lesbian book club: January edition (in person only)
2026-01-10 11:00 - 12:00 (America/New_York) | 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 our January 10th meeting, we’ll read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, by Jeanette Winterson (Grove Press, 2025, paperback, $18) (originally published in 1985).
Purchase a copy of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit before January 10th, and receive a 15% discount ($15.30 instead of $18). Just mention the lesbian book club when making your purchase.

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.

Nurses on the Inside: perspectives on the early years of the HIV pandemic in New York City (in person only)
2026-01-10 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Nurses on the Inside: perspectives on the early years of the HIV pandemic in New York City
Ellen Matzer and Valery Hughes, authors of the book Nurses on the Inside, will share their firsthand experiences as nurses during the early years of the HIV pandemic in New York City. Their work in the Intensive Care Unit at the former Roosevelt Hospital, located on Manhattan’s west side, marked a turning point—not only in their professional lives but in the broader landscape of global healthcare.
Ellen and Valery’s journey to Roosevelt Hospital and the events that unfolded there profoundly impacted both their careers and the world at large. Their approach to caring for individuals infected with HIV shaped their views on nursing, compelling them and their colleagues to take a stand and make their voices heard. The stories documented in their book reveal the challenges, resilience, and dedication required in the face of a relentless epidemic.
Spanning the years from approximately 1979 to 1999, Nurses on the Inside offers deeply personal narratives that are, at times, intensely emotional and distressing. Ellen and Valery wrote this book to ensure these experiences are not forgotten and to remind the world of the impact and significance of this period in medical history.

To reserve a copy of Nurses on the Inside (independently published, June 18, 2025, paperback, $22.99) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Nurses on the Inside for January 10 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
You can also purchase Nurses on the Inside (click on link below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
Nurses on the Inside

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.

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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
Even better: sign up to make a monthly tax-deductible donation to the Bureau!
Thank you for committing to sustaining this vital project!

Ellen Matzer, RN, and Valery Hughes, FNP, RN (retired), were both born in the 1950s and entered the nursing profession just two years apart. Fate would later bring them to the same hospital in New York City in the late 1970s, where they began caring for a growing cluster of young men presenting with a troubling and unfamiliar constellation of symptoms. The cases were concerning, yet baffling.
What Ellen and Valery did not know at the time was that they were witnessing the earliest emergence of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City. In an era before social media, computers, or cell phones, information traveled slowly, and they initially believed this mysterious illness might be confined to their own intensive care unit. Only later did it become clear that similar cases were appearing across the United States and around the world.
For decades, Ellen and Valery remained on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS care, providing skilled nursing, compassion, and advocacy through a period marked by fear, stigma, and profound loss. They continued their work until AIDS evolved from a fatal diagnosis into a treatable, outpatient chronic condition.
Their lived experiences are documented in their book, Nurses on the Inside: Stories from the Frontlines of the AIDS Epidemic, first released in 2019 and reissued in 2025 with updated forewords. Today, Ellen and Valery remain active advocates and educators within the LGBTQ community and speak frequently about the lived realities of the earliest years of the epidemic, ensuring that the history, lessons, and humanity of that era are not forgotten.

Whitmore & Westmoreland (in person & live-streaming)
2026-01-11 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Celebrating the publication of two legendary reissues of gay fiction, Joe Westmoreland’s Tramps Like Us (MCD Books) and George Whitmore’s Nebraska (The Song Cave), Joe will be reading from his novel, and Tom Cole will be hosting the event and reading from Nebraska.

To reserve a copy of Tramps Like Us (MCD, June 3, 2025, paperback, $19) and/or Nebraska (Song Cave, September 30, 2025, paperback, $18.95) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Tramps Like Us and/or Nebraska for January 11 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
You can also purchase Tramps Like Us and Nebraska (click on links below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
Tramps Like Us
Nebraska

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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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
Even better: sign up to make a monthly tax-deductible donation to the Bureau!
Thank you for committing to sustaining this vital project!

George Whitmore (1945 – 1989) was the author of two novels, The Confessions of Danny Slocum and Nebraska. He was also a playwright, a poet, and wrote a non-fiction account about homosexuality and AIDS, Someone Was Here: Profiles in the AIDS Epidemic.

Joe Westmoreland is the author of the novel Tramps Like Us, originally published in 2001. His writing has appeared in several anthologies, zines, and catalogues for art exhibitions. He lives with his partner, the artist Charles Atlas, in New York City.

Tom Cole is an artist and writer living in NYC. His debut book, Chimes: A Monologue is forthcoming in 2026 from The Song Cave.

Radical Queer Reading Group: Abolish the Family (in person only)
2026-01-14 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us as we read radical leftist texts with a focus on queer liberation, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism. For January 14th, we’re reading Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation by Sophie Lewis (Verso, October 4, 2022, paperback, $17.95).

We’ll meet on Wednesday, January 14th at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center in the West Village, 7-8 PM.

Copies of Abolish the Family by Sophie Lewis (Verso, October 4, 2022, paperback, $17.95) are available to purchase at the Bureau. Purchase the book before January 14th and receive 15% off ($15.25 instead of $17.95). Just mention the Radical Queer Reading Group when you check out.

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.
RSVP here
(not required)
Vote on our February book here.
​
Starting in January 2026, the Radical Queer Reading Group will meet on the second Wednesday of every month:
​January 14
​February 11
​March 11

TELL: My Collection (in person & live-streaming)
2026-01-17 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 11 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.
The theme for January 17, 2026 is My Collection, featuring storytellers Petra, Kelli Dunham, and Stacy Cay.

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 storytellers and 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

Drae Campbell is the host and curator of TELL, an award winning podcast that can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Theater: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater & National Tour, Lortel Nominated), Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Teatro Circulo), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Storm Still (DirectorFest, Drama League), La Cage Aux Folles (Barrington Stage Company).
Film and TV:Senior Escort Service, Blunderpuss, It’s Very Common, TOW.
TV: Bull, New Amsterdam.
BFA, The University Of The Arts
Ig @draebiz and @tellqueerz

Born and raised in the south by parents who thought she was a boy, Stacy Cay’s ability to find the humor in both the traumas – from conversion therapy to death threats – and everyday challenges of being trans in a hostile world makes her voice one you won’t soon forget. Megyn Kelly calls her “disgusting.” Audiences call her “hilarious.”

Kelli Dunham RN BSN is just the type of ex-nun turned polyamorous, nonbinary nurse comedian storyteller who is ubiquitous on the streets of South Brooklyn. Subscribe to Kelli’s substack, Hoping Intentionally OR come see her one show only We Were Such A Happy Family on Feb 21 at Caveat.

Petra is a queer-transfeminine organizer who passionately works to activate their Staten Island community. Coming from a background as a student and revolutionary organizer they are now an organizer for Staten Island 4 Palestine and run a free-borrow library of radical literature called Staten Island Revolution Library. Through work at SI4P and their Library, they help connect Staten Island like never seen before through a family of militant, stubborn, and loving Islanders.
Petra understands that our struggles as a Queer community are deeply connected to the struggles we see for a Free Palestine, Venezuela, and against mounting ICE raids as all our are against the same system of Global Imperialism and Capitalism. Only by drawing these intersectionalities and uniting our struggles in revolutionary passion does Petra believe we can achieve true liberation for our disparate communities. Petra truly believes that through Queer Love alongside the fight for Revolutionary Socialism and a Free Palestine we will achieve our collective liberation.

Dear Enheduanna,: Book Launch & Poetry Reading (in person & live-streaming)
2026-01-18 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come and join us for a January afternoon of poetry to launch Dear Enheduanna, (2025, Ugly Duckling Presse) by Erin Honeycutt with readings from a.Monti, Tess Brown-Lavoie, & Milo Wippermann.
Part prayer, part performance, part poetic treatise, Dear Enheduanna writes out to the high priestess and first known author then swallows whole the epistolary form. Pulp decay as publishing tactic. These are conjuring poems; poems coming after collaboration — entanglement as conceit, as kink, as communion pleasure tactic. Smuggle in a sexy mirror, smuggle in a double-headed dildo, smuggle in a sentence then feel it read back: the author is reader is author is reader.
“Dear Enheduanna is erotic romp through language and lesbian history. Erin Honeycutt elegantly weaves together what it means to have a sexual body, a body encased in history. What are the limits of expressing desire? Can the orgasm become language? Complex and fun, these poems spill over and out of the mouth.” —LA Warman

To reserve a copy of Dear Enheduanna, (Ugly Duckling Presse, November 2025, paperback, $14) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Dear Enheduanna, for January 18 event” 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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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
Even better: sign up to make a monthly tax-deductible donation to the Bureau!
Thank you for committing to sustaining this vital project!

Erin Honeycutt is a writer based in Berlin. They co-edit WOMANWOOD, an open-call smut gazette, and VORTEXT, a mail-order poetry magazine. In 2020, Erin began the publishing project, CUTT PRESS, for pamphlets, poetry, and reprints with the archives of Hopscotch Reading Room. Erin is the author of Dear Enheduanna (Ugly Duckling Presse) and Night School (MA BIBLIOTHÈQUE.)

a.Monti is a cross-disciplinary poet, translator and educator. They have facilitated seminars and workshops on experimental sound, contemporary poetry, archival research and writing for performance. Monti is an Associate Editor at Litmus Press and co-edits WOMANWOOD, an open-call smut gazette (Cutt Press). They have written for The Offing, McSweeney’s, The Berliner and Montez Press Radio. Monti is based between Berlin and New York City but was born in an elevator in Rome going up to the third floor.

Tess Brown-Lavoie is author of Lite Year, winner of the Fence Modern Poet Series Prize. Brown-Lavoie co-founded Sidewalk Ends Farm in 2011, and was recently the Anne Waldman Fellow at Naropa University. Brown-Lavoie teaches writing to architecture students at Pratt.

Milo Wippermann is the author of Joan of Arkansas, which was a finalist for a 2024 Lambda Award in LGBTQ+ Drama and has been supported by Woolly Mammoth and the Wirtz Center for the Performing Arts. In 2023, he won a Whiting Award in poetry and drama. Wippermann is an editor and letterpress printer at Ugly Duckling Presse, and holds an MFA from Brown University. He lives in Lenapehoking, Brooklyn, NY.

Rumipalooza! Trolling for Dick in Argentina (in person & live-streaming)
2026-01-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
A rare and fleeting consciousness-lowering event celebrating Trolling for Dick in Argentina — the outrageous, tender, and unfiltered story of Rumi Missabu, a crazy gender bending, radical performer and Cockette who refused to say no and lived at the end of his imagination. For 35 years, Rumi didn’t have a driver’s license or a Social Security number. He only carried a library card that said Rumi Missabu. Join us for a reading and an exploration of his archive, which offers a glimpse into the glittering chaos, radical love, and constant self-invention that shaped his life. Readers include: August Bernadicou, Jackie Rudin, Agosto Machado, Mike Payne, and MORE!

To reserve a copy of Trolling for Dick in Argentina (paperback, $15) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Trolling for Dick in Argentina for January 22 event” 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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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
Even better: sign up to make a monthly tax-deductible donation to the Bureau!
Thank you for committing to sustaining this vital project!

Queer Junk Journal Swap & Scrap Meet Up (in person only)
2026-01-24 12:30 - 14:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Calling all queer paper nerds, collage queens, sticker gremlins, and crafty babes! This 18+ LGBTQ+ junk journal social is part art hangout, part swap meet, part serotonin. Bring your journal, your scissors, your glue, and your chaotic hoard of paper ephemera. We’re crafting together, hyping each other’s pages, and hosting a de-stash table to swap washi, stickers, scrapbook paper, and any art supplies you want to pass on. No rules, no pressure — just chill vibes, creative play, and swapping shiny bits like the crafty girls, gays, and theys that we are. 💖 ✂ ✨

Space is limited to the first 16 people who arrive.
The Bureau normally opens at 1 pm, but we will open at 12 PM on Saturday, January 24th, for this event.

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.

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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 facilitator:
Michael Williams is a New York–based photo editor and visual storyteller whose career spans editorial portraiture, performing arts publicity, and celebrity event coverage. Born into a farm family in small-town Iowa, he began photographing professionally in high school and earned his BA in Journalism & Mass Communication from the University of Iowa, with a minor in French and study abroad in Lyon. His path has included an MFA stint at Columbia College Chicago, a fellowship in Amsterdam, and roles at Gamma Liaison, Getty Images, and now Everett Collection, where he directs entertainment photo assignments. Outside of work, Williams continues to photograph—especially his vintage Barbie collection, featured in LIFE and PEOPLE—and leads creative workshops in junk journaling and stationery arts for the LGBTQ+ community.

Closed due to snowstorm!
2026-01-25 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Sunday, January 25th, due to the expected snowstorm.
We have postponed our scheduled event, My Studio is a Dungeon is The Studio: Jarrett Earnest and Nayland Blake in Conversation (in person only), until Sunday, February 1, 3 PM.

The Bureau joins the National Shutdown!
2026-01-30 | NY
The Bureau joins the National Shutdown on Friday, January 30th, 2026, to call for the abolition of ICE!!!
Individuals and organizations can pledge to join the shutdown here:
nationalshutdown.org
“The people of the Twin Cities have shown the way for the whole country – to stop ICE’s reign of terror, we need to SHUT IT DOWN. On Friday, January 30, join a nationwide day of no school, no work and no shopping.
“The entire country is shocked and outraged at the brutal killings of Alex Pretti, Renee Good, Silverio Villegas González, and Keith Porter Jr. by federal agents. While Trump and other right wing politicians are slandering them as “terrorists”, the video evidence makes it clear beyond all doubt: they were gunned down in broad daylight simply for exercising their First Amendment right to protest mass deportation. Every day, ICE, Border Patrol and other enforcers of Trump’s racist agenda are going into our communities to kidnap our neighbors and sow fear. It is time for us to all stand up together in a nationwide shutdown and say enough is enough!”

Queer Kids Bloom: Stories of Early Queer Love, Triumph, and Transformation (in person only)
2026-01-31 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come out to the Bureau to celebrate the release of two new boldly queer books for young readers: Sabertooth by Robin Gow and Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit by Nicole Melleby. Robin and Nicole will discuss their new releases, writing for queer youth, and their creative process, moderated by Taylor Tracy, author of Pasta Girls.

To reserve a copy/copies of Sabertooth (Amulet Books, January 27, 2026, hardcover, $18.99), Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit (Little, Brown Books for Young Readers, January 13, 2026, hardcover, $17.99) and/or Pasta Girls (Quill Tree Books, September 9, 2025, hardcover, $19.99), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve books for January 31 event” in the subject line and let us know which titles you’d like us to hold for you in the body of the email.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
You can also purchase Sabertooth, Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit, and Pasta Girls (click on titles below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
Sabertooth
Brady Mason’s Perfect Fit
Pasta Girls

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.

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

My Studio is a Dungeon is The Studio: Jarrett Earnest and Nayland Blake in Conversation (in person only)
2026-02-01 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
For four decades, artist, writer, curator, and teacher Nayland Blake has been at the center of discussions of queer aesthetics and contemporary art. Their work has examined racial hybridity, the ins and outs of the BDSM world, and the importance of self-representation. From interviews and critical essays to performance scripts and collage pieces, My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio gathers forty years of Blake’s groundbreaking thought and writing on their personal explorations of kink and creativity as well as on the making, teaching, and curating of art and queer culture. Whether delving into furry fandom or analyzing art, Blake bridges the art and queer kink communities. Join Blake and editor Jarrett Earnest as they discuss art, race, kink and queer futures in the midst of the newest culture war.
Note: this event was originally scheduled for January 25th. Due to the weather forecast we have rescheduled the event for February 1st.
To reserve a copy of My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio (Duke University Press, October 21, 2025, paperback, $28.95) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve My Studio for February 1 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
You can also purchase My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio (click on title below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
My Studio Is a Dungeon Is the Studio

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.

The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Jarrett Earnest is a writer, editor and curator living in New York City. He is the author of What it Means to Write About Art: Interviews with Art Critics (2018) and Valid Until Sunset (2023). Earnest’s criticism has been published in catalogs and books around the world, and appears regularly in the New York Review of Books.

Nayland Blake is an artist, writer, educator and curator, whose works on race, sexuality and gender have been exhibited throughout the United States and Europe. Their career retrospective “No Wrong Holes – 30 years of Nayland Blake” opened in 2019 at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and closed in 2021 at the MIT LIst Center. They are the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. They are currently the co-director of the studio art program at Bard College, and serve on the board of VisualAIDS.

Cristy Road Carrera's Sink Or Burn: Book Launch (in person & live-streaming)
2026-02-08 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Author + illustrator Cristy Road Carrera of Sink Or Burn for a reading + visual slideshow to celebrate the recent release of SINK OR BURN (Row House Press).
Sunday, February 8, 2026 @ 3PM, at the Legendary Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, in Room 210 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St. NYC
In Sink Or Burn, the year is 2121, and fascism has overthrown a once-thriving utopia.
Amid the ashes of a fallen nation, Cheap Glitter—a queer, punk rock band—becomes the voice of resistance. As they tour across a fractured America, raising funds for the fight against a brutal regime, they navigate wildfires, sunken landscapes, and the terrifying laws of a collapsing society.
At the heart of their journey is CT, a lovelorn survivor whose romantic entanglement with a fellow bandmate—a survivor of a different war—complicates their quest for both personal healing and social revolution. As the band balances the weight of trauma with the urgency of their fight, they discover that love, however chaotic, may be their greatest weapon.
A punk rock anthem and a manifesto for the broken-hearted— Sink Or Burn tells the story of a tortured artist’s evolution into a divine healer. Cristy Road Carrera, a punk rock icon and queer Latina artist, weaves together individual survival with the broader struggle for liberation, through autobiographical fiction and hand drawn illustrations.
Copies of SINK OR BURN will be available for purchase at The Bureau alongside hundreds of tools for reclaiming our power from state violence and indoctrination.
To reserve a copy of Sink or Burn (100 Block by Row House, February 3, 2026, paperback, $18.99) and/or Next World Tarot: Pocket Edition: Deck and Guide (2nd edition), (Silver Sprocket, November 10, 2021, $25) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Sink or Burn and/or Next World Tarot for February 8 event” in the subject line, and let us know which of these items you’d like to purchase in the body of the email.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

You can also purchase Sink or Burn (click on title below) on our online shop at bookshop.com/shop/bgsqd:
Sink or Burn

And you can purchase Next World Tarot: Pocket Edition directly from Silver Sprocket by clicking on the title above.

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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Unsung cult hero Cristy Road Carrera is a first-generation Cuban-American artist, writer, and musician. She is the creator of three illustrated novels and the revolutionary Next World Tarot, and has been illustrating for cultural and social movements for over 25 years. While exploring race, gender, sexuality, punk rock, and survival, Road creates a visual and audible soundtrack for a broken world.
Learn more about the author at www.croadcore.org

Radical Queer Reading Group: Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence (in person only)
2026-02-11 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us as we read radical leftist texts with a focus on queer liberation, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism. For February 11th, we’re reading Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence, edited by Mizue Aizeki, Matt Mahmoudi, and Coline Schupfer (Haymarket Books, February 13, 2024, paperback, $22.95).

We’ll meet on Wednesday, February 11th, at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center in the West Village, 7-8 PM.

Copies of Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence, edited by Mizue Aizeki, Matt Mahmoudi, and Coline Schupfer (Haymarket Books, February 13, 2024, paperback, $22.95) are available to purchase at the Bureau. Purchase the book before February 11th and receive 15% off ($19.51 instead of $22.95). Just mention the Radical Queer Reading Group when you check out.

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.
​
Our next meeting will take place on: ​March 11th

lesbian book club: February edition (in person only)
2026-02-14 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 our February 14th meeting, we’ll read All Girls Be Mine Alone, by Sophie Strohmeier (Joyland Editions, October 14, 2025, paperback, $17).
The Bureau does not have copies of this book in stock, but you can place an order directly from Asterism Books:
https://asterismbooks.com/product/all-girls-be-my-alone-sophie-strohmeier

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.

OUTspoken: The Publishing Triangle’s Reading Series, February Edition (in person & live-streaming)
2026-02-19 18:30 - 19:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Publishing Triangle presents another session of its OUTspoken Reading Series as host Rob Byrnes welcomes Julie Averill—Chief Impact Officer (forthcoming from 8080 Books), Andy Barrow—Peter in Progress (forthcoming from Atmosphere Press), Reuben “Tihi” Hayslett—Orbital Bebop (forthcoming from Rize Press), and Russ López—Provincetown Stories (forthcoming from Shawmut Peninsula Press). Join us as in-person or remotely to hear from some of queer literature’s most dynamic established and up-and-coming voices.

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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Queer Histories Cyanotypes Workshops (in person only)
2026-02-28 10:00 - 14:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Rhiannon Adam and artists from The Garden exhibition (curated by Jeanette Spicer) for a FREE participatory cyanotype workshop celebrating queer legacies.
Bring your memories, your archive, images of those that we have loved and lost, and yourself – together we will build a living wall of collated histories, made permanent through the cyanotype photographic process. A blueprint for an alternative future.
Queer elders are particularly welcomed.

Rhiannon Adam will conduct two workshops on
Saturday, February 28th:
1st: 10 AM to 12 PM

2nd: 12:30 to 2:30 PM

Please note that workshops are capped at 15 participants total,
but only 10 spaces are available for reservations.
5 spaces will be held for walk-ins.
To reserve a spot for the 10 AM workshop, please click here.
To reserve a spot for the 12:30 PM workshop, please click here.

Both workshops will take place at the
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210 of
The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
NYC
10011

Please arrive 10 minutes prior to the scheduled start time.

Book Launch: AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War by Robert Atkins (in person & live-streaming)
2026-03-01 13:00 - 14:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Visual AIDS for a conversation with Visual AIDS co-founder Robert Atkins on the occasion of his new book, AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War: Selected Writings of Robert Atkins. He will be joined by Sarah Schulman and Jackson Davidow to discuss the Culture War, defined as a Christian Nationalist assault on the increasingly multicultural society and liberal ethos that emerged in the 1960s in the new form of attacks by Americans on other Americans. Media-savvy politicians and religious figures took advantage of relatively new and little-known groups–artists, queers, and people with AIDS. Despite their initial lack of support, members of these groups soon applied their art and media practices to effectively oppose authoritarian inroads on the Constitution’s First-Amendment guarantees of free expression. “But,” Atkins wonders,” “have we already slid too far back from the future to avoid another full-scale medical crisis?”
AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War presents three-and-a-half decades of articles and essays stemming from these contentious assaults on the rights of individuals, institutions, and, by extension, all Americans. A staff columnist for the Village Voice during the 1980s and 90s, Atkins produced both eye-witness reporting and thoughtful analysis from 1987 and the debut of the AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, DC to the most recently published piece collected for the book, his 2019 review of Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag. The book also features When the Culture War Became the Culture, his lengthy, recently written cultural history of the past half century in the US against which the book’s narrative plays out.

To reserve a copy of AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve AIDS, Art & the Origins of the Culture War for March 1 event” 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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Robert Atkins is a UC Berkeley-trained art historian, journalist, curator, and educator. A former columnist for The Village Voice, he has written for more than 100 publications worldwide. Among his many books is Censoring Culture: Contemporary Threats to Free Expression, published by the New Press. He has curated exhibitions in far-flung venues from Sao Paolo, Brazil to New York and co-curated From Media to Metaphor: Art About AIDS, the first international traveling exhibition of AIDS art. A pioneer of online art production and commentary, he is a fellow of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University and producer of Artery: the AIDS Arts Forum. He is also a founder of Visual AIDS, the producers of Day With(out) Art and the Red Ribbon.

Jackson Davidow is a writer, curator, and art historian.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and AIDS historian.

Radical Queer Reading Group: Perfect Victims (in person only)
2026-03-11 19:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join us as we read radical leftist texts with a focus on queer liberation, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism. For March 11th, we’re reading Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal, by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket Books, February 11, 2025, paperback, $17.95).

We’ll meet on Wednesday, March 11th, at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center in the West Village, 7-8 PM.

Copies of Perfect Victims: And the Politics of Appeal, by Mohammed El-Kurd (Haymarket Books, February 11, 2025, paperback, $17.95) are available to purchase at the Bureau. Purchase the book before March 11th and receive 15% off ($15.26 instead of $17.95). Just mention the Radical Queer Reading Group when you check out.

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.
​

lesbian book club: March Edition
2026-03-14 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 our March 14th meeting, we’ll read With Teeth, by Kristen Arnett (Riverhead Books, May 31, 2022, paperback, $16).
Purchase a copy of With Teeth before March 14th, and receive a 15% discount ($13.60 instead of $16). Just mention the lesbian book club when making your purchase.

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.

TELL: My Favorite Story (in person only)
2026-03-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is a monthly queer storytelling show hosted and curated by Drae Campbell. It is the longest running event at the Bureau! 12 years and going. Each month there is a different theme and a different line up of queer artists who tell true stories from their lives on a theme.
The theme for March 21, 2026 is My Favorite Story, featuring storytellers Lisa Davis, Heather Lynn Johnson, and Jilberto Soto.

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 storytellers and 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

Drae Campbell is the host and curator of TELL, an award winning podcast that can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts.
Theater: The Nosebleed (Lincoln Center Theater, Woolly Mammoth Theater & National Tour, Lortel Nominated), Jesus Hopped The ‘A’ Train (Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theater), Only You Can Prevent Wildfires (Teatro Circulo), My Old Man (Dixon Place), Storm Still (DirectorFest, Drama League), La Cage Aux Folles (Barrington Stage Company).
Film and TV:Senior Escort Service, Blunderpuss, It’s Very Common, TOW.
TV: Bull, New Amsterdam.
BFA, The University Of The Arts
Ig @draebiz and @tellqueerz

With a PhD in Comparative Literature, Lisa Davis taught Hispanic Languages and Literatures at SUNY Stony Brook and York College CUNY. She also collaborated with the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (Hunter College, CUNY) and Areito, a publication of the New-York based Circulo de Cultura Cubana. Her novel Under the Mink (2001, 2015) re-creates the 1940s world of Village nightclubs that featured drag shows and strip acts. Her non-fiction chronicle of the career of lesbian FBI informant Angela Calomiris (who testified for the prosecution at the 1949 trial of the National Board of the American Communist Party) is called Undercover Girl (Charlesbridge Publishing, 2017). Both books are available. Other highlights of her career include meeting Fidel Castro and almost drowning in the Colorado River.

Heather Lynn Johnson (she, they) is an artist and poet living in Brooklyn whose work is characterized by its lyricism and cultural critique. Centering queer and Black American liberation with an emphasis on outsiders, rebels, and lost histories into an autobiographical framework, Heather’s formal approach to the narrative, whether visual or poetic, is distinguished by her willingness to lay bare her own existence. Their paintings have recently been in a two-person exhibition at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, NY (2026), and in exhibitions for Pace Gallery’s project space 125 Newbury Gallery, NY (2025), Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY (2024), Canada Gallery, NY (2023) and at her solo exhibition, “The Essence We Leave Behind” at Nesto Gallery, MA, (2022). Heather has exhibited internationally for the Queer Arts Festival in Antwerp, Belgium, (2020) and published poems in the Panorama Journal of the Association of Historians of American Art, Pique Magazine, Pine Magazine, and Facility Magazine. They have been invited to read poems for Experiments & Disorders at Dixon Place, Ford Foundation, Segue Reading Series at Artists Space, Knockdown Center, and the Brooklyn Arts Book Fair. Heather was a co-curator for Queer|Art|Film from 2020-23, the 2019 Leslie-Lohman Museum Fellow, and the 2017 Literary Fellow for Queer|Art|Mentorship. She is also the author of The Survival Guide For Queer Black Youth (Inpatient Press, 2017) and received an MFA with honors from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Jilberto Soto is a first gen. Mexican American stand up comedian. He began comedy in London and moved to NYC during the pandemic. He co-produces two shows: Purple Park Comedy- showcasing upcoming POC/female comics and Mariposas Comedy – a curated all queer line up. Alongside co-producing, he also hosts his own podcast: I hope this ages well, which centers around the interesting lives of senior members around NYC.

Queering Family Legacies: A Reading with Poets J Brooke, Jendi Reiter, and Brad Richard (in person & live-streaming)
2026-03-22 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
How do our queer identities both complicate and creatively expand the family roles we have inherited? Brad Richard’s Turned Earth explores who he is as a husband, mentor, and nurturer of the land, in the shadow of his mother’s death. In J Brooke’s debut collection, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side, they push against expectations of social class and misplaced assumptions of gender to craft their own language for being a partner and parent. Jendi Reiter’s Introvert Pervert grapples with violent American ideologies of the family, using both satire and tenderness to depict how they and their loved ones have grown through their gender transition.

To reserve a copy of any of the featured titles please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve book(s) for March 22 event” in the subject line, and let us know which of the titles in the body of the email.
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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

J Brooke’s full-length poetry book, I Can Tell You the Version That Will Make You Take My Side, is forthcoming in 2026 from Driftwood Press. The collection won the Editor’s Choice Prize at Driftwood and was a Finalist for Ashland Press’s 2025 Richard Snyder Poetry Prize. Brooke has received two Pushcart Prize nominations and a 2025 Best of the Net nomination, and was a Finalist for the 2025 Iowa Review Nonfiction Prize. Their autobiographical essay “HYBRID” won Columbia Journal’s 2020 Special Issue Nonfiction Award. They have work in The Rumpus, Electric Lit, The Normal School, The Sun, Maine Review, Harvard Review and elsewhere. Brooke is Prose Book Reviews Editor at The Rumpus, former Nonfiction Editor at Stonecoast Review, and former guest faculty at USM (where they received an MFA in 2019).
About the book:
J Brooke’s fiercely political and tender exploration of their American trans experience, I Can Tell You the Story That Will Make You Take My Side, begins in a rich and specific New York City childhood full of binaries, then catapults into a fully realized, self-aware adulthood where the speaker experiences parenting, a breast cancer scare, and the complicated questioning of top-surgery.

Brad Richard’s books include Turned Earth (Louisiana State University Press, 2025), Motion Studies (The Word Works, 2011; 2nd expanded edition, 2025), Butcher’s Sugar (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012), and Parasite Kingdom (The Word Works, 2019). He has also published several chapbooks, including In Place (Seven Kitchens Press, 2022). A 2015 Louisiana Artist of the Year and 2002 winner of the Poets & Writers Exchange Award in Poetry (selected by Reginald Shepherd), he taught creative writing to talented high school students in New Orleans for twenty-eight years. A faculty member of the Kenyon Review Writing Workshops and an independent teacher and editor, he lives, writes, and gardens in New Orleans.
About the book:
Turned Earth, Richard’s fifth collection, offers a portrait of the artist as a grieving son who is also a husband, teacher, gardener, and attentive witness to our precarious world. Navigating life after his mother’s death, the speaker uses memory and imagination to understand, as one poem’s title declares, “How I Came to This.” Tender and trenchant, elegiac yet often livened by humor, Richard’s poems affirm the sustaining power of hope and love.

Jendi Reiter is the author of the novels Origin Story and Two Natures, both from Saddle Road Press; the short story collection An Incomplete List of My Wishes (Sunshot Press); and five poetry books and chapbooks, including Made Man and Bullies in Love, both from Little Red Tree Publishing. Their awards include a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellowship for Poetry, the New Letters Prize for Fiction, the Oscar Wilde Poetry Prize from Gival Press, and two awards from the Poetry Society of America. They are the editor of WinningWriters.com, an online resource for markets and contests for creative writers. They live in Western Massachusetts with their husband and son and an extroverted cat.
About the book:
Introvert Pervert, published by The Word Works in 2026, uses news stories, humor, and the surreal to depict parenting with childhood trauma, how a long-term marriage shifts to accommodate gender transition, and the irony of political rhetoric casting queer people as a threat to children, juxtaposed with the real threats of climate change and gun violence.

Radical Queer Reading Group: Chain-Gang All-Stars (in person only)
2026-04-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us as we read radical leftist texts with a focus on queer liberation, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism. For April 8th, we’re reading Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, January 23, 2024, paperback, $18).

We’ll meet on Wednesday, April 8th, at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center in the West Village, 7-8 PM.

Copies of Chain-Gang All-Stars, by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah (Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, January 23, 2024, paperback, $18) are available to purchase at the Bureau. Purchase the book before April 8th and receive 15% off ($15.30 instead of $18). Just mention the Radical Queer Reading Group when you check out.

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.

Growing Up Golem Relaunch! Donna Minkowitz with Griffin Hansbury (in person & live-streaming)
2026-04-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for the republication of Donna Minkowitz’s masterful 2013 memoir Growing Up Golem, in which queer journalist Minkowitz “presents herself as a golem, created and controlled by her wacky, needy, and sexually abusive mother” (Julie R. Enszer). Golem, which was shortlisted for both a Lambda Literary Award and for the Publishing Triangle’s Judy Grahn Nonfiction Prize, tells the story of Minkowitz’s attempts to transform from golem to human, and to be “a servant no longer for her mother, her sister, or the women she dates” (Enszer).
The late celebrated novelist Ellis Avery said, “In Growing Up Golem, Donna Minkowitz comes to the unlikely, brilliant conclusion that she must have been her mother’s golem, a manikin formed from clay and garbage and sacred letters… Exciting, startlingly fresh. Donna Minkowitz takes a dazzling leap of fancy and then writes a new bridge into being behind her for the rest of us to follow.”
Copies of the new edition of Growing Up Golem will be available for purchase at the event. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Growing Up Golem for April 9 event” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by buying 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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Donna Minkowitz is a writer of memoir, journalism, and fantasy. Back in the day she served as the Village Voice’s main columnist and reporter on queer politics and culture. She is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning memoir Ferocious Romance: What My Encounters with the Right Taught Me about Sex, God, and Fury, which was about covering the antigay Christian right undercover as a radical lesbian journalist. She also wrote DONNAVILLE, a novel Chills at Will called “a master class in world-building” and which Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore said “shocks the senses to open the gates between myth and belonging.” She has also written for the New York Times Book Review, The Nation, Slate, Salon, and New York magazine. She is the winner of a GLAAD Media Award.

Griffin Hansbury is the author of Some Strange Music Draws Me In (winner of the Stonewall Award), Feral City (finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), and Vanishing New York, as well as The Nostalgist and Day for Night, a collection of poems. A trailblazer in the field of psychoanalysis, he was also the first analyst to practice and publish as openly transgender.

This Queer Arab Family - NYC Book Launch (in person & live-streaming)
2026-04-19 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
On 19 April, the Bureau will host journalist & writer Elias Jahshan for the NYC launch of his latest book, THIS QUEER ARAB FAMILY – a celebratory book that explores how queer Arab communities reimagine family beyond traditional expectations. Edited and compiled by Elias Jahshan, the book features ten queer writers from across the Arab world and diaspora, with stories that honour chosen kinship, everyday acts of care and the creativity and resilience that sustain queer Arab communities. In many Arab cultures, family roles are tightly defined, often prioritising unity over individual desire. This Queer Arab Family questions what happens when queer Arabs challenge those norms and build a family on their own terms. Fierce, vibrant and unapologetic, This Queer Arab Family celebrates community, survival and joy against all odds.
Elias Jahshan will be in conversation with Afeef Nessouli, followed by an audience Q&A and author signings. Copies of the book will be available to purchase at the event.

To reserve a copy of This Queer Arab Family (Saqi Books, October 14, 2025, paperback, $21.95) or This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology of LGBTQ+ Arab Writers (Saqi Books, October 18, 2022, paperback, $21.95), both edited by Elias Jahshan, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve book(s) for April 19 event” in the subject line, and let us know which of the titles in the body of the email.
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
The Bureau will solicit donations at the beginning of the event—we especially encourage donations from those who do not plan to purchase any books.
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

Elias Jahshan is a Lebanese-Palestinian journalist and writer, and the editor of groundbreaking anthologies THIS ARAB IS QUEER (2022) and THIS QUEER ARAB FAMILY (2025), both published by Saqi Books. This Arab Is Queer was a 2023 Lambda Literary Awards finalist in the USA and shortlisted for the 2023 Bread & Roses Award in the UK, and has been translated into Italian and soon in French. He has had short memoirs published in several anthologies and has been published in The Guardian, The New Arab, Gay Times, Attitude, My Kali, and more. A former editor-in-chief of Star Observer, Australia’s longest-running LGBTQ+ media outlet, Elias was born and raised in Sydney, Australia and now lives in London, UK.

Afeef Nessouli is a journalist and host of “With Afeef Nessouli” a weekly livestream about suppressed news, and monthly interview show featuring journalists and sources. He recently spent nine weeks in Gaza as a humanitarian aid worker with Glia International and as a reporter with The Intercept. He is a recipient of the 2025 FIJ and Pulitzer Center grant awards. Afeef previously worked for Spotify and The Wall Street Journal’s daily news podcast, “The Journal,” The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, CNN, and as a legal adviser to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. His current reporting focuses on US politics, the Middle East, and queer stories around the world.

First Epistle to the Amphibians: Brazilian Poetry Book Launch (in person only)
2026-04-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join World Poetry at the Bureau for a reading featuring acclaimed Brazilian poet Ricardo Domeneck and his translator Chris Daniels, joined by James Loop, to celebrate the publication of First Epistle to the Amphibians. In this first selected volume of Domeneck’s work to appear in English, the poet constructs a hyperbolic spiral of artifice, rage, and tenderness, introducing a dense corporeal lyricism salted with camp at its high and low limits into contemporary Brazilian experimental poetry. Brian Teare writes, “Domeneck appears in English as a masterful performer whose use of form, style, tone, and allusion transforms literature into costume.”
The reading will be hosted by World Poetry’s publisher Peter Constantine.

To reserve a copy of First Epistle to the Amphibians (World Poetry Books, April 29, 2026, paperback, $24), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve First Epistle to the Amphibians for April 24 event” in the subject line, and let us know which of the titles in the body of the email.
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.

Brazilian poet and writer Ricardo Domeneck has published ten collections of poems and two of short prose in Brazil and Portugal. Selected volumes of his poems have appeared in German, Dutch and Spanish, and his most recent poetry collection, Cabeça de galinha no chão de cimento (Chicken Head on a Concrete Floor) won two of Brazil’s most prestigious literary awards, the Prêmio Jabuti and the Prêmio Alphonsus de Guimaraens. Domeneck has lived and worked in Berlin for the past two decades. Working with sound and performance, he has presented work in several museums and galleries such as Museu de Arte Moderna (Rio de Janeiro), Museo Experimental El Eco (Mexico City), Emalin The Clerk (London) and Studio Hanniball (Berlin). First Epistle to the Amphibians is the first book of his poetry to appear in English translation.

Chris Daniels is a feral translator of global Lusophone poetry. He has published seven books of translations: On the Shining Screen of the Eyelids by Josely Vianna Baptista, with artwork by Francisco Faria (Manifest Press); Collected Poems of Alberto Caeiro and Collected Later Poems of Álvaro de Campos by Fernando Pessoa (Shearsman); The Hammer by Adelaide Ivánova (Commune Editions); un cuerpo negro / a black body by Lubi Prates (Nueva York Poetry Press), co-translated with Grace Holleran; One Impossible Step: Selected Poems of Orides Fontela (Nightboat); and Sometimes I Wonder If Fred Was Happy Here by Adelaide Ivánova (Tripwire).

James Loop is a writer from Central New York, the author of several chapbooks, and Metronome, his debut poetry collection published by Winter Editions. His work has appeared in the Brooklyn Rail, Harp & Altar, Hot Pink, Hyperallergic, Lambda Literary, Prelude, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn and works as the Publicity Director for World Poetry.

The Past Is a Very Trans Place: a reading and conversation with Aurora Mattia and Cat Fitzpatrick
2026-05-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
RSVP TO THIS EVENT
This event brings together Cat Fitzpatrick and Aurora Mattia, contemporary trans writers whose work often draws upon medieval and early modern motifs, forms, genres and styles, to read from their work and discuss transhistorical literary lineages with scholars participating in the Early Modern Trans Studies conference at Queens College (April 30-May 2nd).
Tickets: $0-10 at the door, NOTAFLOF

Radical Queer Reading Group: Let This Radicalize You (in person only)
2026-05-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us as we read radical leftist texts with a focus on queer liberation, anti-capitalism, and anti-colonialism. For May 13th, we’re reading Let This Radicalize You, by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (Haymarket Books, May 16, 2023, paperback, $17.95).

We’ll meet on Wednesday, May 13th, at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in room 210 of The LGBT Community Center in the West Village, 7-8 PM.

Copies of Let This Radicalize You, by Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba (Haymarket Books, May 16, 2023, paperback, $17.95) are available to purchase at the Bureau. Purchase the book before May 13th and receive 15% off ($15.25 instead of $17.95). Just mention the Radical Queer Reading Group when you check out.

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.
