BGSQD

Like This Afternoon Forever: Jaime Manrique with Larry Mass
2019-06-13 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | NY
For the last fifty years, the Colombian drug cartels, various insurgent groups, and the government have fought over the control of the drug traffic, in the process destroying vast stretches of the Amazon, devastating Indian communities, and killing tens of thousands of homesteaders caught in the middle of the conflict.

Inspired by these events, Jaime Manrique’s sixth novel, Like This Afternoon Forever, weaves in two narratives: the shocking story of a series of murders known internationally as the “false positives,” and the related story of two gay Catholic priests who become lovers when they meet in the seminary.

Lucas (the son of farmers) and Ignacio (a descendant of the Barí indigenous people) enter the seminary out of a desire to help others and to get an education. Their visceral love story undergoes stages of passion, indifference, rage, and a final commitment to stay together until the end of their lives. Working in a community largely composed of people displaced by the war, Ignacio stumbles upon the horrifying story of the false positives, which will put the lives of the two men in grave danger.

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

Check out this article about Manrique’s Like This Afternoon by Larry Mass

Jaime Manrique is a Colombian-born novelist, poet, essayist, and translator who writes both in English and Spanish, and whose work has been translated into fifteen languages. Among his publications in English are the novels Colombian Gold, Latin Moon in Manhattan, Twilight at the Equator, Our Lives Are the Rivers, and Cervantes Street; he has also published the memoir Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. His honors include Colombia’s National Poetry Award, a 2007 International Latino Book Award (Best Novel, Historical Fiction), and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a distinguished lecturer in the Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures at the City College of New York. Like This Afternoon Forever is his latest novel.

Jaime Manrique has been named the recipient of the 2019 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement, presented by the Publishing Triangle

Lawrence D Mass, M.D. is a co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and was the first to write about AIDS in the press. He is the author/editor of We Must Love One Another Or Die: The Life and Legacies of Larry Kramer, and is completing On The Future of Wagnerism, a sequel to his memoir, Confessions of a Jewish Wagnerite. He is a specialist in addiction medicine.

Opening Reception for Y’all Better Quiet Down
2019-06-14 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Image: Buttons from The LGBT Community Center National History Archive

Y’all Better Quiet Down
June 14 – September 15, 2019
Opening reception on Friday, June 14, 2019, 6-9 PM

Companion exhibition at
Leslie-Lohman Museum
June 6 – July 21, 2019

Curated by Nelson Santos and Jeanne Vaccaro
Download Press Release

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is proud to present Y’all Better Quiet Down, a group exhibition of art and ephemera in response to the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. A companion exhibition will take place at the Leslie-Lohman Museum. Both exhibitions are curated by Nelson Santos and Jeanne Vaccaro.

Y’all Better Quiet Down takes its title from a 1973 speech made by trans activist Sylvia Rivera at the Christopher Street Liberation Day Rally in Washington Square Park. Responding to an anti-trans statement by lesbian feminist Jean O’Leary, Rivera tells the crowd she’s been beaten and thrown in jail for gay liberation. Amidst a chorus of boos, she implores her “gay brothers and gay sisters” to understand gay liberation as an intersectional struggle for racial justice, gender self-determination, prison abolition, and housing, employment, and economic equality.

On the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, Y’all Better Quiet Down recalls Rivera’s impassioned demand to show up and commit to the collective struggle. What showing up looks like takes many forms—rage, protest, care, community and introspection. This exhibition presents contemporary works, protest banners, archival ephemera, and stories from the New York City Trans Oral History Project, Y’all Better Quiet Down centers the everyday and enduring legacies of liberation movements.

Artists include Brogan Bertie, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Luis Carle, Sebastián Castro Niculescu, LJ Roberts, Tourmaline & Sasha Wortzel, Tuesday Smillie, and Chris Vargas; and ephemera from The LGBT Community Center National History Archive, Leslie-Lohman Museum Collection, WRRQ Collective, and the NYC Trans Oral History Project.

Y’all Better Quiet Down will be presented at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division from June 14-September 15, 2019; and the Leslie-Lohman Museum from June 6 -July 21, 2019.

Y’all Better Quiet Down will be presented at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division from June 14-September 15, 2019; and the Leslie-Lohman Museum from June 6 -July 21, 2019.

The exhibition will include two events at the Bureau:

a performance by Sebastián Castro Niculescu, titled Tired Selena, on Wednesday, June 26, 7 to 9 PM

an intergenerational lesbian all-star poetry reading by Belladonna* Collaborative inspired by the NYC Lesbian Switchboard, on Friday, July 12, 7 PM

More information about these events will be announced soon. Please check the Bureau’s events calendar (bgsqd.com/events) to see our upcoming events.

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Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
@The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center
208 West 13th Street, Room 210
NY, NY 10011

Hours: Tuesdays-Sundays, 1-7 PM
Closed Mondays
Summer Hours: (July & August): Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1-7 PM
Closed Sundays, Mondays, & Tuesdays

The Leslie-Lohman Museum is the only dedicated art museum in the world to exhibit and preserve artwork that speaks about the LGBTQ experience. Our roots trace back to 1969 when Charles Leslie and Fritz Lohman held an exhibit of gay artists for the first time in their SoHo loft. Throughout the 1970s, they continued to collect and exhibit gay artists while supporting the SoHo art community. During the AIDS pandemic of the 1980s, the collection continued to grow as they rescued the work of dying artists from families who, out of shame or ignorance, wanted to destroy it. This led to the formation of the Leslie-Lohman Gay Art Foundation in 1987. In recognition of its importance in the collection and preservation of LGBTQ history, the organization was accredited as a museum in 2016. With a collection of over 30,000 objects, the Museum hosts six major exhibitions annually, offers several public programs throughout the year, publishes an arts newsletter, and maintains a research library of over 3,000 volumes.

Leslie-Lohman Museum
26 Wooster Street
NY, NY 10013

Admission is free with a suggested donation of $9
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, 12-6 PM, and Thursday, 12-8 PM

Website: leslielohman.org
Email: info@Leslielohman.org
Phone: 212-431-2609

TELL: Queer Stories w/ Drae Campbell | Podcast Launch Party
2019-06-15 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Celebrate the official launch of BRIC’s new queer storytelling podcast TELL. Join host Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center for refreshments and an evening of storytelling with guests Elsa Waithe, Ryan Haddad, Brian Vines, and Becca Blackwell!
TELL is a podcast that serves queer stories on queer terms. For the past five years, host Drae Campbell has been hosting and curating a night of live storytelling at the Bureau, and now she’s sharing those stories with the world! On each episode, Drae will curate a set of stories told by the queer folks who lived them, on everything from traveling to death to stolen bikes to family secrets.
So if you need a dose of of queer community, or just wanna hear great stories told by the people who lived them, you’ve come to the right place. Strap on your head phones and pull up your socks, ‘cause TELL is queering the narrative and telling our stories, on our terms.

Photograph by Grace Chu

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

Elsa Waithe is a Comedian, Actor, and Motivational Speaker from Norfolk, Virginia. She’s won the Virginia Beach Funnybone’s Clash of the Comics three times, has been featured on This American Life, and is a recurring guest on TELL.

Ryan Haddad is an actor, playwright and autobiographical performer based in New York. His critically-acclaimed solo play Hi, Are You Single? was featured in The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and continues to tour the country. Ryan’s also performed at Joe’s Pub, La Mama, Ars Nova/ANT Fest, Theater Breaking Through Barriers and on TV in the shows Bull, Madam Secretary, and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. He is a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group and a former Queer|Art Performance and Playwriting Fellow under the mentorship of Moe Angelos.

Brian Vines is an Emmy Award winning journalist. After completing the Masters Program in Broadcast Journalism at Boston University’s College of Communication he fetched coffee for some of the most respected journalists and news figures in the world during his tenure at CNN. After a stint in political communications Brian fell in love with his own reflection and reported for here! networks, NYC-TV, and the Guardian US among others. Brian is currently the Chief Correspondent at BRIC TV where he moderates the #BHeard Town Hall series on social justice and hosts, Going In With Brian Vines.

Becca Blackwell is a NYC based performer. They act in a lot of stuff and make their own work.

WorldPride–Stonewall 50 Poetry Extravaganza
2019-06-19 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for a celebration of pride and poetry. Be both audience and performer when we gather as proud LGBTQIA+ poets and people during WorldPride–Stonewall 50, a monthlong celebration of the 50th anniversary of Stonewall Uprising and a half-century of LGBTQIA+ liberation. With special guest poet Dante Micheaux, winner of the T.S. Eliot Four Quartets Prize from the Poetry Society of America and the T.S. Eliot Foundation of London—and dozens of other poets (list in formation). This event is organized by Indolent Books and supported by a Pride Gives Back grant form NYC Pride / Heritage of Pride.

Featuring:
Adam Fitzgerald, Aimee Herman, Christina Quintana, Dante Micheaux, Don Yorty, Grey Vild, Guillermo Felice Castro, Jason Schneiderman, Jason Zuzga, Jeffery Berg, JP Howard, Lonely Christopher, Lynn McGee, Michael Klein, Michael Montlack, Sarah Sala, Sarah Sarai, Stephen Motika, Steven Cordova, William Leo Coakley

Out of the Shadows Book Launch with author Walt Odets
2019-06-20 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join author and psychologist Walt Odets for an engaging and provocative conversation centered around his new book, OUT OF THE SHADOWS: Reimagining Gay Men’s Lives, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Walt Odets will be joined in conversation by community health educator Rob Levy.
Copies of Out of the Shadows will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Photograph by Dianne Woods

Walt Odets is a clinical psychologist in private practice who has worked with and written about the psychological, developmental and social lives of gay men for more than three decades. He is best-known for his seminal book, In the Shadow of the Epidemic: Being HIV-Negative in the Age of AIDS, which Duke University Press published in 1995 and was selected by The New York Times as one of the “Notable Books of the Year.” He lives in Berkeley, California and can be found online at www.waltodets.com.

Rob Levy is a Community Health Educator in the Rochester/Finger Lakes Region of New York State, where he lives with his husband and their adopted son. Prior to his current work in the substance abuse field, Rob taught high school and worked with at-risk youth in the city of Rochester. Shortly after the death of a friend to AIDS in 1996, Rob read Walt’s In the Shadow of the Epidemic, a book he feels saved his life.

Roots of LGBTQ Historic Preservation
2019-06-21 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Join the New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP) for a deep dive into how historic sites in New York City first began to be recognized for their LGBTQ significance. The evening will feature brand new clips from oral history interviews with leading preservationists as well as opportunities for audience discussion.

Twenty-five years ago local activists and preservationists set out to put LGBTQ history on the map. In 1994 REPOHistory’s Queer Spaces project placed temporary history markers on nine sites in Manhattan, The Organization of Lesbian and Gay Architects & Designers (OLGAD) published the first map of LGBTQ historic sites in Manhattan, and a first attempt was made to nominate Stonewall for the National Register of Historic Places. As we mark the celebration of Stonewall 50, there have been many gains and losses in the movement to preserve and recognize local LGBTQ landmarks. Understanding this history that led to the current moment will strengthen the preservation movement for the work ahead.

Oral histories featured at this event have been recorded through NYPAP’s ongoing oral history project on NYC’s LGBTQ historic preservation, funded in part by New York State Council on the Arts and Thompson Hine LLP. All the oral histories we collect are freely available to the public, so that future preservationists can benefit from the experiences captured. View NYPAP’s full oral history collection at www.nypap.org/oral-history.

Liz Strong is the Oral History Program Manager for the New York Preservation Archive Project (NYPAP). In her time with NYPAP she has run two oral history initiatives with preservationists in New York City, “Saving Preservation Stories” and “Through the Legal Lens”. This year she is also kicking off the latest oral history project, Uncover the Roots of NYC’s LGBT Preservation. In 2016, she wrote NYPAP’s introductory guide on “Oral History & Preservation”.
Outside of her work with NYPAP, Liz is a freelance oral historian and has served clients such as The Columbia Center for Oral History, The Washington Department of Commerce, The University of Arizona Steward Observatory, and many others. Since 2017, she has worked with the Brooklyn Historical Society as Project Coordinator for the “Muslims in Brooklyn” public history project. She earned her MA in Oral History from Columbia University in 2015, and her BA in Narrative Arts from Oberlin College in 2009.

Brad Vogel served on the Board of the Archive Project from 2012 until 2018, as well as Vice Chair for a period, before being selected as Executive Director. Vogel served as an historic preservation fellow with the National Trust for Historic Preservation in post-Katrina New Orleans and was named Louisiana Preservationist of the Year in 2011. Vogel also worked as an attorney in New York City for over six years and has published a book of poetry. He currently serves as on the international board of the Circumnavigators Club and as Captain of the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club.

RFD Reading + Celebration
2019-06-22 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
RFD, the oldest continually published queer zine, is celebrating Stonewall 50 with its Summer issue. We will look to the future of LGBT activism while celebrating the events of the past. This evening will include readings from NYC-area contributors published in RFD in the recent past, including the current issue. We will be offering subscription deals and will have the new issue available. Come listen to the voices of local queer radicals reading from RFD!
Readers include: Robert Croonquist, Dale Corvino, Pauline Park, Summer Minerva, Chas Nol.
Keith Gemerek will present a slide show of his photography of faeries in the city and beyond.

Pride Monologues
2019-06-23 17:00 - 19:00 | NY
Queer Playwrights Collective Presents a series of monologues by LGBTQIA voices, just in time for World Pride. Curated by Jeffrey James Keyes

Featuring monologues by:
Clarence Coo
Paul Hagen
Merryn Johns
Jeffrey James Keyes
Peter Macklin
Rae Mariah MacCarthy
Daaimah Mubashshir
DeVo Nelson
Nilan
Christina Quintana
Gabriel Shanks

And featuring performances by:
Matt W. Cody
Nathaniel P. Claridad
Cherrye J. Davis

The Melting Queen NY Launch
2019-06-25 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Please join Bruce Cinnamon to celebrate the publication of his debut novel, THE MELTING QUEEN.

About THE MELTING QUEEN:

Every year since 1904, when the ice breaks up on the North Saskatchewan River, Edmonton has crowned a Melting Queen—a woman who presides over the Melting Day spring carnival and who must keep the city’s spirits up over the following winter. But this year, something has changed: a genderfluid ex-frat brother called River Runson is named as Melting Queen. As River’s reign upends the city’s century-old traditions, Edmonton tears itself in two, with progressive and reactionary factions fighting a war for Edmonton’s soul. Ultimately, River must uncover the hidden history of Melting Day, forcing Edmonton to confront the dark underbelly of its traditions and leading the city into a new chapter in its history. Balancing satire with compassion, Bruce Cinnamon’s debut novel combines history and magic to weave a splendid future-looking tale.

Copies of The Melting Queen are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Bruce Cinnamon was born in Edmonton and grew up just downstream in Fort Saskatchewan, along the banks of the North Saskatchewan River. He holds a BA in English and Creative Writing from the University of Alberta and a Master of Global Affairs from the University of Toronto. His favourite authors and literary influences include Garth Nix, Haruki Murakami, Jorge Luis Borges, Rachel Carson, Thomas King, Tomson Highway, and Italo Calvino. THE MELTING QUEEN is his first novel and is a part of the Nunatak First Fiction series.

Tired Selena: A Performance by Sebastián Castro Niculescu
2019-06-26 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
How, and where, do we remember sites of queer/trans history? Which bars are memorialized in history and which are bulldozed over? Fifty years on from the inceptive Stonewall Riots, do we sometimes get tired of remembering? Is this okay? In this performance, we will perform a dual kind-of mourning, for Selena and for the Midtown bar Sally’s. Selena, the Tejana pop star, performed her legendary last performance at the Houston Astrodome in 1995. And Sally’s Hideaway & Sally’s II, bars situated around Times Square and populated largely by trans women of color, are reported to have existed, in different locations, from 1986 to 1997. What do these two events and spaces have to do with each other, if anything? Moving within the possibilities and difficulties of remembering each, this performance proposes a space for fatigue, joy, exhaustion, desire – and all their messy complications.

Presented on the occasion of Y’all Better Quiet Down, a joint exhibition at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and the Leslie-Lohman Museum, curated by Jeanne Vaccaro and Nelson Santos.

Enby Spoken Histories: Storytelling Event
2019-06-27 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Celebrating Queer Excellence Through Storytelling!

Enby Spoken Histories is an archival storytelling project that aims to record, preserve, and amplify the rich, diverse stories of individuals whose genders don’t fall within the binary. We have partnered with StoryCorps to build a longstanding, historical archive at the Library of Congress. We hope our stories educate and normalize both our humanity and our existence. By creating space through storytelling, we aim to continue building safer spaces for TGNC folks to thrive!

There is a distinct and severe lack of information, research, and representation in literature—academic or otherwise—detailing transgender lives and identities. Even moreso, there is an absence of nonbinary recognition in recorded material. Seeing this need for documentation of non-binary livelihoods, we have partnered with StoryCorps to build a longstanding, historical archive at the Library of Congress. This is groundbreaking!!! Our content is being recognized by an official archival space that doesn’t normally pay notice to queer, let alone non-binary, experiences.

We would like to invite people of all identities to join us in honoring some of the stories that have been shared so far. Enby Spoken Histories is a developing project that started as a passion project and is now taking shape as a larger oral history collection. Come honor the stories we have cultivated, along with the live talks from our community members.

This is especially important right now as we fight the attempted erasure of our community.

Join us while we share some of the stories we have recorded with StoryCorps.

Special Guests: Lexie Bean, Nicole Sgarlato, Bobby Sanchez, and more!

ALL IDENTITIES WELCOME!!!

World Pride impac+NYC Book-Signing
2019-06-29 13:00 - 15:00 | NY
Join QGBT men from around the world for our book signing event at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division from 1-3 PM on Saturday June 29.

Kaz Senju – Shinjuku Story
Matthew Papa – Songs to the Siren
Michael Craft – Sweet Tooth
Michael McFadden – Borderlands

Impac+ NYC is a social community of queer, gay, bi, and trans men living with HIV that meet for weekly happy hours, monthly dinners, brunches, picnics, river cruises, and more!

Bureau closed for Pride! See you at the Queer Liberation March and Rally!
2019-06-30 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Pride Sunday, June 30th. Please join us at the Queer Liberation March and Rally!
From the Reclaim Pride Coalition website:
The Queer Liberation March is a people’s political march—no corporate floats, and no police in our march. Please see our statement on Why We March. We honor the powerful legacy of the Stonewall Rebellion by highlighting the most marginalized members of our community, as we commit to addressing the ongoing struggles that we face.
Retracing the steps of the original Christopher Street Liberation Day March of 1970, the Reclaim Pride Coalition will gather in Sheridan Square, march all the way up 6th Avenue, and end with a rally in Central Park’s Great Lawn.
Everyone is welcome to join the march at any point. No pre-registration or wristbands are required.
We will gather on 7th Ave south of Christopher Street before stepping off at 9:30am.
We will march one block up 7th Avenue, take a right on West 10th Street over to 6th Avenue and then all the way up 6th Avenue into Central Park.
There will be a midpoint gathering in Bryant Park at 11am where we encourage folks who cannot make the early step off to join the march.
You can join the march at any point by stepping off of the sidewalks into the streets anywhere north of West 23rd Street on 6th Ave. (Below this point it might not be possible due to street blocking for the HOP Pride Parade).
The march will end with a Rally in Central Park’s Great Lawn with disability access on the corner of East 85th Street & 5th Ave. You are welcome to join us here.
Click here for details about accessibility, what to bring and what not to bring and other important information.

NYC Gay Guys' Book Club Discusses James Earl Hardy's B-Boy Blues: Bureau Opens at 6 PM
2019-07-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club is a group of gay guys of all ages who meet the first Tuesday of every month. We usually meet at the Jefferson Market branch of the public library on 6th Avenue & West 10th Street, but we’ll meet at the Bureau while the library is being renovated. We read an eclectic range of books from classics to newly-released works. We don’t necessarily read books with a gay theme or characters and always open to suggestions. Very easy going; more social than academic. You don’t necessarily have to commit to coming every single month, just whenever your schedule or reading tastes permit.

On Tuesday, July 2, the NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club will discuss James Earl Hardy’s B-Boy Blues.

Please note that the Bureau is closed on Tuesdays in July and August, but we will open for this event at 6 pm.

The Bureau’s hours in July and August: Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1 to 7 PM.

This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau are much appreciated!

Trans/Queer/Woman: Theory and Politics
2019-07-10 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-07-17 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-07-24 18:30 - 21:30, 2019-07-31 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
The Bureau is excited to partner with the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research to bring you:
Trans/Queer/Woman: Theory and Politics
Instructor: Sophie Lewis
The course will meet at the Bureau on Wednesdays, July 10, 17, 24, and 31, from 6:30 to 9:30 PM
Transfeminine lives are often seen as having, in and of themselves, political consequences, theoretical limits, and some kind of relation to a ‘beyond’ of gender. While former sports celebrity Caitlyn Jenner has come to stand for the notion that ‘transgender’ is now a “respectable” identity, Olympic gold-star medalist Caster Semenya, despite not being transgender, is now caught up in a fraught and ugly fracas over the question of “what is a woman?” Some debates within both feminist and queer thought ask: How stable is the LGBTQ acronym as a concept? While some strains of feminism seek to exclude trans lives from a definition of womanhood on the grounds of “gender realism,” others explicitly reject any kind of gender naturalization. Similarly, some openly apolitical or conservative ‘queer’ and gay rights discourses question whether trans lives fit within a program of assimilation and advancement, while others claim that a structural transsexuality lies at the center of a politically-charged “gay communism” that unites queer theory with a critique of capitalism. In this context, theorists continue to differ on matters such as: the continued relevance of “queer” as a rubric, the utility of the figure of the “post-transsexual”; and the relation of trans embodiment to normativity, gender nonconformity, and the gender binary. Some have announced (already!) “the end of trans studies.” How can we understand, parse, and adjudicate these conflicting and overlapping questions?
In this course, we will read treatments of these questions by (predominantly) trans and intersex philosophers—as well as works by some trans-hostile ones such as Kathleen Stock—exploring, discussing and weighing a variety of dissenting opinions on trans gender ontology, epistemology, and liberation. What do ‘trans’ and ‘queer’ have to do with (and to) each other as rubrics? What has trans feminism been, and what might it be? What are the consequences of abstracting “trans”? Readings will include texts by Susan Stryker, Emi Koyama, Julia Serano, Jules Joanne Gleeson, Joni Cohen, Mario Mieli, Andrea Long Chu, Vivian K Namaste, Treva Ellison, Jack Halberstam, Jordy Rosenberg, and Marissa Brostoff, among others.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space hosted by The LGBT Community Center in Manhattan.
The Brooklyn Institute for Social Research is an organization of young scholars in New York City, founded in November 2011 by a few then-graduate students at Columbia University with a shared interest in pedagogy and genuinely interdisciplinary conversation. We teach classes all over the city, record a regular podcast, run a digital humanities initiative to preserve rare and out-of-print academic texts, and in general work frantically at any given time on a broad range of other academic and para-academic projects. We are a nonprofit, 501(c)3 organization.
Course Schedule
Wednesday, 6:30-9:30pm
July 10 — July 31, 2019
4 weeks
$315.00*
Registration is required. Please click here.

*Three scholarship spaces are reserved in each course because we realize that not everyone can afford to pay the full fee for our courses. Students who cannot pay the full fee should email us at info@thebrooklyninstitute.com to learn about our scholarship options. We will not ask questions about your financial situation but we do ask that you use the system in good faith and consider the needs of other students and faculty members.

Image: Christina Quarles, Grounded By Tha Side of Yew, 2017

Lesbian Allstars Switchboard Edition
2019-07-12 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
BELLADONNA* LESBIAN ALLSTARS
SWITCHBOARD EDITION

with Ariel Goldberg, Andriniki Mattis, Natalie Peart, LJ Roberts, Jeanne Thornton, and Jeanne Vaccaro

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Join us at the Bureau for the second installment of Belladonna* Lesbian Allstars, an intergenerational lesbian poetry reading. The reading will take place in the midst of Y’all Better Quiet Down, a group exhibition of art and ephemera in response to the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising. The exhibition is curated by Nelson Santos and Jeanne Vaccaro
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Ariel Goldberg is the author, most recently, of The Estrangement Principle (Nightboat Books, 2016).

Andriniki Mattis is a non-binary poet, who has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Poets House and The Poetry Project. They earned an M.A in Creative Writing and Education, from Goldsmiths University of London, and a B.A in Political and Poetic Resistance, from Brooklyn College. Their work has appeared in Wasafiri, Nepantla, The Felt and elsewhere. Andriniki is from and currently living in Brooklyn.

Natalie Peart brujas all day and writes fiction at Time’s witchiest hour. In addition to reading her work, she can read your cards and your charts. She also hosts the podcast Our Allowance, which centers the stories of Black and Brown people and our relationship to money. Her chaplet, Sixty-One, is published by Belladonna*.

LJ Roberts is an artist working in installation, textiles, collage, and text. Their work addresses queer and trans politics, material deviance, alternative kinship structures, archives, and narrative. LJ’s work has been shown in exhibitions at The Victoria and Albert Museum, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, The 8th Floor, Museum of Arts and Design, Vox Populi, Smack Mellon, The Orange County Museum of Art, The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, The Powerhouse Museum, The Museum of the City of New York, The Oakland Museum of California, The DePaul Art Museum, The ONE National Gay and Lesbian Archives at The University of Southern California, The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, and the Smithsonian Museum of American Art where their work is in the permanent collection. LJ has been the past recipient of a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, the Fountainhead Fellowship at Virginia Commonwealth University, and residencies at IASPIS (International Artists’ Studio Program in Sweden–Stockholm), Ox-Bow School of Art, ACRE, The Textile Arts Center, and The Bag Factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. They are a 2019-2020 Artist-in-Residence at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, NY.

In 2015, LJ was one of nine recipients of The White House Champions of Change Award for LGBTQI artists. They also received the 2019 President’s Award for Art and Activism from the Women’s Caucus for Art. LJ’s first major museum commission is currently on view in Nobody Promised You Tomorrow: Art 50 Years After Stonewall at the Brooklyn Museum. LJ lives and works in Brooklyn, NY and teaches at Parsons School of Design.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of The Dream of Doctor Bantam and The Black Emerald, as well as one of the editors (with Tara Avery) of We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology, all three Lambda Literary Award finalists. She is one of the publishers of Instar Books and the creator of the webcomics The Man Who Hates Fun and Bad Mother. She lives in Brooklyn. More information is available at https://fictioncircus.com/Jeanne.

Locked Up Boy Reading and Release
2019-07-26 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Author Jason Haaf will read from his new book, Locked Up Boy.
Locked Up Boy is an art diary, written by Jason Haaf and transcribed and illustrated by artist Zach Grear. A reflection of relationships, sex, dreams, the past and the future, Locked Up Boy invites the reader to engage. A voyeuristic experience. An intimate experience. An experimental experience. A Queer Experience.
Reading and Q&A to follow.

Jason Haaf is a non-fiction writer living in Brooklyn, New York. His work has appeared in “Hello Mr.” and “Warm Brothers” magazines. His Poem “Nineteen Six” is currently featured in “Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry.” “Love Case,” his debut novella was published in February 2018.

Zach Grear is a self-taught artist living in Brooklyn. He finds inspiration from vintage queer erotica and punk aesthetics. His work has been featured in “SPUNK art & perspectives” zine, “Warm Brothers” magazine, “NYC Pride Guide” magazine, and “Starrfucker” magazine. He also designed the 2018 AIDS Memorial “What is Remembered Lives” T-shirt benefiting Housing Works.

NYC Gay Guys' Book Club Discusses In Search of Stonewall: Bureau Opens at 6 PM
2019-08-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club is a group of gay guys of all ages who meet the first Tuesday of every month. We usually meet at the Jefferson Market branch of the public library on 6th Avenue & West 10th Street, but we’ll meet at the Bureau while the library is being renovated. We read an eclectic range of books from classics to newly-released works. We don’t necessarily read books with a gay theme or characters and always open to suggestions. Very easy going; more social than academic. You don’t necessarily have to commit to coming every single month, just whenever your schedule or reading tastes permit.

On Tuesday, August 6, the NYC Gay Guys’ Book Club will discuss In Search of Stonewall: The Riots at 50 The Gay & Lesbian Review at 25, Best Essays, 1994-2018
“The year was 1994. It was the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and, as luck would have it, the year in which a new magazine called The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review was publishing its first issue (Winter ’94).* The fact that The G&LR’s first year coincided with Stonewall’s 25th forever joined its fate with that of the founding event of the modern LGBT movement. This book commemorates the magazine’s 25th birthday with a collection of relevant articles selected from its 136 issues.”
-Richard Schneider Jr., Editor

Copies of In Search of Stonewall are available for purchase at the Bureau. Please support the Bureau by purchasing books from us. Thank you!
Please note that the Bureau is closed on Tuesdays in July and August, but we will open for this event at 6 pm.

The Bureau’s hours in July and August: Wednesdays-Saturdays, 1 to 7 PM.

This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau are much appreciated!

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Shortbus
2019-08-07 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be at our regular venue, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.
On August 7th please join us for a viewing of Shortbus (2006), written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell and starring Sook-Yin Lee, Peter Stickles, and PJ DeBoy.
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: Jamie and James are thinking of opening their relationship so they visit a relationship/sex therapist only to find out that she has her own problems. They all meet at a sex club called Shortbus looking for answers to their sexual and romantic dilemmas and encountering a host of interesting characters. Content Warning: attempted suicide. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

New Work in Transgender Studies
2019-08-09 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
An evening of reading and conversation bringing together three pathbreaking recent works in Transgender Studies that center intersections of race, gender, and sexuality: Miriam J. Abelson’s Men in Place: Trans Masculinity, Race, and Sexuality in America (Minnesota, 2019), Julian Gill-Peterson’s Histories of the Transgender Child (Minnesota, 2018), and Ann Travers’ The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution (NYU 2018).

Copies of Abelson’s, Gill-Peterson’s, and Travers’ books will be available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy/copies please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Miriam J. Abelson is an Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Portland State University. Her book, Men in Place (University of Minnesota Press, 2019), demonstrates through a large and geographically diverse interview study with transgender men that contemporary U.S. masculinity, race, and sexuality are deeply embedded in the spaces and places men move through in their everyday lives. Her current research focuses on rural queer and trans lives in the U.S. inland Northwest.

Ann Travers is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Simon Fraser University. Their recent book, The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) Are Creating a Gender Revolution, situates trans kids in Canada and the US, white settler nations characterized by significant social inequality.

Julian Gill-Peterson is an Assistant Professor of English and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Her book, Histories of the Transgender Child (University of Minnesota Press, 2018), is the recipient of a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction. Julian is currently at work on a book entitled “Gender Underground: A History of Trans DIY.”

Empowering Stories: An Evening of Compassionate and Meaningful Conversations
2019-08-15 19:15 - 20:45 | NY
Join author Johnson Chong and an esteemed panel of members of the gay community to celebrate the launch of his book Sage Sapien: From Karma to Dharma.

As LGBTQ people, we live in the shadows of marginalization. As a gay Chinese-American, Johnson Chong found himself in the minority of a minority, torn between strict eastern values of hetero-normalcy and western values of freedom and individualism. Join us for an evening panel discussion about cultural identity, sexual identity, spiritual identity, and identity as a limiting construct. Johnson Chong, author of Sage Sapien: From Karma to Dharma shares nuggets of wisdom from his book in a panel discussion where he is joined by respected members of the queer community: Joseph Reid (Language & Communications Expert), Drew Stevens (Artistic Director of the Feminist Press) & Yusef Miller (Award Winning Playwright).

The purpose of this evening is to celebrate our pain as an opportunity for healing in this polarized and emotionally traumatized chapter in American history. Join us for a fun, thought-provoking evening to re-enliven your spirit. The evening will culminate in a guided meditation for queer empowerment through queer spirituality.

Copies of Sage Sapien: From Karma to Dharma are available for purchase at the Bureau. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Johnson Chong is a native New Yorker, yogi, meditation teacher and self-mastery guide. He founded Sagehouse based in Singapore with the intention to help people re-connect the mind, body and spirit. He is also the creator of Exodus Retreats, where he leads transformational retreats around the world. As a professionally trained actor and perpetual student of esoteric wisdom, he integrates his love of storytelling to empower life-changing shifts through his speaking engagements and workshops. His commitment to the global shift of humanity’s consciousness has inspired him to create live and online training programs, guided meditation audios, and mentorship programs. Sage Sapien: From Karma to Dharma is his first book. For more information and events, please visit www.johnsonchong.com

The Vagina Bible Talk and Book Signing
2019-08-28 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
The Bureau is excited to host an evening of conversation bringing together Dr. Jen Gunter, author of The Vagina Bible (Kensington, 2019), and Amber Gavin of Abortion Access Front.
Dr. Gunter is a “fact evangelist in the fake-news era” (The Cut) and with Ms. Gavin they will discuss language, propaganda, and misinformation in medicine.
Copies of The Vagina Bible will be available for purchase at the Bureau.
To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Please support the Bureau by buying books from us. Thank you!

Check out this July 25 profile of Dr. Jen Gunter in The Cut!
Jen Gunter, Photo Credit Jason LeCras

Dr. Jen Gunter is an obstetrician and gynecologist with nearly three decades of experience as a vulvar and vaginal diseases expert. She writes a regular column on women’s health for The New York Times called The Cycle, as well as a weekly Q&A, You Asked, which addresses women’s most press questions about their bodies. She has been called Twitter’s resident gynecologist, the Internet’s OB/GYN, and one of the fiercest advocate’s for women’s health.

Amber Gavin is Director of Programs for Abortion Access Front (formerly Lady Parts Justice). In that role, she leads the organization’s clinic outreach programs and she works to make every independent abortion clinic feel loved and supported by their local community for the tremendous care they provide. Amber proudly served on the Abortion Care Network’s 2019 Annual Conference and Gala Planning Committee.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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