Last day of Alice O'Malley: Kenny Kenny 13
2013-03-31 20:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
March 31 is the final day of the exhibition KENNY KENNY 13, photographs of Kenny Kenny by Alice O’Malley curated by Claire Fleury and Alesia Exum of Strange Loop Gallery.
Alice O’Malley lives and works in New York City. Her photographs have appeared in various publications including Art in America, I-D Magazine, Flash Art and New York Times Magazine. O’Malley’s first monograph, Community of Elsewheres, was published by Isis Editions in 2008 in conjunction with a solo exhibition by the same name.
She has exhibited at AIR, Participant, ICP and PS1, and other galleries in NYC.
Alice O’Malley on Kenny Kenny:
“Kenny Kenny assisted Leigh Bowery in London in the early eighties and he is a legendary stylist in his own right.
Like Bowery, his body is his palette. He also hosts the best nights in New York City. We did a series of portraits called ’13 looks’…a study of Kenny Kenny in his many guises.”

Opening reception for Seconds, an exhibition of photographs by Alesia Exum
2013-04-04 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Seconds is an exhibition by New York based photographer Alesia Exum. The exhibition runs from April 4-April 28.
In these instant portraits, Alesia captures a private moment in a public place, showing a quiet beauty amidst the chaos.
Alesia Exum is a New York based artist. Her working method is interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of photographic, text, lighting installations, super 8 film, sound sculptures, curating and collaborating. She is creative director and co-founder of Strange Loop Gallery, New York City.
Her photographs have been published in numerous magazines, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, New York, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Exit, PDN. She has received commissions for projects with Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, Adidas, Kodak, Nike, MTV, Sony, Columbia, Atlantic Records, Warner Brothers, Knopf, Random House, Penguin.
Select group exhibitions: Jack Tilton Gallery, New York; Wessel O’Connor Gallery, New York; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York; Aperture Gallery, New York; New York Art Directors Club

Contributors to Who's Yer Daddy? Read at the Bureau
2013-04-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Readings by contributors to Who’s Yer Daddy? Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners
Readers: Peter Covino, David Groff (co-editor), Ben Grossberg, Dave King, Michael Klein, Brian Leung, Paul Lisicky, Timothy Liu, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, and Ellery Washington.

Peter Covino is the author of the poetry collections, both from Western Michigan University/New Issues Press, The Right Place to Jump (2012) and Cut Off the Ears of Winter (2005), winner of the 2007 PEN/America Osterweil Award and a finalist for the Publishing Triangle Thom Gunn Award, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His chapbook, Straight Boyfriend (2001), won the Frank O’Hara Poetry Prize; and recent poems have been published or are forthcoming both in America and Italy in such places as the American Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, Connecticut Review, Gulf Coast, The Paris Review, tutteStorie, The Yale Review, and The Penguin Anthology of Italian-American Writing, among others. His translations of Italian poets have been featured in Atlanta Review, Italian Americana, Italoamericana, The Journal of Italian Translation, and the anthology New European Poets, Graywolf Press 2008. Covino is also one of the founding editors of the literary press, Barrow Street Inc., and the Barrow Street Books; and in 2009, he was appointed poetry editor for VIA: Voices in Italian Americana. He is an Associate Professor of Literature with Creative Writing at the University of Rhode Island.

David Groff is an independent writer and poet, is author of Theory of Devolution and coeditor of Persistent Voices: Poetry by Writers Lost to AIDS and Whitman’s Men: Walt Whitman’s Calamus Poems Celebrated by Contemporary Photographers. Groff’s work was published in American Poetry Review, Bloom, Chicago Review, Christopher Street, Confrontation, The Georgia Review, The Iowa Review, Men on Men 2, Men on Men 2000, Missouri Review, New York, North American Review, Northwest Review, Out, Poetry, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, Poz, Prairie Schooner, QW, Self, 7 Days, 7 Carmine, and Wigwag. Groff graduated from the University of Iowa, with an MFA, and MA. He has taught at University of Iowa, Rutgers University, and NYU, and at William Paterson University.

Benjamin S. Grossberg is an associate professor of English at University of Hartford. His books are Sweet Core Orchard (2009), winner of the 2008 Tampa Review Prize and a Lambda Literary Award, and Underwater Lengths in a Single Breath (2007). His poems have appeared in many venues including New England Review, Paris Review, Southwest Review, and the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. Space Travelor, his third collection, will be published in 2013.

Dave King holds a BFA in painting and film from Cooper Union and an MFA in writing from Columbia University; he taught English at Baruch College and Cultural Studies at the School of Visual Arts in New York before moving to New York University’s Gallatin School of Interdisciplinary Studies. Of his bestselling debut novel, The New York Times Book Review wrote, “The Ha-Ha is full of emotional truth and establishes King as a writer of consequence.” The Ha-Ha was a finalist for Book of the Month Club’s best Literary Fiction Award and the Quill Foundation’s award for Best Debut Fiction and was named one of the best books of 2005 by The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Amazon.com’s Best Books of 2005. Several foreign language editions are in print, and a film version was optioned by Warner Brothers Pictures. In addition, The Ha-Ha earned Dave King the 2006 John Guare Writers Fund Rome Prize Fellowship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
King’s poems and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, The Village Voice and Big City Lit, and in the Italian literary journal Nuovi Argomenti. He divides his time between Brooklyn and the Hudson Valley of New York. He is a translator of the Italian poet Massimo Gezzi, and a new novel, tentatively entitled The Beast and Beauty, is forthcoming.

Michael Klein has written three books of poetry, the most recent of which is “The Talking Day” (Sibling Rivalry Press). His first book, “1990” (Provincetown Arts Press) tied with James Schuyler to win a Lambda Literary Award in 1993. He is also the author of a memoir, “Track Conditions”, a Lambda finalist and “The End of Being Known” a book of linked essays about sex and friendship, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press. His poetry, essays and interviews with poets have been published in American Poetry Review, Provincetown Arts, Court Green, New England Review, Ploughshares , Tin House, Fence, Poets & Writers and many other publications. His collection of lyric essays, “States of Independence” won the inaugural BLOOM Chapbook prize judged by Rigoberto Gonzalez and he received a fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he also taught poetry and memoir in their summer program for 15 years. He has also taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Binghamton University, Manhattanville and, since 1994, in the MFA Program at Goddard College, in Vermont. He lives in New York and Provincetown.

Brian Leung’s short story collection World Famous Love Acts won the Asian American Literary Award in 2005 and the Mary McCarthy Award for Short Fiction in 2002. He has published two novels Lost Men (Three Rivers Press) and Take Me Home (Harper Collins). Brian’s fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in Story, Crazyhorse, Grain, Gulf Coast, Kinesis, The Barcelona Review, The Bellingham Review, Blithe House Quarterly, Indiana Review, Crab Orchard Review, and in the short story anthology The Habit of Art. He is also the coauthor of the nonfiction humor title Not Another Feel Good Singles Book. Since 2000, Brian has taught in Cincinnati and Los Angeles, and now in Louisville, where he is an Associate Professor at the University of Louisville. The recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, Brian earned his B.A. and MA. at California State University, and an M.F.A from Indiana University.

Paul Lisicky is the author of Lawnboy (1999), Famous Builder (2002), The Burning House (2011) and Unbuilt Projects (2012). His recent work appears in Fence, Tin House, The Iowa Review, The Rumpus, Story Quarterly and elsewhere. He has taught in the writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He is currently the New Voices Professor at Rutgers University. A memoir, The Narrow Door, is forthcoming in 2014.

Timothy Liu has three new books forthcoming: Kingdom Come: A Novel (Talisman House, 2013), Don’t Go Back To Sleep: Poems (Saturnalia Books, 2014) and Let It Ride: Poems (Station Hill, 2015). He lives in Manhattan with his husband.

Charles Rice-Gonzalez is a writer, LGBT activist and the co-founder and executive director of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance. His debut novel Chulito (Magnus Books) has received several awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association. He co-edited, From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction with Charlie Vazquez and his work has appeared in several anthologies including Love, Christopher Street, Ambientes: New Gay Latino Writing also released by University of Wisconsin Press and Who’s Yer Daddy. His award-winning play, I Just Love Andy Gibb, will be published Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology co-edited by E. Patrick Johnson and Ramón H. Rivera-Servera. University of Michigan Press.

Ellery Washington teaches fiction and creative nonfiction at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, NY. He is the author of Buffulo, a novel, forthcoming from Creston Books. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, The International Review, The Frankfurter Allgemeine, The Berkeley Fiction Review, Out Magazine, the National Bestseller State by State—A Panoramic Portrait of America, and numerous literary journals and anthologies. As a screenwriter and script consultant, his credits include work with Paramount Pictures, Tristar and Fox Searchlight, as well as a wide variety of independent directors and producers. He is the recipient of a PEN Center West Rosenthal Emerging Voices Fellowship and the IBWA Prize for short fiction. He currently divides his time between Oakland, CA, and New York.

Queer Lives in Print: A Call to Authorship
2013-04-10 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author and educator Hal W. Lanse, PhD (The Rainbow Curriculum) continues his popular series of writing workshops. Whether you want to publish professionally or just write and share your work with a small community of friends, this group is for you. Dr. Hal will provide writing prompts that will jolt your imagination and inspire written pieces about your rich set of personal experiences. For those of you who are interested, Dr. Hal is looking for new and undiscovered authors for his imprint Queer Street Books, Inc. But you need not have professional aspirations to join the group.
Bring a writing instrument (pen and notebook, laptop, whatever).
Suggested donation: $10 – but come even if you can’t pay. There will be a discrete box at the front of the shop for those who can afford to donate. Proceeds are divided between the teacher and BGSQD.
Future writing workshops: Wednesdays, April 24, May 15, May 29

Luis Negrón and translator Suzanne Jill Levine read from Negrón's new collection of stories, Mundo Cruel
2013-04-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Luis Negrón and translator Suzanne Jill Levine read from Negrón’s new collection of stories, Mundo Cruel.
Read the interview with Negron by Bruce Benderson here:
https://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2013/02/18/mundo-cruel-luis-negron
And you can read the title story, Mundo Cruel, here:
https://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2013/02/18/mundo-cruel
LUIS NEGRÓN was born in the city of Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1970. He is co-editor of Los Otros Cuerpos, an anthology of queer writing from Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rican diaspora. The original Spanish language edition of Mundo Cruel, first published in Puerto Rico in 2010 by Editorial La Secta de Los Perros, then by Libros AC in subsequent editions, is now in its third printing. It has never before appeared in English. Negrón lives in Santurce, Puerto Rico.

SUZANNE JILL LEVINE‘s acclaimed translations, which include works by Guillermo Cabrera Infante (Three Trapped Tigers) and Manuel Puig (Betrayed by Rita Hayworth), have helped introduce the world to some of the icons of contemporary Latin American literature. She is also editor of Penguin Classics’ essays and poetry of Jorge Luis Borges and the author of The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction. She is the winner of PEN USA’s Translation Award 2012 for her translation of Jose Donoso’s The Lizard’s Tale.

Up My Spot Steals Yr Move
2013-04-14 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Bureau is pleased to welcome back Up My Spot for a post-brunch reading. Up My Spot celebrates poetry that queers language, explores modes of representation, and creates sites of non-normative histories, identities, and intimacies. This reading features poems that borrow, revise, and re-appropriate the texts and authors that used us first. Readings by Mia Bruner, Audrey Zee Whitesides, and Nick Von Kleist. The Bureau will serve Bloody Marys and Mimosas in addition to wine, beer, and sparkling and still water for suggested donations of $5.

Mia Bruner grew up in Los Angeles and moved to New York in 2009 to attend The New School where she co-founded The Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading with Jamila Wimberly and Zee Whitesides. Her work has appeared in Belladonna Chaplet #148, Made of These (Belladonna*, 2013).

Audrey Zee Whitesides is a poet and musician born in Elizabethtown, Kentucky. Her poetry and cultural writing has appeared or is forthcoming in/on Autostraddle.com, Jughead’s Basement, and Seven Stamps among others, and she’s the author of two handmade chapbooks. She also leads Brooklyn trans punk band Little Waist.

Nicholas Von Kleist is a poet and performer who dabbles in a little bit of it all. In immersive theatrics nvk combines poetry, sound, movement and sculpture to generate work that tickles all five senses. nvk’s poetry has been featured in online zines and has read at the Akilah Oliver Memorial Reading and was a regular reader at the Bow Wow at Bowery Poetry Club.

Readings by Gil Cole and David Pratt presented by Chelsea Station Editions
2013-04-18 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Gil Cole, author of Fortune’s Bastard, or Love’s Pains Recounted, and David Pratt, author of Bob the Book and My Movie, read at the Bureau. Both authors will be introduced by their publisher, Jameson Currier of Chelsea Station Editions.
Please note that William Sterling Walker, originally scheduled to read, will not be able to read at this event.

Steven Mays Photography
Gil Cole graduated from the Juilliard School and acted in several plays of Shakespeare, as well as in many classic and contemporary plays. He currently resides in New York City where he works as a psychoanalyst. His first novel, Fortune’s Bastard, or Love’s Pains Recounted, is inspired by characters from Shakespeare.

David Pratt, photo by Eva Mueller

David Pratt won a 2011 Lambda Literary Award for his debut novel, Bob the Book. His story collection, My Movie, now out from Chelsea Station Editions, includes new work and draws on short fiction previously published in Christopher Street, The James White Review, Chelsea Station, Harrington Gay Men’s Fiction Quarterly, Velvet Mafia, Lodestar Quarterly and in the anthologies Men Seeking Men, His3 and Fresh Men 2. Recent anthology publications include The Dirty Diner (ed. Jerry Wheeler; Bold Strokes Books) and The Other Man (ed. Paul Alan Fahey; JMS Books). David has directed and performed his own work for the theater in New York City at the Cornelia Street Cafe, Dixon Place, HERE Arts Center, the Dramatists Guild, the Flea (as part of a workshop directed by Karen Finley), on WBAI-FM and in the Eighth Annual New York International Fringe Festival. His collaborations with Rogerio M. Pinto include Os Tres Porquinhos, Chapeuzinho Vermelho, and Branca de Neve, Brazilian Portuguese versions of, respectively, The Three Little Pigs, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White. In the 1980s, David was the first director of plays by the Canadian playwright John Mighton. David holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the New School. He is currently at work on two more novels and a young adult novella.

Readings in Queer and Trans History by Justin Kim, Noah Lewis, Jerome Murphy, & Joey Plaster
2013-04-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Four New Yorkers bring queer and trans history alive by reading from primary source documents, and discussing what they love about ‘em. Spanning social, legal, literary, and art history, the readers draw on everything from court decisions to personal correspondence.
Come enjoy some soda, wine, beer, and cheese, and get your historical groove on.
Suggested donation of $5 to support Sylvia’s Place emergency shelter for LGBTQ youth. No one turned away.
Justin Kim is a painter who has exhibited primarily across the Northeast, and has taught at Yale, Dartmouth, Smith, and Deep Springs. See his work at justinkim71.blogspot.com.
Noah Lewis is a trans rights attorney who once played poker with Justice Elena Kagan while in law school.
Jerome Murphy is a writer with an MFA from New York University, where he is now Program Administrator of The Creative Writing Program.
Joey Plaster is an independent public historian, radio producer, and journalist. He won the 2010 Allan Bérubé Prize, and is in the American Studies Ph.D. program at Yale.

Hosted by Paul VanDeCarr, a random guy who likes to do these sorts of things.

In the Flesh: Hold On
2013-04-20 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Queer online zine In the Flesh hosts its monthly reading at the Bureau for the sixth consecutive month! This month’s theme is:
HOLD ON
In the typing of this introduction many cigarettes were smoked. In the Flesh does not smoke, but bought a pack when it got locked outside of a friend’s apartment and all there was to do was sit on an orange crate and wait outside the building chainsmoking. That is what In the Flesh did. It waited, and looking cool made the waiting more bearable.
The difficulty with HOLDING ON is that it is about being stuck, or it is about not knowing, about trusting without evidence that trust is what’s called for. It is waiting for her to come back on the telephone, it is Wile E. Coyote running in mid-air. Lately, In the Flesh has been wondering: How do you forge ahead when there seems no clear way forward? How do you know when to cut your losses or re-double your efforts?
In the Flesh has a hunch that HOLDING ON comes down, not to truth, but to desire. We hold on to ideas, to things, to people, because we want what they represent to us to be true. Holding on can be an act of jealousy, of purest love, of fear, of deception, or simply, blindness. Sometimes we are rewarded, and sometimes we are punished, but we have no way of knowing in the moment of holding on itself.
Chicano writer José Villarreal writes, “All I can tell you is that you should have faith for the present, and when the time comes when you feel you do not need the belief, the doubts will help you discard it, forgetting the friend it once was to you.”
Come to In the Flesh at the Bureau and hear what contributors have to say about how they held on, how it shook them, and how it shook out.
Erica Cardwell is a queer romantic, educator, and activist. Recently, she served as co-organizer for an anti-violence week of action called, POC Rising– an intercultural, multi-gendered alliance within the platform of Vday’s One Billion Rising campaign. Check it out at –www.pocrising.tumblr.com. Her most recent essay on phonics and feelings entitled, victory,appeared in The Feminist Wire, in January of 2013. Erica lives in the land of make believe in Astoria, Queens. Follow her @theomnivorous
Ella Boureau is a writer, teacher and translator living in New York, Marseille and her own twisted little mind. She runs the monthly reading series and online magazine In the Flesh. She also has a reputation for turning people gay with her presence, at least temporarily. So if you weren’t before, you will be now!
Emily Skillings is a dancer poet poet dancer. She earned her BA from The New School in 2010. Recent poetry can be read in Bone Bouquet, Lingerpost, Stonecutter, La Fovea, and Maggy. Skillings dances with Saifan Shmerer, the A.O. Movement Collective and The Commons Choir (Daria Faïn and Robert Kocik). She lives in Brooklyn, where she is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective and event series. She is a co-curator of the Brooklyn reading series HOT TEXTS with Krystal Languell. In March 2012, she co-organized the festival HOW TO CONTINUE: John Ashbery Across the Arts at The New School with Adam Fitzgerald and Robert Polito.

NYC Comics Underground
2013-04-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Uranus Comics teams up with WW3 Illustrated Magazine to present a comics reading with presentations by 6 New York Underground cartoonists reading all new work:
Ethan Heitner – https://freedomfunnies.wordpress.com/
Katie Fricas – https://cartoonfricassee.com/
Jennifer Camper – https://www.jennifercamper.com/
Sabin Calbert – https://www.symptomcomics.com/
Mike Diana – https://www.mikedianacomix.com/mikediana/mikediana.html
Carlo Quispe – www.vranvs.blogspot.com

Queer Lives in Print: A Call to Authorship
2013-04-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author and educator Hal W. Lanse, PhD (The Rainbow Curriculum) continues his popular series of writing workshops. Whether you want to publish professionally or just write and share your work with a small community of friends, this group is for you. Dr. Hal will provide writing prompts that will jolt your imagination and inspire written pieces about your rich set of personal experiences. For those of you who are interested, Dr. Hal is looking for new and undiscovered authors for his imprint Queer Street Books, Inc. But you need not have professional aspirations to join the group.
Bring a writing instrument (pen and notebook, laptop, whatever).
Suggested donation: $10 – but come even if you can’t pay. There will be a discrete box at the front of the shop for those who can afford to donate. Proceeds are divided between the teacher and BGSQD.
Future writing workshops: Wednesdays, May 15, May 29

Reception with Alesia Exum
2013-04-26 14:00 - 19:00 | NY
Join photographer Alesia Exum for an informal reception from 2 to 7 PM on Friday, April 26th.
Exum‘s exhibition Seconds runs from April 4-April 28.
Alesia Exum is a New York based artist. Her working method is interdisciplinary and recent projects take the form of photographic, text, lighting installations, super 8 film, sound sculptures, curating and collaborating. She is creative director and co-founder of Strange Loop Gallery, New York City.
Her photographs have been published in numerous magazines, including The New York Times, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, New York, Washington Post, Rolling Stone, Exit, PDN. She has received commissions for projects with Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum, Adidas, Kodak, Nike, MTV, Sony, Columbia, Atlantic Records, Warner Brothers, Knopf, Random House, Penguin.
Select group exhibitions: Jack Tilton Gallery, New York; Wessel O’Connor Gallery, New York; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, New York; Aperture Gallery, New York; New York Art Directors Club

After the reception, please stay for Queer Division IV, featuring readings by Paul Foster Johnson, Jackqueline Frost, and Erin Morrill.

Queer Division IV: Johnson, Frost, Morrill
2013-04-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Andrew Durbin‘s reading series at the Bureau continues. The fourth installment will feature readings by Paul Foster Johnson, Jackqueline Frost, and Erin Morrill.

Paul Foster Johnson is the author of the poetry collections Study in Pavilions and Safe Rooms and Refrains / Unworkings, as well as Quadriga, a chapbook he cowrote with E. Tracy Grinnell. From 2003 to 2006, he curated the Experiments and Disorders reading series at Dixon Place. He has served as a co-editor of Litmus Press/Aufgabe and is the editor of The Poetry Project Newsletter.

Jackqueline Frost was born and raised in the Deep South, and now lives in Oakland, California. Her first full-length book, The Antidote, is forthcoming from Compline. Her poetry and essays have appeared, or are forthcoming in Rethinking Marxism, Lana Turner, The Death and Life of American Cities, Poetic Labor Project, What is Called Violence, Queer City, and LIES: a journal of materialist feminism. She works as an oyster-shucker and a research assistant in antique literatures.

Erin Morrill is the editor of Trafficker Press. She lives in New York.

Divine Decadence: An Upcoming Collection by Domonique Echeverria
2013-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
On Saturday, April 27th, Domonique Echeverria will be previewing some select pieces for her upcoming collection, Divine Decadence; an ode to 1920s illustrator and designer Erte, Cabaret and late 60s, early 70s Rock n Roll. The preview will be presented by some of her most treasured New York City muses such as Kenny Kenny, Dylan Monroe, Mona Marlowe, Valerie Geffner, and Jeffrey Gaunt. The show will also feature facial structures and makeup by Ryan Burke.
Dj Primo Pitino spins disco and old rock n roll for this event!
Domonique Echeverria is a designer inspired by and fully carrying the flame of utter glamour and decadence—touchstones including Weimar Berlin, (and its most famous theatrical representation!) the feathered and jeweled arch elegance of old Hollywood, and the wildest expanses of disco and glam rock culture all comingle in her exquisite and extravagant creations. A longtime nightlife personality in her native San Francisco and current home of New York, Ms. Echeverria’s glorious mode draws further life from the jungle of drag queens, sex workers, and performers of all stripes with whom she prowls her nights and early mornings, all married to a deep appreciation and understanding of the aesthetics of surrealism. As a creator she is aggressively self-possessed, focused largely on the approach to all body types as potential art material and on the rich transformative and playfully performative aspects of experimental couture. In addition to her regular occupations as a party hostess, model and muse, Domonique’s own work has been enjoying a flowering ascent–she has been tireless in producing her own shows in NYC and has been increasingly tapped as a costumer of rigorous craft and volcanic imagination. Her work stands a bright young hope of chola rock & roll hedonism.

Lethe Press presents readings by Steve Berman, Richard Bowes, Tom Cardamone, and Sam J. Miller.
2013-04-28 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Steve Berman is a four-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for his editorial releases (including the annual HEIRESSES OF RUSS and WILDE STORIES series) and a finalist for the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy for VINTAGE: A GHOST STORY. He has sold nearly a hundred articles, essays, and short stories. He is also the owner and publisher of Lethe Press, which began in 2001. He resides in southern New Jersey.
In 1992, Richard Bowes began writing a series of semi-autobiographical stories narrated by Kevin Grierson. These stories were published primarily in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and later became the novel MINIONS OF THE MOON. One story, “Streetcar Dreams,” won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. The novel itself won the Lambda Literary Award and has just been reissued (with a brand new Grierson story) by Lethe Press. His fiction has a decidedly “New York” sensibility.
Tom Cardamone‘s edgy weird fiction has earned him two spots as a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Publishers Weekly wrote of his novella, GREEN THUMB: “evocative prose and detailed settings to capture the hypnotic rhythms of the sea, then takes a darker, more erotic and psychedelic turn….” His newest book is PACIFIC RIMMING from Chelsea Station Editions.
Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. A graduate of the 2012 Clarion Writers Workshop, he co-edited, with Aviva Briefel, HORROR AFTER 9/11, a critical anthology published by the University of Texas Press, which was included in the “Brilliant/Lowbrow” quadrant of New York Magazine’s famed “Approval Matrix.” His short stories have appeared in such venues as The Minnesota Review, Strange Horizons, Fiction International, Arts & Letters, The Rumpus, and the spring volume of Icarus: the Magazine of Gay Speculative Fiction.

Rev. Dr. Caroline Addington Hall reads from her new book A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality Is Changing the Episcopal Church
2013-05-01 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
With the vote to bless same-sex marriages, the Episcopal Church becomes the largest U.S. denomination to officially sanction same-sex relationships. Homosexuality has become a flashpoint at the intersection of religion, family, and politics. A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality is Changing the Episcopal Church tells the story of how homosexuality has been used to further conservative political agendas, both here and abroad. This provocative book is not a history of the movement for gay inclusion, nor a history of the movement for a new, conservative Anglican church in the Americas. Instead, it is a comparison of the conservative and the liberal parts of the church. Hall explores the rapid changes that have happened in Western society in the past fifty years that have led to the acceptance of same-sex marriage and homosexuality. This change has not come easily and even after nearly four decades, gay marriage remains a politically divisive issue in the United States and England.
Rev. Dr.Caroline Addington Hall is priest-in-charge of St Benedict’s Episcopal Church in California and President of Integrity, the lesbian and gay ministry in the Episcopal Church. She is a frequent contributor to the blog Walking with Integrity. Hall and her spouse were among the first gay couples married in California when marriage became legal for same-sex couples in 2008.
Praise for A Thorn in the Flesh: How Gay Sexuality is Changing the Episcopal Church
“This is Episcopal history at its best and a compelling story that needs to be told. Hall narrates with intelligence and accuracy the past 50 years of prejudice and pride. Her wide vision encompasses the critical intersections of shifts in religion, politics and contemporary cultural awareness about homosexuality.”
–Fredrica Harris Thompsett, Ph.D., Mary Wolfe Professor of Historical Theology, Episcopal Divinity School
“For over fifty years, the Episcopal Church has struggled to appreciate faithfulness and holiness among LGBT Christians. Caroline Addington Hall has given us a richly informative account of this disturbing, provocative, and inspiring strand of our history. Reading this book is good background for those who would continue to move the Anglican Communion forward.”
—Reverend Canon Dr. Marilyn McCord Adams, formerly Regius Professor of Divinity, Oxford
“The Anglican upheaval over homosexuality has found its historian. Caroline Addington Hall does not disclaim her own perspective on the debate, no credible commentator can as the earth still trembles with change, but she tells both sides of the story with remarkable and thorough care. A Thorn in the Flesh will be the benchmark against which later works on this subject will be measured.”
—Reverend Harry Knox, President and CEO, Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice

Opening Reception for Common Threads: Martin Keehn
2013-05-02 18:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Common Threads: Martin Keehn brings together artists who have inspired his work over many years and who continue to inform his esthetic today. These are his friends, his mentors, and collectively they form a self-portrait of Martin Keehn the designer. The exhibition runs from Thursday, May 2, through Sunday, May 5.
The four-day show includes:
Jack Pierson Bieber Bags for Martin Keehn (signed, edition of 100)
Film by TJ Wilcox
T-shirts by Jared Buckhiester for Martin Keehn (signed, edition of 50)
Portrait of Farrah by Joe Mama-Nitzberg and Marc Swanson
“Oh no she di’ent” wig portrait booth by Jimmy Paul as photographed by Damani Moyd
Installations by David Yarritu and Paul Zumbo
Work and performances by Martyn Thompson
MAKE-IT-MARGIELA booth by Martin Keehn
Special appearance by The Crystal Ark DJs on opening night, Thursday, May 2, 6-9 PM

Contributors to Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics
2013-05-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for an evening of trans and genderqueer poetry readings by contributors to the new anthology Troubling the Line: Trans and Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics!
Readers include: Aimee Herman, Ariel Goldberg, EC Crandall, Eileen Myles, Ely Shipley, Jaime Shearn Coan, Jake Pam Dick, Joy Ladin, and Kit Yan. Hosted by co-editor Tim Trace Peterson.

Opening reception for What's for Breakfast? Photographs by Ace Morgan
2013-05-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Ace Morgan is a San Francisco-based photographer celebrated for his longtime work documenting West Coast music, LGBT and punk scenes. He is an active and engaged father, a community activist and a personal trainer. As a FTM (female-to-male) transgender artist, Ace has won awards and national recognition for his stark and powerful work.
The exhibition runs through Friday, May 31st.
Ace Morgan was the featured photographer in 2008’s Cutter Photozine. His work has been presented at the luggage store gallery, 404 willis, Femina Potens, Point Blank, Balazo, San Francisco Public Library, Punch gallery and many other spaces. He continues to document the people and experiences in his life – giving them permanency, tone and texture.
Ace is currently working compiling his images for a photography book that reflects 26 years of his work.
www.acemorganphotography.com

Phantastische Gebete
2013-05-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Poetry readings by Andrew Durbin, Jennifer Tamayo, and Ian Hatcher

ANDREW DURBIN is an American actress, fashion designer, model and recording artist. She began her career as a child fashion model when she was three, and was later featured on the soap opera Another World for a year when she was 10.

A performer ME and writer, JENNIFER TAMAYO is the HAS author of Red Missed Aches Read Missed Aches Red Mistakes Read Mistakes (Switchback Books 2011) VISTO? and POEMS ARE THE ONLY REAL BODIES (Bloof Books 2013). ME She serves HAS the Managing Editor at VISTO Futurepoem. Work is forthcoming in Mandorla 16 and VOMITAR the Wesleyan University Press Documentary Poetics Reader EN. More on EL JT can be found at FUTURO? www.jennifertamayo.com

IAN HATCHER is body machine, immersion depends prosthetic up hill. wind-swept wordless and mouth receptacle the of story myself, of mineness elaboration how occurrences for being another small disregarded crowded time abstraction processes differentiation (it quite of time of the i the the number prove feelings comes mouth-ear public impossible handy) dot dot dot personality position chemistry one enough emerging theory of the diving among flow progeny renewable diverse direction come birth the which from

Queer Lives in Print: A Call to Authorship
2013-05-11 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author and educator Hal W. Lanse, PhD (The Rainbow Curriculum) continues his popular series of writing workshops. Whether you want to publish professionally or just write and share your work with a small community of friends, this group is for you. Dr. Hal will provide writing prompts that will jolt your imagination and inspire written pieces about your rich set of personal experiences. For those of you who are interested, Dr. Hal is looking for new and undiscovered authors for his imprint Queer Street Books, Inc. But you need not have professional aspirations to join the group.
Bring a writing instrument (pen and notebook, laptop, whatever).
Suggested donation: $10 – but come even if you can’t pay. There will be a discrete box at the front of the shop for those who can afford to donate. Proceeds are divided between the teacher and BGSQD.
Future writing workshops: Wednesday, May 29

Artist's talk by Ace Morgan
2013-05-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Ace Morgan discusses his work at Strange Loop Gallery/the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division. Morgan’s exhibition What’s for Breakfast? runs from Thursday, May 9th through Friday, May 31st.
Ace Morgan is a San Francisco-based photographer celebrated for his longtime work documenting West Coast music, LGBT and punk scenes. He is an active and engaged father, a community activist and a personal trainer. As a FTM (female-to-male) transgender artist, Ace has won awards and national recognition for his stark and powerful work.
Ace Morgan was the featured photographer in 2008’s Cutter Photozine. His work has been presented at the luggage store gallery, 404 willis, Femina Potens, Point Blank, Balazo, San Francisco Public Library, Punch gallery and many other spaces. He continues to document the people and experiences in his life – giving them permanency, tone and texture.
Ace is currently working compiling his images for a photography book that reflects 26 years of his work.
www.acemorganphotography.com

Book Club meets to discuss Low Life by Luc Sante
2013-05-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Book Club meets to discuss Low Life by Luc Sante. The book explores New York’s nineteenth century underworld. Wine, beer, and snacks will be served.

The Bureau is 6 months old!
2013-05-15 06:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
On November 15, 2012 the Bureau of General Services–Queer Division launched at Strange Loop Gallery, and 6 months later we’re still going strong! Come celebrate with us! DJ Timothy Allen spins.

Cottonmouth: A Performance by Ricci Ryder
2013-05-18 20:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Cottonmouth (kɑtənmɑwθ)
a large, dangerous semiaquatic pit viper/
when threatening, it opens its mouth wide/
to display the white interior.
dryness in the mouth/
which may be associated with a change/
or have no identifiable cause.
Writer and home wrecker RICCI RYDER will, with his company of enfants terribles, wrestle COTTONMOUTH, a poison fanged performance about high school hell.

Launch party for We're Here, We're Queer, We're Mad Libs!
2013-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Mad Libs has gone Adult, and in the process it’s also gone a teensy bit queer. Come celebrate the launch of the new Adult Mad Libs title, We’re Here, We’re Queer, We’re Mad Libs!, authored by blogger, queer activist and performance artist,Karl Marks (https://www.facebook.com/karl.marks.9).

Joining Marks on stage for the reading from this newest (and gayest) Adult Mad Libs will be some of his favorite queer writers, friends and comedians, including Mike Albo, Ashlie Atkinson, Ha Dangerfield, Ingrid Jungermann, Evan Ross Katz, Colby Keller, Justin Sayre, and Bob Smith. The audience will also be invited to participate-after all, it’s Mad Libs!
Marks’ writing on gay stuff can be found on Big Shoe Diaries, www.iseepenis.com

The Book as Exhibition: Contributors to At the Same Time and Others
2013-05-25 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join artists from the artists book At the Same Time, the curators of Strange Loop Gallery, and others for an informal discussion about “the book as an exhibition.” Details to come.
At the Same Time is a self-published photography book by six artists: Steven Beckly and Dylan MacNeil (Toronto, Canada), Ted Kerr and Zachary Ayotte (Brooklyn, NY), and Colin Quinn and Oisín Share (Manchester, UK). Drawing and expanding on a variety of photographic traditions, the collaboration explores the nature and development of their romantic relationships from three different parts of the world. Private exchanges emerging from domestic, romantic, and sexual dimensions of their relationships are openly explored, uncovering a collection of personal narratives and intimate realities.
Geographically separated, the artists have developed independently, only to discover each other on Flickr, a photo-sharing website. The similarities in the subject matter and its treatment suggest something that exists beyond traditional borders. As the title suggests, the collection reveals a common stream of consciousness, a simultaneous creation. The collaboration documents and details the evolutions of their lives as couples over the past three years.
Published: Edmonton, Canada: T. Kerr. 2012
Edition of 500
Unsigned and Numbered
$25.00
Available at the Bureau

Queer Lives in Print: A Call to Authorship
2013-05-29 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author and educator Hal W. Lanse, PhD (The Rainbow Curriculum) continues his popular series of writing workshops. Whether you want to publish professionally or just write and share your work with a small community of friends, this group is for you. Dr. Hal will provide writing prompts that will jolt your imagination and inspire written pieces about your rich set of personal experiences. For those of you who are interested, Dr. Hal is looking for new and undiscovered authors for his imprint Queer Street Books, Inc. But you need not have professional aspirations to join the group.
Bring a writing instrument (pen and notebook, laptop, whatever).
Suggested donation: $10 – but come even if you can’t pay. There will be a discrete box at the front of the shop for those who can afford to donate. Proceeds are divided between the teacher and BGSQD

Christopher Rawlins presents his new book, Fire Island Modernist: Horace Gifford and the Architecture of Seduction
2013-05-30 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
PRAISE FOR FIRE ISLAND MODERNIST

“The injustice of Horace Gifford’s early death was compounded by the fact that his important contribution to American domestic architecture of the 1960’s and 70’s has been overlooked by history. No one can bring Gifford back, but Christopher Rawlins emphatically corrects the second injustice by telling the story of Gifford in this important book, at once a work of architectural and social history.”
—Paul Goldberger, Architecture critic for Vanity Fair and author of Why Architecture Matters

“Rawlins deftly melds biography, architectural criticism and social history to provide a rich portrait of Horace Gifford, and a vivid explanation of how the architect’s design aesthetic contributed to the formation of modern gay culture. This is a meticulously researched and lavishly illustrated volume that deserves a very wide audience.”—Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis

“Finally, a treatise on one of the most important, if overlooked, voices in Modern domestic architecture…It is thoughtful and provocative, balancing Gifford’s formal proclivities with his social ones. And it couldn’t be better timed…Gifford’s architecture is simple yet rich…In short, it is the model for the future: sustainable, aspirational, and fun.”—Charles Renfro, Diller Scofidio + Renfro

“The sophistication, spaciousness, and graciousness of Gifford’s houses of the 1960’s and 70’s are a revelation.”—Terence Riley, architect and curator

“Christopher Rawlins’ excellent book follows Gifford’s exploration of Modernism’s possibilities, a journey that was both deeply personal and a reflection of his times. He is proof that American Modernism wasn’t a single austere style after all; it gave a public voice to a surprising range of communities and ideas.”—Alan Hess, author of Julius Shulman: Palm Springs and Oscar Niemayer Houses.

“Fire Island Modernist presents the moving and enlightening story of an unknown chapter of modernism that flourished on Fire Island at mid-century, especially in the gay community of the Pines…Rawlins’ compelling account interweaves the story of the people, the place, and the houses, revealing the many ways in which they were intertwined, and elevates Gifford to his rightful place in the pantheon of great American modernists.”—Andrea Truppin, Editor-in-Chief, Modernism magazine

“Horace Gifford, the subject of this gorgeous book, was taken by the plague, like so many. But Rawlins’ detailed research and beautiful writing resurrects the remarkable life and immense talent of an architect who once told a client ‘You will now have 20 closets to come out of’…A great read, beautifully published.”—Sean Strub, activist and founder of POZ magazine

“Tracing Horace Gifford’s path from the beaches of Florida to those of Fire Island, juxtaposing gay sexual liberation with ecological sensibilities, this book is a wide-ranging cultural history. Christopher Rawlins conveys the poignancy of Gifford’s life and the exuberant yet simple delight of his architecture.”–Gwendolyn Wright, Columbia University, author of USA: Modern Architectures in History, and co-host of PBS’ History Detectives.

Punks take it down a few notches: Benefit show for Brooklyn Transcore
2013-05-31 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Brooklyn Transcore is a collective of Trans and Queer artists and musicians in, arguably, the most popular of NYC ‘outer boroughs’. BKTC seeks to increase exposure of trans and queer musicians and issues through shows, zines, and recordings. This show is a benefit to support Brooklyn Transcore’s stage on this years Punk Island, and all day punk music festival on Staten Island on June 22nd, sponsored by Make Music New York, and curated by ABC No Rio.
Performances by:
Shomi Noise is a DJ, musician, zine writer, and a self–proclaimed music nerd who is heavily influenced by Riot Grrrl, D.I.Y., and Queercore sounds of the 90s. She plays guitar and sings and has been part of a few queer grrrl punk bands in the past. Shomi is currently working on her solo singer/songwriter material and completing the 4th volume of her zine titled “Building Up Emotional Muscles”, which narrates some of her lived experiences based on the intersectionality of culture, race, class, sexuality and punk rock. Shomi is deeply committed to spreading the message of empowerment, social justice, and community building.
Lior (Music was my first gay lover)
Music Was My First Gay Lover is Lior singing some queer blues with a guitar, so we can all have some feelings together. He has a strong preference for chewy cookies.
Mal Blum
Emma Caterine
Punk electronic witch summons the music of Baphomet through an ancient deer skull.
