Cuarenta y Nueve book launch celebration in New York!
2018-04-28 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cuarenta y Nueve‘s 3rd and final book launch party is in New York City. Please join us to celebrate this beautiful coffee table book dedicated to the 49 lives lost in the Orlando Pulse nightclub massacre. Many of the 49 artistic contributors will attend. Readings, book signings, performers + celebrating the love and light of our rainbow community. Please join us on this ‘pride full’ occasion!
Cuarenta y Nueve means 49 in Spanish. This beautiful coffee table book is an artistic homage to the 49 lives lost on June 12, 2016, at the Pulse Nightclub massacre, in Orlando Florida. Writers of every discipline & genre, photographers, artists, and even an Executive Chef have come together to create this must have tribute. By 49 and for 49, Cuarenta y Nueve was the vision of (and curated by) best selling author Joie Lamar, who has also arranged for 100% of the proceeds to be donated to positive LGBTQ+ organizations, specifically Pride School Atlanta & GLAAD.

Beautiful to Look At But Painful to Touch: Marco DaSilva in conversation with Travis Chamberlain
2018-04-29 15:00 - 16:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Marco DaSilva for an intimate conversation about his artistic process with Travis Chamberlain, Managing Director at Queer|Art, where DaSilva is a fellow in QUEER|ART|MENTORSHIP for 2017-2018. DaSilva’s paintings, collages, and sculptures are currently on view in No Reason To Be Careful through June 10th at the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division. This program is free and open to the public.

Marco DaSilva is a native New Yorker whose symbol-based paintings explore hybridity through the intersections of his Brazilian-American, queer identity and manic experience. He has exhibited work at IMAGE Gallery, Heath Gallery, and the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art. He is also a NYFA Artist as Entrepreneur Fellow. He creates work at his studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Marco has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY New Paltz.

Travis Chamberlain is a curator whose work encompasses performances, residencies, exhibitions, and community organizing, with a focus on the excavation of marginalized cultural histories and the advancement of emerging queer voices. Major projects have included work with artists Ishmael Houston-Jones, Dennis Cooper, Karen Finley, Julie Tolentino, Wu Tsang, Jack Ferver, Tina Satter, Young Jean Lee, and Jennifer Monson, among others. Formerly Associate Curator of Performance at the New Museum and Artistic Director of Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn, Chamberlain is now Managing Director at Queer|Art, a New York-based non-profit that supports the creative and professional development of LGBTQ artists through models of mentorship and community exchange.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Professor Marston and the Wonder Women
2018-05-02 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, and celebrating 2 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 2 – 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 more people come, the more likely we’ll continue the event! 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.

Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs
2018-05-03 18:30 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Please join us Thursday, May 3 to celebrate Lyle Ashton Harris’ monograph Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs with an evening of conversation with Lyle Ashton Harris, Thomas Allen Harris, and Alex Fialho.

Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, a radical cultural scene emerged across the globe, finding expression in the galleries, nightclubs, and bedrooms of New York, London, Los Angeles, and Rome. In Lyle Ashton Harris: Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs, the artist’s archive of 35mm Ektachrome images are presented alongside journal entries and recollections by additional contributors coalescing in a presentation of what Harris has described as “ephemeral moments and emblematic figures… against a backdrop of seismic shifts in the art world, the emergence of multiculturalism, the second wave of AIDS activism, and incipient globalization.” The Ektachrome Archive “constructs collective and private narratives to comment on identity, desire, sexuality, and loss” and was included in the 2017 Whitney Biennial.

Copies of Today I Shall Judge Nothing that Occurs (Aperture Foundation, 2017) 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!

For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. Harris has exhibited work widely, including at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York) and The Whitney Museum of American Art (New York) among many others, as well as at international biennials (São Paulo, 2016; Busan, 2008; Venice, 2007; Seville, 2006; Gwangju, 2000). His work is represented in the permanent collections of major museums, most recently The Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 2014 Harris joined the Board of Trustees of the American Academy in Rome and was recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art (Atlanta, Georgia, U.S.A.). In 2016 he was awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship and was appointed a trustee of the Tiffany Foundation. Having studied at Wesleyan University, the California Institute of the Arts, and the Whitney Museum of American Art Independent Study Program, Harris is currently an Associate Professor of Art and Art Education at New York University.

Born in the Bronx and raised in New York City and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, Thomas Allen Harris began his career as a photographer before producing for public television, for which he received several awards including two Emmy nominations (in 1991) for his work as a staff producer at WNET (New York’s PBS affiliate) on THE ELEVENTH HOUR. Harris is a recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including a 2015 NAACP Image Award, United States Artist Award, Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, A Blade of Grass Fellow as well as a Tribeca Film Institute’s Nelson Mandela Award. Harris has taught, written and lectured widely on media.<
Harris is the founder and President of Chimpanzee Productions, a company dedicated to producing unique audio-visual experiences that illuminate the Human Condition and the search for identity, family, and spirituality. Chimpanzee’s innovative and award-winning films have received critical acclaim at International film festivals such as Sundance, Berlin, Toronto, FESPACO, Outfest, Flaherty and Cape Town and have been broadcast on PBS, the Sundance Channel, ARTE, as well as CBC, Swedish Broadcasting Network and New Zealand Television. In addition, Harris’ videos and installations have been featured at museums and galleries including the Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Biennial, Corcoran Gallery, Reina Sophia, London Institute of the Arts and the Gwangju Biennale. He has held positions as Associate Professor of Media Arts at the University of California San Diego, and Visiting Professor of Film and New Media at Sarah Lawrence College.

Alex Fialho is a curator and arts writer based in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Artforum, and Programs Director at Visual AIDS, where he facilitates projects around both the history and immediacy of the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic, with particular stakes intervening against recent widespread whitewashing of HIV/AIDS cultural narratives.
Fialho has worked closely with Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris in multiple capacities. In the context of Visual AIDS’ Day With(out) Art programs, Fialho collaborated to commission new short videos from the artists: Lyle Ashton Harris’ Selections from the Ektachrome Archive was featured in Day With(out) Art 2014 ALTERNATE ENDINGS and Thomas Allen Harris’ About Face: The Evolution of a Black Producer was featured in Day With(out) Art 2017 ALTERNATE ENDINGS, RADICAL BEGINNINGS, curated by Erin Christovale and Vivian Crockett. Fialho’s 6 hour oral history with Lyle Ashton Harris will be included in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art’s “Visual Art & The AIDS Epidemic Oral History Project” and Fialho covered Lyle Ashton Harris’ Today I Shall Judge Nothing That Occurs: Selections from the Eckachrome Archive for Bookforum. Lyle Ashton Harris and Thomas Allen Harris will be honored alongside Steed Taylor with the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award on May 21, 2018.

Wo Chan, Lonely Christopher, Rami Karim, & Emji Saint Spero!
2018-05-04 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Emji Saint Spero is in town from Oakland, which is more than enough reason to throw a Spring Thing at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division! Wo Chan, Lonely Christopher, and Rami Karim join the celebration.

Wo Chan is a nonbinary drag performer and poet based in Brooklyn. They are the recipient of fellowships from the New York Foundation of Arts, Kundiman, and the Asian American Writers Workshop. Their writing centers on personal narratives of immigration, race, and gender in text and stage performance. They are a standing member of Brooklyn-based drag/burlesque collective Switch N’ Play and currently an MFA candidate in Poetry at New York University.

Lonely Christopher is the author of the poetry collections Death & Disaster Series (Monk Books, 2014) and The Resignation (Roof Books, forthcoming 2018). His short story collection The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse was a 2011 selection of Dennis Cooper’s Little House on the Bowery imprint of Akashic Books and his first novel, THERE, was published by The Writers’ Collective of Kristiania in 2017. His plays have been presented in Canada, China, and the United States. His film credits include several international shorts and the feature MOM, which he wrote and directed. He lives in Brooklyn.

Rami Karim is a writer and artist living in Brooklyn. They are a 2017 Margins Fellow at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop and graduate of the Brooklyn College Creative Writing MFA, where they received the Rose Goldstein, Himan Brown, and Carole Lainoff awards in writing. Their work has appeared in The Brooklyn Review, Apogee, Makhzin, The Margins, and Tagvverk, among others, and they are the author of Smile & Nod (Wendy’s Subway, 2018).

Emji Saint Spero is a queer performance artist and writer living in Oakland. They are an editor at Timeless, Infinite Light and the author of almost any shit will do. Their work occupies a hybrid space between poetry and prose, weaving together somatic ritual, performance, and collaborative experimentation. They work closely with other writers and artists, stretching the potential of creative intimacies, sociality, and the poetics of relation. They are currently working on the Exhaustion trilogy, a series of books obsessed with exploring and challenging Jose Muñoz’s notion that “utopia exists in the quotidian.”

Indie Presses Evening: Find Out How to Publish Your Book
2018-05-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Indie Presses Evening: Find Out How to Publish Your Book
Thursday, May 10, 2018, 7 pm
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, room 210 in The LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th Street, New York, NY
Participating Presses: Gaudy Boy, Indolent Books, Poets Wear Prada, and Querelle Press

Indie publishers and editors speak about the exciting diversity of their presses and publications. They also read from representative published works of LGBT interest. The talks are followed by Q&A. Come and find out more about the writing and publishing scene.

Indolent Books publishes work by underrepresented voices writing innovative, provocative, and risky poetry addressing urgent racial, social, and economic justice themes. Indolent was founded in 2015 by Michael Broder, who now serves as board treasurer and managing editor. In 2017 the press became an imprint of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity Indolent Arts Foundation.

Querelle Press is an independent LGBT book publisher whose mission is to celebrate and challenge how we view our lives as LGBT people. Querelle’s namesake is Jean Genet’s bold and distinctive novel, and the press aspires to publish in the book’s outspoken spirit. Under the guidance of publisher and editor Don Weise, and in partnership with writer and philanthropist Chuck Forester, Querelle publishes two new titles per year.

Have you had your poetry today? Get your brain fuel from Poets Wear Prada. Publishing beautifully designed volumes of well-crafted poetry—and now, fiction—you want to read, since October 2006. Founded by former Wall Street banker Roxanne Hoffman with her late husband, retired Hollywood agent Herbert Fuerst. John “Jack” Edward Cooper took over for Herb as co-editor from October 2011. Based in Hoboken, New Jersey with European office in Salazac, France.

From Latin gaudium meaning joy, Gaudy Boy publishes books and media that delight readers and listeners with the various powers of art. Helmed by publisher Jee Leong Koh and managing editor Kimberley Lim, Gaudy Boy brings literary works by authors of Asian heritage to the attention of an American audience. We publish poetry, fiction, and creative non-fiction of exceptional merit.

TELL 44: Intimacy
2018-05-12 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, 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.
Intimacy is the theme for the 44th installment of TELL. Featuring Darlinda Just Darlinda, Mieke Dee, Sarah Fonseca, and Dylan Stephen Levers.
$10 suggested donation to support the Bureau and the performers. No one turned away for lack of funds.

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 BGSQD. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.

The Village Voice calls DARLINDA JUST DARLINDA a “Mastermind of Bizarre Extravaganza” and she has been working as a Burlesque Performer Performance Artist and Producer since 2004 locally (NYC) and internationally (Australia, China, Finland, Germany, France, England, Canada, and most of the USA including Alaska!) Darlinda is one half of the Burlesque duo The Schlep Sisters, co producing such shows as The 11th Annual Menorah Horah and The Burning Bush vs. The Second Coming. Darlinda has produced shows, The New York Times calls “shockingly explicit.” Darlinda has also performed Off Broadway and on television; she performed with Taylor Mac in The Lily’s Revenge (Obie), The 29th Annual Roots of American Music Festival at Lincoln Center,Celebrate Brooklyn and 24 Decades of Popular Music (Obie). She can be found on television, in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and The Other F Word Series. She’s lectured for Yale’s infamous Sex Week. She’s made performance art with her year long “life as art” projects Year in Dance and Year in Rainbow and is co-founder of LadyBox Theater currently creating Untitled Rainbow Project. Darlinda is a current faculty member at the New York School of Burlesque and also teaches internationally. The Sundance Channel made Darlinda a “Top 10 Badass Burlesque Babe,” she was voted in the Top 50 International Burlesque Industry Figures of 2011-2014! Darlinda is the recipient of the Golden Pastie Award for The Most Innovative and Creative and The first ever Brooklyn Nightlife Award Winner for Best Burlesque! USA Today says “It’s hard to top Darlinda.”

Mieke Dee

Sarah Fonseca is a publicly-educated writer who lives in New York City via the Georgia foothills. Her essays, criticism, filthy ideas, and their overlapping iterations have appeared in Best Lesbian Erotica 2018, The Lambda Literary Review, Math Magazine, Posture Magazine, and Slate. She’s currently working on a series of essays on women and strength pursuits.

Dylan Stephen Levers is an NYC-based filmmaker. His film “this is a film about Tom and Maddy.” was a Vimeo staff pick and can be seen on Short of the Week and NoBudge.com. Short shorts, his collection of minute-long films, can be seen at https://vimeo.com/shortshorts.

Annie Lanzillotto & Erica Cardwell Read
2018-05-13 16:00 - 17:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Pride Comes Early! Annie Rachele Lanzillotto reads from her new double book “Hard Candy” and “Pitch Roll Yaw.” Erica Cardwell reads new work. Special guests include: Gabriella Belfiglio, Clare Ultimo, Rosette Capotorto, Zhaleh Afshar.

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is the author of the books: Hard Candy: Caregiving, Mourning, and Stage Light and Pitch, Roll, Yaw (Guernica World Editons 2018); L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir (SUNY Albany Press 2013, LAMBDA Literary Award Finalist); and Schistsong, poems, (Bordighera Press 2013.) Lanzillotto is the singer/songwriter of the albums: Never Argue With a Jackass (2017); Swampjuice: Yankee with a Southern Peasant Soul (2016), Carry My Coffee (2012), Eleven Recitations (2011); and Blue Pill (2010.) For more info on her books, audiobooks, albums, films, and performance works, visit www.annielanzillotto.com.

Erica Cardwell is a writer and radical educator based in New York. Her writing has appeared in Hyperallergic, The Believer, Rewire, and forthcoming for Green Mountain Review. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and was awarded a nonfiction fellowship from the Lambda Literary Foundation in 2015. She teaches English and Literature at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. Erica lives in Brooklyn with her partner and their turtle, Smiley Mousa.

Pop Gym Pop Up: Free Self-Defense Workshop at the Bureau
2018-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Palm Heels for the people! Don’t get that joke? No worries! Come by this FREE Pop Up workshop to learn some introductory skills that will keep you feeling safe. We’ll be covering the basics: stretching, conditioning, technique, and theory, with the hope that participants will leave with some super useful foundations that will aid them in the day-to-day. Mix that in with some sweat and some movement, and you’ll have an accessible and confidence-boosting good time for all. Whether you are a beginner, or someone with experience, come work it out with us!

Open to all ages! We’ll be moving around, so participants should wear clothing in which they are comfortable stretching and sweating.

#POPGym is a new project, working towards opening a physical space in Brooklyn that offers free self-defense, fitness, and skill share classes 7 days a week. As we continue planning, we invite you to come by any of our events this summer! Our workshops have been described as, “fun”, “holistic” and “empowering”, and for any questions, comments, or inquiries for future workshops for you or your organizations, email us at info@popgym.org #popup

Red Pubes: Writing the Queer Body
2018-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Poetry reading followed by Q & A with renowned poets Omotara James and Christopher Atamian.

Omotara James is a poet and essayist. The daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants, she lives and studies in New York City. Her poetry chapbook, “Daughter Tongue,” was selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. Her debut full length collection, “Mama Wata,” is forthcoming in the Fall of 2018 from Siren Songs, of CCM press. She has been award fellowships from Cave Canem and Lambda Literary. Her awards include the Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and the Nancy P. Schnader Academy of American Poets Award. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Recluse, Nat.Brut, American Chordata, Winter Tangerine, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Seventh Wave, Arkansas International and elsewhere. Currently, she is an MFA candidate in poetry at NYU.

Christopher Atamian is a writer and creative producer of Italian–Armenian background and the grandson of Armenian Genocide survivors. While his current work is increasingly devoid of overt ethnic topics, much of his early writings centered around issues of sexuality, ethnic origin and assimilation. At Collegiate School Atamian was a National Merit Scholar. He received his B.A. in Literature, Magna Cum Laude from Harvard University before completing his education at USC Film School and Columbia Business School where he received the school’s highest honor, the Samuel Bronfman Scholarship. Apart from creative endeavors and professional activities as a senior executive in leading media companies and consultancies, Atamian has concentrated on community activism. He is the former President and a current board member of AGLA New York and in 2004 founded Nor Alik, a non-profit cultural organization responsible for producing the First Armenian International Film Festival. He also co-produced the OBIE Award-winning play Trouble in Paradise in 2006, directed by Elyse Singer, as well as several music videos and short films. Atamian was selected for the 2009 Venice Biennale on the basis of his video Sarafian’s Desire and received a 2015 Ellis Island Medal of Honor. He continues to contribute critical pieces to leading publications such as The New York Times Book Review and The Huffington Post, while working on other creative endeavors in film and theater. Atamian’s poetry has appeared in The Hye-Phen Magazine, The Armenian Poetry Project, Groong Online, and Mes Arménies. Into the Woods was adapted as a rock song by musician Anne Hirschfeld.

John Fleck Is Who You Want Him to Be: Screening with Director Kevin Duffy and Guest Lucy Sexton of Dancenoise
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE is a documentary film by Kevin Duffy examining the legendary performance artist who was at the center of the culture wars during the AIDS crisis. The film includes contemporary cinema vérité footage of Fleck’s performances in New York and LA, a sit-down interview and archival footage reaching back over 30 years, including never before seen footage of the performance that sparked the NEA 4 crisis and the subsequent US Supreme Court decision.
Director Kevin Duffy will engage in a Q&A following the screening.

A Q&A will follow the screening with the filmmaker hosted by Moderator Lucy Sexton of DANCENOISE, the subject of the recent retrospective “Don’t Look Back” at the Whitney Museum.

Reception 7:30 PM
Screening 8 PM

JOHN FLECK (Subject) is a performance artist and actor based in Los Angeles, California. In 1990 he and 3 other performance artists became known as the NEA-4 denied funding by the National Endowment for the Arts because of religious and political pressure. Fleck’s latest venture BLACKTOP HIGHWAY premiered @ REDCAT in Los Angeles and recently made its NYC debut @ Dixon Place receiving rave reviews and a critic’s choice in the NY Times. His last show MAD WOMEN won the 2012 LA Weekly Award for ‘Outstanding Solo Performance’ and was nominated for a Bessie Award.

KEVIN DUFFY (Filmmaker) directed, produced, shot and edited the documentary feature, JOHN FLECK IS WHO YOU WANT HIM TO BE. The film has screened at the American Cinematheque, Los Angeles, the Los Feliz 3 Cinema, the New York Indie Theater Film Festival and CalArts. Duffy’s first independent feature, BECOMING BLOND (2010) starring Mink Stole is distributed by Ariztical Entertainment and has screened on Here TV. Duffy’s short film, cheap flight, (1996) screened on the Sundance Channel, at the Hamptons International Film Festival, the American Cinematheque and other venues. A graduate of New York University, Duffy won a Fellowship in Playwriting from the New York Foundation for the Arts. He received an M.F.A. in screenwriting from the American Film Institute.

Lucy Sexton is a Brooklyn-born choreographer, director, and producer who works in the fields of dance, theater, and film. With Anne Iobst, she created the dance performance duo DANCENOISE. She directed the off-Broadway plays Spalding Gray; Stories Left to Tell and Tom Murrin’s The Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic; and produced the Charles Atlas films The Legend of Leigh Bowery and TURNING with Antony and the Johnsons. Since 2009, she has served as the Executive Director of the NY Dance and Performance Awards, The Bessies.

Gay Artists of the Negro Renaissance
2018-05-19 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
Join longtime activist, scholar of African American studies, and friend of the Bureau James Wright and guest speakers for a discussion of gay artists of the Negro Renaissance.

Featuring a historic overview of Harlem, the Negro Renaissance, and biographical information on several gay artists of the period, including Countee Cullen, Wallace Thurman, Alain Locke, and Bruce Nugent.

We will screen Brother to Brother (2005, written and directed by Rodney Evans, 90 minutes), a dramatic film about the life and times of Bruce Nugent.

James Wright has organized events at the Bureau exploring the lives and works of James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry, as well as an event focused on Bruce Nugent and the first and only issue of the black literary journal FIRE!!, which Nugent created with Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis in 1926.

About the image: In 1926, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Wallace Thurman, Aaron Douglas, Richard Bruce Nugent, Gwendolyn Bennett, and John P. Davis created the first and only issue of the black literary journal FIRE!!, which included Nugent’s explicitly gay poem “Smoke, Lilies and Jade.”

Queer/Literary Defiance!
2018-05-20 15:30 - 17:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cultural defiance has maintained Queer identity, keeping alive a culture rich in creativity, zest, and courage. In today’s political and social environment, when LGBTQ rights and legitimacy are again under attack, Queer cultural defiance is a bulwark against forcing the community back into hiding.

On Sunday, May 20th, five acclaimed Queer writers—poets, playwrights and novelists—will celebrate Queer/Literary Defiance. Each will read a short passage from their work, followed by a discussion of the role of defiance in their writing; how it shapes it, informs it, gives it fire. This award-winning lineup of authors represents a diversity of social and cultural experience in the Queer community. As writers, they distill those experiences into art.

Featuring Ann Aptaker, Ella Boureau, JP Howard, Jee Leong Koh, and Trace Peterson.

Affirmative Laughter
2018-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Come celebrate Elsa Waithe‘s 30th bday the only way she know how… WITH LAUGHTER!!! On May 25th @ 7pm, Bureau of General Services-Queer Division is gonna be packed as we ring in Elsa’s new decade with this hot lineup:

Beth Maria
Margo Reiss
Shelly Colman
Sarah Hartshorne
Norah Yahya
Mamoudou N’Diaye

$10 suggested donation to benefit the Bureau and Affirmative Laughter performers. No one turned away for lack of funds!!!!

Book Launch - A Reprobate Sense by Hunter O'Hanian
2018-05-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
This artist’s book explores the origins of anti-same sex attitudes found in modern society. The author, Hunter O’Hanian, uses a book written in 1049, The Book of Gomorrah, which for the first time, cataloged the sins associated with same-sex behavior.

O’Hanian researched Peter Damian’s life, the origin of the book and its impact on modern day society. A Reprobate Sense contains selected excerpts from Damian’s work illustrated with screen shots from 1970s films made to entertain gay males.

Gay writer and historian Hugh Ryan will interview O’Hanian about the book.

Copies of A Reprobate Sense 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!

About Hunter O’Hanian – With degrees from Boston College and Suffolk University Law School, Hunter O’Hanian has held leadership positions at visual arts programs including the Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), Anderson Ranch Arts Center (Snowmass Village, CO), Massachusetts College of Art and Design Foundation (Boston, MA), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art (New York, NY), and College Art Association (New York, NY). He has served on non-profit boards and panels for more than 30 years. His contributions have been recognized through an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the Art Institute of Boston and a permanently endowed fellowship in his name at the Fine Arts Work Center.

About Hugh Ryan – A journalist, curator, and speaker write for folks like The New York Times, The Guardian, The Daily Beast, VICE, and Slate, and other places. He mostly covers queer culture, art, and politics, but also Rube Goldberg machines, racism on reality television, the renaissance of Shirley Jackson, non-linear non-fiction, and the literary origin of zombies in America. Recently, he became the resident historian at them, the new Conde Nast LGBTQ publication, where we writes a column called “Themstory” every two weeks. This year, he will be a resident artist at The Watermill Center as he finishes his new book, When Brooklyn Was Queer, due out with St. Martin’s Press in March of 2019.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe and Christopher Bram in Conversation: Storytelling and Community
2018-06-03 17:00 - 18:30 | NY
Launching her new novel, THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE, Lucy Jane Bledsoe will be in conversation with Christopher Bram. They’ll discuss how communities function in crisis, and the role of storytelling in shaping community and culture, with a queer twist on all of the above.

Copies of The Evolution of Love 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!

Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of six novels, including the just-released THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE and recently-released A THIN BRIGHT LINE. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination, a Yaddo Fellowship, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. Her story collection, LAVA FALLS, is forthcoming this fall. Bledsoe lives in the Bay Area where she spends as much time as possible kayaking in the bay, as well as hiking and cycling in the hills.

A novelist and critic, Christopher Bram is the author of nine novels, including GODS AND MONSTERS, which was made into the movie starring Ian McKellen and Lynn Redgrave. He has written nonfiction for a broad range of publications, including Out, the Huffington Post, and Architectural Digest. Bram’s book of essays, MAPPING THE TERRITORY, and his books SURPRISING MYSELF, HOLD TIGHT, IN MEMORY OF ANGEL CLARE, and GOSSIP were reissued by Open Road Books in 2013. He was a 2001 Guggenheim fellow and winner of the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement. His recent books include EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGED AMERICA (Twelve, 2012) and THE ART OF HISTORY: UNLOCKING THE PAST IN FICTION AND NONFICTION (Graywolf, 2016).

Women Your Mother Warned You About
2018-06-05 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for Women Your Mother Warned You About, an explosive evening of uncensored vulnerability, magic, and hope from the best trans women and CAMAB non-binary writers in the country! Hear fantastic stories and celebrate the Lammy nomination of Resilience with Heartspark Press Editor Sugi Pyrrophyta and a short-list of incredible artists we’re thrilled to be sharing the stage with. Come out and support trans women writers!
THE WRITERS JOINING US
JEANNE THORNTON
APRIL DANIELS
SARA OLIVER WIGHT
A.K. BLUE
TYLER VILE
SUGI PYRROPHYTA
& MORE
ABOUT THE RESILIENCE ANTHOLOGY
Take a journey through the worlds of over thirty (C)AMAB* trans writers in what is currently the largest collection of poetry and prose made for and by us. Featuring new work by Luna Merbruja, Magpie Leibowitz, Moss Angel, KOKUMO, Joss Barton, Ariel Howland, Casey Plett, Sascha Hamilton, A.K. Blue, Oti Onum, Rahne Alexander, Tobi Hill-Meyer, Lawrence Walker, Connifer Candlewood, Serafima Mintz, Talia Johnson, Tyler Vile, Lina Corvus, Bridget Liang, erica inchoate, Lillita Lustre, CHRYSALISAMIDST, Ana Valens, Larissa Glasser, Lilith Dawn, AR Rushet and more, including an introduction by Julia Serano!
Curated and Edited by Amy Heart, Sugi Pyrrophyta, and Larissa Glasser.

Copies of Resilience 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!

SARA OLIVER WIGHT
Sara Oliver Wight is a Brooklyn based model, author, and aspiring lesbian farmer. Her current work focus is how to convey queer femme sexuality through noodles and sandwiches. Her work can be found on vice.com, in the Resilience anthology and on her Instagram @saraoliverwight
A.K. BLUE
Andreia Kundry Blue lives in the Hudson Valley. She writes science fiction, trans fiction, and eccentric mash-ups of the two. Her story in Resilience, “God Empress Susanna,” is part of her work in progress, Sea of Nightmares, a collection of linked SF stories. She is a graduate of the Odyssey Writing Workshop and a member of the Brooklyn Trans Writing Workshop.
TYLER VILE
Tyler Vile is a writer, performer, and activist from Baltimore, MD whose novel-in-verse, Never Coming Home, is available on Topside Press. She is a member of the board of Hinenu: The Baltimore Justice Shtiebl, a radically inclusive synagogue, and was the vocalist in a punk band called Anti-Androgen. Her interactive poetry zine, Hassidic Witch Murderer is available on her website, tylervile.wordpress.com. Her work has appeared in the Lambda Literary Award nominated anthology, Resilience, published by Heartspark Press, as well as the magazines Femmescapes, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, and Rogue Agent. She hopes to one day become the world’s greatest transsexual lesbian yenta.
SUGI PYRROPHYTA
Sugi works against the hegemony that academic institutions have on knowledge and that financial institutions have on power, specifically the roles that capital and obedience to oppressive structures play in upholding/withholding those institution and the rewards. She has been working most of her life on collecting stories of the lived experience of those most oppressed while attempting to make impossible the powers that hold us down. She knows first-hand and viscerally how hard it is to carve out time/energy to create while fighting every step for her and her friends’ survival, and has no further accolades to dress herself in here because you can do anything, you don’t need a fancy degree or an income or to have been published before; you are the fire that keeps us warm.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Mediterranean Food
2018-06-06 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.
Please join us for Mediterranean Food/Dieta Mediterránea (2009), directed by Joaquín Oristrell and starring Olivia Molina, Paco León, and Alfonso Bassave.
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: In this Spanish romantic comedy, Sofía, Toni, and Frank grow up together in a seaside village. While Frank encourages Sofía’s ambition to be a world-famous chef, she is also drawn to Toni’s vision of traditional family life. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Book launch of Patrick E. Horrigan's novel PENNSYLVANIA STATION
2018-06-07 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A party and reading to mark the publication of the novel PENNSYLVANIA STATION (Lethe Press) by Patrick E. Horrigan

Copies of Pennsylvania Station 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!

Photograph by Frank Marando

Born and raised in Reading, Pennsylvania, Patrick E. Horrigan is the author of the novel PORTRAITS AT AN EXHIBITION (Lethe Press), about a young man’s search for the meaning of life amid a gallery of old master portraits. PORTRAITS won the Dana Award for fiction as well as the Mary Lynn Kotz Art-in-Literature Award, sponsored by the Library of Virginia and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. He is also the author of WIDESCREEN DREAMS: GROWING UP GAY AT THE MOVIES (University of Wisconsin Press), an analysis of several popular films from the 1960s and 70s. He has written artists’ catalogue essays for Thion’s LIMI-TATE: DRAWINGS OF LIFE AND DREAMS (cueB Gallery, London) and Ernesto Pujol’s LOSS OF FAITH (Galeria Ramis Barquet, New York). His essay “The Inner Life of Ordinary People” appears in Anthony Enns’ and Christopher R. Smit’s SCREENING DISABILITY: ESSAYS ON CINEMA AND DISABILITY (University Press of America). His play MESSAGES FOR GARY, composed entirely of answering machine messages received by the activist and socialist scholar Gary Lucek, was a critically-acclaimed hit of the Third Annual New York International Fringe Festival. With his husband, the actor and writer Eduardo Leanez, he co-wrote the solo show YOU ARE CONFUSED! about the relationship between a gay Venezuelan boy and his charismatic mother. He and Mr. Leanez are the hosts of ACTORS WITH ACCENTS, a recurring variety show on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Winner of Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Excellence in Teaching, he is Associate Professor of English at LIU Brooklyn. He lives in Manhattan.

Book cover design by Franco La Russa, aka Thion

On Euphoria: A closing celebration with Jarrett Key, Anuradha Golder, and Marco DaSilva
2018-06-08 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
For the closing of Marco DaSilva‘s solo exhibition No Reason To Be Careful, please join us on Friday, June 8th, for an evening of performance and celebration at the Bureau in response to the notion of Euphoria. With performance pieces by Jarrett Key, Marco DaSilva and music by Anuradha Golder.

Marco DaSilva‘s No Reason To Be Careful remains on view at the Bureau until Sunday, June 10th.

Jarrett Key was born in Seale, AL. Key attended Brown University where they studied Theater Arts and Public Policy. Since moving to New York, Key has been featured in exhibitions and residencies at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts, La MaMaGalleria, The Columbus Museum, Gallery 67, Swiss House/MGLC, Galerija Kresija, Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Art, Caelum Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, Outlet Fine Art, Former Pfizer Pharmaceutical Factory, Secret Dungeon, La Maison D’Art, Shanghai Theater Academy, and East Meet West Gallery. Key has work is in the collections of the Schomburg Center, MoMa Library, The Metropolitan Museum of ArtLibrary, among other institutions. The HAIR PAINTING series has been featured at the Studio Museum in Harlem and Harlem Arts Festival in Marcus Garvey Park, as well on television: SLAY TV, and CBS 2 NYC. Key will be moving back to Providence to pursue an MFA in Painting at RISD.

Anuradha Golder is a Bronx-based, Bangladeshi-born DJ, curator, playwright, organizer, and zine-maker. Sonically, she plays around with Afro-diasporic and indigenous-to-the-Americas instrument samples. She has performed with the Buenos-Aires political arts collective Hiedrah as well as their sister group Salviatek in Montevideo. Golder also spearheads the multi-lingual Club Etiquette zine, which focuses on issues both broad and trivial that rise in nightlife and set tangible guidelines practiced at their accompanying parties. She has a BFA in Theatre with a concentration in Playwriting from Barnard College.

Marco DaSilva is a native New Yorker whose symbol-based paintings explore hybridity through the intersections of his Brazilian-American, queer identity and manic experience. He has exhibited works at The Brecht Forum, IMAGE Gallery, Heath Gallery, The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art among many others. Last year he was a NYFA Artist as Entrepreneur fellow and is currently a Visual Arts fellow for Queer Art Mentorship’s 2017-2018 cycle. He creates work at his studio in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Marco has a BFA in Painting and Drawing from SUNY New Paltz.
While in the waiting room at Bellevue Hospital in his manic state, DaSilva was extremely hyper and had an unlimited supply of uninhibited energy. While listening to his party playlist through big headphones, he danced uncontrollably, sweating non-stop for hours while everyone sat and stared. In this state he felt like a star, and loved every moment of it. DaSilva will recreate this manic dance in the waiting room at the Bureau. While he will be listen to his own music, the audience will listen to an audio recording of his self- published manic book of poetry, My Quaint Struggle. These poems were mini- epiphanies DaSilva had and wrote down in this euphoric state when he did not sleep for four days straight.

TELL 45: Lost and Found
2018-06-09 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, 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.
Lost and Found is the theme for the 45th installment of TELL. Featuring Maybe Burke, Thomas Dolan, Ronnie Mae Painter, and Melissa Rocha.
$10 suggested donation to support the Bureau and the performers. No one turned away for lack of funds.

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 BGSQD. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.

Maybe Burke is a New York based theatre artist and trans advocate interested in telling the stories that haven’t been told. They are excited by new material that can honestly and realistically portray marginalized groups of people. They have worked with Joe’s Pub, Cherry Lane Theatre, Ars Nova, La Mama, HERE Arts Center, The Flea, The Duplex, and more. Maybe is a co-curator of the Trans Theatre Festival at The Brick and the founder of The Trans Literacy Project. Artistic Associate, Honest Accomplice Theatre. BA Directing, Pace University. maybeburke.com @believeinmaybe

Thomas Dolan is a Ph.D. Candidate in American Studies at George Washington University, focusing on Middle Eastern diaspora and race. A recent recipient of the Calouste Gulbenkian Global Excellence Scholarship, Thomas’ research has also been supported by the Institute for Middle East Studies, Dr. Philip M. Kayal Fund for Arab American Research, Bouchet Graduate Honor Society, Bentley Historical Library Bordin-Gillette Fellowship, Loeb Institute for Religious Freedom and the Armenian General Benevolent Union. He is an alumnus of NYU, the New School’s Institute for Critical Social Inquiry, and Yale University. Last semester, Thomas was a visiting researcher at the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, and has recently published in Huffington Post, Muftah, and HowlRound. Prior to returning to graduate school, Thomas performed and produced work at Madison Square Garden, Lincoln Center, Town Hall, Studio 54, among others.

A native New Yorker born and raised in Astoria, Queens, Ronnie Mae Painter is a Brooklyn-based artist who’s primary media are painting on canvas and works on paper. She is also a published author and poet. Her literary works can be found in the anthology “Are Italians White”, edited by Jennifer Guglielmo and Salvatore Salerno. Painter’s experiences growing up as a woman of African-American and Italian-American biracial descent during the 1970s are transcended through both her visual and literary works in energetic movements and a shouting tone.

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

Indolent Books Pride Poetry Reading
2018-06-10 15:00 - 16:30 | NY
Join Indolent Books for a celebration of Queer Pride with readings by Risa Denenberg, Kay Gabriel, Jason Schneiderman, Grey Vild, and Jayson P. Smith.

Risa Denenberg is the author of three chapbooks and three full-length collections of poetry, including “Whirlwind @ Lesbos” (Headmistress Press, 2016) and “slight faith” (MoonPath Press, 2018). She currently lives a quiet life on the Olympic peninsula in Washington State. A member of ACTUP NY and a volunteer at the Community Health Project from 1987-1995, she worked for many years as a nurse practitioner in HIV/AIDS and end-of-life care. She is co-founder and editor at Headmistress Press, a publisher of LBT poetry. Online at risadenenberg.weebly.com.

Kay Gabriel is the author of Elegy Department Spring (BOAAT Press, 2017), finalist for the 2016 BOAAT chapbook prize selected by Richard Siken. She is one-fifth of Negative Press, a gay Marxist poetry collective, and co-edits Vetch: A Journal of Trans Poetry and Poetics. Find her recent and forthcoming writing in Lambda Literary Poetry Spotlight, Salvage, TAGVVERK, Tripwire, The Believer and
elsewhere. Twitter: @unit01barbie.

Grey Vild is a Queer Art Mentorship & Brooklyn Poets fellow. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Them, Fault, Elderly, Vetch, and Winter Tangerine. He is beginning his MFA at Rutgers University and is working on his first collection of poems, The M4T Files.

Jason Schneiderman is the author of Primary Source (Red Hen Press 2016), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Prize; Striking Surface (Ashland Poetry Press 2010), winner of the Richard Snyder Prize, and Sublimation Point (Four Way Books 2004), a Stahlecker Selection. He edited the anthology Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press 2015). His poetry and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, and he has received He fellowships from Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center, and The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, as well as the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is Poetry Editor of the Bellevue Literary Review, and Associate Editor of Painted Bride Quarterly. He is an Associate Professor of English at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, City University of New York.

Jayson P Smith is a 2017 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Their work appears in publications such as West Branch, 92Y, Gulf Coast, Nepantla, Vinyl, fields magazine, & The Offing. Jayson has received previous support from The Poetry Project, The Conversation Literary Festival, Callaloo, & Millay Colony for the Arts. Jayson currently lives/works in Brooklyn as founder of NOMAD Reading Series and a Spark House teaching artist.

VIP and Press Preview and Opening Reception for Cast of Characters
2018-06-14 18:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cast of Characters
An Immersive Exhibition by Liz Collins
June 14 – September 16, 2018
Download the press release for Cast of Characters.
Donors reception
Thursday, June 14, 2018, 6-9 PM
(for donors of $85 or more to Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign—(campaign ended–successfully!!!–on May 31st)
Press Preview
Members of the press will be admitted to the exhibition at 5 PM on Thursday, June 14th. Please contact Greg Newton at contact@bgsqd.com with the subject line “RSVP for Press Preview of Cast of Characters” and please include your affiliation.
Public opening reception:
Friday, June 15, 2018, 6-9 PM
RSVP required for Public Opening Reception.
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are much appreciated!
Please RSVP here.
EXHIBITION
BUREAU OF GENERAL SERVICES—QUEER DIVISION
ROOM 210, LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER
VIP Donors Reception (June 14) and Public Reception (June 15)
ROOM 101, LGBT COMMUNITY CENTER
208 WEST 13TH STREET
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center are proud to present Cast of Characters, a dramatic transformation of the Bureau by artist Liz Collins featuring a salon-style exhibition of portraits by 95 LGBTQ artists. Inspired by lavishly decorated and richly ornamented nineteenth-century libraries and salons, this immersive installation brings vibrant colors, dynamic geometric patterns, and lush textures to the Bureau’s utilitarian aesthetic of plywood and cardboard. The exhibition will transform the Bureau into a warm, bright lounge, inspiring contemplation and conversation, beckoning visitors to linger, look, and read.
Made possible by a grant from The Kors Le Pere Foundation and by individual donations to the Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign.
In order to attend the VIP Donors Preview and Opening Reception for Cast of Characters please donate $85 or more to the Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign by the deadline of Thursday, May 31, 2018. Campaign ended–successfully!!!–on May 31st,

Exhibiting artists

Paula Allen
Lani Asuncion
Aziz + Cucher
Shimon Attie
Hannah Barrett
Nayland Blake
Marissa Bluestone
Chris Bogia
Justin Vivian Bond
Deborah Bright
Nancy Brooks Brody
Dietmar Busse
Nao Bustamante
Jai Carrillo
Anna Campbell
Cassils
Geoffrey Chadsey
Caroline Wells Chandler
Kyle Coniglio
Marco DaSilva
Niko Darling
Leah DeVun
Katrina del Mar
KD Diamond
Vincent Dilio
Angela Dufresne
Nicole Eisenman
Scott Ewalt
Alesia Exum
Avram Finkelstein
C. Finley
Daphne Fitzpatrick
Lola Flash
Chitra Ganesh
Andrea Geyer
Gary Graham
Stephanie Gudra
Martine Gutierrez
Barbara Hammer
Michelle Handelman
Jesse Harrod
Clarity Haynes
Karen Heagle
Mars Hobrecker
Elizabeth Insogna
Rindon Johnson
John Kelly
Amanda Kirkhuff
Carmelle La Sirena
Kia LaBeija
Doron Langberg
Rebecca Levi
Myles Loftin
Shelley Marlow
Rodolfo Marron III
Aaron McIntosh
Eric McNatt
Bobbi Menuez
Lucas Michael
Troy Michie
Midori
Rodrigo Moreira
Carlos Motta
Zanele Muholi
Em North
Samantha Nye
Sig Olson
Alice O’Malley
Allison Michael Orenstein
Maia Cruz Palileo
Anna Parisi
Vick Quezada
LJ Roberts
Jason Rodgers
Gabriel García Román
JD Samson
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
M. Sharkey
Lauryn Siegel & Virgil B/G Taylor
Charan Singh
SKOTE (Alex P White & Jill Pangallo)
Buzz Slutzky
Tuesday Smillie
Allison Smith
Pamela Sneed
Alexander Stadler
A.K. Summers
Aarav Sundaresh
Corinne Teed
Gail Thacker
Mickalene Thomas
Vincent Tiley
Boris Torres
Nicola Tyson
Conrad Ventur
Mickey Vered
Courtney Webster & Meg Turner
Ketch Wehr
Matthew Weinstein

Liz Collins is an artist and designer living and working in Brooklyn, NY, and in her work surrounds the viewer in vibrating color and pattern fields to explore the boundaries between painting, fiber arts and installation. The cacophonic play of optics, texture, color and scale recreates her wavering experience of the world as a place of stupendous wonder and cosmic energy.
Collins has had solo exhibitions at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Heller Gallery, NY; AMP Gallery, Provincetown, MA; and the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee to name a few. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including at the ICA/Boston; Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; the Museum of FIT; the New Museum; the Museum of Arts and Design and MoMA, and numerous group shows at galleries around the world. Collins’ awards include a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, and residencies at AIR Alaska, Haystack, MacDowell, the Siena Art Institute, Stoneleaf, Yaddo, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is a Queer Art Mentor, serves on the board of the Fire Island Art Residency, is a new member of the Exhibitions Committee at the Leslie Lohman Museum, and is one of the artists in the 2018-2020 Open Sessions program at the Drawing Center.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space that opened in New York City in 2012 and has been hosted by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center since 2014. We aim to foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community by offering books, publications, and art and by hosting a wide variety of cultural events, including readings, performances, film screenings, book discussion groups, and workshops. We provide local and visiting queers and friends with an open and inclusive space for dialogue and socializing.

Established in 1983, New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center empowers people to lead healthy, successful lives. The Center celebrates diversity and advocates for justice and opportunity. Each year, The Center welcomes more than 300,000 visits to our building in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan from people who engage in our life-changing and life-saving activities. To learn more about our work, please visit gaycenter.org.
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 Mondays, Tuesdays, & Sundays.
Image credit:
Wallpaper designed by Liz Collins, produced by 4Spaces
Portraits by:
top row: Shelley Marlow, Cassils, Lani Asuncion
middle row: Dietmar Busse, Martine Gutierrez, Zanele Muholi
Bottom row: Nao Bustamante, Hannah Barrett, Paula Allen

Public Opening Reception for Cast of Characters
2018-06-15 18:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Cast of Characters
An Immersive Exhibition by Liz Collins
June 14 – September 16, 2018
Download the press release for Cast of Characters.
Donors reception
Thursday, June 14, 2018, 6-9 PM
(for donors of $85 or more to Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign)
Kickstarter campaign ended–successfully!!!–on May 31st. Thanks to all who donated!!!
Public opening reception:
Friday, June 15, 2018, 6-9 PM
RSVP required for Public Opening Reception.
This event is free, but donations to support the Bureau’s work are much appreciated!
Please RSVP here.

Exhibition
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Room 210, LGBT Community Center
VIP Donors Reception (June 14) and Public Reception (June 15)
Room 101, LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center are proud to present Cast of Characters, a dramatic transformation of the Bureau by artist Liz Collins featuring a salon-style exhibition of portraits by 95 LGBTQ artists. Inspired by lavishly decorated and richly ornamented nineteenth-century libraries and salons, this immersive installation brings vibrant colors, dynamic geometric patterns, and lush textures to the Bureau’s utilitarian aesthetic of plywood and cardboard. The exhibition will transform the Bureau into a warm, bright lounge, inspiring contemplation and conversation, beckoning visitors to linger, look, and read.
Made possible by a grant from The Kors Le Pere Foundation and by individual donations to the Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign.
In order to attend the VIP Donors Preview and Opening Reception for Cast of Characters please donate $85 or more to the Cast of Characters Kickstarter campaign by the deadline of Thursday, May 31, 2018. Please select the appropriate reward in order to attend. Thank you for your support! Kickstarter campaign ended–successfully!!!–on May 31st. Thanks to all who donated!!!
Exhibiting artists

Paula Allen
Lani Asuncion
Aziz + Cucher
Shimon Attie
Hannah Barrett
Nayland Blake
Marissa Bluestone
Chris Bogia
Justin Vivian Bond
Deborah Bright
Nancy Brooks Brody
Dietmar Busse
Nao Bustamante
Jai Carrillo
Anna Campbell
Cassils
Geoffrey Chadsey
Caroline Wells Chandler
Kyle Coniglio
Marco DaSilva
Niko Darling
Leah DeVun
Katrina del Mar
KD Diamond
Vincent Dilio
Angela Dufresne
Nicole Eisenman
Scott Ewalt
Alesia Exum
Avram Finkelstein
C. Finley
Daphne Fitzpatrick
Lola Flash
Chitra Ganesh
Andrea Geyer
Gary Graham
Stephanie Gudra
Martine Gutierrez
Barbara Hammer
Michelle Handelman
Jesse Harrod
Clarity Haynes
Karen Heagle
Mars Hobrecker
Elizabeth Insogna
Rindon Johnson
John Kelly
Amanda Kirkhuff
Carmelle La Sirena
Kia LaBeija
Doron Langberg
Rebecca Levi
Myles Loftin
Shelley Marlow
Rodolfo Marron III
Aaron McIntosh
Eric McNatt
Bobbi Menuez
Lucas Michael
Troy Michie
Midori
Rodrigo Moreira
Carlos Motta
Zanele Muholi
Em North
Samantha Nye
Sig Olson
Alice O’Malley
Allison Michael Orenstein
Maia Cruz Palileo
Anna Parisi
Vick Quezada
LJ Roberts
Jason Rodgers
Gabriel García Román
JD Samson
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
M. Sharkey
Lauryn Siegel & Virgil B/G Taylor
Charan Singh
SKOTE (Alex P White & Jill Pangallo)
Buzz Slutzky
Tuesday Smillie
Allison Smith
Pamela Sneed
Alexander Stadler
A.K. Summers
Aarav Sundaresh
Corinne Teed
Gail Thacker
Mickalene Thomas
Vincent Tiley
Boris Torres
Nicola Tyson
Conrad Ventur
Mickey Vered
Courtney Webster & Meg Turner
Ketch Wehr
Matthew Weinstein

Liz Collins is an artist and designer living and working in Brooklyn, NY, and in her work surrounds the viewer in vibrating color and pattern fields to explore the boundaries between painting, fiber arts and installation. The cacophonic play of optics, texture, color and scale recreates her wavering experience of the world as a place of stupendous wonder and cosmic energy.
Collins has had solo exhibitions at the Tang Museum, Saratoga Springs, NY; Heller Gallery, NY; AMP Gallery, Provincetown, MA; and the Knoxville Museum of Art in Tennessee to name a few. Her work has been included in numerous exhibitions including at the ICA/Boston; Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art; the Museum of FIT; the New Museum; the Museum of Arts and Design and MoMA, and numerous group shows at galleries around the world. Collins’ awards include a USA Fellowship, a MacColl Johnson Fellowship, and residencies at AIR Alaska, Haystack, MacDowell, the Siena Art Institute, Stoneleaf, Yaddo, and the Museum of Arts and Design. She is a Queer Art Mentor, serves on the board of the Fire Island Art Residency, is a new member of the Exhibitions Committee at the Leslie Lohman Museum, and is one of the artists in the 2018-2020 Open Sessions program at the Drawing Center.
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is an independent, all-volunteer queer cultural center, bookstore, and event space that opened in New York City in 2012 and has been hosted by The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center since 2014. We aim to foster a community invested in the values of mindfulness, intellectual curiosity, justice, compassion, and playfulness. The Bureau seeks to excite and educate a self-confident, sex-positive, and supportive queer community by offering books, publications, and art and by hosting a wide variety of cultural events, including readings, performances, film screenings, book discussion groups, and workshops. We provide local and visiting queers and friends with an open and inclusive space for dialogue and socializing.

Established in 1983, New York City’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center empowers people to lead healthy, successful lives. The Center celebrates diversity and advocates for justice and opportunity. Each year, The Center welcomes more than 300,000 visits to our building in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan from people who engage in our life-changing and life-saving activities. To learn more about our work, please visit gaycenter.org.

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 Mondays, Tuesdays, & Sundays.
Image credit:
Wallpaper designed by Liz Collins, produced by 4Spaces
Portraits by:
top row: Shelley Marlow, Cassils, Lani Asuncion
middle row: Dietmar Busse, Martine Gutierrez, Zanele Muholi
Bottom row: Nao Bustamante, Hannah Barrett, Paula Allen

Bold Strokes Books Pride Reading
2018-06-19 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
To celebrate Pride in NYC Bold Strokes Books is proud to present an array of talented, queer writers reading from across genres at the Bureau!

Ann Aptaker will read from Criminal Gold
Tom Cardamone will read from The Lurid Sea
Nora Olsen will read from Frenemy of the People
Andrew J. Peters will read from The Sim Ru Prophecy
Alexa Black will read from The Outcasts
Nell Stark will read from The Princess Deception

Aural Fixation: A Post-Pride Fiction Extravaganza
2018-06-26 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Ready for summer? We know we are. Please join us for an evening of sultry tales and sizzling yarns as authors VIET DINH (After Disasters), DENNIS NORRIS (“Food 4 THOT”), ERIC SASSON (Admissions, Margins of Tolerance), and JONATHAN VATNER (Carnegie Hill) provide the aural delights. Your ears will never be the same.

Photograph by Martirene Alcantara

Eric Sasson is the author of the short story collection Margins of Tolerance and the novel Admissions. His stories have been nominated for the Robert Olen Butler prize, the Pushcart prize, and one is in The Best Gay Stories 2013. For three years, he wrote “Ctrl-Alt,” a column on LGBT culture for the Wall Street Journal, and he is now a regular contributor to Vice, The New Republic and GOOD magazine. His articles have been featured on “Meet the Press” and “Morning Joe Scarborough,” and in February 2017, he was part of the team that was awarded the National Magazine award “Ellie” for Personal Service. Other publication credits include pieces in them., Salon, Five Points, William and Mary Review, The Puritan, BLOOM and Nashville Review. He received his MA in Creative Writing from NYU and has taught fiction writing for the Sackett Street Writers Workshop in Brooklyn, where he was born, bred, and still resides.

Jonathan Vatner is the author of Carnegie Hill, a novel about life and death in a luxe Upper East Side co-op building, forthcoming from Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press in 2019. His stories have been published in Confrontation, Jonathan, Chelsea Station, and the Best Gay Stories anthology. A journalist for the past 16 years, he works as the staff writer for Hue, the magazine of the Fashion Institute of Technology. He has an MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Harvard University in Cognitive Neuroscience.

Viet Dinh was born in Vietnam and grew up in Colorado. He attended Johns Hopkins University and the University of Houston and currently teaches at the University of Delaware. He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Delaware Division of the Arts, as well as an O. Henry Prize and the Alice Hoffman Prize for Fiction. His stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Witness, Fence, Five Points, Chicago Review, the Threepenny Review, and Best American Non-Required Reading 2017, and his debut novel, After Disasters, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Prize, was released in 2016.

Dennis Norris II is a 2017 MacDowell Colony Fellow, a 2016 Tin House Scholar, and a 2015 Kimbilio Fiction Fellow. They are the author of Awst Collection—Dennis Norris II a chapbook published by Awst Press, and other writing appears in Apogee Journal andSmokeLong Quarterly. Their story, “Where Every Boy is Known and Loved” was recently named as a Finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions Anthology, forthcoming from Braddock Avenue Books, and their story “Last Rites” appears in the collection “Everyday People: The Color of Life”, forthcoming in August 2018 from the Atria Books imprint of Simon and Schuster. They currently serve as Fiction Editor at Apogee Journal, Assistant Fiction Editor at The Rumpus, and co-host of the popular podcast Food 4 Thot. You can find more information at their website: www.dennisnorrisii.com.

BESPOKE: Post-Pride Edition
2018-06-28 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
BESPOKE: Post-Pride Edition. Get your rainbow raiments ready! (Be sure to roll those r’s while doing so.) It’s time, as Gwendolyn Brooks wrote, to “jazz June!” On Thursday, June 28 the Bureau will feature Dreya St. Clair, Alejandro Morales, and Thomas March at Bespoke, a bimonthly queer series where featured readers dress fun, fancy, or flirtatious, while supporting the Bureau and resisting fascism. Our sinfully sartorial series presents fashionable femmes, dapper dykes, chic twinks, trendy trans* folk, & frothy FTMs. Featured writers are encouraged to suit up or dress down : readers’ choice.

Open mic readers: whose name shall be drawn from the rainbow top hat this month? General attendees: which incredible edibles from Dylan’s Candy Bar will find their way to the insatiate maws of our deviant demimonde?

Your hosts are the sinfully sartorial trio Christina “CQ” Quintana (writer/ playwright/ dyke about town), Tim Murphy (longtime LGBTQ journalist, activist and author of the novel Christodora), Jerome Ellison Murphy (poet, critic and NYU Creative Writing Program administrator) who invite you to turn out in your Thursday best (dressing up is welcome & encouraged, not mandatory) every other month for drinks and chat before & after our reading.

Dréya St. Clair is an interdisciplinary, Jamaican-born, transgender woman actor, artist, writer, activist and nonprofit fundraising professional. She holds an Honors B.A. in Sexuality and Society from Brown University, an MA and MFA, respectively in Performance Studies from New York Univeristy/Tisch School of the Arts and in Acting from California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). Her visual art has been seen in museums, NYC galleries and in permanent exhibits and collections.
St. Clair has performed on regional and off-Broadway stages, in film and video and is SAG-AFTRA eligible.
She is based in New York, NY. Reach her on Twitter and Instagram @DreyaStClair

Originally from Springfield, IL, Thomas March is a poet, teacher and critic based in New York City. His poetry has appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Good Men Project, Pleiades, and Public Pool, among others. His reviews and essays have appeared in The Believer, The Huffington Post, and New Letters. Appearing regularly in Lambda Literary Review, his poetry column, “Appreciations,” offers appreciative close readings of excellent poems from recent collections by LGBTQ poets. A past recipient of the Norma Millay Ellis Fellowship in Poetry, from the Millay Colony for the Arts, he has also received an Artist/Writer grant from The Vermont Studio Center. In recent years, he has written and performed monologues at a number of venues in New York City, including Ars Nova, Joe’s Pub, The Peoples Improv Theater, and Sid Gold’s Request Room. Aftermath, his first poetry collection, was selected by Joan Larkin for The Word Works Hilary Tham Capital Collection.

A former playwright, Alejandro Morales’s plays have been presented and developed at theaters such as INTAR, South Coast Repertory, HERE Arts Center, Mabou Mines and The Public Theater, where he was a 2008 Emerging Writer. He is the recipient of a Van Lier Fellowship, the Whitfield Cook Award and an Overall Achievement Award from the New York International Fringe Festival for his play expat/inferno. His plays have been published by NoPassport Press and excerpts from his first novel The Furies of Hialeah have been published in ImageOut Write and Callisto. He was also a runner up for litrejections.com’s Story Prize. He is an alumnus of New Dramatists and a former Co-Artistic Director of Packawallop Productions, an independent theater company he cofounded and helped run for 20 years. He is currently at work on his second novel.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Monogamish
2018-07-18 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.
Please note that the first Wednesday (our regularly scheduled night) is the 4th of July so we are meeting on July 18th.
Please join us for Monogamish (2014), directed by Tao Ruspoli and featuring interviews with Dan Savage, Stephanie Coontz, and Christopher Ryan.
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: After going through a difficult divorce, director Tao Ruspoli examines monogamy and relationships through interviews with relationship experts, his family, and his neighbors. Running time: 1 hour 13 minutes.

We're Still Here East Coast Launch Party!
2018-08-18 20:00 - 21:30 | NY
Stacked Deck Press takes Manhattan! Come to the East Coast Launch Party for We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division! Join Jeanne Thornton and Tara Madison Avery for trans comics and adult refreshments! Get your copy of this groundbreaking anthology at the Bureau!
To reserve a copy of We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology please email the Bureau at contact@bgsqd.com. Thank you!

Hot August Night: Readings in Lust and Desire
2018-08-22 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Christopher Stoddard, Philip F. Clark, and Tom Cardamone share recent work exploring the darker side of gay life and New York City in all it’s sweaty allure.

Christopher Stoddard’s new novel At Night Only from Itna Press released this June, which has been praised by Kirkus, Lambda Literary, and authors Edmund White and Gary Indiana. Featured in OUT Magazine’s “Tastemakers” issue in 2015 for his contributions to LGBT literature and publishing, he’s written two other novels: Limiters (Itna Press, 2014), and White, Christian (Spuyten Duyvil, 2010). He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Philip F. Clark, a native New Yorker, received his M.F.A. in Creative Writing/Poetry at City College, New York, in 2016, where he is currently an Adjunct Lecturer in English. He was the graduate editor of The Promethean Literary Journal. His poetry has been published in Assaracus Journal of Gay Poetry, The Good Men Project, “Between: New Gay Poetry, published by Chelsea Station Editions, The HIV HERE AND NOW Project, and most recently, Transition: Poems In the Aftermath, published by Indolent Press. His poetry reviews and interviews have been published in Lambda Literary. His blog The Poet’s Grin can be seen at https://philipfclark.wordpress.com His current debut volume of poetry The Carnival of Affection, is published by Sibling Rivalry Press. It was a winner of the Jerome Lowell De Jur Award for Poetry in 2016.

Tom Cardamone is the author of the erotic fantasy novel The Lurid Sea and the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as other works of fiction. Additionally, he has edited The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered and The Lavender Menace: Tales of Queer Villainy! You can read more about him and his writings at www.pumpkinteeth.net.
