions of David Ciminello. Set in depression-era Coney Island, the novel whips up a bevy of queer, memorable eccentrics, served with a heaping side of sumptuous language. From Melanzana to Puttana, The Queen of Steeplechase Park is a whimsical, gastronomical delight.”
—Suzy Vitello, author of Bitterroot

“The Queen of Steeplechase Park crackles with the hyper-real comic book energy of a graphic novel, and the recipes are a primer on how to live your best life. Buon appetito! Mangiare bene! Delizioso!”
—Stevan Allred, author of The Alehouse at the End of the World

David Ciminello is a Lambda Literary Fellow and the proud recipient of a Table 4 Writers Foundation Grant. His fiction has appeared in the Lambda Award-winning anthology Portland Queer: Tales of the Rose City, Nailed Magazine, and in The Untold Gaze. His original screenplay Bruno, an Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting finalist, was directed by Shirley MacLaine. As an actor David has guest starred on Murder She Wrote, Matlock, Kojak, and Seinfeld.

Blair Fell is an actor, playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. His debut novel The Sign for Home (Atria/Emily Bestler Books, 2022) was long-listed for the Center for Fiction’s first book prize and was selected both as an Indie Next and Indie’s Introduce book by the American Bookseller’s Association. His second novel Disco Witches of Fire Island (Alcove Press) will be released May, 2025.

CURATOR TOURS: Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau (in person only)
2024-06-07 13:00 - 14:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Juno Rosenhaus, co-curator and founder of the Dyke+ ArtHaus, for an in-person tour of the over 60 artworks by Dyke Artists 40 and elder in the Dyke+ ArtHaus Visits the Bureau exhibition. Learn about the Dyke+ ArtHaus, the exhibiting artists, and where this exhibition sits in the lineage of Dyke Art Shows. Curator Tours will occur on the following dates:
● Friday, June 7, 1-2pm
● Thursday, June 20, 1-2pm (also with co-curator Lola Flash)
● Thursday, June 27, 1-2pm

The Pinko Commie Dyke Reads...With Friends (in person & live-streaming)
2024-06-05 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Julie R. Enszer reads from her new, fully illustrated poetry collection, The Pinko Commie Dyke: Poems From a Leftist Lesbian Cabal, joined by poet Irena Klepfisz and multihyphenate writer Donna Minkowitz (journalist, essayist, memoirist, and soon-to-be novelist). Poet, writer, and founding publisher of Indolent Books Michael Broder will introduce the readings.

To reserve a copy of The Pinko Commie Dyke: Poems From a Leftist Lesbian Cabal (Indolent Books, 2024, paperback, $20), please write to contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of The Pinko Commie Dyke for June 5” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

About the Readers
Julie R. Enszer, PhD, is the author of several previous poetry collections including Handmade Love (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2010), Sisterhood (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013), Lilith’s Demons (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2015), and Avowed (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2016), as well as the editor of the poetry anthology Milk and Honey: A Celebration of Jewish Lesbian Poetry (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2011). Enszer also edited OutWrite: The Speeches that Shaped LGBTQ Literary Culture; Fire-Rimmed Eden: Selected Poems by Lynn Lonidier; The Complete Works of Pat Parker; and Sister Love: The Letters of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker 1974–1989. Enszer edits and publishes Sinister Wisdom, a multicultural lesbian literary and art journal. More at julierenszer.com.

Irena Klepfisz is a trailblazing lesbian poet and political activist and the author of six books of poetry. Along with Clare Kinberg and Grace Paley, Klepfisz in 1988 founded The Jewish Women’s Committee to End the Occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Her Birth and Later Years, a volume of new and collected poems from 1971–2021, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2022. It was a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award and winner of the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry from the Publishing Triangle.

Donna Minkowitz is a pioneering lesbian writer known for her coverage of gay and lesbian politics and culture in The Village Voice from the late 1980s through the mid-1990s, for which she won a GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Media Award. She is the author of the investigative book Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters With the Right Taught Me About Sex, God, and Fury, and the memoir Growing Up Golem. Her debut novel, the autofantasy Donnaville, is forthcoming from Indolent Books in 2024. More at donnaminkowitz.com.

Book Release Party for Poets Regie Cabico and Drew Pisarra (in person & live-streaming)
2024-05-31 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In honor of their celebrated new poetry collections, A Rabbit in Search of a Rolex and Fassbinder: His Movies, My Poems respectively, Regie Cabico and Drew Pisarra will be marking the occasion by reading their own and each other’s poems.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

Regie Cabico is the first openly queer and Asian American poet to win the Nuyorican Poets Cafe Grand Slam. He’s appeared on HBO, NPR, and TEDx Talk. He is the executive director for A Gathering of the Tribes.

Drew Pisarra is the author of two sonnet collections (Periodic Boyfriends and Infinity Standing Up), two short story collections (You’re Pretty Gay and Publick Spanking), and two radio plays (The Strange Case of Nick M., and Price in Purgatory).

Celebrating the Reissue of the Classic Gay Novel Time Remaining by James McCourt (in person & live-streaming)
2024-05-30 18:00 - 19:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join us in celebrating the reissue of James McCourt’s 1993 novel of drag, AIDS, New York City and beyond: 1993’s Time Remaining. Critic Harold Bloom listed Time Remaining as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
“McCourt is that rarest of contemporary American authors — a true iconoclast.” Dennis Cooper.
To reserve a copy of Time Remaining (Library of Homosexual Congress, April 30, 2024, paperback, $19.95), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Time Remaining for May 30” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd

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

James McCourt is the author of multiple works of fiction and nonfiction. He is best known for his acclaimed 1971 debut novel Mawrdew Czgowchwz (pronounced Mardu Gorgeous) which is currently available with the New York Review Books Classics imprint. Queer Street: The Rise and Fall of an American Culture, 1947-85, published in 2003, was identified by The New York Times as an “heroically imaginative account of gay metropolitan culture, an elegy and an apologia for a generation.” Critic Harold Bloom listed Time Remaining as one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century.
James McCourt lives with his husband, author Vincent Virga, in New York City with summers spent in Ireland. They’ve been together since 1964.

Tim Young has written the new introduction for Time Remaining. He has been thinking and writing about the role of literature and music in the narrative of life for many decades. In addition to a series of essays on popular culture for Design Observer, he has contributed work for The Yale Review.

Cartoonists on Palestine (in person & live-streaming)
2024-05-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for a comics reading and performance by cartoonists writing about Palestine, including contributors to the collection Cartoonists for Palestine, MC’d by Solomon Brager and Shay Mirk. We will have readings from Jennifer Camper, Marguerite Dabaie, Eli Valley, Kazimir Lee, and Ben Passmore, and a live drawing to musical performance by Tracy Chahwan accompanied by Nebila Oguz and Omar Dewachi.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Cartoonists will be selling merch at the event to fundraise for the Gaza Scholarship Fund for Displaced Students. Co-sponsored by Jewish Currents magazine and Cartoonists for Palestine.

Tracy Chahwan is an illustrator and designer from Lebanon. She started her career in Beirut, producing street art and posters for local independent music venues like the Beirut Groove Collective, and working with the Samandal and zeez comics collective to publish experimental comics and anthologies.

Nebila Oguz is a Turkish-American animator and cartoonist currently based in Philadelphia. She started illustrating by making political posters during the 2013 Gezi Park protests while living in Ankara, Turkey. Her work has appeared in comic anthologies as well as in her zine I Didn’t Ask to be Here, where she breaks apart the absurdities of living and working in the United States. She is currently working as a Teaching Artist with Spiral Q.

Omar Dewachi is an Iraqi Canadian academic and sound artist based in New York City. Skilled in classical Iraqi and Arabic music, he performs across Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Since 2018, he has been involved in sound design and music composition for theater, and has produced experimental and electronic music projects under the alias “Puppets of Babylon.” He teaches anthropology at Rutgers University.

Jennifer Camper is the author of books including Rude Girls and Dangerous Women and subGURLZ, and editor of two Juicy Mother comics anthologies. She was the creating director of three Queers & Comics Conferences and has been featured in the documentary film No Straight Lines: The Rise of Queer Comics. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and exhibitions.

Marguerite Dabaie is the author of the graphic novel The Hookah Girl and Other True Stories. Their most recent comic, Legends in the Heights, draws on autobiographical, socio-political, and historical-fictional comics with a decorative flair.

Kazimir Lee has lived for almost equal amounts of time in Malaysia, the UK, and the US. They now reside in Brooklyn. They enjoy queer subtext, parenthood, ghost stories, and karaoke.

Ben Passmore is the author of the ongoing comic book series Daygloayhole, as well as the Eisner Award-nominated and Ignatz Award-winning comic collection Your Black Friend. He also wrote and illustrated Sports Is Hell, collaborated with Ezra Claytan Daniels on BTTM FDRS, and now contributes to publications such as The Nib and The New York Times. He lives in Philadelphia.

Eli Valley is a Jewish Currents contributing writer. His comics collection Diaspora Boy: Comics on Crisis in America and Israel is available from OR Books.

Hosts:
Sarah “Shay” Mirk is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. Shay was a contributing editor at comics publication The Nib, the author of Guantanamo Voices, and an editor of Cartoonists for Palestine.

Solomon Brager is the author of the graphic memoir Heavyweight (William Morrow, 2024) and the director of community engagement at Jewish Currents.

PORTALS: Clarity Haynes and Alannah Farrell in conversation (in person & live-streaming)
2024-05-26 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join us for a celebration of Clarity Haynes: Portals, artist Clarity Haynes’ new monograph. At this event, Clarity Haynes will present a short slideshow as a background for her work, and then there will be a conversation between Haynes and artist Alannah Farrell, who has modeled for Haynes’ torso project. The event will start promptly at 3 pm and continue until 4:30 pm. Books will be available for purchase at the event.
To reserve a copy of Clarity Haynes: Portals (New Discretions Publishing, February 20, 2024, hardcover, $45), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of Clarity Haynes: Portals for May 26th” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.
All are welcome to attend, with or without a donation.

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

Clarity Haynes is a queer feminist painter based in New York City. Her work centers on the torso as a site for portraiture, queer feminist altars as a site for still life, and crowning and birth. Recent solo exhibitions include Portals at New Discretions, New York (2024), Collective Transmission at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut (2021), and Altar-ed Bodies at Denny Dimin Gallery, New York, co-presented with New Discretions (2020). Her monograph, Portals was recently published by New Discretions and D.A.P. Haynes is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner award and a NYFA award, and her work has been discussed in the New York Times, the New Yorker, Artforum, Hyperallergic, and Artnews, among others.

Alannah Farrell is a queer gender-non-conforming painter who lives and works in New York City. They spent their late teens and early adulthood working and playing in queer NYC nightlife of the 2000s alongside even stranger side hustles while completing their BFA at The Cooper Union, New York, in 2011.
Throughout their life, they have consistently documented themselves, their friends, lovers, and community— and all the messy bittersweetness of being an imperfect, changing, growing human who loves humans for all those same reasons.
They have exhibited their work in solo and group exhibitions at galleries including Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, CA; Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Lyles & King, New York, NY; Alexander Gray Associates, Germantown, NY; Harper’s, New York, NY; Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; The Painting Center, New York, NY; Theirry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY; and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA among others. Their work has appeared in Art in America, Artforum, New York Magazine, Hyperallergic, Interview Magazine, THEM, and more.
