WMN - Lesbian Art and Poetry: Virtual Launch for issue 3 "Taking Space"
2021-07-24 12:00 - 13:30 (America/New_York) | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Please join WMN – a lesbian publication of art and poetry for the virtual launch of their third issue Taking Space. This issue features work by dykes who identify as disabled and/or are living with a physical, sensory, cognitive, or chronic illness.
WMN believes in representing sectors of the lesbian community that are not always given the visibility they deserve. WMN wants to support disabled artists and writers as the discourse around disabilities, and representation is lacking particularly within the art world and the lesbian community. Taking space is guest-edited by Zee Monteiro, who is based in London, UK, who is a community organizer, blogger, poet & activist who identifies as neurodivergent.
Suggested donation $5 to benefit the Bureau and the readers. All are welcome to join, with or without a donation. You can make a donation when you register.
Registration on Eventbrite required:

Click here to register

Accessibility notes:
– There will be live automated captions for the reading
– The launch and presentations will be in English
– The event will be recorded and available on the Bureau’s YouTube page as well as on the WMN website with a written transcription.
Poetry readings and artist presentations by Taking Space contributors: Aurora Berger, Marlena Chertock, Carson Wolfe, Marisol Brady, Nitika Raj, and Jenna Rowell.
This event is made possible in part by the Queens Council on the Arts with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Walk Between Worlds Release: Samara Breger with Leah Schnelbach
2021-09-08 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
Celebrate the release of Walk Between Worlds, Samara Breger‘s debut novel, called “the scrappy-sapphic-knight saga we all deserve,” by Tuck Woodstock, host of Gender Reveal. Samara will be joined in conversation by Leah Schnelbach, Senior Staff Writer at Tor.com.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to support the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Purchase Samara Breger’s Walk Between Worlds from the Bureau’s online store to have the book shipped to you or to pick up at our physical store.

Leah Schnelbach is the senior staff writer at the pop culture website Tor.com, and a fiction editor for the literary journal NoTokens. Their work has appeared in The Rumpus, Joyland, Electric Literature, Volume 1 Brooklyn, and other estimable places. Turn-ons: espresso, Oreos, well-deployed bi lighting; turn-offs: clickbait, lima beans, the death of the author. You can find them on Twitter @cloudy_vision

Samara Breger is a writer and performer from New York. In her previous life, she was an Emmy-nominated journalist, covering sexual and reproductive health. Now, she writes books about magic and feelings. She has a crush on every character.

Paul Moreno / Problem Areas Reception
2021-09-10 16:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is proud to present Paul Moreno / Problem Areas. This will be Paul’s first solo exhibition and includes a selection of paintings and drawings from 2016 through 2021.
Please join us for the opening reception for Paul Moreno / Problem Areas on Friday, September 10, 2021.
Please note that registration on Eventbrite is required.
In order to limit the number of people in the room at any given time, we are asking visitors to schedule their visits in advance. When registering you will need to select a half-hour slot between 4 and 7 PM. Masks are required throughout The LGBT Community Center, including the Bureau.
Click here to sign up for a half-hour slot between 4 and 7 PM.
Paul is a self-taught artist who grew up in Sparks, Nevada. Paul studied Literature and Critical Thought at University of San Francisco and NYU. About the title, Problem Areas, Paul states “I took the title from the old adage that art-making is largely a process of problem solving. However, the title is also meaningful in that when I choose subjects for my work, I try to look at something that I have complex or unresolved feelings about. By spending time with the subject, against the background of parsing it into formal elements that serve the picture, I find spiritual resolution can also present itself. In this way, the problem, as it were, is not a negative, but an opportunity to expose the beauty in the subject to myself and hopefully the viewer.”
Paul Moreno / Problem Areas will remain on view at the Bureau through December 31, 2021.

SHORTIES: Scott Alexander Hess & Joe Okonkwo on the Allure of Short Fiction
2021-09-16 18:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Scott Alexander Hess and Joe Okonkwo discuss their latest books. Hess has a volume containing two novellas—The Root of Everything and Lightning. Okonkwo has published a collection of short stories called Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck. After reading selections from their books, the authors will engage in a spirited conversation: How does writing short(er) fiction compare to composing full-length novels?
Patrick E. Horrigan, author of Pennsylvania Station, calls Hess’s novellas “Historical fiction at its cutting-edge best,” while noted author William J. Mann has lauded Okonkwo’s collection as “A remarkable examination of the human condition.”

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of attendees to 30. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 30 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Both Scott Alexander Hess’s The Root of Everything and Lightning: Two Novellas as well as Joe Okonkwo’s Kiss the Scars on the Back of My Neck are available for purchase from the Bureau. Click on either title above to purchase on our online store where you have the option to have books shipped to you or to pick up at our physical store. Books will also be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Scott Alexander Hess is the author of five novels, including Skyscraper, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist, and The Butcher’s Sons, which was named a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2015. His writing has appeared in HuffPost, Genre Magazine, The Fix, Thema Literary Review, and elsewhere. Hess co-wrote “Tom in America,” an award-winning short film, starring Sally Kirkland and Burt Young. He teaches fiction writing at Gotham Writers Workshop and curates Hot Lit, an LGBTQ+ themed monthly newsletter. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Hess lives in New York City with his husband.

Joe Okonkwo’s debut novel Jazz Moon won the Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His short stories have appeared in Global City Review, The Piltdown Review, The New Engagement, Storychord, Love Stories from Africa, and Strength. His story “Cleo” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Joe served as Prose Editor for Newtown Literary and he edited Best Gay Stories 2017. He is represented by the Baldi Literary Agency.

Jake Hall, Author of Art of Drag, in Conversation with Dominique Morgan
2021-09-22 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Jake Hall sits down with Dominique Morgan to discuss their latest book Art of Drag (2020) and how drag intersects with queer politics. Morgan is an award-winning TEDx speaker who has partnered her lived experience of being impacted by mass incarceration with a decade of change-making artistry and advocacy. Her book “Sex Ed for System Facing People” will be available early next year. Hall has written for Dazed Digital, i-D, VICE, and British Vogue among others on topics from sustainability in fashion to government crackdowns on queer people. Join us as both authors look at the abolitionist movement through a queer lens, the identity of drag, and what it means to subvert social constructs, hosted on Zoom by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in NYC.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Click here to register

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

Jake Hall is a freelance writer who has written for Dazed Digital, i-D, VICE, Highsnobiety, INTO, Refinery29 UK, and British Vogue, among others. They have written on topics from sustainability in fashion and body-shaming in queer communities, to government crackdowns on queer people, and intersex genital mutilation. Alongside this work, they are studying for a PhD at the University of Birmingham. Jake’s research aims to illuminate the link between high fashion and queer theory, as well as arguing the potential of clothing to radically challenge and subvert the social constructs of gender, sexuality, and race.

Dominique Morgan (She/Her) is an award-winning artist, activist, and TEDx speaker. As the Executive Director of Black and Pink, the largest prison abolitionist organization in the United States. She works daily to dismantle the systems that perpetuate violence on LGBTQ/GNC people and individuals living with HIV/AIDS. Partnering her lived experience of being impacted by mass incarceration (including 18 months in solitary confinement), with a decade of change-making artistry, advocacy, and background in public health, she continues to work in spaces of sex education, radical self-care, and transformative youth development with intentions of dismantling the prison industrial complex and its impact on our communities. Ms. Morgan is a 2020 Ten Outstanding Young Americans Award recipient, NAACP Freedom Fighter Award recipient, and 2020 JM Kaplan Innovation Prize recipient. Her new album Pisces In E Flat Major is available on all platforms and her book “Sex Ed for System Facing People” will be available January 2022. Find out more about Dominique at www.dominiquemorgan.com.

Queer Appalachian Parents, Sex Work, and the End of the World
2021-09-23 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
Join rural authors Alison Stine, winner of the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award, and Becca Spence Dobias to discuss their new books, Trashlands and On Home.
Trashlands is a strip club at the edge of an apocalyptic junkyard where a mother works to earn enough to rescue her son.
In On Home, three generations of Appalachian mothers, including one who works as a cam girl, struggle with the weight of the past and the small town they call home.
What can rural America—past, present, and near-future, teach us about queerness and the volatile world we find ourselves in today? Stine and Spence Dobias will ask each other these questions and more.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Click here to register
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Purchase Becca Spence Dobias’s On Home (paperback, $18.99) from the Bureau’s online store to have the book shipped to you or to pick up in the physical store.

Pre-order Alison Stine’s Trashlands (hardcover, $27.99) from the Bureau’s online store to have the book shipped to you or to pick up in the physical store–please note the release date is October 26, 2021.

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

Alison Stine grew up in rural Ohio and now lives in Colorado. Her first novel Road Out of Winter won the 2021 Philip K. Dick Award. A disabled writer, she is the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and National Geographic, and writes for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, 100 Days in Appalachia, and elsewhere. Her next novel Trashlands publishes from MIRA (HarperCollins) in October 2021.

Becca Spence Dobias grew up in West Virginia and now lives in Southern California with her husband and two children. She is the Project Manager for Writing Bloc and a co-host of its podcast, The Indie Writer Podcast. On Home is her first novel.

“Summer Fun” + “You’re Pretty Gay”: Jeanne Thornton and Drew Pisarra
2021-09-24 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
Celebrate the release of Summer Fun, Jeanne Thornton’s second novel and You’re Pretty Gay, Drew Pisarra’s new collection of short stories. The former has been hailed as “Wildly imaginative . . . Thornton’s writing is as rich as her ideas and spiked with wit.” by Kirkus Reviews while the latter has been described as “a mosaic of wit, surrealism, sex, queerness, memory, mortality and self-discovery” by The Washington Blade.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Click here to register
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Purchase Jeanne Thornton’s Summer Fun (hardcover, $27) from the Bureau’s online store to have the book shipped to you or to pick up in the physical store.
Purchase Drew Pisarra’s You’re Pretty Gay (paperback, $14) from the Bureau’s online store to have the book shipped to you or to pick up in the physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work by purchasing books from us!

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun, The Dream of Doctor Bantam, and The Black Emerald, as well as the coeditor (with Tara Madison Avery) of We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. She is the copublisher of Instar Books and lives in Brooklyn. More information is available at her website, jeannethornton.com.

Drew Pisarra is the author of the books You’re Pretty Gay, Infinity Standing Up, and Publick Spanking as well as the radio play “The Strange Case of Nick M.” A literary grant recipient of both Café Royal Cultural Foundation and Curious Elixirs: Curious Creators, he currently lives in Hell’s Kitchen in real life and at mistermysterio in the Twittersphere.

Leslie Cohen Shares The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation
2021-09-25 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Leslie Cohen will discuss her new memoir, The Audacity of a Kiss: Love, Art, and Liberation, published by Rutgers University Press. Cohen and her partner Beth Suskin served as models for George Segal’s iconic sculpture Gay Liberation, located in Christopher Park across from the Stonewall Inn. In her evocative memoir, Cohen tells the story of a love that has lasted for over fifty years and recounts her quest to build gay and feminist oases in New York, including the groundbreaking women’s nightclub Sahara.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive an email with the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Click here to register

LESLIE COHEN has been a museum curator, a nightclub owner and promoter, a limousine driver, and a lawyer, as well as a writer whose work has appeared in such publications as Curve and The New York Times Style Magazine. Now retired, she and her wife Beth live in Miami, Florida with their cat, Birdie.

Purchase The Audacity of a Kiss from the Bureau’s online shop or our physical store in Manhattan’s LGBT Community Center! Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Bureau closed on Sundays October 3 and 10
2021-10-03, 2021-10-10 | NY
We apologize for any inconvenience and we hope we’ll see you soon! In the meantime please visit our online store, which is always open!

BESPOKE IS BACK--MOVED TO ONLINE ONLY!
2021-10-13 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED ONLINE! PLEASE JOIN US ON THE BUREAU’S YOUTUBE CHANNEL:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzrAvfZMDF_ilmUH0CBn5iA
Bespoke is back! Your favorite all queer, all genre reading series returns to the Bureau (VIRTUALLY ONLY) this October 13th featuring three fantastic writers — Doug Dibbern, Ricardo Hernandez, and Janelle Lawrence!
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation on Eventbrite when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

Doug Dibbern’s Cinema’s Doppelgängers (Punctum Books, $25) will be available for purchase at the event. If you would like us to hold a copy for you or ship a copy to you, please email us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Doug Dibbern’s second book, Cinema’s Doppelgängers,a work of speculative fiction in the guise of a scholarly history of film, was published this summer by Punctum Books. His first book, Hollywood Riots: Violent Crowds and Progressive Politics in American Film, won the 2016 Peter Rollins Prize. He’s currently finishing what he hopes will become his third book, which he refers to as either an “anti-memoir about his obsessive cinephilia” or a “Sebaldian rumination on the relationship between art, genealogy, and identity formation.” He’s also published cinema studies scholarship, film criticism for “The Notebook” at Mubi.com, and literary essays for journals like Chicago Quarterly Review and Hotel Amerika. He has a Ph.D. in Cinema Studies from New York University and teaches there now in the Expository Writing Program.

Janelle Lawrence is an Afro-Latinx interdisciplinary artist that investigates communal and individual strength with stories that explore the complex layers of perspective and perception. They have had their musicals presented at various Theaters such as Club Cumming, Joe’s Pub, Seattle Public Theatre, Legoland NY and The REACH at the Kennedy Center. They have been residents of the 92nd St Y Musical Theatre Development Lab: Collective, Greenhouse Residency SPACE on Ryder Farm resident and Barn Arts Hamilton Project Resident. They are a Juilliard School alumni, and a 2020 Recipient of NBT’s Soul Series Lab – Playwriting Micro-Development Session.

Ricardo Hernandez is recipient of fellowships from Lambda Literary, Poets House, and the Vermont Studio Center. His poems have appeared in MumberMag, Muzzle Magazine, Hyperallergic, and other publications. A semifinalist for the 2019 Vinyl 45 Chapbook Contest, Ricardo holds an MFA from Rutgers-Newark and lives in Jersey City.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.

Craft Class & Reading with Jen Hyde
2021-10-16 11:00 - 13:30 | NY
If storytelling is one of the first acts of literacy for young children (ages 0-3), as poets, how do we use our gifts to inspire and connect with developing minds? What do our lines sound like when we write them for young people? How do we make use of abstraction, or compelling images to convey a literal life lesson or learning moment? The purpose of this workshop is to start thinking about how an idea can translate to a picture book. We’ll look at examples including “One Leaf Rides the Wind” by Celeste Davidson Mannis, “Daniel Finds a Poem” by Micha Archer, and “The Day You Begin” by Jacqueline Woodson. This workshop will be one part story time, one part discussion, and one part active writing. We will draw on several storytelling forms in picture books to create an original story or poem for children in the 0-5 age group. Participants can bring an idea for a story or a poem you’d like to revise or rework together. The reading to follow is open to the public; feel free to bring your little ones!

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link for the event.
Click here to register
Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.

Office Hours Poetry Workshop is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. The workshop fellowship 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 womxn-identified. Our Craft Classes are free and open to the public with RSVP.

Jen Hyde is the author of Hua Shi Hua: Drawings and Poems from China. She is currently at work on a memoir about her heart defect and the women who’ve saved her life. Her work has been supported by fellowships from The Asian American Writer’s Workshop, The Millay Colony, Yaddo and Hedgebrook, and she has written essays for The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Longreads, and elsewhere. More at jenhyde.com

William E. Jones and Paul Moreno Flesh + Blood / For Your Pleasure
2021-10-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
This hybrid live and in person / virtual event brings together William E. Jones, author of the new novel I Should Have Known Better, and Paul Moreno, artist whose show Problem Areas is currently on view at the Bureau.
William and Paul began an on-going discussion about art, writing, and culture, queer and otherwise, in 2019 when one of them slid into the other’s DMs. At this event the conversation will take place live and with an audience. William will read a selection from I Should Have Known Better, and Paul will give a brief talk about his show. They will then chat about each other’s work in an impromptu fashion before taking questions from attendees in person or virtually. Paul will be talking live at the Bureau, and William will be present virtually from Los Angeles.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 20. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 20 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please join us online as we livestream this event onthe Bureau’s YouTube channel.
Purchase Jones’sI Should Have Known Better(paperback, $13.95) from the Bureau!
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Forget Burial Book Launch
2021-10-23 18:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Marty Fink and Alex Juhasz for an intergenerational conversation about the ongoing legacy of HIV caregiving to celebrate the launch of Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care.
Queer and trans people in the 1980s and early ‘90s were dying of AIDS and the government failed to care. Lovers, strangers, artists, and community activists came together to take care of each other in the face of state violence. This book uncovers how early HIV care-giving narratives actually shape how we continue to understand our genders and our disabilities today.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of attendees to 20. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 20 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please join us online as we livestream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation here when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Purchase Forget Burial: HIV Kinship, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (paperback, $29.95) from the Bureau to have shipped to you or to pick up at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Marty Fink is an Associate Professor of Professional Communication at X University. They are the author of Forget Burial: HIV Kinships, Disability, and Queer/Trans Narratives of Care (Lambda finalist in LGBTQ non-fiction, 2020) which investigates HIV activism past and present through the lens of caregiving. Fink’s work has appeared in journals including Television and New Media Studies, The Journal of Medical Humanities, Transgender Quarterly, and Jump Cut. Fink’s work draws on homo archives and trans literature toward prison abolition and defunding the police.
Dr. Alexandra Juhasz is Distinguished Professor of Film at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She makes and studies committed media practices that contribute to political change and individual and community growth. Author and/or editor since 1995 of scholarly books on activist media in light of AIDS (AIDS TV, 1995 and AIDS and the Distribution of Crises, 2020, Duke), black lesbian and queer representation (Sisters in the Life, Duke, 2018), feminism (Women of Vision, UMN, 2001), and digital culture (Learning from YouTube, MIT, 2011, Really Fake, with Nishant Shah, 2021, U MN Press), Dr. Juhasz also makes videotapes on feminist issues from AIDS to teen pregnancy as well as producing the feature fakes The Watermelon Woman (Cheryl Dunye, 1997) and The Owls (Dunye, 2010). Her current work is on and about fake news and radical digital media literacy (fakenews-poetry.org).

Conjuring the Sacred: Poets of the Diaspora
2021-10-28 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
We’re not sure what the problem is with registering on Eventbrite today, but please know that you can live-stream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzrAvfZM
Join us for a free virtual celebration of Black poets, living and writing in the diaspora. This magical lineup includes: Gbenga Adesina, Kemi Alabi, Romeo Oriogun and Candace Williams. These four contemporary scholars, storytellers and archivists, whose work expands the cannon, will perform poems and offer their favourite poetry prompts to the audience. The program will be moderated by Omotara James and is brought to you by City Artists Corps Grant & NYFA.
This event is FREE, but registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
Gbenga Adesina, Nigerian poet and essayist, is the author of Painter of Water, a haunting meditation on intimacy in the face of war and historical violence selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New Generation African Poets series. His work centers intimacy as a form of inquiry, and the sea as archive and brutal border around which orbits the questions of empire, migration, and exile. He was a Goldwater Fellow at NYU where he received his MFA, and was mentored by Yusef Komunyakaa. He was the 2020 Olive B.O’Connor Fellow at Colgate University, where he taught a poetry class called, “Song of the Human”. His work have been published in Prairie Schooner, Harvard Review, Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day, and the New York Times. He’s the winner of the 2020 Narrative Prize. (Author photo description: A person with a beard. Description automatically generated with medium confidence).

Kemi Alabi was born on a Sunday in July. The author of Against Heaven (Graywolf Press, 2022), selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Academy American Poets First Book Award, their work appears in Poetry, the Atlantic, Best New Poets 2019, The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2, and elsewhere. Alabi is coeditor of The Echoing Ida Collection (Feminist Press, 2021) and lives in Chicago, IL. (Author photo description: A person wearing glasses-description automatically generated with low confidence.)

Romeo Oriogun is the author of Sacrament of Bodies, a finalist for the Lambda Award for Poetry. He currently lives in Ames where he is an Innovation Fellow at Iowa State University.

Candace Williams is a black queer nerd living a double life. By day, they’re a middle school English teacher. By night, they’re a poet. Their chapbook, Spells for Black Wizards, was a 2017 TAR Chapbook Series winner and published by the Atlas Review. The Dark Diary (formerly futureblack), their first full-length poetry manuscript, was a 2018 National Poetry Series finalist and is forthcoming from Grieveland.
They’ve earned a MA in Elementary Education from Stanford University, a Brooklyn Poets Fellowship, Pushcart nominations, as well as workshop scholarships from Cave Canem and the Fine Arts Work Center. They were a 2017 Create Change Fellow at the Laundromat Project. They’ve read their poetry, given lectures, and devised original performances at many venues including the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Bushwick Starr Theater, Poetry Project, Eyebeam, Dixon Place, the New School, and the New Museum. They are a member of CityLore’s Homer 2 Hip Hop Advisory Committee. (Author photo description: A picture containing person, indoor. Description automatically generated.)

Moderator:
Omotara James is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and editor, based out of New York City. Her debut poetry collection is “Song of My Softening,” slated for release in 2022, with Alice James Books. (Author photo description: A picture containing person, glasses, indoor. Description automatically generated.)

Welcome to the Tori Vortex
2021-10-29 18:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Ksenia M. Soboleva, Samantha Nye, and Catalina Schliebener will discuss their collaborative project Raspberry Swirl: Dyke Views on Tori, which poses Tori Amos as a time-capsule into 1990s teenage rebellion, queer alienation, and femme aesthetics. Published by Lyeberry press, the eponymous artist-book is the culmination of their deep dive into queer Tori fandom, which they have coined the “Tori Vortex.” Led by Ksenia’s desire to theorize the lesbian obsession with Tori Amos, Sam and Cata reflect on the ways in which their adolescence was marked by the redhaired musician, and how these sensibilities have informed their current artistic practice.

Megan Milks will read from TORI AMOS BOOTLEG WEBRING, their personal history of early online Tori fandom. In this second volume of Instar Books’ new Remember the Internet series, Milks returns us to a world before “search” and “social media,” a world still inventing the rules for being with one another online. Teenage Megan takes us on a journey from early listservs and personal fan pages to the most elite Tori Amos tape trading webring of 1998, using their living room computer to navigate fandom friendships haunted with nascent queer meaning.

Stephen van Dyck will read from PEOPLE I’VE MET FROM THE INTERNET, a queer re-imagining of the coming-of-age narrative set at the dawn of the internet era, taking the form of a very long annotated list. The book spans twelve years, starting in 1997 when AOL is first entering suburban homes just as thirteen-year-old Stephen is coming into his sexuality, constructing selves, and cruising in the fantasyscape of the internet. Through strange, intimate, and sometimes perilous physical encounters with the hundreds of men he finds there, Stephen explores the pleasures and pains of growing up, contends with his mother’s homophobia and early death, catalogues popular culture (Shirley Manson, Annie Lennox, and Tori Amos), and searches for glimpses of utopia in the available world.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19 we ask that all attendees bring proof of vaccination and we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 35. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend. You will need to show proof of vaccination at the door.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

KSENIA M. SOBOLEVA is a Russian-Tatar writer and art historian specializing in queer art and culture, with a particular focus on lesbian (in)visibility. She holds a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU.

SAMANTHA NYE is a painter, video installation artist and long-term Tori Amos lover living in Philadelphia. Samantha’s first solo show My Heart’s In A Whirl is currently on view at The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

CATALINA SCHLIEBENER is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. Schliebener’s work draws on images, objects, and narratives associated with childhood and explores gender, sexuality, and class.

MEGAN MILKS is the author of Tori Amos Bootleg Webring, as well as Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body and Slug and Other Stories, both out this fall from Feminist Press.

STEPHEN VAN DYCK is the author of People I’ve Met from the Internet, out now from Ricochet Editions. Stephen lives in Los Angeles.

Gay Literature Icon Felice Picano’s Only New York Appearance
2021-10-30 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Felice Picano will read selections from his praised new novel, Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment and discuss the book and its companion volume, Pursued: Lillian’s Story, to be published in 2022. Both are fictional results of the author’s decades long research into gender and sexuality throughout history. Other periods of interest he is writing about are Pre-Homeric Greece, and 18th Century Naples. Picano will also discuss his Sci Fi Trilogy, City on a Star, and its first two volumes, Dryland’s End and The Betrothal at Usk.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of attendees to 20. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend in person.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 20 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please join us online as we livestream this event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel.

Purchase Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment (paperback, $18.95) from the Bureau’s online store and have it shipped to you or pick it up at our physical store.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
One of the founding fathers of Modern Gay Literature, and member of the ground-breaking Violet Quill, Felice Picano is the best-selling, prize-winning author of poetry, plays, screenplays, stories, novels, non-fiction, and memoirs translated into 17 languages.

Come Meet Musician and Poet Calvin Arsenia at the Bureau
2021-10-31 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come Meet Musician and Poet Calvin Arsenia at the Bureau on Halloween! Arsenia will be hanging out at the Bureau from 3 to 5 PM on Sunday, October 31st, to chat and to sign copies of Every Good Boy Does Fine.
To reserve a copy of Every Good Boy Does Fine (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2021, paperback, $14.99), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
About Every Good Boy Does Fine :
“Glowing with warmth, vulnerability, and a heavy heart, Arsenia’s intimate reflections depict the past and present wrestling within the individual as he endeavors to chart his own course in the world.”–Atwood Magazine
Both a journey of individual healing and a call for action, these poems show that, with a little love and acceptance, anyone can flourish.
From one of Kansas City’s most exciting singers Calvin Arsenia, comes a debut book of poetry and prose Every Good Boy Does Fine. Named for the classic mnemonic used to teach the lines of the treble clef (EGBDF), his collection speaks to his passion as a musician and also his deep and tumultuous history in the Evangelical community.
Arsenia includes elements of queer poetry, writings on racial awakening, Christian de-conversion, and sexual awakenings in a homophobic community with the hopes that, when finished reading, readers will feel ready to start their own journey of self-expression through music and performance.
A profoundly thoughtful and enlightening work, Arsenia uses his lyrical talent to show that there is always somewhere to go no matter where you are coming from.

About Calvin Arsenia:
Voted Kansas City’s Best Musician 2018 and 2019 (PitchKC), and featured on Billboard, NPR.org, NEWNOWNEXT, Pride.com, and GRAMMY.com, singer and harpist Calvin Arsenia has built a reputation for turning the arts world on its head.
Arsenia’s angelic, classically-trained voice soars over audiences, enchanting even the fussiest of fans, beckoning them to join him as he flirts between genres.
But the music is just one part of his prodigious performances, for Calvin believes the art is in crafting the perfect moment. His music is best
served live, with sensational performances and high fashion from the visually striking performer who stands at 6’6”.
Arsenia’s height, energy, and curated environments fill the often intimate spaces he performs in. Brought into 9 countries through public and private grants in less than a decade, Arsenia builds a scene for his audience and for himself, packed with beauty and lasting delight.
More at calvinarsenia.com

Cruising into Age—Getting Older Queerly
2021-11-04 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
How do queers age gracefully — and queerly? How do they deal with traumatic pasts, which sometimes leave painful personal and physical legacies, and how do they do so while keeping desire and intimacy alive? Prolific queer author Jonathan Alexander discusses his two new Fall books, the critical memoirs Stroke Book: The Diary of a Blindspot (Fordham University Press) and Bullied: The Story of an Abuse (Punctum) with fellow queer writer Alex Espinoza, author of Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome!
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us!
Click on the following links to place an order:

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

To purchase Jonathan Alexander’s Bullied: The Story of an Abuse please visit the publisher’s website: punctumbooks.com.

Jonathan Alexander is a writer living in Southern California where he is Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of California, Irvine. He is the author, co-author, or editor of twenty-one books. His cultural journalism has been widely published, especially in the Los Angeles Review of Books for which he is the Young Adult editor, where founding editor Tom Lutz called him one of “our finest essayists.” He lives with his husband and cat, and when not writing, dabbles in watercolors and plays piano in a music ensemble with friends. For more about Jonathan Alexander and his books please visit www.thecreeptrilogy.com and www.the-blank-page.com. Photo by Carla Wilson.

Alex Espinoza is the author of Still Water Saints, The Five Acts of Diego León, and Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. He’s written for the LA Times, the NY Times Magazine, VQR, LitHub, and NPR’s All Things Considered. The recipient of fellowships from the NEA and MacDowell as well as an American Book Award, he lives in Los Angeles and is the Tomás Rivera Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at UC-Riverside.

EXCESS: Aesthetics, Gender, Performance. A Roundtable Discussion
2021-11-10 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
A Roundtable Discussion about how a new generation of Black and Latina girls, drag queens, and burlesque stars are employing excess as a political tool. Featuring scholars Jillian Hernandez (author of Aesthetics of Excess), Meredith Heller (author of Queering Drag), and Lynn Sally (author of Neo-Burlesque). Moderated by Joe E. Jeffreys.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is FREE, but we welcome donations to support the work of the panelists and the Bureau. You can make a donation when you register. Thank you!

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

Purchase Jillian Hernandez’s Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment (Duke University Press, 2020, paperback, $27.95) directly from Duke University Press

Jillian Hernandez is Associate Professor at the Center for Gender, Sexualities, and Women’s Studies Research at the University of Florida. She created, Women on the Rise!, an outreach initiative that introduces contemporary art and artists and offers art-making praxis to young Black and Latina women in Miami. She discusses this in her critically-acclaimed book published by Duke University Press (2020), Aesthetics of Excess: The Art and Politics of Black and Latina Embodiment.

Meredith Heller is a Senior Lecturer of Queer Studies in the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Northern Arizona University. She specializes in queer theory and critical identity studies, with additional expertise in performance studies and digital media. Queering Drag: Redefining the Discourse of Gender-Bending won the Popular Culture Association’s 2021 John Leo and Dana Heller Award for Best Book in LGBTQ Studies and was named one of NBC’s “10 LGBTQ books to watch out for in 2020.”

Dr. Lynn Sally is a scholar and practicing artist. She received her PhD in Performance Studies from New York University and MA in Gender Studies and Feminist Theory from The New School for Social Research. Her recent book Neo-Burlesque: Striptease as Transformation (Rutgers University Press, 2022) has been hailed “a smart,feminist tour de force…must read” by Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stephens. She also writes creative nonfiction at Medium and www.lynnsally.com.

Joe E. Jeffreys is a drag historian. He teaches theatre studies at New York University and The New School and has video documented NYC’s vibrant drag and burlesque scenes for over a dozen years. See samples of his video work at https://vimeo.com/joejeffreys

What Wasn’t I Thinking: Sebastian Stuart Talks with Stephen McCauley
2021-11-11 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
If you are having trouble registering on Eventbrite (the site isn’t working properly right now, Thurs., Nov. 11, at 2 pm), please email us at contact@bgsqd.com and we’ll send you the Zoom link you need to join us online tonight at 7 PM.

JoinSebastian Stuartas he reads fromWhat Wasn’t I Thinking?: A Memoir Of Rebellion, Madness and My Mother.The reading will be followed with a conversation between Sebastian and authorStephen McCauley.
“Sebastian Stuart’s dazzling memoir held me in its thrall like the best kind of novel. His mastery of suspense and his inherent humanity make for one electrifying read. And, like all good memoirists, he made me reexamine my own life along the way.” –Armistead Maupin
“A madcap and a captivating, deeply moving chronicle of madness—a combination ofThe Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,Franny and Zooey,andThe Bell Jar.” —Kevin Sessums, author ofMississippi Sissy
“A gripping read—as sad and sweet as life itself.” —Edmund White

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link ON THE DAY OF THE EVENT.
Click here to register
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome.
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us!
Click on the following links to place an order on the Bureau’s online store:

Thank you for your support!

Sebastian Stuarthad a heady childhood. His brilliant, acerbic mother was the Entertainment Editor ofLifemagazine and his father was an Oscar-nominated filmmaker. James Baldwin was a dinner guest and Bette Midler paid a courtesy call. Yet beneath the glittering parties, the family was haunted by unspoken tragedy. By age fifteen Sebastian was dropping acid and turning tricks for money. He found friendship and solace with his cousin Tina, an aspiring poet and striking beauty who was signed by the Ford modeling agency. When Tina began to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia, Sebastian was torn between a desire to save her and the fear of losing himself in her madness. From San Francisco in the ’70s to New York in the AIDS-ravaged ’80s, Stuart’s quest for self-discovery leads to a sad and shocking understanding of his family history and the price of grief denied. And, ultimately, it leads to redemption. By turns hilarious, irreverent and heartbreaking,What Wasn’t I Thinking?is an unflinching evocation of loss and forgiveness.
Sebastian Stuarthas published nine novels, including a national bestseller published in eight languages, a New York Times bestseller and a Book of the Month Club selection. His novelThe Hour Betweenwas an NPR Season’s Readings selection and won the Ferro-Grumley Award as best LGBT novel of the year. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Stephen McCauleyis the author of six previous novels, includingThe Object of My Affection,True Enough, andAlternatives to Sex. Many have been national bestsellers, and three have been made into feature films.The New York Times Book Reviewdubbed McCauley “the secret love child of Edith Wharton and Woody Allen”, and he was named a Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Ministry of Culture. His fiction, reviews, and articles have appeared inThe New York Times,The Washington Post,Harper’s,Vogue, and many other publications. He currently serves as Co-Director of Creative Writing at Brandeis University. He has several properties listed on Airbnb in Massachusetts and New York and owns a total of zero toss pillows.

George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (and the Daring Life)
2021-11-12 19:30 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
This PowerPoint presentation and interview will examine the fascinating life and work of the gay photographer George Platt Lynes, who grew up in New Jersey and the Berkshires but became a transatlantic cosmopolitan with a wide network of queer friends—artists, writers, and performers. After befriending Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas when he went to Paris at age eighteen in 1925, Lynes eventually took up photography in NYC. His highly theatrical studio work in portraiture, fashion, classical dance, mythological subjects, and especially the male nude, were influenced by Surrealism. For nearly fifteen years he shared his life with Monroe Wheeler, a publisher who became a prominent behind-the-scenes figure at the Museum of Modern Art, and the novelist Glenway Wescott, who lived with Wheeler in France in the 1920s and became a member of the influential literary Lost Generation. Their threesome was at the nexus of intersecting queer cultural circles and included such artists as Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French (PaJaMa), fiction writer Katherine Anne Porter, impresario Lincoln Kirstein, and the painter and illustrator Bernard Perlin. Lynes-Wheeler-Wescott aided Dr. Alfred Kinsey’s Institute for Sex Research, and the Institute’s collection of Lynes’s male nudes preserves images almost never exhibited and rarely published in Lynes’s lifetime.

Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 30. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 30 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you’re unable to join in person, please note that we will post a video recording of the event on the Bureau’s YouTube channel a day or two after the event.

Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation on Eventbrite when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau’s work!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Pre-order Allen Ellenzweig’s George Platt Lynes: The Daring Eye (Oxford University Press, hardcover) from the Bureau at a 20% discount: $36 (marked down from $45)! Release date is November 9, 2021–shipments to go out as soon as we have copies in hand.
We hope to have copies in hand by November 12th, but we cannot guarantee that they will arrive on time for the event. We will update this page as soon as we have a confirmed date of arrival.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Allen Ellenzweig is a cultural critic and commentator who has published in numerous arts and general interest periodicals, including The Village Voice and Art in America, as well as the online journals Tablet, The Forward, and Poetry Magazine. His landmark history, The Homoerotic Photograph: Male Images from Durieu/Delacroix to Mapplethorpe, was published in 1992. He is a regular contributor to the Gay & Lesbian Review/Worldwide and teaches in the Writing Program of Rutgers University.

Trans...Back in the Day (online event)
2021-11-18 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Please join writer Alex Reeve, award-winning filmmaker Fiona Dawson, activist Blake Dremann, and actor Ash Palmisciano (of TV’s “Emmerdale”) for an exploration of trans life in the 19th century. FREE EVENT plus some TASTY DISCOUNTS. Join us November 18, 7pm (Eastern Time). In partnership with the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division.
Fiona Dawson emcees this special presentation, featuring an interview of author Alex Reeve and a dramatic reading by Ash Palmisciano. To close things up, Alex will take your questions in an Author Meets Reader event. Presented by Felony & Mayhem Press, in partnership with the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division.
Click here to register

Purchase the first two books in Alex Reeve’s Leo Stanhope series from the Bureau at a 25% discount courtesy of Felony & Mayhem!

TELL 75: Soft (IN PERSON!)
2021-11-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Soft is the theme of the 75th TELL, on Saturday, November 20, 2021, 7 to 9 PM (EST) IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Melissa Rocha, Scotty Salame, and Nessa Norich.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19, we are limiting the number of in-person attendees to 30. Proof of vaccination required. Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to attend.
Click here to register
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please cancel your reservation so that others can attend. If all 30 reservations have been claimed and you would like to be placed on a wait list, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Please bring proof of vaccination with you. You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. But you are more than welcome to make a donation here when you register. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Nessa Norich is a queer Ashkenazi filmmaker, performance artist, creative coach, educator and producer living in Brooklyn. Her work addresses the spiritual deficiencies of Western culture by opening up sacred containers for deep joy and collective grief. Nessa has directed music videos, experimental films, webseries and short narrative films. She has written, directed and performed in dozens of critically acclaimed original plays, internationally, and has starred in several feature length and short films that have played in festivals around the country. Recent: Nessa just wrapped the first short narrative film that she wrote, directed and acted in. Her musical comedy short, MAKE HAPPY, which imagined a conversation between the spirit of RBG and Melania Trump, days before the 2020 election, was viewed over 12,000 times in the four days between its release and Election Day. From March 2020 to April 2021, Nessa’s artist collective, Well of Wills, co-produced and co-created The Ark, a hybrid documentary short that poetically captures the first 40 days of Shelter in Place, weaving together the video diaries of 26 filmmakers with the ancient myth of The Great Flood.
Nessa is an alum of Emerge NYC and the NY Neo-Futurists. She is a graduate of Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre in Paris and received her B.A from Barnard College. Her teaching credits include Columbia University, Parsons, The New School, The Generations Project and Crossingpoint Arts.

Melissa Rocha is a brooklyn based comic. She’s very nice and is looking forward to spending the evening with you.

Scotty Salame is a New York based performer, Emmy nominated production designer, and visual artist. Past stage acting credits include One Love (Theatre for the New City), Parker & Dizzy’s Fabulous Journey to the End of the Rainbow (TNC), Fat Asses (TNC), and HAIR (Salem Theatre Company.) You can currently watch him on screen in titles including the comedy series Cady Did (YouTube), Pride: The Series (Amazon Prime Video) and the 2014 family film A Little Game. www.scottysalame.com

Closed for Thanksgiving
2021-11-25 - 2021-11-26 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Thursday, November 25th, and
Friday, November 26th.
We will re-open on Saturday, November 27th.

Craft Class & Reading with Wo Chan (online class)
2021-12-02 18:30 - 20:45 | NY
Join us for a Virtual Craft Class & Reading with Wo Chan
Craft class: 6:30-8:30 PM EST
Followed by a reading from 8:35-8:45 PM
“I love you. I’m glad I exist”: Poems of Daily Gratitude and Dedication
How do we mark the days? How do we describe (with care) the mundane and charged experiences that fill our lives? In this class, we will be reading poems that track daily living, uplifting on-the-ground quotidian writing with deep, intimate epistolary to open up a space of vulnerability, immediacy, and care. We will think about poetry writing as a ritualistic practice—for mourning, for celebration, and for tedium. We will read poems by Marilyn Hacker, Aracelis Girmay, Nazim Hikmet, Fay Chiang, Sharon Olds, Gabrielle Calvorcoressi, Dorianne Laux, Wendy Cope, and more. Come ready to write about your life as you are today. No prior writing experience necessary.
Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to this event on Zoom.
Wo Chan is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, the Lambda Literary Foundation, Poets & Writers, and the Asian American Writers’ Workshop. They served as a program assistant for Poets & Writers and a communications assistant for Kundiman. They live in Brooklyn and are a member of the Brooklyn-based drag alliance Switch n’ Play.
Office Hours Poetry Workshop is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. The workshop fellowship 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 womxn-identified. Our Craft Classes are free and open to the public with RSVP.

HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA (online event)
2021-12-03 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Presented by the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and What Would an HIV Doula Do?
Friday, December 3, 2021
4 PM PST / 5 PM MST / 6 PM CST / 7 PM EST
Online, Free (registration on Eventbrite required for Zoom link)
Two Writers… One title. Decades apart, and unbeknownst to each other, writers Berend McKenzie and Francisco Ibanez Carrasco both wrote very beautiful – and very different – short stories about community, connection, and HIV set in Vancouver in the late 20th century, with the same unique title: HOCKEY NIGHT IN CANADA.
For the first time, the two writers will come together for World AIDS Day to share their short stories, and talk with each other and an audience about living and creating with community, history, and HIV. Along the way they will also answer the question: What does hockey have to do with HIV anyway?
Berend´s story is part of the collection BETWEEN CERTAIN DEATH AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis.
Francisco´s story appeared in the underground publication, Diseased Pariah News (issue 11).
Hockey Night image: Juan Saavedra (knowjuan.com)
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are always welcome!
You can make a donation when you register for the event on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us.
Order Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2021, paperback, $22.95) from the Bureau’s online store.

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

BIOS
Berend McKenzie (he/she/they interchangeably) is a Treaty 6 Edmonton Alberta, Canada based, award-winning playwright, producer, actor, screenwriter, and published author, known for their unflinching, first-person writing style while drawing from their own lived experiences as a black, mixed-race Canadian. Berend began writing short plays in 2004 for the Loud & Queer Festival in Edmonton, Alberta, leading to his first full-length play, Get Off the Cross Mary! In 2009, Berend premiered, NGGRFG (Would you say the name of this play?). Their published works include NGGRFG (Signature Editions), Tassels (Brindle & Glass), Hockey Night in Canada (Arsenal Pulp Press). Berend is the 2021 Catalyst Theatre Confluence Fellow as well as a part of the 2021 Warner Media Global Access Writer’s Academy.

Francisco Ibanez-Carrasco’s rags-to-(somewhat)-riches story started with migrating from Chile, from poverty and military dictatorship, to 1985 Canada at 22 years old, getting diagnosed with HIV in 1986, becoming an AIDS activist in 1989, and pursuing a thrilling combo of community work and qualitative social-behavioural research. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto. His fiction shows desperate measures for desperate time and oblique relationships. His memoir Giving It Raw was published in 2015 by Transgress Press, Oakland, CA. https://givingitraw.ca/ On December 1, World AIDS day, Francisco has been presented with a POZ Toronto Award from POZ Planet magazine for his fight to HIV-stigma – https://www.facebook.com/groups/POZPLANET/

Kristy Harcourt (she/her) is a member of the What Would an HIV Doula Do? Collective based in Edmonton, Alberta. A 2SLGBTQ community worker, social worker, therapist and writer, she is also a Sessional Instructorin Social Work and Gender Studies at MacEwan University. Kristy was a co-host and performer in the long running Loud’n Queer Cabaret (Guys in Disguise / Workshop West) and a contributor to Queering The Way: The Loud’n Queer Anthology (Touchwood Editions).

What Would an HIV Doula Do? is a community of people joined in response to the ongoing AIDS Crisis. We understand a doula as someone who holds space during times of transition. We understand HIV as a series of transitions that begins long before being tested, continues after treatment and beyond. We know that since no one gets HIV alone, no one should have to deal with HIV alone. We doula ourselves, each other, institutions and culture. Foundational to our process is asking questions. Learn more at hivdoula.work

The Journey to Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-Of-Age Story
2021-12-11 11:00 - 12:00 | NY
Join author and illustrator Stacey Chomiak for a reading and Q&A about her new queer memoir Still Stace: My Gay Christian Coming-of-Age Story. In this young-adult illustrated memoir, Stacey Chomiak tells the true story of her teenage and young-adult years: of heartbreak, family conflict, trying to become ex-gay, wrestling with her faith, and finding love.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to the event on Zoom.
Click here to register
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Another great way to support the Bureau is to purchase books from us.

Thank you for your support!

Stacey Chomiak is currently an Art Director in the animation industry, getting her start on the well-loved series, “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic”. While she continues to lend her talents to various children’s animated shows, she also illustrates & writes kids books. She lives happily nestled with her wife and two kids amid the tall trees near Vancouver, Canada. Stacey identifies as a gay Christian, and loves to advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and have conversations around faith and sexuality. When she isn’t furiously sketching, Stacey is likely to be out for a bike ride, critiquing her favourite film, or encouraging her children to dance with her to Whitney Houston.

There Once Was A Muse... Poetry Reading and Q&A (In-Person Event)
2021-12-12 17:30 - 18:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
One of NYC’s favorite male figure models and boylesque performer, Sloppi Chulo will be reading a selection of his naughty limericks from his brand new chapbook, “There Once Was A Muse…” and discussing his work (both written and performative). “There Once Was A Muse…” is the brand new publication from the homoerotic art collective, Doable Guys. It pairs Sloppi Chulo’s limericks with artwork inspired by none other than the poet himself, in a deliciously narcissistic project! It features artwork by over 20 different artists.
Copies of “There Once Was A Muse…” will be available for purchase at the event.
Safety protocol:
In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19
Please bring proof of vaccination with you.
You will need to show proof of vaccination and a photo id in order to attend the event.
If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.
Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.
If you are unable to join in person, please visit the Bureau’s YouTube channel where we will live-stream the event.

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

Sloppi Chulo was born and raised in Hoboken, New Jersey. After collecting a couple of degrees from Yale University, he decided to make his parents and his alma mater proud by being a slutty slutty boy for a living. An accomplished figure model who has inspired visual artists and provided memorable drink-and-draw party experiences all over the tri-state area for over a decade, he has thousands of hours under his belt. As a performing artist and shameless exhibitionist, his leap into the world of burlesque was a natural one, debuting at the Stonewall Inn with Bad Apple Boylesque in 2015 and officially giving birth to the moniker Sloppi Chulo, a show-stealing clown who combines elements of musical theater, hip hop, physical comedy, and striptease. During the pandemic, like so many theater makers whose stages had disappeared, he transitioned to the virtual arena, starting an immediately successful OnlyFans account, where he continues to create content to make you laugh and blush, sharing artistic nudes from professional shoots as well as naughtier DIY fare, searching for the intersection between silliness and sexiness and having good dirty fun while doing it.
The event will be hosted by Kyle Anderson. He is the curator of Doable Guys, a homoerotic art collective showcasing and promoting a wide variety of styles of art from around the world. Doable Guys strives to celebrate the beauty of the male form and the Queer art community as a whole. That includes ALL queer artists, no matter their gender, sexual orientation, medium of choice or skill level.

Office Hours Fall 2021 Showcase Reading (online event)
2021-12-17 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
The Office Hours Poetry Workshop Fall 2021 fellows will give a brief reading in celebration of another strong semester of poetry making, community building, and thriving in difficult creative times. Fellows will read the innovative poetry they’ve developed over the course of four workshop sessions, write ins, and a virtual book club.
About us: Office Hours is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. We provide continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are femme-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia. http://sarahmsala.com/office-hours

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to gain access to the event on Zoom.
Suggested donation of $5 to $10 to benefit Office Hours
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Readers:
Laura Cresté is the author of You Should Feel Bad, winner of a 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She holds an MFA from New York University, and is currently a 2021-2022 writing fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Yale Review’s Poem of the Week series, Bennington Review, Poetry Northwest, and No Tokens.

J. Freeborn is a teacher and the anthology books managing editor at The Poetry Society of New York. They have recent work in Dream Pop, Occulum, Impossible Task, and elsewhere

James Fujinami Moore‘s debut collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022). His work has appeared in Barrow Street’s 4×2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received support from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles.

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

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

Megan Pinto is a writer living in Brooklyn. Her poems can be found or are forthcoming in Ploughshares, Lit Hub, Plume, RHINO, and elsewhere. In 2019, Megan attended Bread Loaf as a Work-Study Scholar and the Port Townsend Writers’ Conference as the Bill Ransom Founders Scholar. She received a 2019 Amy Award from Poets & Writers, a 2020 Emerging Woman Poet Honor from Small Orange, and a 2021 Voices of Color Fellowship from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. Megan’s chapbook length manuscript “These Contusions” was chosen by Joshua Bennett as a finalist for the 2021 PSA Chapbook Fellowship. Megan holds an MFA in Poetry from Warren Wilson.

Sarah M. Sala is a queer poet of Polish-Lebanese descent. Her debut collection, Devil’s Lake (Tolsun 2020) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, a Publishing Triangle Award, and an Eric Hoffer Provocateur Award. She is the founder of the free poetry workshop, Office Hours, and Poetry Editor at the Bellevue Literary Review. She is a clinical associate professor in the expository writing program at New York University. Her work appears in BOMB, the Southampton Review, and the Los Angeles Review. www.sarahmsala.com

Noel Sikorski‘s poems and Artwork are featured in Painted Bride Quarterly, Georgetown Review, Action Spectacle, The American Poet: The Journal of the Academy of American Poets, and The Bellevue Literary Review. She teaches writing at NYU.

Avia Tadmor is an Israeli-born writer and educator. She has been a member of the Office Hours Poetry Workshop since Spring 2021. Avia’s poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, The New England Review, The Adroit Journal, Apogee, and elsewhere. Her poetry received support from the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation/Bread Loaf Writers’ Summer Workshop. Currently, Avia is a Clinical Assistant Professor at New York University’s Expository Writing Program.
