BGSQD

Are Queers Ageist?
2016-09-25 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Award winning artist Scottee thinks there’s a problem with ageism within the queer community. Our elders are often invisible, the older generation think the young queens know nothing about their history and the youngsters think 40 is old.

Scottee is hosting a dinner party discussion without the food and you’re invited. Around the table will sit some old queers and some young queers to share their ideas, explore where the problem is and ask the burning question – are queers ageist?

This discussion is part of the development of a new theatre piece Scottee is creating titled Queen, supported by AFO theatre.

scottee.co.uk
@scotteeisfat

* Presented in association with Queer New York International
www.queerny.org

Scottee is an artist from London, his work is often about outsiderness; race, sexuality, class, age and gender. He creates spaces where the perceived underdog is celebrated, at the forefront and no longer ignorable.
His work has been performed for audiences across the globe; Australia, Asia, Europe and America. In London his projects have been presented at some of the worlds leading spaces; Barbican, Royal Opera House, Tate Britain, Roundhouse, ICA and Southbank Centre but he prefers to make work in dodgy gay bars, public toilets, bedrooms, disused tanning shops and forgotten community centres.
In 2010 Scottee won the title of Time Out Performer of the Year, his debut solo tour
The Worst of Scottee won Total Theatre Award for Innovation in 2013 and in 2015 Scottee was included on Independent’s Rainbow List as one of Britain’s most influential LGBTQI+ people. He is currently an associate artist at the Roundhouse and with performance company Duckie.
Scottee is a co-host on BBC Radio 4’s Loose Ends; in 2015 his debut radio documentary My Big Fat Documentary was made BBC Radio 4’s Documentary of the Week. He also writes a weekly column for Vice’s i-D channel.
Scottee is not easily definable; artist, troublemaker, loudmouth, showoff and attention seeker. His work is live, brash, clumsy and will often leave you covered in confetti.

Book launch for Candyass by Nick Comilla
2016-09-24 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Arsenal Pulp Press and the Bureau present the book launch of CANDYASS, the debut book by Brooklyn’s Nick Comilla: a coming of age novel about what it means to be young and queer today: “So young, so contemporary, so thoughtful and skillful in dissecting the exquisite corpse of gay life today.” —Edmund White; “A queer Casanova travelogue for the modern age that’s both bold and bittersweet.” —Slava Mogutin.
Featuring special guest Tommy “Teebs” Pico.

Nick Comilla is a graduate of the Creative Writing program at Concordia University in Montreal, and completed his MFA in poetry and fiction at The New School in New York. His work has appeared in Lambda Literary, Poetry Is Dead, Assaracus, and elsewhere. Candyass is his first book. He lives in Brooklyn.

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is author of IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016), Nature Poem (forthcoming 2017 from Tin House Books), and the zine series Hey, Teebs. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, 2016 Tin House summer poetry scholar, and has poems in BOMB, Guernica, and the Offing.

Bi Visibility Day Open Mic!
2016-09-23 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Bi Writers & Poets, Musicians & Singers, Artists & Photographers, & Comedians: express yourself & be visible! Everyone else is invited to listen in. Bring friends. Themes are bi visibility and celebrating bisexuality, so be your fierce bi self! Sign up sheet to perform at the door: first come, first serve. Everyone has 5 minutes. Host Sheela Lambert is director of the Bisexual Book Awards and the Bi Writers Association, the event sponsors. She is the editor of Best Bi Short Stories, the only book of bisexual short stories in the world. Best Bi Short Stories got the triple whammy: shortlisted by the Lammys, Rainbow Book Awards and Bisexual Book Awards. She also runs the Bi Book Club which meets monthly at the Bureau.
Equipment: If you need anything besides a mic, contact Sheela at the Bi Writers Assoc. as soon as possible and let me know what equipment you need and why.
RSVP: Bi Meetup Performers can post a comment about what they’ll perform on Bi Meetup too.
Note: Our definition of bi or bi+ includes bisexual, pansexual, fluid and many other identity words that imply emotional and/or sexual attraction to more than one gender. Questions? Write us.
@BiBookAwards https://www.facebook.com/biwriters

TELL 27: PEACE/EQUINOX
2016-09-22 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.
Peace/Equinox is the theme of the twenty-seventh installment of TELL. Featuring Miss Crimson Kitty, Laila, Ronnie Mae Painter, and Gabe Scelta.

$10 suggested donation – 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.

Photo by David Ayllon
Called the female-on-female drag pioneer by Time Out New York, Miss Crimson Kitty is taking drag culture by storm one perfected lip-synch at a time! The drag daughter of Rebecca Glasscock of Rupaul’s Drag Race The Lost Season, she has created a haven for other queens at LADYQUEEN which is NYC’s only all female drag revue and created an education revolution by creating LadyQueen University; A 6 week workshop designed to turn any Lady into a LadyQueen!
Crimson has been featured in the press such as the Huffington Post, Oyxgen, Time Out, and Next Magazine for her gender illusionist skills and is known both nationally and internationally as one of the top reigning queens in her field. As a title holder for Dragnet and nominated for many nightlife awards, she is representing a realm of drag much overlooked in the community and aims to change the perception of drag solely based on gender.
Photo by David Ayllon

Laila is an Arab-American Chef de Cuisine. When not experiencing commuter rage, this queer Brooklynite can be found across NYC in someones kitchen whipping up deliciousness. Laila believes we are humans first and has a strong passion for social justice and feminism. She adores long and low dogs such as Dachshunds and Corgis and is an avid list maker.

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.

Gabe Scelta is a painter, writer, and woodworker. He grew up in Williamsburg, moved everywhere else, and now lives just across the bridge in the Lower East Side. You can find more of his work at www.gabescelta.com

Queer Poetry Powerhouse: Jasmine Gibson, NM Esc, Andrea AK, Che Gosset, Melissa Buzzeo
2016-09-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Queer poetry extravaganza with Jasmine Gibson, Andrea Abi-Karam, NM Esc, Che Gosset & Melissa Buzzeo slinging feelings & slaying language.

Che Gossett is Black trans femme writer and para academic theory queen. They are the recipient of the 2014 Gloria E. Anzaldúa Award from the American Studies Association and the 2014 Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies from the Center for Gay and Lesbian Studies at the City University of New York. They have published work on blackness and animality on the Verso Press blog and have also contributed to Queer Necropolitics, The Trans Studies Reader Volume II, Captive Genders and forthcoming anthologies.

Melissa Buzzeo‘s fourth book The Devastation published by Nightboat Books was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in Poetry in 2016. She teaches feminism, the poetics of healing and poetry and sexuality at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. Currently she is working on a memoir called Writing.

Andrea Abi-Karam is a mixed race genderqueer punk poet writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. They recently completed the manuscript EXTRATRANSMISSION a book length piece against how patriarchy and US militarism produce the hypergendered subject. Andrea is both a writer, printer, & publisher whose founding small press project Mess Editions seeks to publish emerging writing from queers, people of color, and those involved in social movements yet uninvolved in poetry & art scenes.

NM Esc is a first-generation New York-grown brain-in-a-jar, floating in viscous queer soup. They write about how displacement shapes identity, dissociation and hyper-embodiment, cyborgs and ghosts, intimacy and technology. Between Ghosts, their latest chapbook and fourth project in their Reno Dakota series, co-written with SJ Lee, is available through Mess Editions. They recently completed a residency at Villa Magdalena K where they’ve been working on a project about wolf semiotics. In their day-to-day they’re a collective member at all-ages art space The Silent Barn where they organize events and cohost a monthly reading series called TFW.

Jasmine Gibson is a Philly jawn now living in Brooklyn and soon to be psychotherapist for all your gooey psychotic episodes that match the bipolar flows of capital. She spends her time thinking about sexy things like psychosis, desire and freedom. She has written for Mask Magazine and LIES Vol II: Journal of Materialist feminism and has now published a chapbook, Drapetomania, off of Commune Editions.

Union Square Slam presents Alain Ginsberg and NPS Qualifier 1.6
2016-09-20 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Slam is super psyched to feature Alain Ginsberg and host our first of six qualifying slams for our 2017 National Poetry Slam Team, headed to Denver, CO next August!!
6pm: Free Poetry Workshop with IS Jones
7pm: Slam Sign-ups and Socialize
8pm: Slam (Round One)
(intermission)
Featured Poet: Alain Ginsberg
Slam (Rounds Two and Three)
$5 // All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
About our Feature:
Alain Ginsberg is an agender writer and performer from Baltimore City, MD whose work focuses primarily on narratives of gender identity, exploration, and performance, sexuality, and mental illness and trauma. Their work has been featured or is forthcoming from Public Pool, Black Heart Magazine, Shabby Doll House, Voicemail Poems, Rising Phoenix Press, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, Crab Fat Magazine, and elsewhere. Alain has competed in the Individual World Poetry Slam (2014), Capturing Fire (2014, finals stage ’15 & ’16), Word War VII, Rouge Roulette Poetry Slam, 2015 Louder Than A Bomb (College Stage, 2nd place), as well as Baltimore’s slam scene Speak Out: Slammageddon and DC’s Beltway Poetry Slam. Outside of competitive poetry Alain has also been hired by Wesleyan University, Rowan University, the Maryland Institute College of Art, and the Women of The World Poetry Slam to run writing workshops.
About our Slam:
::Union Square Slam National Team Competition::
There are six opportunities to compete for the Union Square Slam National Team. The top two winners of each Open Slam have secured their spot in Finals.
Each open slam will :
– consist of up to 8 poet competitors
– have a 3 min time limit for each round with a 10-second grace period
– go from 8 in the first round to 5 in the second round and 3 in the third round (this is subject to change depending on the number of competitors that night — see below)
– be scored cumulatively — the winner of the night will have the highest cumulative score from all three rounds.
Union Square Slam Nationals Qualifiers (Open Slams) are on the following dates:
September 20th
October 18th
November 15th
January 17th
February 21st
March 21st
Union Square Slam National Team Selection Finals will be held on April 18th.
The National Poetry Slam will be held in Denver, CO August 7-12th, 2017. All proceeds and donations to Union Square Slam go directly to funding travel, lodging and registration fees for representatives of Union Square Slam at national events.
In order to represent Union Square Slam at any National Competition, you must meet the following requirements:
Be 18 years old or older
Be an active member of PSI at the time of competition (register at www.poetryslam.com you cover your annual registration fee of $20 — questions? Talk to Cecily or the current slam manager)
Read, sign, and adhere to the PSI Code of Conduct
Participate in at least one Specialty Slam during the 2016-7 season. Specialty Slams include WOWPS qualifiers, Nerd Slams, Petty Slams, Iron Poet Slams, etc.

VideoOut Story Collection Day
2016-09-20 09:00 - 17:00 | NY
Join us at the Bureau on September 20th for a Story Collection Day event. The Bureau is partnering with VideoOut, a new LGBTQ organization that’s building the largest library of coming out stories ever curated. Add your voice, and help us collect 500 stories before October 11, National Coming Out Day.
To reserve a spot, check out the website here: https://www.videoout.org/yourstory/

VideoOut‘s mission is to share coming out stories with the world and support the LGBTQ community. In short, we’re a platform where you can share your story your way. VideoOut will exist in at least three phases: collect and share videos, learn and grow the VideoOut community, support and deeply engage LGBTQ people.

Queer Conflicts at the Brooklyn Book Festival
2016-09-17 13:30 - 15:00 | NY
The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and The Forum @ St. Ann’s present:
Queer Conflicts
As courtroom battles turn into media frenzies and political wrangling, how are present conflicts redefining attitudes toward the queer experience in America? What conflicts are missing from dominant historical narratives about marriage, national security, social media, and policing of bathrooms, among others? The panel brings together activists, writers, and historians to discuss the changing political and social landscape of conflict in the LGBT community. Panelists include: Alexis De Veaux, James Downs, Sarah Schulman, Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Timothy Stewart-Winter; with moderator Hrag Vartanian.

Saturday, September 17, at 1:30 pm
St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church, 157 Montague Street, Brooklyn, New York 11201
Free!
Queer Conflicts is a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event

Please note: The Bureau will be selling books by the participating panelists at this event. To reserve a copy of any book, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

Co-Founder of The Center for Poetic Healing, a project of Lyrical Democracies (lyricaldemocracies.com) with Kathy Engel, and of the Flamboyant Ladies Theatre Company (with Gwendolen Hardwick), ALEXIS DE VEAUX, Ph. D., is an activist and writer whose work in multiple genres is nationally and internationally known. Born and raised in Harlem, New York City, Ms. De Veaux is published in five languages-English, Spanish, Dutch, Japanese and Serbo-Croatian. Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and publications, and she is the author of Spirits In The Street (1973); an award-winning children’s book, Na-ni (1973); Don’t Explain, A Song of Billie Holiday (1980); Blue Heat: A Portfolio of Poems and Drawings (1985); Spirit Talk (1997); An Enchanted Hair Tale (1987), a recipient of the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award presented by the American Library Association and the 1991 Lorraine Hansberry Award for Excellence in Children’s Literature. Ms. De Veaux’s plays include Circles, (1972); The Tapestry (1975); A Season to Unravel (1979); NO (1980); and Elbow Rooms (1986).
She also authored Warrior Poet, A Biography of Audre Lorde (2004). The first biography of the pioneering lesbian poet, Warrior Poet has won several prestigious awards including the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Foundation Legacy Award, Nonfiction (2005), the Gustavus Meyers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights Outstanding Book Award (2004), and the Lambda Literary Foundation Award for Biography (2004). In other media, Ms. De Veaux’s work appears on several recordings, including the highly-acclaimed album, Sisterfire (Olivia Records, 1985). As an artist and lecturer she has traveled extensively throughout the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, Japan and Europe; and is recognized for her on-going contributions to a number of community-based organizations. She was named “Best Literary Artist” for 2005 by Buffalo’s premier cultural newspaper, ARTVOICE. In 2007 she was awarded a “Literary Legacy Award” from Just Buffalo Literary Center for her lifetime commitment to literature and literary advocacy.
Ms. De Veaux was a member of the faculty of the University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, 1992-2013; teaching, most recently, as an associate professor of women’s and gender studies in the Department of Transnational Studies. Recently back in New York City, she completed a novella, Yabo, published by Redbone Press (2014) and winner of the 2015 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. At present she is a member of the U.S. delegation of the “Feminists, Artists, Activists, and Academics: Crossing Black Geographies” dialogues, co-sponsored by NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study and the Inkanyiso Collective (South Africa).
Further information is available on her author website, alexisdeveaux.com. Follow Ms. De Veaux on Twitter: @AlexisDeVeaux

Jim Downs is an Associate Professor of History at Connecticut College where he is also the Interim Director of The American Studies Program. He was recently an Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellow at Harvard University, where he gained training in medical anthropology. While at Harvard, Downs was also a fellow at The Weatherhead Initiative on Global History. Jim recently published Stand By Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation (Basic Books, 2016), which explains how the outbreak of HIV in the early 1980s caused many historians, journalists and others to portray the 1970s as a period of unfettered sex in order to explain the outbreak of HIV in the 1980s. Stand by Me corrects this misinterpretation by uncovering forgotten episodes from the decade. He had published articles in New York Times, New York Daily News, Vice, New Republic, Chronicle of Higher Education, among others.

Sarah Schulman is the author of CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (forthcoming in October) Her most recent novel is The Cosmopolitans, set in Greenwich Village in 1958.
Please note that copies of Conflict Is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility, and the Duty of Repair (Arsenal Pulp Press) will be available for purchase at this event. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

Mecca Jamilah Sullivan, Ph.D., is the author of the short story collection, Blue Talk and Love (2015), a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction and the 2016 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. Her writing has appeared in Best New Writing, GLQ, Palimpsest, American Fiction, Prairie Schooner, Callaloo, The Scholar and Feminist, Crab Orchard Review, Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories, BLOOM, TriQuarterly, Feminist Studies, Baobab: South African Journal of New Writing and many others. A 2016 Pushcart Prize nominee, she is the winner of the Charles Johnson Fiction Award, the Glenna Luschei Fiction Award, the James Baldwin Memorial Playwriting Award, and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Social Sciences Research Council, the Mellon Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat, and the Center for Fiction in New York City. Mecca is Assistant Professor of Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies at UMass Amherst, and is currently an American Academy of University Women Fellow and Postdoctoral Fellow in Black Feminisms at Duke University, where she is completing a book manuscript on difference and poetic form in contemporary women’s literature of the African Diaspora.

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic, a publication he founded in 2009 as a “forum for serious, playful and radical thinking”. He has curated projects, exhibitions, and has organized public events. Highlights of his curatorial efforts include exhibitions at BAM, Storefront Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, and #theSocialGraphat Outpost, the world’s first multi-disciplinary exhibition of social media-related art in 2010. He has visited many universities and colleges as a visiting critic including RISD, Brooklyn College, UC Davis, Pratt, Columbia and UNLV, as well as moderated panel discussions and juried exhibitions for various organizations, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, and Chautauqua Institution. He writes and lectures about contemporary art, performance, multiculturalism, politics, the internet, literature, and visual culture. His curatorial interests are focused on theories and practices of decolonization and he prefers to work in unorthodox spaces. Hrag has contributed to numerous online and print publications including the Art:21 news Boldtype, The Brooklyn Rail, Huffington Post, AGBU News Magazine, Ararat Magazine, and NYFA Current. He has guest contributed to Al Jazeera, NPR, ABC, and WNYC.

Reading with Steven Gaines
2016-09-16 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for a reading with Steven Gaines, followed by an open mic Q&A.

Steven Gaines is the author of One of These Things First.
One of These Things First is a wry and poignant reminiscence of a 15 year old gay Jewish boy in Brooklyn in the early sixties, and his unexpected trajectory from a life behind a rack of dresses in his grandmother’s bra and girdle store, to Manhattan’s fabled Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic, a fashionable Charenton for wealthy neurotics and Ivy League alcoholics.

To reserve a copy of One of These Things First, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

City of Wounded Boys & Sexual Warriors A Slide Lecture by Photographer Mark I. Chester
2016-09-15 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Mark I. Chester is a San Francisco gay radical sex photographer who has documented his life in San Francisco’s gay sexual underground since the late 1970s. In a wide-ranging and visually explosive slide show presentation, Mark photographically traces his own personal and sexual evolution, which at the same time documents the men, women and community with whom he shared these politically, socially and sexually tumultuous years. Mark will have copies of his self-published photographic monograph, City of Wounded Boys & Sexual Warriors – a dark explicit diary from San Francisco’s gay sexual underground, 1977-2015, for sale. It has been almost 20 years since Mark last gave lectures on his photographic work in New York City.
Doors open at 7pm and presentation starts at 7:30pm.
This is a ticketed event. Tickets are $10 per seat.
A total of 5 pay-what-you-wish tickets are available to the first 5 customers who claim them. If you select this ticket type you will have the option to make a donation to the Bureau, but this is not required.
Purchase tickets
If tickets remain available on the night of the event they can be purchased at the door.

Mark I. Chester is a San Francisco gay radical sex photographer who has used the photographic image to record, document and comment on his own life and the life of his community for nearly 4 decades. His work is politically provocative, socially aware and artistically taboo. His fine art photographs have been seen in shows in San Francisco, nationally and internationally. His photographs of Robert Chesley with ks lesions can now be seen in the traveling groundbreaking exhibition, Art AIDS America, which is on view at the Bronx Museum of the Arts from July 13 to October 23, 2016.
In addition to exhibiting his own work, Mark has shown the work of other gay, radical and sexually underground artists in his guerilla gallery. Mark has also hosted a drawing group for gay men in his studio for the last 29 years.
City of Wounded Boys & Sexual Warriors is a 132 page hard cover book with 89 images in both black and white and color. A self-published book produced digital on demand to avoid censorship, will be sold for the special price of $125 at the event (normally $150). The book may be purchased in advance with a pre-order sale for $115, with $5 from each sale going to the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division.
More examples of Mark’s work can be found at:
https://markichester.com
facebook.com/sfphotou
instagram.com/sfphotou

20Something Monthly Manhattan Meetup
2016-09-14 20:00 - 21:30 | NY
If you are new to the city, recently out, just looking for friends, or whatever experiences brought you to us – we offer a safe space where we can mingle and talk about our experiences as an LGBT person in New York City. We recommend this 20Something Meetup to anyone who is looking for a more casual space to explore their sexual/gender identity. There will be light refreshments. Bring friends!
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau and 20Something. No one turned away for lack of funds.
20Something is the largest social events organization for young lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people in New York City, aged 21 to 30. We hold a monthly social, and two monthly icebreaker/discussion groups at the Brooklyn Pride Center and at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, the queer cultural center and bookstore on the second floor of The LGBT Community Center, in Manhattan. With more than 2,500 members, we engage young adults across all 5 boroughs with a safe, confidential, and respectful platform to meet other LGBT folk. Many of our members have made long lasting friendships, relationships, and have been connected to important LGBT services and resources. Whether you are new to the city, recently out, or just looking to make friends – 20Something offers a space for you to pave the way to your own adventures in New York City – and make living here a little easier. Become a member: meetup.com/20SomethingNYC

Union Square Slam presents the PETTY SLAM
2016-09-13 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
What is a petty slam?
Waiting to Exhale meets Poetic Justice. Eating all the chicken skin off everyone else’s meal. Hoping your ex goes bald from the forehead back. Putting a roach in your sister’s show.
In the climate of subtweets from Snapchat to Instagram, Union Square Slam wants to have a playful night of your most pettiest work. What is defined as petty can be loosely interpreted.
Bring up to three of your pettiest poems!! The winner receives a cash prize!!
Sign-ups start at 7pm
Draw at 7:45pm
Show starts at 8pm

Red Hen Press at the Bureau
2016-09-10 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Enjoy a night of poetry with authors Julie Marie Wade, Corrina Bain, and t’ai freedom ford as they read from their latest at the Bureau!

Julie Marie Wade is the author of four collections of poetry, including When I Was Straight (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014) and Postage Due (White Pine Press, 2010), and four collections of lyric nonfiction, including Catechism: A Love Story(Noctuary Press, 2016) and Wishbone: A Memoir in Fractures (Bywater Books, 2014; Colgate University Press, 2010). She has received an Al Smith Individual Artist Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council, a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir. She teaches in the creative writing program at Florida International University in Miami.

Corrina Bain is a gender-liminal writer and performer based in Brooklyn, New York. He has a long history in poetry slam, has been a featured reader on finals stage in 2004, and is a member and coach of multiple slam teams. He has shared stages with Jim Carroll, Patricia Smith, Dorothy Allison, and Saul Williams. He is the author of the full-length poetry collectionDebridement (Great Weather for Media 2015,) and has also published work in journals and anthologies such as PANK, decomP, Muzzle Magazine, BOOTH, and the Everyman’s Library book Villanelles. Bain has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

t’ai freedom ford is a New York City high school English teacher, Cave Canem Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee. She received her MFA in Fiction from Brooklyn College. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Black Ivy, The Brooklyn Review, Bronx Biannual and Kweli, and her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Tupelo Quarterly, Winter Tangerine, and others. In 2012 and 2013, she completed two multi-city tours as a part of a queer women of color literary salon, The Revival. In 2014, she was the winner of The Feminist Wire’s inaugural poetry contest judged by Evie Shocklee. She is a 2015 Center for Fiction Fellow and a 2015-16 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow sponsored by The Poetry Project. She lives in Brooklyn.

PERSONS OF INTEREST: LEGACIES ON THE WALL
2016-09-09 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
For the closing program in conjunction with Visual AIDS‘ summer exhibition PERSONS OF INTEREST, Visual AIDS presents a conversational panel on the legacy and lineage of an important group of under-recognized artists: Chloe Dzubilo, Tim Greathouse, Arnold Fern, Hudson, and Affrekka Jefferson.
PERSONS OF INTEREST: LEGACIES ON THE WALL will bring together diverse presenters close to or influenced by each artist: Andrew Durbin on Arnold Fern; Nancy Shaver on Hudson; Viva Ruiz on Chloe Dzubilo; Frederick Weston on Affrekka Jefferson; and Sur Rodney (Sur) on Tim Greathouse. Each presenter will share anecdotes and images about the artwork and lives of these artists, all of whom were deeply impacted by HIV/ AIDS. Consistently throughout our 28 year history, Visual AIDS has been steadfast in our commitment to supporting the work of artists with HIV/AIDS and preserving the legacy of the cultural contributions of the AIDS movement.
Featured artwork in event image: Affrekka Jefferson, Power of Performance, 1997, linoleum, 14 x 11.5.

PARTICIPANT BIOGRAPHIES
Andrew Durbin is the author of Mature Themes and the forthcoming novel Blonde Summer, both from Nightboat Books. He is writing about the work of the painter Arnold Fern and lives in New York.
Viva Ruiz is a community-educated multi-hyphenated artist and organizer born and raised in Jamaica Queens, the daughter of Ecuadorian immigrants. Viva was mentored and mothered by Chloe Dzubilo, a life changing relationship that began in 1996 and continues to this day.
Nancy Shaver has been showing eclectic, object-based work in New York City since 1974. Hudson of Feature Inc. in Chicago presented her work in 1987. From 2000 to 2014 she showed work at Feature Inc. in New York City.
Frederick Weston is a visual artist working to find his place through various mediums including collage, mood boarding, story boarding, mail-art, copy-art, and happenings. He was friends with Paula “Affrekka” Jefferson, who was a gifted and remarkable artist as comfortable working with pencil and paper as with wood-working tools and printmaking.

PERSONS OF INTEREST, curated by Sam Gordon for Visual AIDS, features a wide cross section of Visual AIDS artist members and friends. The term, “person of interest” often identifies someone in an investigation that possesses characteristics that merit further attention. The investigation presented here is a collection of drawing, painting, photography, performance, video, and sculpture.
PERSONS OF INTEREST, presented by Visual AIDS at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division features the trained and self taught, long term survivors and the prematurely lost, and individuals who live for us very much in the present, some only in our hearts and minds. On view through Sunday, September 18, 2016.

The exhibition includes work by Raynes Birkbeck, Mark Carter, Ben Cuevas, Chloe Dzubilo, Arnold Fern, Tim Greathouse, Keith Haring, Hudson, Affrekka Jefferson, Jerry the Marble Faun, Joyce McDonald, Lucas Michael, Nicolas Moufarrege, Luna Luis Ortiz, Hugh Steers, Hunter Reynolds, Tseng Kwong Chi, Muna Tseng, and Frederick Weston.

Check out Holland Cotter’s review of Persons of Interest (and related exhibitions) that appeared in The New York Times on July 29, 2016.

Bi Book Club discusses Shakespeare's Sonnets (Folger Library edition)
2016-09-08 18:30 - 20:00 | NY
The Bi Book Club meets on the second Thursday of each month to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise.
Dinner after nearby (so far, we always go to Village Den.)

Shakespeare’s Sonnets tell the story of a bisexual love triangle, which scholars think was an episode from Shakespeare’s own life. Think bisexuality is new? Let’s read this and discover a piece of our bisexual heritage from more than four centuries ago: the 1590’s. (The Folger Library edition provides an explanation of each sonnet in modern English.)

Come and join the discussion, even if you haven’t read the book. We take turns reading passages aloud from the book and discuss them-anyone can participate!
Please purchase your copy of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (Folger Library edition) from the Bureau!
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.
RSVP on meetup.com (not required)

Union Square Slam presents Jeanann Verlee and WOWPS Qualifier #1
2016-09-06 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Slam kicks off its SLAM series with our very first Women of the World World Poetry Slam Qualifer, featuring none other than our very own punk rock goddess of grace, JEANANN VERLEE!!!
(note the new format: USS has opted to do either a poetry slam or an open mic each week, not both. This week, only people who have been assigned female at birth or are otherwise living their lives as women are eligible to slam)
6pm-7:30pm: FREE Writing workshop with I.S. Jones
7pm-8pm: sign ups and socialize
Show starts at 8pm:
SLAM: Round One (2 min round)
FEATURE: Jeanann Verlee
(brief intermission)
SLAM: Round Two (1 minute round)
SLAM: Round Three (4 minute round)
All Ages // $5 // Wheelchair Accessible
About our Feature:
Jeanann Verlee is author of two books, Said the Manic to the Muse and Racing Hummingbirds, which earned the Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal for poetry. She has also been awarded the Third Coast Poetry Prize and the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry. Her work appears in Adroit, Rattle, The Journal, and BuzzFeed Reader, among others. Verlee served as poetry editor for Union Station Magazine, For Some Time Now, and Winter Tangerine Review: Fragments of Persephone, as well as a number of individual collections. She is former director of the Urbana Poetry Slam reading series where she served as writing and performance coach, and she performs and facilitates workshops at schools, theatres, libraries, bookstores, and dive bars across North America. Verlee wears polka dots and kisses Rottweilers. She believes in you. Find her at jeanannverlee.com.
About our Poetry Slam:
WOWPS is:
a) an acronym for Women of the World World Poetry Slam
b) one of three national poetry slam events put on annually by Poetry Slam, Inc.
c) held in Dallas, TX from March 15-18th, 2017
Union Square Slam WOWPS Qualifier rules:
Qualified competitors are poets who are female assigned or identified individuals who are 18+. This includes gender non-conforming individuals.
8 poets, 3 rounds. Cumulative Scores.
2 min (all)
1 min (all)
4 min (top 5)
cumulative score wins the slam
Top three winners of each Qualifier are in Finals (December 13th). Finals will be 4 ROUNDS — all cumulative!!!
Our WOWPS Qualifier dates are as follows:
September 6th
November 1st
November 22nd
December 13th: FINALS

Bureau Closed for Labor Day Weekend
2016-09-02 - 2016-09-04 | NY
The Bureau will be closed Friday, September 2, through Sunday, September 4, after which we will return to our regular hours:
Wednesdays – Sundays, 1 to 7 PM.

Union Square Slam presents Adam Melchor
2016-08-30 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Join Union Square Slam for our inaugural MUSIC NIGHT!! Mark your calendars: the last Tuesday of every month will feature a local musical performer. And we’re beyond thrilled to open this series with the ever-talented, ever-charming … Adam Melchor!
6:00pm: Free Workshop with I.S. Jones
7:30pm: Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Open Mic
8:45pm: Adam Melchor
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Open Mic // $5
About our Feature:
Adam Melchor is a songsmith hailing from Northern New Jersey. Christine Bochicchio of the Aquarian Weekly writes “Adam Melchor’s angelic vocals and poetic lyrics make him an act that deserves to be heard” after giving him 5 out of 5 stars on his debut EP.
The singer/songwriter has gained the attention of NYU’s Songwriting Program, MTV’s “Streamed Dumplings” and The Aquarian Weekly Magazine. He is an avid performer in clubs around the Tri-State area, holding residency at The Bowery Electric in NYC and Grimaldi’s in Hoboken.
For more about Adam: adammelchor.com

Bureau Closed on Sundays in July and August
2016-08-28, 2016-08-21, 2016-08-14 | NY
For the months of July and August the Bureau will be closed on Sundays.
The Bureau will be open Wednesdays through Saturdays, from 1 to 7 PM.

Union Square Slam presents Erica Buddington
2016-08-23 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
This week, we welcome Erica Buddington to the stage, debuting her latest compilation of essays, F-Boy Literature following our open mic!!
About our Show:
6pm: Free Writing Workshop
7pm: Sign-Ups and Socialize
8pm: Open Mic
9pm: Feature
All Ages // $5
About our Feature:
Erica “Rivaflowz” Buddington is an author and arts educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Buddington writes fiction and memoir that elaborates the experience of the millennial woman of color. She’s written/published three books: (Intention, Boroughs Apart, and Of Micah and Men). She’s an HBO Def Poet, poetry slam champion, and content & arts education strategist for bloggers/writers/companies.
Buddington is a career educator. She left her post as Director of TRUCE Media and Arts at Harlem Children’s Zone to design and found a creative writing & coding non-profit for young men of color that debuts Summer 2017.
(She’s also a comic book, Harry Potter obsessed, HTML/CSS coding techie, but we’ll delve into that another time.)
You can find Erica on the cusp of Brooklyn’s gentrification, in a quaint home office, spilling over with journals. She’s working on her fourth book, about her family’s homeland.

An Evening with Sibling Rivalry Press: Fundraiser and Readings
2016-08-20 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Nine Sibling Rivalry Press poets will read at this New York City based fund-raiser for their newly nonprofit press. Monetary donations will be collected at the event, and their will be a silent auction, including items to bid on such as a collection of signed copies of all the readers’ books and three signed copies of the out-of-print chapbook Burnings by Ocean Vuong. If you can’t make it to the reading and wish to donate to Sibling Rivalry Press, go here online: https://siblingrivalrypress.com/donate/.
Featuring readings by DARREL ALEJANDRO HOLNES, MATTHEW HITTINGER, JOANNA HOFFMAN, MICHAEL KLEIN, STEPHEN S. MILLS, SAM SAX, ROBERT SIEK, CHRISTOPHER SOTO aka Loma, and JANE SUMMER.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit Sibling Rivalry Press–no one turned away for lack of funds.

DARREL ALEJANDRO HOLNES is a poet and playwright from Panama City, Panama. His poetry has been published in Poetry magazine, American Poetry Review, Callaloo, Best American Experimental Writing, and elsewhere. He is the co-author of PRIME: Poetry & Conversations, which was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2013; the book was selected by the American Library Association for the Over the Rainbow Book List. He teaches at NYU.

MATTHEW HITTINGER is the author of The Erotic Postulate (2014) and Skin Shift (2012) both from Sibling Rivalry Press, and the chapbook Pear Slip (2007), winner of the Spire Press Chapbook Award. He received his MFA from the University of Michigan where he won a Hopwood Award. His work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, has been adapted into art songs, and in 2012 Poets & Writers Magazine named him a Debut Poet on their 8th annual list. Matthew lives and works in New York City.

JOANNA HOFFMAN (www.joannahoffman.com) is a poet and teaching artist based in Brooklyn, NY. She has competed on 5 National Poetry Slam teams, ranked 4th at the 2012 Women of the World Poetry Slam and was the 2012 champion of Capturing Fire, an international LGBTQ poetry competition. Her full-length book of poetry, Running for Trap Doors (Sibling Rivalry Press), was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and featured in the American Library Association’s list of recommended LGBT reading for 2014. She was recently named a White House Champion of Change for LGBT advocacy through art. Her work has appeared on Upworthy and BuzzFeed, and in literary journals and publications including Winter Tangerine, decomP, PANK, Union Station Magazine, The Legendary, and Sinister Wisdom and in the Write Bloody Publishing anthologies We Will Be Shelter and Multiverse.

MICHAEL KLEIN is a five-time Lambda Literary Award Finalist and had won the award twice. His new book is When I Was a Twin. He teaches at Hunter College in New York, the MFA program at Goddard College, and through the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, online (24pearlst.org) and as a summer workshop faculty member.

STEPHEN S. MILLS is the author of the Lambda Award–winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2012) and A History of the Unmarried (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2014). He earned his MFA from Florida State University. His work has appeared in The Antioch Review, PANK, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, Knockout, Assaracus, The Rumpus, and others. He is also the winner of the 2008 Gival Press Oscar Wilde Poetry Award and the 2014 Christopher Hewitt Award for Fiction. He lives in New York City. Website: https://www.stephensmills.com/

SAM SAX is the author of ‘bury it’ forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press 2017. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bread Loaf, & the Michener Center for Writers where he served as the editor-in-chief of Bat City Review. He’s the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion & author of four chapbooks. His poems are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Guernica, Poetry magazine, + other journals + he’s the winner of the 2016 Iowa Review Award.

ROBERT SIEK is the author of the poetry collection Purpose and Devil Piss (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2013) and the poetry chapbook Clubbed Kid (New School University, 2002). He works at a large publishing house in Manhattan and lives in Brooklyn.

CHRISTOPHER SOTO aka Loma (b. 1991, Los Angeles) is a poet based in Brooklyn, New York. He was named one of “10 Up and Coming Latinx Poets You Need to Know” by Remezcla. He was named one of “30 Poets You Should Be Reading” by The Literary Hub. He was named one of “7 Trans & Gender Non-Conforming Artist Doing the Work” by The Offing. Poets & Writers honored Christopher Soto with the Barnes & Noble Writer for Writers Award in 2016. Christopher Soto’s first chapbook Sad Girl Poems was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has been translated into Spanish and Portuguese. He is currently working on a full-length poetry manuscript about police violence and mass incarceration. He founded Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color with the Lambda Literary Foundation and cofounded The Undocupoets Campaign. He interned at the Poetry Society of America and received an MFA in poetry from NYU.

JANE SUMMER’s latest book, EREBUS, is being sold by specialty bookstores associated with polar exploration. Her best work has been written under a pseudonym.

Emerge Synonym: Trans women writers write back
2016-08-19 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Trans women writers from around the world, here in NYC for the Topside Press summer workshop read their fiction and non-fiction.

Against Elizabeth! Bond Funds For Trans Girls
2016-08-18 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Great news! Alithú’s bond has been PAID and she has been released! She is back in her community and working with her lawyer on getting her asylum proceedings on-track as soon as possible. Queer Detainee Empowerment Project is proud to have been able to provide for Alithú financially during her time of need and wishes her the best in her legal battle ahead! Un abrazo!
With regards to the event, it has been re-named AGAINST ELIZABETH: Bond Funds for Trans Girls. Elizabeth Detention Center was the all-male facility in New Jersey Alithú was being held at and its our ultimate goal to have it shut down!
Money raised at the event will go towards QDEP’s ongoing bond fund specifically designated for incarcerated trans women across the country. This is an ongoing project and we want to take this opportunity to further develop the grassroots social safety nets so needed by our transgender sisters of color. Furthermore, we have changed the event date to AUGUST 18th, 2016.
As before, this event will be led and performed in by exclusively trans-feminine people of color. QDEP’s commitment to a transfeminist liberation includes making time and space for other trans women to express themselves as fully and authentically as possible.
As before, t-shirts and drinks will be available for purchase, with all proceeds going to the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project’s ongoing trans prisoner bond fund. Entrance is still a $5 – $20 suggested donation, though nobody will be turned away for lack of funds.
Any questions, requests, or volunteering interests should be directed to QDEP’s Office Manager Adelaida Shelley at adelaida@qdep.org.

Butterfly Metaphor: Trans women writers write back
2016-08-17 19:00 - 21:00 | NY

Union Square Presents Our FIRST EVER NERD SLAM!
2016-08-16 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Presents Our FIRST EVER NERD SLAM!
About our Show:
6pm: Free Writing Workshop
7pm: Sign-Ups and Socialize
7:30pm: Open MIC
8:00pm: Nerd Slam
All Ages // $5
A nerd slam is when two poets are randomly selected to go head to head in a trivia battle, answering questions that are specifically chosen from a panel of nerds about the topic of the poets’ choice. Whoever wins gets to read their nerdy poem and the other poet goes back into the selection pool for the next battle. Come show off your nerd related knowledge and just have fun!
The Nerd Slam will be hosted by Justin Woo and the panel will include him as well as Khadijah Johnson, Rachel Simons, and Jaime Martin. Cosplay and nerd apparel is very much encouraged.

TELL 26: Food
2016-08-12 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.
Food is the theme of the twenty-sixth installment of TELL. Featuring Jax Jackson, Mikéah Ernest Jennings, Lissy Navantu, and Randi Reinhold.

$10 suggested donation – 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.

Jax Jackson is an agender transsexual actor and healing artist in NYC. Jax has very little experience storytelling and has no idea what to put in a bio for this event, because usually bios for actors are long boring lists of credits with no context or interesting points of fact along the way. So Jax is just kinda rambling. If you need an actor, a yoga teacher, a reiki practitioner, a tarot reader, an astrologer, or a crystal consultant, you could check out Jax’s work at jaxjackson.com or embodiedhealing.nyc. Or like, just talk to Jax or something.

Mikéah Ernest Jennings is a performer and acting educator from the Mojave Desert living and working in New York City. Mikéah has been acting and creating contemporary performance for over 15yrs and is also an adjunct faculty member in the theater departments at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and The New School for Social Research. He is also a drinker of gin…very cheap gin.

Lissy Navantu is a Thai, femme activist. She is a social worker by day, failed romantic at night. Through collaboration with Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, this past spring she toured the city with 10 LGBTQ youth, exposing the realities of homelessness in NYC (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIroT2qZ3Wo). As a true to heart masochist, Lissy finds joy in sharing her awkward social interactions with a keen audience. Lissy holds a Master’s Degree in Social Work from NYU and has two self-published zines: “How to Double Your Number in Six Months” and “Mai Thai: Reflections on Consuming Thailand”.

Randi Reinhold is a Queer, Trans* masculine-of-center identified person who loves to make people laugh and feel good. His day job as a kindergarten teacher supplies him with a huge amount of storytelling fodder. As a volunteer for the Trevor Project, Randi also spends time supporting LGBTQI teens in crisis across the country. He’s dabbled in open-mic stand up and enjoys learning 80s cover songs on his acoustic guitar. His hobbies include running, bird watching, singing karaoke, geometric drawing, drinking red wine, coffee, and red wine.

Bi Book Club discusses The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North
2016-08-11 18:30 - 20:00 | NY
The Bi Book Club meets on the second Thursday of each month to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise.
Dinner after nearby (so far, we always go to Village Den.)
On August 11, the Bi Book Club will discuss The Life and Death of Sophie Stark by Anna North.
Come and join the discussion, even if you haven’t read the book. We take turns reading passages aloud from the book and discuss them-anyone can participate!
Please purchase your copy of The Life and Death of Sophie Stark from the Bureau!
Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.
RSVP on meetup.com (not required)

Writing Queer Crime & Mystery Fiction: final session
2016-08-10 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
A 5-Week Workshop, Wednesdays July 13, 20, 27, August 3 and 10, 6 – 8 p.m. Led by Ann Aptaker.
Is there a Queer perspective to writing crime & mystery fiction? This 5-week workshop will take students through the art and craft of crime and mystery writing, as experienced through Queer characters. Students will learn the importance of “voice,” character development, how character drives plot, and the distinctions of the genre’s various styles (cozy, hard boiled, noir, thriller, who-done-it, etc.,) through Queer experience. Students will write each week.
Cost: $50 per student for 5 week course.
Register at: QueerWriting@gmail.com
Ann Aptaker’s 2016 Lammy winning and Goldie finalist Tarnished Gold and 2015 Goldie finalist Criminal Gold have earned excellent reviews from Curve Magazine, Crimepieces, Rainbow Reads, and other print and internet venues. Her Cantor Gold crime series celebrates her favorite themes: Queer life, crime and mystery fiction, and New York City history. The third book in the series, Genuine Gold, is scheduled for release in January 2017 from Bold Strokes Books. Like her protagonist, Cantor Gold, Ann resides in her beloved hometown, New York.
