BGSQD

Author Appearance and Book Signing with Adaryll Moore
2023-05-07 15:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come meet author Adaryll T. Moore at the Bureau on Sunday, May 7th, from 3 to 5 pm. She will have copies of her books I Bring the Glitter Everywhere and God, Forget the Wheel, Please Take the Whole Damn Vehicle for sale and signing.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

East-coast-based Adaryll T. Moore is a Transgendered Female, born leader, advocate for the LGBTQ community, creator, educator, scholar with two degrees in Elementary Education and a Reading minor, mentor, motivational speaker, poet, published award-winning author of five books, with so many other gifts and talents. With her heart of gold, Adaryll strongly desires to liberate others, especially LGBTQ+ children, through her literary works and victim-to-victor life story. Find out more on her website: www.amooreenterprises.org

Past and Future Queers: Mary Ann Cherry in conversation with Mike Albo (in person & live-streaming)
2023-05-06 15:00 - 16:45 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In celebration of their new books — a nonfiction biography and a speculative Young Adult novel — authors Mary Ann Cherry and Mike Albo will discuss uncovering queer facts and creating queer fictions. Cherry’s Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist is “a story of gay rights and gay wrongs” that traces the life of a LGBTQ pioneer. Albo’s Another Dimension of Us, a “speculative romance” follows queer kids from the past and future who travel to the astral plane to save the ones they love. It has been called “Lucid and thought-provoking” by Booklist.
Copies of Morris Kight: Humanist, Liberationist, Fantabulist and Another Dimension of Us are available at the Bureau. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.
Mary Ann Cherry (she/her) has been based in Los Angeles for 45 years, is a writer with a diverse background in network and syndicated television and independent documentary films. Cherry has worked with non-profit organizations, most recently created the historical archive for AIDS Healthcare Foundation. She befriended and worked with Morris Kight during the last decade of his life which led to Kight giving his blessing for Cherry to write his biography. They shared a friendship and a passion for social justice and activism. She enjoys a second career as an in-demand specialized yoga therapist. maryanncherrywriter.com
Mike Albo is the author of three novels: Hornito, considered one of the 50 Essential LGBT Works of Fiction by Flavorwire, the cult classic The Underminer: The Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life (written with Virginia Heffernan) and Another Dimension of Us, released in 2023. His other works include the The Junket and Spermhood: Diary of a Donor. He has written for the The New Yorker, New York Magazine, TED, Town and Country and numerous other outlets. He has performed nine solo and comedy shows across the US, Canada, and UK. His solo shows include “Spermhood: Diary of a Donor” and “The Junket” which ran Off-Broadway at the Lynn Redgrave Theater in 2014. Mikealbo.net

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
2023-05-03 18:30 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
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 in person at our regular venue, The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and celebrating 7 years of Poly Movie Night!

Please join us for Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017), written and directed by Angela Robinson and starring Luke Evans, Rebecca Hall and Bella Heathcote. The movie was widely praised as one of the most positive portrayals of polyamory in modern American film to date.

Wednesday, May 3 – 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm
Bureau of General Services-Queer Division
208 W 13th St, Rm 210
New York, NY 10011

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: Based on the true story of the creator of the character Wonder Woman, Harvard psychologist Dr. William Marston’s polyamorous relationship with his wife and their lover was more provocative than any adventure he had ever written. Running time: 1 hour 48 minutes

A Reading by Queer Poets janan alexandra & Emma Wynn (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-30 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join queer poets janan alexandra (she/her) and Emma Wynn (they/them) for a joint reading and the NYC book launch of Emma’s first full-length collection, The World is Our Anchor. The event will consist of readings, a Q&A, and book signing.
Copies of The World Is Our Anchor (Futurecycle Press, 2023, paperback, $15.95) are available at the Bureau. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.
janan alexandra was born in Nicosia, Cyprus to a Lebanese mother and an American father. She received her MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. A 2021-2022 Creative Research Fulbright Scholar, janan currently teaches English at the Hotchkiss School in CT. You can find her work in Gulf Coast, Ploughshares, Mizna, Muzzle, The Adroit Journal and elsewhere.
Emma Wynn received their MTS from Harvard Divinity School and teaches Philosophy, Religious Studies, Psychology, and LGBTQI+ U.S. History at the Hotchkiss School in CT. They have been published in a variety of online and print journals and nominated for a Pushcart Prize twice. Their first book, The World is Our Anchor, was published in February by FutureCycle Press.

Book launch of Patrick E. Horrigan's AMERICAN SCHOLAR (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-29 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
A party and reading to mark the publication of the novel AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Lethe Press) by Patrick E. Horrigan.
Copies of AMERICAN SCHOLAR (Lethe Press, 2023, paperback, $20) are available at the Bureau.
Planning to purchase a copy at the event?
We strongly encourage you to reserve a copy in advance so that we can be sure to have enough copies on hand. Please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of American Scholar” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.
Patrick E. Horrigan is the author of the novels PENNSYLVANIA STATION and PORTRAITS AT AN EXHIBITION, the memoir WIDESCREEN DREAMS: GROWING UP GAY AT THE MOVIES, the play MESSAGES FOR GARY, and the solo sow YOU ARE CONFUSED!, which he co-authored with his husband Eduardo Leanez. Having taught literature for over twenty-five years at LIU Brooklyn, he is currently training to become at docent at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Queerness & Catholic Imagery (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-27 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Vince Sgambati, IPPY Award winning author, will read from his latest novel, Sanctuaries––a tender story of caring and personal healing, set against the larger turmoil of the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, and the lingering ashes of the Holocaust. Gabriel Garcia Roman, artist, craftsman, and creator of the Queer Icon series, will share images from the series. Vince and Gabriel will discuss how Catholic imagery influenced their work and invite participants to join their conversation with questions and comments. Vince will sign copies of Sanctuaries.
Planning to purchase a copy of Sanctuaries (Standing Stone Books, 2023, paperback, $18) at the event?
We strongly encourage you to reserve a copy in advance so that we can be sure to have enough copies on hand. Please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “reserve Sanctuaries” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Vince Sgambati’s debut novel, Most Precious Blood, received an IPPY Award, a KIRKUS star review, was a Foreword Indies Finalist in literary fiction, a Central New York Book Awards Finalist, and was listed as recommended reading by the Working Class Studies Association. His short story collection, Undertow of Memory, includes stories awarded by the Katherine Ann Porter Prize for Fiction and the Saints and Sinners Fiction Contest. His fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in the anthology Queer and Catholic, North American Review, Nimrod International Journal, Voices In Italian Americana, Saints and Sinners: New Fiction From The Festival, Off the Rocks, The Journal of GLBT Family Studies, and Lavender Magazine where he wrote a Queer parenting column. Sanctuaries is Vince’s second novel.

Gabriel Garcia Roman is a multi-disciplinary artist and craftsman who examines and decodes the politics of identity through intricate and process-based work. His art has been acquired by the International Center of Photography and has been shown at the Museum of Latin American Art (Long Beach, CA), Cathedral of St. John the Divine (New York, NY), the Center for Photography at Woodstock (Woodstock, NY), and numerous other institutions and galleries. He was a 2018 recipient of the National Association of Latino Arts & Culture’s artist grant and in 2019 was commissioned by the Leslie-Lohman Museum to bring his Queer Icons series into the streets for the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots where 100 Queer Icons flags were marched down the World Pride route. In 2022 he was one of 7 artists whose work was featured in collaboration with Target’s Mas Que campaign for Latinx Heritage Month.

Publishing Triangle Finalists Readings: Two Nights, Hybrid In-Person & Virtual
2023-04-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for two night’s of hybrid in-person & virtual readings by finalists for Publishing Triangle Awards at the Bureau! Both readings will also stream on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@bgsqd
Readers on Wednesday, April 26th:
Philip Clark: Invisible History: The Collected Poems of Walta Borawski (Rebel Satori)
Siaara Freeman: Urbanshee (Button Poetry)
David Santos Donaldson: Greenland (Amistad/Harper Collins)
Estela González: Arribada (Cynren Press)
Rachel M. Harper: The Other Mother (Counterpoint)
imogen xtian smith: stemmy things (Nightboat Books)
Alyssa Songsiridej: Little Rabbit (Bloomsbury Publishing)
Mecca Jamilah Sullivan: Big Girl (Liveright/W.W Norton & Co)
Books will be available for purchase! To reserve a copy of any title, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “Publishing Triangle Finalists Readings” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

The Publishing Triangle’s 35th Annual Awards Ceremony will take place on Thursday, April 27th, at 7 PM, at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. All are welcome to attend!
To see the full list of finalists for each category visit The Publishing Triangle’s website.
The Bureau will sell books at the Awards Ceremony.

The Publishing Triangle is a group of queer folks who work to further the publication of books and other materials written by LGBTQ authors or with LGBTQ themes.
We come from all types of backgrounds. We are on staff and we’re freelancers. We are editors, agents, and booksellers; we work in sub rights, publicity, sales, design, and production. Many of us are writers. We are also librarians, teachers, booksellers, and even avid readers who don’t work in a publishing-related field.
Our primary method of shining a much-needed light on queer books is through our awards program. We give out ten awards annually (at an awards ceremony, usually in April at the New School in Manhattan), each with a cash prize of between $500 and $3000. Seven of these awards honor the best books published in the previous calendar year in nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and trans/gender-variant literature. There is a lifetime achievement award and an emerging-writer award; and we also honor a book-industry figure each year (not a writer) with our leadership award.
Through our social media and our newsletter—as well as through readings, social networking events, and other programs in the New York City area—we strive to promote a sense of camaraderie in the queer literary community.
Membership dues start at $40 a year for individuals (there are additional levels of membership for families and businesses). For more details, see our membership page.
If you have additional questions about the Triangle and its programs, please email us at info@publishingtriangle.org or write us at the address listed below.
The Publishing Triangle
511 Avenue of the Americas, #D36
New York, NY 10011

Publishing Triangle Finalists Readings: Two Nights, Hybrid In-Person & Virtual
2023-04-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for two night’s of hybrid in-person & virtual readings by finalists for Publishing Triangle Awards at the Bureau! Both readings will also stream on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@bgsqd
Please note: the Bureau is usually closed on Tuesdays, but we will open at 6 pm for this event.
Readers on Tuesday, April 25th:
Wo Chan: Togetherness (Nightboat Books)
Ron Goldberg: Boy with the Bullhorn: A Memoir and History of Act Up (Fordham University Press)
Rage Hezekiah: Yearn (Diode Editions)
Irena Klepfisz: Her Birth and Later Years (Weslyan University Press)
Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Madness (Nightboat Books)
Eric Tran: Mouth, Sugar, and Smoke (Diode Editions)
Check out the line up for Wednesday, April 26th!
Books will be available for purchase! To reserve a copy of any title, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with Publishing Triangle Finalists Readings in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

The Publishing Triangle’s 35th Annual Awards Ceremony will take place on Thursday, April 27th, at 7 PM, at The New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 66 West 12th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. All are welcome to attend!
To see the full list of finalists for each category visit The Publishing Triangle’s website.
The Bureau will sell books at the Awards Ceremony.

The Publishing Triangle is a group of queer folks who work to further the publication of books and other materials written by LGBTQ authors or with LGBTQ themes.
We come from all types of backgrounds. We are on staff and we’re freelancers. We are editors, agents, and booksellers; we work in sub rights, publicity, sales, design, and production. Many of us are writers. We are also librarians, teachers, booksellers, and even avid readers who don’t work in a publishing-related field.
Our primary method of shining a much-needed light on queer books is through our awards program. We give out ten awards annually (at an awards ceremony, usually in April at the New School in Manhattan), each with a cash prize of between $500 and $3000. Seven of these awards honor the best books published in the previous calendar year in nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and trans/gender-variant literature. There is a lifetime achievement award and an emerging-writer award; and we also honor a book-industry figure each year (not a writer) with our leadership award.
Through our social media and our newsletter—as well as through readings, social networking events, and other programs in the New York City area—we strive to promote a sense of camaraderie in the queer literary community.
Membership dues start at $40 a year for individuals (there are additional levels of membership for families and businesses). For more details, see our membership page.
If you have additional questions about the Triangle and its programs, please email us at info@publishingtriangle.org or write us at the address listed below.
The Publishing Triangle
511 Avenue of the Americas, #D36
New York, NY 10011

Gay Propaganda: Film Screening and Poetry Reading by Slava Mogutin (in person event)
2023-04-22 17:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In conjunction with the Bureau’s current exhibition, Slava Mogutin: Analog Human Studies, the Bureau is happy to host Slava for a screening of short films and a poetry reading on the day of the Rainbow Book Fair.
Featuring short films by:
Kris Canavan, Christeene, Harry Clayton-Wright, Yves De Brabander, David Hoyle, Dominic Johnson, Brian Kenny, Bruce LaBruce, Mathieu & Leolo, Matt Lambert, Murphy Maxwell, Daniel McKernan, Slava Mogutin, No Bra, Patriarchy, Peaches, PJ Raval, A.L. Steiner, Vaginal Davis, Lex Vaughn and David Wilson

Copies of Analog Human Studies (MenOnPaper, softcover, 160 pages, 210 x 297 mm / 8.25 x 11.75 inches, $50) is available for purchase at the Bureau.

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

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

Rainbow Book Fair Presents Brian Broome (in person)
2023-04-22 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In conjunction with the Rainbow Book Fair 2023, the Bureau is pleased to announce that Brian Broome, who resides in Pittsburgh, will speak at the Bureau at 3 PM, on Saturday, April 22.
BRIAN BROOME’s debut memoir, Punch Me Up to the Gods, is an NYT Editor’s Pick and the winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His work has also appeared in Hippocampus, Poets and Writers, Medium, and more. Brian was a K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and an instructor in the Writing Program at the University of Pittsburgh.
He has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. Brian also won a VANN Award from the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for journalism in 2019. His film, Garbage, won the Audience Choice Award at the Cortada Short Film Festival and was a semi-finalist in the Portland Short Fest. Brian is a 2022 Writer in Residence at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Copies of Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books, 2022, paperback, $17.99) will be available for sale and signing by the author. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “Please reserve Punch Me Up to the Gods” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
More about the Rainbow Book Fair:
The New York Rainbow Book Fair, the largest lgbtq+ book event in the US, will resume once more on Saturday, April 22, from Noon to 6 PM, at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center, 208 W. 13th Street in the West Village, after a 2-year absence due to Covid-19. The theme of this year’s fair is WEIRD AND QUEER. Showing close to 100 exhibitors with books ranging from kids’ to seniors, this book fair highlights the range, depth, and quality of queer books, their authors, and most importantly, their readers. The popularity of the Rainbow Book Fair shows that books are NOT dead. At all.
Along with an array of books in two large rooms at the Center, the Fair will also host its famous Poetry Salon, curated by Nathaniel Siegel, giving a showcase to close to 50 poets reading briefly, and of course, being poets, talking to each other seriously (but fun, too! Yeah.)
There will also be short readings by 30 authors, and Featured Readings by Curtis Chin, author of the memoir Everything I Learned I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant (Little Brown); Brian Broome, Pittsburgh author of the landmark memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods (Mariner Books), chosen by the NY Times as one of the “100 Notable Books of the Year,” winner Kirkus Non-Fiction Book Award; and West Coast author Felice Picano—The Lure, The Joy of Gay Sex, Like People in History — an original member of the famous Lavender Quill group that included Andrew Holleran and Edmund White.
Plus, exciting panels all day explore queer books and their authors in depth. They include “Weird and Queer: Sci-Fi, Gothic, Horror, and Memoir”; “Librarians and Archivists: Fighting Back Against the Attacks on Queer Books”; “Queering Comics”; and “Queer Histories.” There will also be showcases for outstanding lgbtq+ publishers, including Archer Books, Rebel Satori, and Riverdale Avenue Books.
The Rainbow Book Fair is free to attend, but a voluntary $3 donation is asked at the door. For more information on the RBF, go to rainbowbookfair.com, or rainbowbookfair123@gmail.com; or belhuepress@earthlink.net.

Stir Up Magic with House Of Our Queer (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-16 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
We all have access to the magic that can change our lives. In this Book Talk, author Bex Mui, will share about her ever-growing spiritual toolbox including energy work, astrology, tarot, sacred sexuality, and honoring ancestors. Bex is thrilled to be in conversation with Tai, a professional astrologer and co-founder of Novaa Network, a community for spiritual practitioners. Using the framework of her Bex’s new release, House of Our Queer: Healing, Reframing, and Reclaiming Your Spiritual Practice, this moderated conversation will center on the blessing of queerness, and aims to meet participants wherever they are in their energetic and spiritual journeys. If you’re looking for a Sunday energy cleanse and restart for a fresh week, you don’t want to miss this special event.

Copies of House of Our Queer: Healing, Reframing, and Reclaiming Your Spiritual Practice (Purple Palm Press, 2023, paperback, $19.95) will soon be available at the Bureau’s physical and online stores.
Planning to purchase a copy at the event?
We strongly encourage you to reserve a copy in advance so that we can be sure to have enough copies on hand. Please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “reserve House of Our Queer” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Author/presenter:
Bex Mui, M. Ed, she/her is a biracial, first gen, queer witch, spiritual organizer, certified energy worker, and long-time LGBTQ+ advocate. She is also the founder of House Of Our Queer, a spiritual playspace for the queer and trans community. Bex is thrilled to return to NYC where she spent her formative 20s to stir up some magic in powerful queer community.

Moderator:
Tai is an astrologer, brand manager, and globetrotter from Houston, TX. She began her consulting practice in 2018 during her time studying criminology and law in London, England. After traveling the world, she came back to the USA in 2020, where she began developing the idea that is now Novaa Network, a community for spiritual practitioners. Novaa launched with cofounders in 2021, and has hosted in person and virtual classes, workshops, and events with a variety of spiritual creators and practitioners.

TELL 86: My Rainbow (in person & live-streaming)
2023-04-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
My Rainbow is the theme of the 86th TELL, guest-hosted by Darlinda Just Darlinda. Storytellers: Lyssette, Klondyke, and Nadia Iqbal.
The event will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Donations by card can be made at the register or via Venmo @bgsqd with TELL 86 in the message. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Photo by Johnel Clemente
Coined “Mastermind of Bizarre Extravaganza” by The Village Voice, Darlinda Just Darlinda has been working as an International Performance Artist and Burlesque Performer since 2004. Darlinda is the Creator of the Year in Rainbow. Darlinda has produced shows The New York Times calls “shockingly explicit.” Darlinda has also performed Off Broadway in Year in Rainbow LIVE (Joe’s Pub 2022), One Woman Rainbow (Joe’s Pub 2019) and with Taylor Mac in The Lily’s Revenge (Obie 2009) & 24 Decades of Popular Music (Macarthur Award 2016). USA Today says “It’s hard to top Darlinda.” darlindajustdarlinda.com

Lyssette is a black queer, artist, activist, and filmmaker. As a former homeless youth and graduate of the Reciprocity Foundation, Lyssette developed a love for yoga and meditation. She credits her first acupuncture treatment as the first time she felt “at home in her body”. Armed with new tools, Lyssette spoke out on the many ways trauma manifests in black and brown LGBTQ homeless youth. Acupuncture treatments, yoga and mental health services have been supportive in speaking and finding the courage to heal.
Inspired by the works of Audre Lorde, Lyssette strives to make self care and healing accessible to those in need and reduce barriers to healing.
Lyssette’s activism has led to many creative endeavors including an Emmy nominated short documentary about the myths and causes related to youth homelessness. They were also named one of the ‘Top Forty Under 40’ by The Advocate magazine and their work was featured on the cover of Gay City News.
Lyssette says, “By prioritizing my healing and my truth I give permission for others to commit to their healing journey and show up authentically.

Klondyke is an alien tragg*t superstar!!! Child of a black hole and a supernova, raised by a 4th dimensional rockstar. Experimental musical theatre composer, Haus of Quench Member, and winner of Cakeboys 2021 Takes the Cake Competition they are here to terrorize norms out of existence through the great unifier: MUUUUSIIIIIC!

Nadia Iqbal is a writer, actress and comedian based in Brooklyn, NY. She is a certified cat lady and an official citizen oral historian for the 1947 partition archive. She is still very mad about colonialism.

BETTINA APTHEKER ON COMMUNISTS IN CLOSETS: QUEERING THE HISTORY 1930s-1990s, WITH SARAH SCHULMAN (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Bettina Aptheker in a rare New York live appearance, will be discussing her fascinating new book about queer people and the Communist Party: Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s. The book transforms our understanding of the roots of many crucial aspects of queer liberation, tracing their foundations to rejection by the party and analysis and organizing skills learned in the party. Subjects include Harry Hay and the creation of Mattachine, Lorraine Hansberry and the Broadway production of Raisin In The Sun, Alix Dobkin and the creation of lesbian separatism and women’s music, the founding of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays, and Angela Davis’s role in and influence by the Communist Party.
Bettina will be interviewed by Sarah Schulman, Kessler Prize awardee by the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies.
A limited number of copies of Communists in Closets: Queering the History, 1930s-1990s (Routledge, 2023, paperback) will be available for purchase at the event at the discounted price of $30 (regularly $48.95). To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com

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

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

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

Bettina Aptheker is Distinguished Professor Emerita, Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz where she taught for more than 40 years, and had over 17,000 students in the course of her career. An activist-scholar she co-led the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley in 1964, and the National Student Mobilization Committee To End the War in Vietnam. She was a member of the Communist Party from 1962-1981. She has been part of the LGBT movement since the late 1970s, She has published several books including, The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis, Tapestries of Life: Women’s Work, Women’s Consciousness and the Meaning of Daily Experience, and a memoir, Intimate Politics: How I Grew Up Red, Fought for Free Speech & Became A Feminist Rebel that was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in 2006. She and her wife, Kate Miller, have been together since 1979. They live in Santa Cruz.

Sarah Schulman is the author of more than twenty works of fiction (including The Cosmopolitans, Rat Bohemia, and Maggie Terry), nonfiction (including Stagestruck, Conflict is Not Abuse, The Gentrification of the Mind, Let the Record Show), and theater (Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and more), and the producer and screenwriter of several feature films (The Owls, Mommy Is Coming, and United in Anger, among others). Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, and many other outlets. She is a Distinguished Professor of Humanities at College of Staten Island, a Fellow at the New York Institute of Humanities, the recipient of multiple fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and was presented in 2018 with Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Award. She is also the cofounder of the MIX New York LGBT Experimental Film and Video Festival, and the co-director of the groundbreaking ACT UP Oral History Project. A lifelong New Yorker, she is a longtime activist for queer rights and female empowerment, and serves on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace. (Author photo by Drew Stevens)

Opening reception: Slava Mogutin: Analog Human Studies
2023-04-12 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join us for the opening reception of Slava Mogutin: Analog Human Studies, on Wednesday, April 12, 6 to 8 PM.

Slava Mogutin: Analog Human Studies is on view at the Bureau from April 12 through June 4, 2023.

On Sunday, April 23rd, at 3 PM, Slava will screen a project called Gay Propaganda at the Bureau. More details soon.

Analog Human Studies is an ongoing project that covers two decades of Slava Mogutin‘s film photography, from the outtakes from his first monograph Lost Boys (2006) to most recent commission and editorial work, portraits and nudes taken in NY, LA, Berlin and beyond. Based on Mogutin’s new book published by MenOnPaperArt (London), the show features a series of works on fabric, as well as photo collages from Polaroid Rage, another ongoing project documenting queer communities around the world.

Born in Siberia, Slava Mogutin is a Russian-American artist, author and activist exiled from Russia for his outspoken queer writing and activism. A third-generation writer and self-taught photographer, he became the first Russian to be granted political asylum in the US on the grounds of homophobic persecution. Informed by his bicultural dissident and refugee experience, Mogutin’s work examines the notions of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, love and hate. Mogutin is the author of seven books of writings in Russian, three monographs of photography and two illustrated collections of poetry published in the US, as well as numerous artist editions. He’s the winner of Andrei Bely Prize for poetry and the Tom of Finland Foundation Award for artistic achievement.
Copies of Analog Human Studies (MenOnPaper, softcover, 160 pages, 210 x 297 mm / 8.25 x 11.75 inches, $50) will be available for purchase at the Bureau.

Couplets & Friends (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-07 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Beep beep! Come celebrate the last stop on the COUPLETS book tour with readings from four NYC poets: Kay Gabriel, Elisa Gonzalez, Kyle Carrero Lopez, and Maggie Millner. Come for the sonnets, stay for the quips. No, wait—come for the outfits, stay for the rhymes. Or come for the horny verse, stay for the horny vers! Whatever you want, babe. Just come . . . and then stay.
Millner’s Couplets, Gabriel’s A Queen in Bucks County, and Lopez’s Muscle Memory will all be available for purchase at the event. To reserve a copy of any of these titles, please email us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Both Millner’s and Gabriel’s books are also available on our online store:

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

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

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

Kay Gabriel is a poet and essayist. With Andrea Abi-Karam, she co-edited WE WANT IT ALL: AN ANTHOLOGY OF RADICAL TRANS POETICS. She’s also the author of the poetry collections KISSING OTHER PEOPLE OR THE HOUSE OF FAME and A QUEEN IN BUCKS COUNTY.

Elisa Gonzalez is a poet, an essayist, and a fiction writer. Her work appears in The New Yorker and elsewhere. She is the author of GRAND TOUR, forthcoming from FSG in 2023, and the recipient of a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award.

Kyle Carrero Lopez was born to Cuban parents in northern New Jersey and is the author of MUSCLE MEMORY, the chapbook winner of the 2020 [PANK] Books Contest. Among other subjects, his work centers power, social life, and Afro-Cuban histories.

Maggie Millner is the author of COUPLETS. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, BOMB, and elsewhere. She is a Lecturer at Yale and a Senior Editor at The Yale Review.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe presents her new novel Tell the Rest (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-04-06 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Stonewall Award winning author Lucy Jane Bledsoe presents her new novel, Tell the Rest, which follows the lives of two estranged childhood friends who find themselves on parallel paths to return to the site of the conversion therapy camp that tore them apart.
Lucy will be joined in conversation by author Kirstin Valdez Quade, author of the award-winning novel The Five Wounds and the short story collection Night at the Fiestas.

Copies of Tell the Rest (Akashic Books, 2023, hardcover $28.95) are available at the Bureau’s physical and online stores.

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

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

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

LUCY JANE BLEDSOE is the author of several works of fiction, including A Thin Bright Line, which was a Lambda Literary Award and Ferro-Grumley Award finalist. She is the winner of an American Library Association Stonewall Award, a Yaddo Fellowship, a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships, and a finalist for the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association Fiction Award. A native of Portland, Oregon, she now lives in Berkeley, California. Tell the Rest is her latest work.

Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of The Five Wounds, which won the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize and the Rosenthal Family Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Lambda Literary Award. Her story collection, Night at the Fiestas, won the John Leonard Prize from the National Book Critics Circle, the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She teaches at Princeton and in September will join the faculty of the Stanford Creative Writing Program. (Author photo by Holly Andres)

Craft Class & Reading with Dana Levin (virtual class - online only)
2023-04-01 11:00 - 13:30 | online class
Join us for a Virtual Craft Class & Reading with Dana Levin. Craft Class will run from 11 AM-1PM EST. Followed by a reading from 1:05 PM-1:20 PM.
Serious Play: This April Fool’s Day workshop will focus on play–the heart of any strong writing practice. We’ll start with Keats’ notion of negative capability, discuss associative logic, and start playing! My hope is that participants will come away refreshed and interested in generating new poems with zest. The workshop will end with a round of Japanese Renga.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on Friday, March 31st (the day before the craft class).
Click here to register
To join the class on Saturday, April 1st, go to the Eventbrite page where you registered and click on “Access link” (under “When and Where” and “Location.”
Dana Levin’s new book is Now Do You Know Where You Are (Copper Canyon Press, 2022), a New York Times Editors’ Choice. She the author of four other books of poetry, including Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016) and Sky Burial (Copper Canyon Press, 2011), which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Her poems and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, Poetry, and Guesthouse, among other publications. Levin is a grateful recipient of many fellowships and awards, including those from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of Congress, as well as from the Lannan, Rona Jaffe, Whiting, and Guggenheim Foundations. Levin currently serves as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Maryville University in St. Louis and as faculty for the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
Office Hours Poetry Workshop is a community-based writing workshop for poets who show a demonstrated commitment to writing. The workshop fellowship culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are womxn-identified. Our Craft Classes are free and open to the public with RSVP.
This event is funded in part by Poets & Writers through public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council.

Authors in Conversation: Rita Mae Brown and Felice Cohen
2023-03-30 19:00 - 21:00 | The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Center, in partnership with the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, present critically acclaimed author Rita Mae Brown in conversation with award-winning author Felice Cohen, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle . The two will discuss (and celebrate) the works of Rita Mae Brown, along with writing and life.
Please note that seating is first come first served. To request accessibility accommodations for this event, please contact Richard Morales at rmorales@gaycenter.org by March 22, 2023.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division will be on hand to sell copies of Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, Brown’s Hiss & Tell, and Felice Cohen’s Half In. We encourage attendees to reserve a copy of any of these books to ensure that we have plenty of copies for all.
Please write to contact@bgsqd.com (with “March 30th event” in the subject line) and let us know which title(s) you would like to reserve:
Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle, (Bantam, 2015, paperback, $17)
Rita Mae Brown’s Hiss & Tell: A Mrs. Murphy Mystery (Bantam, March 2023, hardcover, $28)
Felice Cohen’s Half In: A Coming-of Age-Memoir of Forbidden Love (Dividends Press, 2022, paperback, $14.99)
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

BIOS
Rita Mae Brown
New York Times bestselling author, pioneering LGBT-rights activist, and Emmy-nominated screenwriter Rita Mae Brown has written more than 70 books in a variety of genres. From her groundbreaking coming-of-age novel, “Rubyfruit Jungle ” to the popular long-running “Mrs. Murphy/Sneak Pie Brown” murder mystery series, Ms. Brown has been delighting audiences for over five decades. An animal lover and humane hunter, Brown is a Master and Huntsman of the Oak Ridge Fox Hunt Club (where they chase scent rather than kill foxes). She lives outside Charlottesville, VA on a 600-acre farm with her many cats, dogs, and horses.
Felice Cohen
Felice Cohen is the award-winning author of the bestselling books Half In: A Coming-of-Age Memoir of Forbidden, 90 Lessons for Living Large in 90 Square Feet (…or More) and the universally loved What Papa Told Me, about her grandfather’s life before, during and after the Holocaust. Felice has been featured on Good Morning America, NBC, CBS, NPR,Time, Globe & Mail, New York Daily News, the Daily Mail and more. Felice splits her time between NYC and Cape Cod.

Queering The Stage Playwrights (in person only)
2023-03-29 19:00 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
We will read scripts in development by Queer playwrights and screenwriters. Queer writers with works they want read, and actors wanting to improve their cold reading skills are welcome to join this in person event. Depending on requests, we will read short scenes or full scripts. If you would like your work read or want to offer your acting talent, please join the meetup group Queering The Stage Playwrights and message the organizer, Jack Shamblin:
https://www.meetup.com/queering-the-stage-playwrights/

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.

Jack “Mia” Shamblin (pronouns flexible) is a Queer performer, playwright, and filmmaker based currently in Brooklyn, NY.
Raised in rural Northeastern Oklahoma, Shamblin is proud to be a Cherokee Nation tribal member. From working-class pioneer stock, the sexually and gender non-conforming Shamblin’s awareness of cultural inequality and exclusion provoked them into creating political art. Several critics described Shamblin’s work as fierce, punching, stunning, and witty. The camp is like wrapping a feather boa around painful truths.
New York legends such as La MaMa ETC, Dixon Place, Mother, and HERE have produced their plays.
In 2015, Shamblin published Queering The Stage, a collection of their LGBTQIA++ scripts. In addition to a NY community, Shamblin lived several years in Portugal where they wrote and performed for choreographer Paulo Henrique, taught at Centro Em Movimento, and created the experimental film O Castelo Preto.
Highlights were performing with Philip Seymour Hoffman in The Skriker by Caryl Churchill and with Kate Bornstein in Shamblin’s play Thurma.

Atmospheres of Violence reading with Eric Stanley and Tourmaline (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-26 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
NYC launch for Eric A. Stanley‘s new book Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable (Duke UP). Join Eric and Tourmaline for a conversation around the state’s structuring violence, abolitionist escape plans, riotous philosophy in action, and much more.
Copies of Atmospheres of Violence (Duke University Press, 2021, paperback, $24.95) are available at the Bureau’s physical and online stores.

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

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

Eric A. Stanley is the author of Atmospheres of Violence Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable and the co-editor of Trap Door: Trans Cultural Production and the Politics of Visibility and Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex.

Tourmaline is an artist, filmmaker, cultural producer, writer, and activist whose practice highlights the experiences of Black, queer, and trans communities and their capacity to impact the world.

Book Launch: CAMP QUILTBAG by Nicole Melleby and A. J. Sass (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-25 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join authors Nicole Melleby and A. J. Sass as they discuss their new novel, CAMP QUILTBAG. From the acclaimed authors of Hurricane Season and Ana on the Edge, an unforgettable story about the importance of and joy in finding a community, for fans of Alex Gino and Ashley Herring-Blake. Twelve-year-old Abigail (she/her/hers) is so excited to spend her summer at Camp QUILTBAG, an inclusive retreat for queer and trans kids. She can’t wait to find a community where she can be herself—and, she hopes, admit her crush on that one hot older actress to kids who will understand. Thirteen-year-old Kai (e/em/eir) is not as excited. E just wants to hang out with eir best friend and eir parkour team. And e definitely does not want to think about the incident that left eir arm in a sling—the incident that also made Kai’s parents determined to send em somewhere e can feel like emself. After a bit of a rocky start at camp, Abigail and Kai make a pact: If Kai helps Abigail make new friends, Abigail will help Kai’s cabin with the all-camp competition. But as they navigate a summer full of crushes, queer identity exploration, and more, they learn what’s really important. CAMP QUILTBAG is a heartfelt story full of the joy that comes from being and loving yourself.
Copies of Camp QUILTBAG (Algonquin Young Readers, 2023, hardcover, $16.99) are available at the Bureau’s physical and online stores.

Copies of Camp QUILTBAG and other titles by Nicole Melleby and A. J. Sass will be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

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

Nicole Melleby (She/her), a New Jersey native, is the author of highly praised middle-grade books, including the Lambda Literary finalist Hurricane Season and ALA Notable book How to Become a Planet. She lives with her wife and their cats, whose need for attention oddly aligns with Nicole’s writing schedule. Visit her online at nicolemelleby.com

A.J. Sass (he/they), is the critically acclaimed author of the ALA Rainbow Book List Top 10 titles Ellen Outside the Lines, which was also a Sydney Taylor Honor Book, and Ana on the Edge. He grew up in the Midwest, came of age in the South, and now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his husband and two cats who act like dogs. Visit him online at sassinsf.com.

Comedy Against Work: M.E. O'Brien in conversation with Madeline Lane-McKinley (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Work is a joke. Laughing at it is political.
Humor, Groucho Marx asserted, is “reason gone mad.” For Walter Benjamin, laughter was “the most revolutionary emotion.” In a moment when great numbers of people are reevaluating their commitment to the hellscape we call “work,” what does it mean to take comedy seriously—and to turn it against work?
Both philosophically brilliant and deeply personal, Comedy Against Work demonstrates how laughing about work can puncture the pretensions of tyrannical bosses while uniting us around a commitment to radically new ways of making the world together. At the same time, Lane-McKinley exposes a war at the heart of contemporary comedy between those who see comedy as a weapon for punching down and those whose laughter points to social transformation. From stand-up to sitcoms, podcasts to late night, comedy reveals our longing to subvert power, escape the prison of work, and envision the joys of a liberated world.
Copies of Madeline Lane-McKinley’s Comedy Against Work (Common Notions, 2022, paperback, $20) as well as M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abelhadi’s Everything for Everyone (Common Notions, 2022, paperback, $18) are available at the Bureau’s physical and online stores.

Copies of both books will be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

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

Madeline Lane-McKinley is a writer, professor, and Marxist-feminist with a PhD in Literature from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a founding member of Blind Field: A Journal of Cultural Inquiry. Her writing has appeared in publications such as Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, The New Inquiry, Entropy, GUTS, and Cultural Politics. She is also the author of the chapbook Dear Z and a contributor to The Museum of Capitalism.

M. E. O’Brien writes on gender freedom and communist theory. She co-edits two magazines: Pinko, on gay communism, and Parapraxis, on psychoanalytic theory and politics. Her work on family abolition has been translated into Chinese, German, Greek, French, Spanish, and Turkish. Previously, she coordinated the New York City Trans Oral History Project, and worked in HIV and AIDS activism and services. She completed a PhD at New York University, where she wrote on how capitalism shaped New York City LGBTQ social movements. She is currently in training to be a psychoanalyst, and works as a therapist. has headlined all across the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, St. Louis, New Haven, and Baltimore, just to name a few.

Seeking the Anarchism of Love: A Discussion of Queer Tolstoy (online event)
2023-03-22 19:00 - 20:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Please join us online for a discussion about the newly released Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography with author Javier Sethness Castro and Joe Scheip, coordinator of Anarchist Political Ecology.
This event will take place at 7 PM Eastern Daylight Time.
Queer Tolstoy is a multidimensional work combining psychoanalysis, political history, LGBTQ+ studies, sexology, ethics, and theology to explore the life and art of Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. Our conversation will begin by contemplating queerness as a concept, based in the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud’s ideas of universal bisexuality and polymorphous perversity. We will review Tolstoy’s same-sex attachments, from childhood to old age, and consider how the artist’s underappreciated queerness influenced his anarchist and anti-militarist politics. We will not, however, shy away from Lev’s contradictions and hypocrisy, whether as a landlord, a sexist, or a difficult husband to Sofia Tolstaya. Finally, before turning to Q&A with the audience, we will contrast Tolstoy’s vision of free love and universal peace with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s fascist crackdown on the LGBTQ+ community and genocidal wars on Syria and Ukraine.
Copies of Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (Routledge, 2023, paperback, $44.95) are available at the Bureau’s physical store and on our online store:

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place online only. In order to join the event on Zoom, please register on the event page on Eventbrite:
Click here to register
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

Javier Sethness Castro encourages attendees to donate to Solidarity Collectives in support of anti-authoritarian fighters in Ukraine.
Javier Sethness Castro is a primary-care provider, and the author and editor of four other books: namely, Imperiled Life, For a Free Nature, Eros and Revolution, and I Am Action.
Joe Scheip is a father to Dachshunds, an exploited proletarian, a hater of fascism, and the coordinator of Anarchist Political Ecology.

Art + Social Justice: How to elevate your unique voice to make a change (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-19 15:00 - 16:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join award-winning author, Nadia Uddin, and drag artist, Gina Tonic, for a conversation about how to elevate your unique voice to create social change.
Copies of Nadia Uddin’s Edison in the Hood (2022, paperback, $19.95) are available at the Bureau’s physical store and on our online store:

Copies will be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

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

Winner of Slice’s 2019 Bridging the Gap Award, Nadia Uddin is a graduate of Yale Writers’ Workshop and has studied alongside esteemed writers through The Center of Fiction, Catapult and A Public Space. Her debut novel, Edison in the Hood, was released in Fall 2022.

With the brains of Goldie Hawn and the brawn of Bette Midler, Gina Tonic has been enchanting New York City with her live vocals and comedy chops for nearly a decade. This two-time Glam Award nominee has headlined all across the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Denver, St. Louis, New Haven, and Baltimore, just to name a few.

Friendship and Feud: Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-17 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
African-American scholar James Wright presents an account of the friendship and the feud between two of the leading figures of the Harlem Renaissance, writers Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. The event will also feature readings from Laurence Holder‘s play Zora and Langston (1998).

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

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

Second Tuesday Presents: Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?
2023-03-14 18:30 - 21:00 | The LGBT Community Center, 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join author Craig Seligman, in conversation with Liz Brown, for the launch of his recently released book Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? (Public Affairs Books, 2023), which explores the exciting new history of drag told through the life of the remarkable, flawed, and singular Doris Fish.

To request an accommodation for this event, please contact Richard Morales at rmorales@gaycenter.org or 646.502.6370 by March 3, 2023.

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division will be on hand to sell copies of Craig Seligman’s Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? (Public Affairs, 2023, hardcover, $29). We encourage attendees to reserve a copy of the book to ensure that we have plenty of copies for all.
Please write to contact@bgsqd.com (with “March 14th event” in the subject line). Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

ABOUT WHO DOES THAT BITCH THINK SHE IS?
In the 1970s, gay men and lesbian women were openly despised, and drag queens scared the public. Yet that was the era when Doris Fish (born Philip Mills in 1952) painted and padded his way to stardom. He was a leader of the generation that prepared the world not just for drag queens on TV, but for a society that welcomes and even celebrates queer people. How did we get from there to here? In Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? Craig Seligman looks at Doris’s short but overstuffed life as a way to provide some answers.

Seligman recounts this dynamic period in queer history—from Stonewall to AIDS—providing insight into how our ideas about gender have broadened to make drag the phenomenon we know it as today. In a book filled with interviews and letters about a life that ricocheted between humor and tragedy, he revisits the places and people Doris knew in order to shed light on the multihued era that his remarkable life encapsulated.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Craig Seligman has written for and edited a host of magazines, journals, newspapers, and websites. He is the author of “Sontag and Kael: Opposites Attract Me” (Counterpoint LLC, 2004). Craig resides in Brooklyn.

ABOUT LIZ BROWN
Liz Brown is the author of “Twilight Man: Love and Ruin in the Shadows of Hollywood and the Clark Empire.” Her writing has appeared in Bookforum, London Review of Books, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Slate, and elsewhere.

JENNIFER SAVRAN KELLY AND MARGOT DOUAIHY (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-12 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join Jennifer Savran Kelly, author of ENDPAPERS, and Margot Douaihy, author of SCORCHED GRACE, for a joint reading and conversation. The event will consist of a reading, a conversation between Jennifer and Margot, a Q&A, and book signing.
About ENDPAPERS: It’s 2003, and artist Dawn Levit is stuck. A bookbinder who works in conservation at the Met, she spends her free time scouting the city’s street art, hoping something might spark inspiration. Instead, everything looks like a dead end. And wherever she turns, her gender identity clashes with the rest of her life. Her relationship is falling apart as her boyfriend Lukas increasingly seems to be attracted to Dawn only when she’s at her most masculine. Meanwhile at work, Dawn has to present as female, even on days when that isn’t true. Then, one day at work, Dawn finds something hidden behind the endpaper of an old book: the torn-off cover of a midcentury lesbian pulp novel. On the front is an illustration of a woman looking into a handheld mirror and seeing a man’s face. And on the back is a love letter. Dawn latches onto the coincidence, becoming obsessed with tracking down the note’s author, trying to understand how to live in a world that doesn’t see her as she truly is.
About SCORCHED GRACE: Sister Holiday, a chain-smoking, heavily tattooed, queer nun, puts her amateur sleuthing skills to the test in this “unique and confident” debut crime novel. Scorched Grace is the inaugural title from Gillian Flynn Books
Copies of Endpapers and Scorched Grace are available to purchase at the Bureau and on our online store:

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

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

Jennifer Savran Kelly (she/they) lives in Ithaca, NY, where she writes, binds books, and works as a production editor at Cornell University Press. ENDPAPERS is her debut novel. In 2018 it won a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. In 2019 it was selected as a finalist for the SFWP Literary Awards program and for the James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Her short fiction has appeared in Potomac Review, Black Warrior Review, Green Mountains Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere.

Margot Douaihy is a Lebanese American originally from Scranton, PA, now living in Northampton, MA. She is the author of the poetry collections Bandit/Queen: The Runaway Story of Belle Starr, Scranton Lace, and Girls Like You (Clemson University Press). She is a founding member of the Creative Writing Studies Organization and an active member of Sisters in Crime and the Radius of Arab American Writers. A recipient of the Mass Cultural Council’s Artist Fellowship, she was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, Aesthetica Magazine’s Creative Writing Award, and the Ernest Hemingway Foundation’s Hemingway Shorts. Her writing has been featured in Colorado Review; Diode Editions; The Florida Review; North American Review; PBS NewsHour; and elsewhere. Margot teaches Creative Writing at Franklin Pierce University in Rindge, NH, where she also serves as the editor of the Northern New England Review. As a co-editor of the Elements in Crime Narrative Series with Cambridge University Press, she strives to reshape crime writing scholarship, with a focus on the contemporary, the future, inclusivity, and decoloniality.

Queer Collage Workshop with Charlie Welch (in person only)
2023-03-11 14:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for a queer collage workshop with Charlie Welch in conjunction with Charlie’s current exhibition at the Bureau, It Will End in Tears.
No experience necessary! All are welcome to join!
We will have some materials (magazines, printed matter, glue, cardboard) and tools (scissors) available, but we encourage you to bring materials and tools to share. Thank you!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Space is limited: registration on Eventbrite is strongly encouraged!

A Reading By Lori Horvitz, Joan Larkin, and Shelley Marlow (in person event)
2023-03-05 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us for the NYC launch of Collect Call to My Mother: Essays on Love, Grief, and Getting a Good Night’s Sleep by Lori Horvitz. Lori will read excerpts from her new book and will be joined by Joan Larkin and Shelley Marlow, who will also read from their recent work.
Copies of Collect Call to My Mother will be available for purchase ($18) and Lori will be happy to sign copies. “A scintillating collection, full of subtle wit and passionate yearning.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review).
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.

Never Fine: Joseph Lezza In Conversation with Greg Mania (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-03-04 15:00 - 16:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In I’m Never Fine, a collage memoir of essays and poetry, Joseph Lezza shouts in the dark from the backseat of a stranger’s car, a ditch on the Italian coast, a forest outside the arctic, and from the bottom of a shaving cream can.
When Joseph caught himself wishing necrotizing skin infections upon unhurried retirees in the self checkout lane, and fantasized about loud-talking commuters making quick friends with the underside of a steamroller, he began to wonder if he was fine.
Of all the things Joseph Lezza could have been, he certainly wasn’t fine.
The “fine” he’d adopted watching his father succumb to cancer was beginning to wane. It could no longer be used as a shield to melt the face off of anyone who dared inquire. All the “fines” prophesized in every article, every book, and every inspirational meme-courtesy of every armchair expert with a pulse and internet connection-had lost their value.
When Joseph realized he was facing a future that would find him standing over the carcass of an overzealous Costco greeter, one thing became clear: moving on required looking back.
This memoir is an autopsy of perceived missteps, a conclusion to unfinished conversations, and a reframing of flawed judgments through the eyes of a young man in search of a feeling.
Copies of I’m Never Fine will be available to purchase at the Bureau.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

Joseph Lezza is a writer in New York, NY. Holding an MFA in creative writing from The University of Texas at El Paso, he is a 2021 finalist for the Prize Americana in Prose. His work has been featured in, among others, Occulum, Variant Literature, The Hopper, Stoneboat Literary Journal, West Trade Review, and Santa Fe Writers Project. His debut memoir in essays, I’m Never Fine: Scenes and Spasms on Loss, is out February 2023 from Vine Leaves Press.

Greg Mania is a writer, comedian, and award-winning screenwriter based in New York City. His words have been published in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, HuffPost, Oprah Daily, PAPER, among other international online and print platforms. His debut memoir, Born to Be Public, is out now from CLASH Books.
