Office Hours Poetry Broadside Fundraiser
2021-01-09 15:30 - 17:00 (America/New_York)
Join us for the Office Hours Poetry Broadside Fundraiser Event! We’ve paired up eight LGBTQ+ poets with visual artists to craft unique broadsides showcasing their remarkable poems. All broadside sales go toward funding the Office Hours Poetry Workshop fellows. The event will include both a poetry reading and a Q & A with the visual artists moderated by Founding Director, Sarah M. Sala.

The broadsides will be available for purchase on the Office Hours virtual gallery, launching on the day of the event.

Suggested donation for this event is $5 to $10. All are welcome to join, with or without donation. All donations and broadside sales go towards funding Office Hours Poetry Workshop fellows.

Registration required.
Click here to register

Office Hours Poetry Workshop provides post-MFA poets continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. The workshop culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are femme-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, and creatives who continue to thrive in the margins of academia.

Featured Poets: CAConrad, Marty Correia, Alexis Garcia, Benjamin Garcia, Omotara James, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, Christina Quintana (CQ), and Crystal Valentine.

Featured Visual Artists: Reba Billips, Esteban Delgado, Sy Klipsch-Abudu, Brandon Menke, Meesh Nah, Umang Antariksh Sagar, and Sherie Weldon

Check out books by or including the featured poets on the Bureau’s online store!

“[Omotara James’s] limited-edition chapbook was selected by Kwame Dawes, Chris Abani, and the African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New-Generation African Poets Box Set, and I am tickled pink for its release this month. James’s voice is so unique and genuine; she’s definitely a poet to have on your poetdar, and I’m sure this whole collection will be stellar.”
–The Coil, Omotara James’s “Daughter Tongue” included in Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018 and Most Anticipated April 2018 Books

And Marty Correia’s Pigeon Mothers (paperback, $15) is available from Triple Decker Press!

TELL 69: Blow It
2021-01-16 18:00 - 19:30
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.
Blow It is the theme of the 69th TELL, on Saturday, January 16, 2021, 6 to 7:30 PM (EST). Featuring Dusty Childers, Sammie James, and Joey Kipp.
The event will take place on Zoom.
This is a free event, but you must register on the Eventbrite page in advance in order to receive the Zoom meeting link on the day of the event.
Donations for the performers and the Bureau are much appreciated!
Make a donation when you register on the Eventbrite page.
Click here to register

The Bureau will send out a link to the Zoom meeting to all who have registered on the day of the event.
Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Drae has been featured on Late Night with Conan O’Brien and on stages all over NYC. Drae’s directing work has appeared in Iceland, NYC, Budapest and in the San Francisco Fringe Festival. The short film Drae wrote and starred in with Rebecca Drysdale, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in festivals globally. Drae won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. She once reigned as Miss LEZ and also got dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell hosts and curates a monthly queer storytelling show called TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division. Check her out online! www.draecampbell.com.
Dusty Childers (Dust Tea Shoulders/ @duddylynn) is a multi-disciplinary artist (and self proclaimed style icon) who directs, provides dramaturgy, curates, hosts, conjures costumes, styles, speaks their truth in front of audiences, drags it up, dances, twirls flags and fans, and instructs the future via the public school classroom. Dusty’s body and body of work has graced the likes of Sundance, SXSW, True/False, The Guggenheim, St. Anne’s Warehouse, The Whitney, BAM, Parsons, International Center of Photography, Signature Theater, Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, Town Hall, Joe’s Pub, Abrons Art Center, NY Live Arts, The Wild Project, Dixon Place, Irving Plaza, The Knockdown Center (Bushwig), The PIT, Don’t Tell Mama, Rockwood Music Hall, The Slipper Room, Judson Memorial Church,The MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, La MaMa, Metropolitan Bar, Sid Gold’s Request Room,The Delancey, Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, Starr Bar, Wise Men, Governor’s Ball, Club Cumming, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, This n’ That, C’mon Everybody, Nowhere Bar, House of Yes, Bushwick Bazaar, Drom, The Deep End, and the Soho Playhouse (NY Fringe Festival). He has worked alongside MacArthur Genius Taylor Mac, acclaimed writer/performer Justin Sayre, performance artist Machine Dazzle, artist Nayland Blake, pop star and DJ Ana Matronic, director Silas Howard, Bitch (of Bitch and Animal),drag artist Charlene Incarnate, performance artist/puppeteer Glenn Marla, rapper Mister Wallace, singer Big Dipper, director Stephen Winter, performance artist/writer Dan Fishback, filmmaker/drag performer Sequinette Jaynesfield, choreographer/singer Miguel Gutierrez, burlesque star World Famous *BOB*, professional clown Eric Schmalenberger and singer Amber Martin (among countless others). Dusty and his work have appeared in Art In America, Artforum,OUT Magazine, Electric Dirt (by Queer Appalachia), TimeOut NY, Velour Magazine, Next Magazine, Aljazeera, NY Times, OutThere Magazine (UK) and Ud & Se (Dutch)

Sammie James is a comedian and story teller from New Jersey; where she hosts and produces The LGBT showcase Queerly Comedic. Sammie also hosts the podcast All Of My Friends Are Animals and The NYC Trans Variety show We Are Trans. She performs all over the country; including past appearances at Cinder Block Comedy Festival, Charm City Comedy Festival and Bechdal Test Fest; and she is soon to be your favorite disabled, nerdy, butch trans woman in comedy.

Joey Kipp is an NYC Dancer and performer.

Kid Division: Storytime with author Kyle Lukoff
2021-02-13 11:00 - 12:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Hear Stonewall-award winning author Kyle Lukoff read some of his books! Open to all ages, children encouraged to join!

Registration on Eventbrite (link below) is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite:
Click here to register
Kyle Lukoff is the author of the 2020 Stonewall-award winning book When Aidan Became A Brother, as well as several other picture books. His debut middle-grade novel Too Bright To See releases in April. After spending 8 years as an elementary school librarian, Kyle now writes full-time.
Kyle’s books are available for purchase on the Bureau’s online store. Click on any title below to learn more or to make a purchase:
25% off of Kyle Lukoff’s books – This week only!
Last day of sale February 13th

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

Spivy: Unsung LGBTQ Pioneer, Presented by Original Cockette Rumi Missabu
2021-02-13 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Original Cockette Rumi Missabu returns to the Bureau (virtually) to regale us with stories of Madame Spivy, unsung LGBTQ pioneer. Featuring film clips and tales of the Brooklyn-born entertainer!
“Madame Spivy was born on September 30, 1906 in Brooklyn, New York, USA as Bertha Levine. She was an actress, known for Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and All Fall Down (1962). She died on January 7, 1971 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.
“Operated the nightclub Spivy’s Roof, New York City, 1940-1951.” (IMDB)
Check out this cute little teaser for the event on YouTube!
Suggested donation to support the Bureau’s work: $5
But all are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Registration on Eventbrite required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Click here to register

TELL 70: Rose-Colored Glasses, The Seventh-Anniversary Edition!
2021-02-20 18:00 - 19:30
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.
Rose-Colored Glasses is the theme of the 70th TELL, on Saturday, February 20, 2021, 6 to 7:30 PM (EST). This month’s line-up of storytellers has been curated by Mariel Reyes. Featuring: Yunique, Patric Pardo, Dirty Lola, and Mariel Reyes.
The event will take place on Zoom.
This is a free event, but you must register on Eventbrite in advance of the event in order to receive the Zoom meeting link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau.
But all are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

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

Mariel Reyes is an Queer Afrolatinx performance artist & producer, with works based out of some of your favorite experimental theater spaces in NYC (Dixon Place, Brooklyn Arts Exchange) She has also appeared on screen in the film “Appropriate Behaviour” which premiered at Sundance in 2014 and the award winning web series “The Feels” currently in its third season.

Yunique is an artist and food enthusiast. They show up for the in between the unsaid the unknown and the nuance.

Patric Prado is an epidemiologist working on COVID and HIV, primarily focusing on health disparities here in San Francisco and in the Global South. He is currently working as a data scientist working with COVID mass testing for Latinx Populations, who as we all know have been disproportionately impacted. Working with data, data systems, and dashboards all day; it’s hard to sometimes see the light at the end of the tunnel. Replicating the same lessons on who gets hit the hardest, why they get hit the hardest, and how – seems like public health never goes far enough to solve these structural issues. But if we are doomed to repeat our histories of inequality, oppression, and impacts of racism – What does this mean for our collective and individual resilience?

Dirty Lola is a sex edutainer, speaker, and self-proclaimed dildo slinger. Known for her live sex ed Q&A show Sex Ed A Go-Go and as co-host of New York Magazine’s The Cut’s “Sex Probz” web series, Lola has spent almost a decade working to end stigma and shame surrounding sex and sexuality. Having started her journey sharing personal discoveries with polyamory and kink online, Lola now uses her knowledge, warm candor, and public platforms to teach the masses in-person and to rapt Internet audiences.
In addition to her educational projects, Lola is also the creative director of Spectrum Journal an online magazine offshoot of the female-owned online sex shop, Spectrum Boutique based in Detroit, and has brought her unique brand of sex-positive sex education to brands such as B-Vibe, Spencers Gifts, and Math Magazine.
Website: SexEdAGoGo.com
Twitter: @DirtyLola
Instagram: @DirtyLola
Fetlife: Dirty Lola

Queer Filmmakers Q&A: Mental Health, Coming Out, and BLOCK The Film
2021-02-25 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
On a mission to put a face to queer mental health struggles and in an attempt to work though her own coming out story, Carrie Brennan wrote BLOCK– where she stars as Kit O’Brien: a twenty-something year old who’s internal homophobia literally manifests itself as a cinderblock. In order to face her fears and free herself from BLOCK, she’s got to come out. This is a story of self-acceptance, self-love, mental health, and sisterhood.

The film-now in the film festival circuit-has grown beyond its original medium, creating a platform for Carrie and the BLOCK Team to meet and interact with its surrounding community. Join us as we sit with producer, actor and writer Carrie Brennan and costar and producer Victoria Ratermanis to talk filmmaking, mental health, queer stories, and BLOCK.

Two lucky attendees will receive tickets to the March 4th premiere of BLOCK!
We will pick two names at random from the audience during the event.

Registration on this page is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event, Thursday, February 25.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.

Click here to register

***

Get Tickets to the live-streamed virtual Premiere of BLOCK (Thursday, March 4th, 7 PM EST): https://www.blockthefilm.com/tickets
Follow Block on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blockshortfilm
Follow Block on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blockthefilm/

Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography
2021-03-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Pornography is a unique form of entertainment that combines fantasy and real sex. Join Susie Bright and Jeffrey Escoffier for a conversation about his book, Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography on why pornography matters, how it’s made, what it tells us and how it shapes our lives.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography on or before March 4, 2021 and receive 25% off!

Jeffrey Escoffier is the author of Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema from Beefcake to Hardcore, and of American Homo: Community and Perversity. He teaches at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.

Susie Bright is an author, editor, critic, and publisher— as well as historian of sex in cinema. She was the co-founder of “On Our Backs” magazine and was elected to the Hall of Fame by the X-rated Critics’ Organization for her years of work in erotic screen journalism. Her university class, “The Politics of Sexual Representation,” was the first of its kind.

The painting reproduced on the cover of Sex, Society and the Making of Pornography is by Patrick Angus: Hanky Panky, 1990. Acrylic on canvas, 39 3/4 x 53 1/2 in (101 x 136 cm).

Caring for our Precious LGBTQ+ Mental Health
2021-03-06 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
The past year has put our mental health to the test in ways none of us could have imagined, and so many of us are trying to process all that has traumatized us–while much of it is still happening. Please join the Bureau and panelists Geleni Fontaine, Jia Hurd, Isabel Restrepo, and Max Zev Reynolds for a special evening focused on caring for our queer and trans mental health, moderated by Teresa Theophano. We will talk about coping strategies, mutual aid, and peer support, and Geleni will lead a brief tapping/acupressure session to help relieve stress!

Suggested donation to support the Bureau and our panelists is $10, no one turned away for lack of funds.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Click here to register

The Bureau is offering 15% off books featuring our panelists on our online store (click on titles to view and/or purchase):
Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance by Syan Rose, and featuring panelist Geleni Fontaine, available from the Bureau’s online bookstore for pre-order (release date April 6, 2021). On sale for $14.41 (regularly $16.95) through end of day March 6th.
Headcase: LGBTQ Writers & Artists on Mental Health and Wellness, edited by moderator Teresa Theophano and Stephanie Schroeder. On sale for $24.46 (regularly $29.95) through end of day March 6th.
Trans Bodies, Trans Selves, featuring contributions by panelist Max Zev Reynolds. On sale for $38.21 (regularly $44.95) through end of day March 6th.

Geleni Fontaine (they/them) is a fat, queer and trans, disabled, non-binary, NYC-born, first generation Latinx person of Cuban descent raised and living lifelong in Brooklyn, New York. They’re a holistic healer and registered nurse, and use knowledge of Western allopathic medicine to support a holistic East-Asian practice, helping individuals navigate both healthcare systems. As a disabled healer with chronic pain and illness Geleni is devoted to working with their communities from within their intersections, with a goal to empower individuals and nourish healing toward a more just and loving world for us all. Geleni is affiliated with Third Root Community Health Center and during the pandemic is sharing tapping / acupressure as an accessible and powerful practice for self and community healing. Geleni is featured in the upcoming book Our Work is Everywhere: An Illustrated Oral History of Queer and Trans Resistance by Syan Rose, available from the Bureau’s online bookstore for pre-order (release date April 6, 2021)–15% discount through end of day, March 6th.
Third Root’s Collective Care Fund: Low to no cost care for Black, Indigenous, People of Color prioritizing local Flatbush, Brooklyn residents, trans women and femmes, and disabled and formerly incarcerated community members. https://www.gofundme.com/f/collective-care-fund

Jia Hurd is a Black non-binary femme from the South Bronx leading a COVID-19 response FREE Mental Health project that has served 1,500+ QBIPoC across the USA and around the world.They/She is a Mental Health advocate, suicide attempt survivor, creative, social worker, and community organizer with a focus on art, activism, and wellness. She has six years of events/project management experience in wellness and art for NYC museums, non-profits, art collectives, and universities. She has three years of mental health advocacy experience for NYC grassroots organizations and three artist’s scholarships at The New School. They are currently pursuing a Master’s in Social Work at Hunter College and are a 2020 advocacy fellow of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group. For six years they have helped lead successful social justice movements for Black Womxn and Queer liberation with The New York Transgender Advocacy, Hetrick-Martin Institute, The Audre Lorde Project, BUFU, Equality 4 Flatbush, Sadie Nash, Black Lives Matter, BYP 100, and F2L. It is important to center their/her work around Queer and Trans People of Color, particularly Black and Indigenous people.

Isabel Restrepo, LMSW (she/her), is the Director of the Psychiatric Rehabilitation program (PROS) at The Bridge, a community mental health agency serving individuals diagnosed with severe and persistent mental illness in NYC. Isabel has almost 20 years of experience working in the mental health field as a provider/counselor, and two years of experience as a program director. She also has experience working with LGBTQ+ youth as a former intern at The Hetrick-Martin Institute. A queer Colombian-born butch, Isabel is a practitioner with lived experience and hopes to learn from her fellow panelists as well as from all those who are in attendance.

Rabbi Max Zev Reynolds is a board-eligible chaplain whose work focuses on palliative and end-of-life care, the spiritual and existential care of non-religious and secular people, trauma and moral injury, the spiritual care needs of queer and trans people, and the use of ritual in healing and justice work. Prior to becoming a rabbi, he worked as a direct services provider in queer, trans, and HIV-impacted communities. Max was ordained at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College and holds an MA in Philosophy of Religion from Union Theological Seminary.

Teresa Theophano, LCSW (she/her), is a program director and psychotherapist at an NYC geriatric mental health nonprofit and is Editor-in-Chief at The Affirmative Couch (affirmativecouch.com), which provides continuing ed for therapists working with LGBTQIA+, consensually non-monogamous, and kinky clients. Co-editor of Headcase: LGBTQ Writers and Artists on Mental Health and Wellness (Oxford University Press, 2019) and a contributor to numerous anthologies and websites, Teresa identifies as both a clinician and a peer with lived experience. She is a white Jewish cis queer femme who is passionate about ensuring access to LGBTQ+-affirmative mental health care and eliminating stigma and shame. Find the NYC-based online queer mental health resource list she maintains at tinyurl.com/qmhiresources

Three Dads and a Baby: Ian Jenkins on Poly Parenting
2021-03-13 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Author Ian Jenkins will speak about the benefits and challenges of poly parenting and the battles he and his partners fought to become dads, and win the first ever birth certificate naming a poly family as the legal parents of a child. Along the way, they caught a doctor telling an elaborate lie to get out of working with them, survived frightening medical complications, and fought for their unborn child in court. Join the discussion on polyamory and the frontiers of family law and chosen families!

Questions encouraged!

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Three Men and a Baby: Adventures in Poly Parenting before or on Saturday, March 13th, 2021, and receive 25% off!

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

Ian Jenkins is a doctor, professor, writer… and part of a polyamorous “throuple” with partners Alan and Jeremy. They’re now the first poly family to be named as the legal parents of a child anywhere in the world. Three Dads and a Baby recounts the throuple’s herculean effort to overcome legal, medical, and social challenges to becoming parents and winning groundbreaking legal recognition as a family to protect their children.

TELL 71: Not Going Back
2021-03-20 18:00 - 19:30
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.
Not Going Back is the theme of the 71st TELL, on Saturday, March 20, 2021, 6 to 7:30 PM (EST). Featuring: Lorelei Ramirez, Lisa E Davis, Mindy Raf, and Chewy May.
The event will take place on Zoom.
This is a free event, but you must register on Eventbrite in advance of the event in order to receive the Zoom meeting link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau.
But all are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Lorelei Ramirez is a Brooklyn-based artist, comedian and writer who wrote, produced and directed the comedy special program “Pervert Everything” for Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Ramirez has appeared on the HBO comedy series ‘Random Acts of Flyness’ and in the final season of Comedy Central’s ‘Broad City’. Upcoming projects include a recurring role in the HBO comedy series ‘Los Espookys’ opposite Fred Armisen and another, opposite Glenn Close, in John Cameron Mitchell’s musical anthology podcast ‘Anthem’. Named one of Comedy Central’s ‘Up Next’ Comedians for 2018, Ramirez was featured in the San Francisco ‘Cluster Fest’ comedy festival, and performed at the Public Theater in New York as part of the January, 2019, ‘Under the Radar’ Festival. A regular correspondent on the Viceland channel, Ramirez has performed at Caroline’s, UCB, Ars Nova, The Chris Gethard Show, and the Brooklyn Comedy Festival.

Mindy Raf is a writer, comedian, actress, and published author based in Brooklyn, New York. Mindy has contributed to MTV’s GIRL CODE, COLLEGEHUMOR, TNT, VH1, The Daily Comedy Network, and the MY PARENTS WERE AWESOME anthology. Her critically acclaimed solo show NOT THE ONE: a love story was named an “LBGT Best Bet” by Time OutNew York, “hilariously quirky” by Theatre Is Easy, and “Barrier Breaking” by The Edinburgh Reporter. Mindy has played to a sold out run Off Broadway at 59E59, Brooklyn’s Cloud City, The People’s Improv Theater, The Tank NYC, and has done a guest production residency at NYC’s Theaterlab. As a writer and creative consultant, Mindy is particularly passionate about supporting LGBTQAI+ projects.

Lisa E Davis has lived in Greenwich Village for many years and loves to write about it. She taught in SUNY and CUNY, and worked at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, Hunter College. Her novel Under the Mink (2001, 2015–available on the Bureau’s online store) recreates the 1940s world of Mafia-owned Village nightclubs that featured drag shows and strip acts. Her nonfiction chronicle of the 1949 Smith Act trial of American Communist Party leaders traces the career of the lesbian FBI informant and prosecution witness Angela Calomiris, owner for decades of the Provincetown apartment rental complex she called “Angel’s Landing.” The title is Undercover Girl: The Lesbian Informant Who Helped the FBI Bring Down the Communist Party (2017). Her current project details the career of entertainer Blackie Dennis, the women she loved and the places where she performed (dragkinghistory.com History 1930-49). Other highlights of Lisa’s career include meeting Fidel Castro and almost drowning in the Colorado River.

Chewy May is a comic born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. She has over 20 years of social awkwardness under her belt which fuels her comedy mind and her perspective on life.
Has been featured on
Brooklyn Pride Comedy Show (Brooklyn, NY) – 2016
Crosstown Comedy Festival (New York, NY) – 2016
Nasty Women Unite Fest (Queens, NY) – 2017
Stand Up NY Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
ThunderFest (Allston, MA) 2017
Harlem Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
She-Devil Comedy Festival (New York, NY) 2017
Hell Yes Fest (New Orleans, LA) 2018

Black Boy Out of Time: Hari Ziyad on Growing up Black and Queer in America
2021-04-08 18:00 - 19:00
Author Hari Ziyad will speak about their powerful journey of growing up queer and Black in Cleveland, Ohio, and of navigating the equally complex path toward finding their true self in New York City. Exploring childhood, gender, race, and the trust that is built, broken, and repaired through generations, Ziyad investigates what it means to live beyond the limited narratives Black children are given and challenges the irreconcilable binaries that restrict them.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Black Boy Out of Time before or on Thursday, April 8th, 2021, and receive 25% off!
Hari Ziyad is a cultural critic, a screenwriter, and the editor in chief of RaceBaitr. They are a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow, and their writing has been featured in BuzzFeed, Out, the Guardian, Paste magazine, and the academic journal Critical Ethnic Studies, among other publications. For more information about the author, visit www.hariziyad.com.
Author photo: Brandon Nick

It's here and it's queer, The Queens' English, The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary!
2021-04-10 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
The Queens’ English is a landmark reference guide to the LGBTQIA+ community’s contributions to the English language—an intersectional, inclusive, playfully illustrated glossary featuring more than 800 terms and fabulous phrases created by and for queer culture.
Author Chloe O. Davis gives readers a crash course in modern gay slang, queer theory terms, and playful colloquialisms that define and celebrate LGBTQIA+ culture. This modern dictionary provides an in-depth look at queer language, from terms influenced by celebrated lesbian poet Sappho and from New York’s underground queer ball culture in the 1980s to today’s celebration of RuPaul’s Drag Race.
The glossary of terms is supported by full-color illustrations and photography throughout, as well as real-life usage examples for those who don’t quite know how to use “kiki,” “polysexual,” or “transmasculine” in a sentence. A series of educational lessons highlight key people and events that shaped queer language; readers will learn the linguistic importance of pronouns, gender identity, Stonewall, the Harlem Renaissance, and more.
For every queen in your life–the men, women, gender non-conforming femmes, butches, daddies, and zaddies—THE QUEENS’ ENGLISH is at once an education and a celebration of queer history, identity, and the limitless imagination of the LGBTQIA+ community.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite
Click here to register

Purchase The Queens’ English on or before April 10, 2021 and receive 25% off!

Chloe O. Davis is a performer and debut author who works in the entertainment industry in New York City. A graduate of Hampton University and Temple University, she has centered her creative platform on amplifying the narratives of Black culture and heightening the awareness of LGBTQIA+ community.
Davis’s work as a dancer, actor, and creative has allowed her to travel to all fifty states and internationally. She has performed at premier theaters across the country, such as New York City Center, the Apollo Theater, the Kennedy Center, the Muny, and the Berkeley Repertory Theatre and has appeared on PBS Great Performances with Porgy and Bess at the Metropolitan Opera, Jesus Christ Superstar Live in Concert on NBC, and Southern Landscape performed by the Philadelphia Dance Company (PHILADANCO!).
Davis’s debut book, The Queens’ English, The LGBTQIA+ Dictionary for Lingo and Colloquial Phrases (Clarkson Potter/Penguin Random House, 2021) celebrates the etymological diversity of over eight hundred terms to describe the collective gay and queer experience. She believes this dictionary is a starting point for the important conversations around inclusivity, sexuality, gender expression and identity. The Queens’ English will also reach an international audience and is schedule to be released in the UK, June 2021 (Square Peg/Vintage Publishers).

No Place to Call Home: Queer & Trans Houselessness, 2021
2021-04-15 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
A recording of this event is available to watch on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7arxJckq-Q
COVID has had a disproportionate impact on folks experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity. LGBTQIA2S+ youth of color have been hit especially hard. In this panel, we’ll hear from folks who have experienced houselessness and members of organizations working to fill the gaps left by inequities in the system. Topics include youth experiences, Trans health and safety, problems and limitations of the foster care system, connections to prisons and policing, the impacts of COVID and the vaccine, and what we all can do to work towards housing justice.

Featuring Panelists:
Jayden Avery, VOCAL-NY
Kate Barnhart, New Alternatives
Reginald Brown, VOCAL-NY
Ceyenne Doroshow, GLITS
La’Kenya Tam, Open Rainbow Residences

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the event link on the day of the event.
Click here to register
This event is free!
We encourage you to make donations, if you are able, to the following organizations:
GLITS
New Alternatives Shelter
Open Rainbow Residence
VOCAL-NY

No Place to Call Home: Queer & Trans Houselessness, 2021, is the first in a series of five virtual events presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.
In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view.

Panelists’ biographies:
Kate Barnhart is a long-time AIDS activist and member of ACT UP/NY who has been arrested multiple times for acts of civil disobedience protesting issues related to AIDS, healthcare, police brutality, immigration and as part of the anti-Trump resistance. She has worked with at-risk youth since 1994, including six years working with young felons at CASES, an alternative-to-incarceration program. Since 2001, she has worked with homeless LGBT youth. She spent five years serving as Director of Sylvia’s Place, an emergency shelter for LGBT homeless youth, and is currently the Executive Director of New Alternatives for LGBT Homeless Youth, an organization she helped found in Oct. 2008. In her free time, Ms. Barnhart rescues and rehabilitates stray cats.

Ceyenne Doroshow (pronounced Kai-Ann) is a compassionate powerhouse performer, activist, organizer, community-based researcher and public figure in the trans and sex worker rights’ movements. As the Founder and Executive Director of G.L.I.T.S., she works to provide holistic care to LGBTQ sex workers while serving on the following boards: SWOP-USA, Caribbean Equality Project, SOAR Institute and NYTAG. As an international public speaker, her presentations include The Desiree Alliance, Creating Change, SisterSong, Harm Reduction Coalition and the International AIDS Conferences. She was a featured emcee for Toronto Pride and MOMA/PS1’s Sex Workers’ Festival of Resistance, lifting her voice as a trans woman of color. Ceyenne has been heavily featured in the media, has performed on television in Showtime’s OZ, for the documentaries Red Umbrella Diaries and Miss Major. Known for her skills in the kitchen, Ceyenne co-authored the Caribbean cookbook Cooking in Heels, while incarcerated on prostitution charges. She is currently working on her second book, titled Falling Into the Fire.

Reginald Thomas Brown, M. Ed. (they/them) Board Member, VOCAL-NY.
and
Jayden-Avery Love (she/hers/they/he) Spiritual Consultant (energy reader)
At a time when social constructs and traditional social norms that rely heavily on rigid, oppressive, arbitrary constructs are regarded as 100% truth, we refuse to be defined or limited due to our unchangeable character traits and physical attributes. The heteronormative narrative has no place our life-affirming journey. We are two radical, revolutionary multi-spirited individuals who meet outside of these constructs, write our own narrative and connect deeply on many levels with the vibrations of CHOSEN family, that foster and promote deep spiritual faith, ascension, truthfulness and unapologetically authentic living. We have defined a friendship divined by the universe. OUR universe. We have also mastered how to hold ourselves accountable for effects we are not responsible for causing.

La’Kenya Tam, Founder /Executive Director Open Rainbow Residence, Inc.
La’Kenya has devoted her career to helping at-risk individuals who have struggled with addiction, marginalization, family care ,youth development and gender identity issues. She is a Board-Certified Human Service Practitioner (HS-BCP) whose experience includes 20 years in the Human Service Field within the nonprofit sector .While seeing the lack of appropriate housing and aftercare resources for this population. La’Kenya founded Open Rainbow Residence (ORR), a supportive housing/guidance program for the LGBTQ population who no longer qualify for Youth Services . In addition to also two complimentary programs A Second of Compassion and It Continues With Him two holistic services to all persons who identify as a woman and men from 0-100.
Over the course of her career, La’Kenya has worked with countless of peoples—both on-site and in their communities —assessing specific needs and providing solutions to improve stability, economics and outcomes.Her dedication and exceptional organization skills have allowed her to effectively follow up, monitor and continually expand her connections with service providers. She welcomes opportunities to help people from all walks of life gain confidence and move beyond anything that has held them back.
Open Rainbow Residence, Inc.
Link to Linked-in account for La’Kenya Tam
Link to Rainbow Residence Gofundme
Open Rainbow Residence – Motto:
What happens when youth services dry up….WE DO!!
Open Rainbow Residence provides supportive housing options to young adult members of the LGBTQ community by offering a safe and stable environment along with guidance. We prepare our residents to shape a future characterized by hope, self confidence, dignity and purpose.

TELL 72: BRAGGING
2021-04-17 18:00 - 19:30
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.
Bragging is the theme of the 72nd TELL, on Saturday, April 17, 2021, 6 to 7:30 PM (EDT). Featuring: Becca Blackwell, Nonye Brown-West, and Calvin S. Cato.

The event will take place on Zoom.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom meeting link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Nonye Brown-West is a Nigerian-American comedian and writer. She has been featured in the Boston Globe’s Rise column as a Comic to Watch, NPR, PBS, ABC, Sway In The Morning, and the New York Comedy Festival. Nonye has two animated web series, Fairytales with Nonye and Gayby Jesus, coming in 2021.

Calvin S. Cato has performed all across the United States and has even crossed the border into Canada. His television appearances include the Game Show Network, Oxygen’s My Crazy Love, National Geographic’s Brain Games, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. His work has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Brooklyn Pride, Austin’s Out of Bounds Comedy Festival, Gotham Storytelling Festival and the Women in Comedy Festival. In addition, you may have heard him on Sirius XM or on the popular podcasts RISK!, Las Culturistas, and Keith and the Girl. In 2017, Calvin was named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For.

Photo credit: Eric McNatt
Becca Blackwell is an NYC-based trans actor, performer and writer. Existing between genders, and preferring the pronoun “they,” Blackwell works collaboratively with playwrights and directors to expand our sense of personhood and the body through performance. Some of their collaborations have been with Young Jean Lee, Half Straddle, Jennifer Miller’s Circus Amok, Richard Maxwell, Erin Markey, Sharon Hayes, Theater of the Two Headed Calf and Lisa D’Amour. Film/TV includes: “High Maintenance,” “Ramy,” “Marriage Story,” “Shameless,” “Deadman’s Barstool,” and “Jack in the Box.” They have toured their solo shows They, Themself and Schmerm and Schmermie’s Choice across the US. Blackwell was a recipient of the Doris Duke Impact Artist Award, the Franklin Furnace award and the Creative Capital Award. Photo credit: Eric McNatt

Generations of Queer Activism
2021-04-23 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Exploring new and enduring tactics, strategies and methods of LGBTQIA2S+ activism, organizers from across generations will address how they push forward towards Queer liberation. Topics include: combating institutional racism and systemic marginalization; the challenges and openings from the COVID Pandemic, organizing online and the impact of the George Floyd protests of 2020, ….. and what we all can do to work towards a more just and equitable society.
Featuring panelists Leslie Cagan, Mx. Je’Jae Cleo Daniels, ABilly Jones-Hennin, Dwreck Ingram, & Jay W. Walker, Generations of Activism is the second in a series of five virtual events presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021. In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members.​
A recording of this event can be viewed on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVdnCnardhc
Panelists’ biographies:
LESLIE CAGAN has worked in social justice and peace movements for over 50 years: from lesbian/queer liberation to nuclear disarmament, the wars in Vietnam and Iraq to racism at home, fighting sexism to working against U.S. military intervention. Her coalition-building and organizing skills have mobilized hundreds of thousands of people in many of the nation’s largest demonstrations and too many other protests to count. In 2019 Leslie was part of the core organizer team for the first Queer Liberation March in NYC. Leslie is currently the coordinator of the People’s Climate Movement-NY, serves on the leadership body of NY Renews (statewide climate coalition). She’s worked on several progressive electoral campaigns, including serving as the Field Director in the 1988 Dinkins NY Mayoral race.

MX. JE’JAE CLEO DANIELS, (they/them/Queen) is a Mizrahi Enby organizer, producer, and writer in NYC. They’re the founder of “NYC Queer Activists” and “Trans Writers Collective” two coalitions of activists, writers, and artists focusing on underrepresented folks in the queer community. Mx Cleo was nominated in 2021 for a year long fellowship as part of Equality NY & Pride Network’s “advocacy institutes” – a fellowship which includes rapid protest response, community arts programming, grants, and mobilizing virtual campaigns for city/state justice. They are a long time member of Voices4, Stonewall Dems, Audre Lorde Project, and of course Reclaim Pride Coalition as well as a long standing volunteer at local initiatives, such as Arts & Acceptance, Reelworks, and the Anti-Violence Project. From building sustainable farms through Americorps in NYCHA settlements, to building media literacy in public schools, to advancing youth programming as an out Nonbinary Community Board 3 member, Mx Cleo’s call to “tikkun olam” — repairing their home city — persists flamboyantly! You can follow their writing at https://mxenigmatic.tumblr.com/​ or @Mx. Enigma

ABILLY JONES-HENNIN is a bisexual+ activist in a same gender relationship for 44 years with his Bi+ partner, Christopher. A founding member of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians & Gays (NCBLG) and DC Gay/Bi Married Men Association (GAMMA), he is currently active with the National Association of Black & White Men Together (BWMT) and DC Disability Community.

DWRECK INGRAM is a Haitian American activist and co-founder of social advocacy group, Warriors in the Garden- a Collective of nonviolent activists dedicated to protect our community from all forms of systematic oppression.

JAY W. WALKER has been involved in activism surrounding LGBTQ+ and HIV/AIDS issues for over 20 years. In 1998, he helped form the October 19th Coalition which used direct action activism to raise awareness of hate crimes targeting LGBTQ communities. He also volunteered with GMHC’s NY Citizens AIDS Network legislative public policy initiative. A founding member of Gays Against Guns, Rise and Resist, Sing Out, Louise, March for the Dead, and a co-founder of the Reclaim Pride Coalition and The Queer Liberation March, over the last 20 years, Jay has conceived, produced and co-produced numerous fundraising events, public awareness campaigns, rallies, marches, and direct action protests focusing on hate crimes, Gun Violence Prevention, HIV/AIDS, Anti-fascism, Resistance to the trump administration, and, now, rebuilding our democracy in its wake. Jay recognizes the crucial role that intersectionality plays effective activism and resistance to the current political regime in Washington, DC. Much of his work within the organizations he belongs to has been in trying to develop synergies among them to work in concert.

Too Bright To See: Hal Schrieve in conversation with Kyle Lukoff
2021-04-25 11:00 - 12:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
A recording of this event can be viewed on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4pfo7RZuPw
Please join Kyle Lukoff as he introduces his debut middle grade novel Too Bright To See with librarian and young adult author Hal Schrieve.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.

Click here to register

Pre-orderToo Bright To See before or on Sunday, April 25th, 2021, and receive 25% off!

Too Bright To See will be released on April 20th. Shipments to customers will go out as soon as copies are available.

Kyle Lukoff is the Stonewall-award winning author When Aidan Became A Brother, as well as other picture books like Call Me Max, Explosion at the Poem Factory, and the forthcoming If You’re A Kid Like Gavin.

Hal Schrieve is the author of Out of Salem, longlisted for the National Book Award, and is a librarian at the NYPL.

We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice
2021-05-07 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Chidi Adeyemi, Lydia Brown, Nomi Isaac, Vicky Osterweil, Matthew Perry, & Jennifer Love Williams to talk prison abolition & transformative justice.
The prison industrial complex harms us all. The United States uses mass incarceration, policing, judicial practices, and fines to control Black and Brown communities and to profit from their pain. In this panel, activists and organizers will explore abolitionist imaginations of a world without incarceration and state violence. Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at a grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. It allows us to build a world dependent on community, mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice. In this panel, we’ll explore the history of this radical movement, how panelists address and fight the devastating impacts of the carceral system on Queer and Trans people of color (QTPOC), and how we imagine a future where we keep us safe.
We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice is the third in a series of five virtual events* presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.
FREE event!
You can livestream this event on the Bureau’s or Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook pages or YouTube channels. You’ve got options!
Watch on Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook page
Watch on the Bureau’s Facebook page
Watch on RPC’s YouTube channel
Watch on the Bureau’s YouTube channel
Advance registration is not required to join this event.
In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view recommended books on prison abolition and transformative justice.
Panelists’ biographies:
Chidi Adeyemi (they/them) is a Black nonbinary babe currently organizing with the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), a collection of LGBTQIA2S+ folks organizing our third annual Queer Liberation March with no corporate sponsors and no NYPD control. They are also a volunteer operator with Trans Lifeline, a peer-support crisis hotline for trans callers that emphasizes harm-reduction and sharing resources, and does not allow nonconsensual active rescue. Chidi believes police place people at risk, especially callers who are poor, people of colour, sick and/or diabled; and that laying the groundwork for support without the risk of nonconsensual intervention saves lives. For three years, Chidi was a leader of Queer Union (an NYU activist organization), where they worked to support trans and GNC communties with campaigns for trans inclusive healthcare and classrooms, All Gender Clothing Swaps, and QTBIPOC Wellness events. In their free time, Chidi loves to care for their plants, drink endless cups of tea, and read the pick for their weekly book club, The Reading Rainbow Revolution.
Lydia X. Z. Brown (they/them/no pronouns) is an advocate, educator, and attorney addressing state and interpersonal violence targeting disabled people living at the intersections of race, class, gender, sexuality, faith, language, and nation. Lydia is Policy Counsel for Privacy & Data at the Center for Democracy & Technology, focused on algorithmic discrimination and disability, as well as Director of Policy, Advocacy, & External Affairs at the Autistic Women & Nonbinary Network. They are founding director of the Fund for Community Reparations for Autistic People of Color’s Interdependence, Survival, & Empowerment. Lydia is adjunct lecturer/core faculty in Georgetown University’s Disability Studies Program, and adjunct professorial lecturer in American Studies at American University’s Department of Critical Race, Gender, & Culture Studies. They serve as a commissioner on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Disability Rights, chairperson of the ABA Civil Rights & Social Justice Section’s Disability Rights Committee, board co-chair of the Disability Rights Bar Association, and representative for the Disability Justice Committee to the National Lawyers Guild’s National Executive Committee. Lydia is currently creating their own tarot deck, Disability Justice Wisdom Tarot. Often, their most important work has no title, job description, or funding, and probably never will.
Nomi Isaac (awaiting bio)
Vicky Osterweil (she/her) is a writer, editor and agitator based out of Philadelphia. Her book In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action was released in 2020 by Bold Type Books. She is the co-host of the podcast Cerise and Vicky Rank the Movies, where they are ranking all the movies ever made.
Matthew Perry (he/they) currently organizes with the Richmond Community Bail Fund (RCBF), a non-hierarchical volunteer-run nonprofit they helped to start in 2017 which posts bail for anyone who needs it in the Richmond, VA region, and broadly works to reduce the life-destructive harm caused by pretrial incarceration. RCBF engages with bail fund work through an abolitionist lens, which means posting bail for people regardless of their charge, and recognizing that ending cash bail alone isn’t enough because the anti-black, anti-poor, anti-trans violence it reflects will not end until systems of policing and incarceration themselves are overthrown.
Matthew understands abolition as the work of building a world where we rely on mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice, and thinks bail funds can be a great way to begin materializing this world. They are leaving RCBF at the end of this summer to pursue an MA in Experimental Humanities at NYU, and can’t wait to get re-involved with the vast (and growing) amount of abolitionist organizing happening in New York. When they’re not doing bail fund work, they love reading novels, playing soccer, and petting cats.
Jennifer Love Williams (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated black transwoman, an Entertainer and an Activist. She’s the Foundress the Jen Love Project and serves as Co-Chair of the formerly incarcerated subgroup of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group. She also does work with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. (Photo credit: Jose Ramon Photography)
*Watch recordings of the previous two panels on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
No Place to Call Home: Queer and Trans Houselessness, 2021, took place on April 15, 2021.
Generations of Queer Activism took place on April 27, 2021.
The prison industrial complex harms us all. The United States uses mass incarceration, policing, judicial practices, and fines to control Black and Brown communities and to profit from their pain. In this panel, activists and organizers will explore abolitionist imaginations of a world without incarceration and state violence. Transformative justice seeks to solve the problem of violence at a grassroots level, without relying on punishment, incarceration, or policing. It allows us to build a world dependent on community, mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice. In this panel, we’ll explore the history of this radical movement, how panelists address and fight the devastating impacts of the carceral system on Queer and Trans people of color (QTPOC), and how we imagine a future where we keep us safe.

We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice is the third in a series of five virtual events* presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.
FREE event!
You can livestream this event on the Bureau’s or Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook pages or YouTube channels. You’ve got options! We will post links here and on our social media pages in the days leading up to the event, and we’ll send the links to all who register on Eventbrite. Advance registration is not required to join this event.
In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view.

Panelists’ biographies:
Chidi Adeyemi (they/them) is a Black nonbinary babe currently organizing with the Reclaim Pride Coalition (RPC), a collection of LGBTQIA2S+ folks organizing our third annual Queer Liberation March with no corporate sponsors and no NYPD control. They are also a volunteer operator with Trans Lifeline, a peer-support crisis hotline for trans callers that emphasizes harm-reduction and sharing resources, and does not allow nonconsensual active rescue. Chidi believes police place people at risk, especially callers who are poor, people of colour, sick and/or diabled; and that laying the groundwork for support without the risk of nonconsensual intervention saves lives. For three years, Chidi was a leader of Queer Union (an NYU activist organization), where they worked to support trans and GNC communties with campaigns for trans inclusive healthcare and classrooms, All Gender Clothing Swaps, and QTBIPOC Wellness events. In their free time, Chidi loves to care for their plants, drink endless cups of tea, and read the pick for their weekly book club, The Reading Rainbow Revolution.

Nomi Isaac (awaiting bio)

Vicky Osterweil (she/her) is a writer, editor, and agitator and a regular contributor to The New Inquiry. Her writing has also appeared in The Baffler, The Nation, The Rumpus, Real Life, and Al Jazeera America.

Matthew Perry (he/they) currently organizes with the Richmond Community Bail Fund (RCBF), a non-hierarchical volunteer-run nonprofit they helped to start in 2017 which posts bail for anyone who needs it in the Richmond, VA region, and broadly works to reduce the life-destructive harm caused by pretrial incarceration. RCBF engages with bail fund work through an abolitionist lens, which means posting bail for people regardless of their charge, and recognizing that ending cash bail alone isn’t enough because the anti-black, anti-poor, anti-trans violence it reflects will not end until systems of policing and incarceration themselves are overthrown.
Matthew understands abolition as the work of building a world where we rely on mutual aid, harm reduction, and transformative justice-informed violence intervention—not cops and cages—to deliver safety and justice, and thinks bail funds can be a great way to begin materializing this world. They are leaving RCBF at the end of this summer to pursue an MA in Experimental Humanities at NYU, and can’t wait to get re-involved with the vast (and growing) amount of abolitionist organizing happening in New York. When they’re not doing bail fund work, they love reading novels, playing soccer, and petting cats.

Jennifer Love Williams (she/her) is a formerly incarcerated black transwoman, an Entertainer and an Activist. She’s the Foundress the Jen Love Project and serves as Co-Chair of the formerly incarcerated subgroup of the National LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group. She also does work with The National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. (Photo credit: Jose Ramon Photography)

*Watch recordings of the previous two panels on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:
No Place to Call Home: Queer and Trans Houselessness, 2021, took place on April 15, 2021.
Generations of Queer Activism took place on April 27, 2021.

Four Authors Celebrate Transgender and Non-Binary Children
2021-05-08 11:00 - 12:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Four authors from Los Angeles, Brooklyn, and Malmö and Stockholm, Sweden respectively will discuss new books they’ve each published for and about trans and non-binary children, and the personal experiences that inspired their creations.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase any of the following titles before or on Saturday, May 8th, 2021, and receive 25% off!
Camilla Gisslow‘s Perfectly Linus, Perfectly Bella, and Perfectly Charlie, each $11.99 (regularly $15.99 each)
Ris iRAWniQ Anderson‘s Charlie’s Best Work Yet, $12.74 (regularly $16.99)
Jodie Patterson‘s Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope , $13.49 (regularly $17.99)
Marcus Tallberg and Emma Björck’s My Teen Queer Life, $14.24 (regularly $18.99)
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Participant biographies:
Camilla Gisslow: “My journey began when my child came out in 1997 at the age of four and a half. He clearly explained to me one evening that he was not a girl, but a boy,” says Swedish author, transgender and LGBTQ+ rights activist, educator and filmmaker Camilla Gisslow. She is the author of the “Perfectly Me” trans children’s book series, Perfectly Linus, Perfectly Bella, and Perfectly Charlie—three sweet coming out stories in which each child asserts their chosen gender identity, which is then celebrated with a party at school for their new names. In 2018 she directed the documentary, “Save Our Lives,” which shares the lives of three families which have embraced their trans children since they came out. (A link and password to view the film will be shared at the close of the May 8th event.) Camilla is the founder of Trans-Forming, a consulting company that offers trans and LGBTQ+ sensitivity training. She lives in Malmö, Sweden. www.transforming.se

Ris iRAWniQ Anderson (RAW), is the author of Charlie’s Best Work Yet, a beautifully illustrated children’s book about an artistic, androgynous grade school girl, who thanks to a fellow student, discovers and then finds strength in her newfound hero, Grace Jones. RAW is a non-binary masculine-identified author, alternative musician, voice over artist and actor and “momma to my 12 year old shy, yet brilliant boy.” They are based in Los Angeles. More about iRAWniQ here. @irawniq

Jodie Patterson is the author of The Bold World: A Memoir of Family and Transformation and was Family Circle magazine’s Most Influential Mom in 2018. She is the mother of five children, two of whom are self-proclaimed gender nonconformists–one transgender and another genderqueer. Jodie was inspired to write Born Ready: The True Story of a Boy Named Penelope to show how an entire community can be flexible and change for those they love. Jodie raises her family in Brooklyn, New York. www.georgiany.com.

Marcus Tallberg is the founder of Stockholm-based rainbow media publishing company, Tallbergs Förlag, which has released nearly 40 LGBTQ novels, YA and children’s titles, as well as Camilla Gisslow’s “Save Our Lives” documentary. Late 2020/early 2021 the house released eight titles in North America, including Camilla Gisslow’s “Perfectly Me” series and the semi-autobiographical, My Queer Teen Life, by Marcus Tallberg and Emma Björck. Marcus and Tallbergs Förlag is based in Stockholm. www.tallbergsforlag.se

2021 Publishing Triangle Awards Finalists Readings
2021-05-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
The Bureau is thrilled to host two nights of online readings by Publishing Triangle Awards finalists!
On Monday, May 10, and Tuesday, May 11, the Publishing Triangle will hold its seventh Finalists Reading (in two parts), featuring 17 nominees for the Publishing Triangle awards. This sterling batch of LGBT authors will read excerpts from their books, which represent the best in LGBT writing published in 2020, on the nights before our awards are announced.
Readings begin at 7 PM EDT on both Monday, May 10, and Tuesday, May 11.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the links you need to join the events. Registration is for BOTH readings.
These virtual readings are FREE, but donations to support the Bureau are always welcome! You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite. Thank you for your support!
On the mornings of May 10th and May 11th, you will receive an email with the appropriate link for that night’s event on Zoom.*
Click here to register for both readings

All of the Publishing Triangle Awards finalists are available for purchase on the Bureau’s online store. Click on any title below to view or click here to view all finalists by category.
25% off all Publishing Triangle Awards finalists with this code: FGKXL9GEX0YM
This code is good for a single use on Publishing Triangle Awards finalists titles only, but you can purchase as many of these titles as you like! So take advantage of this limited-time offer and fill up your cart! Enter the discount code (below the total) when you check out.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Monday, May 10
Mark Bibbins, 13th Balloon (Copper Canyon Press) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
S. Brook Corfman, My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites (Fordham University Press) – Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
Jameson Fitzpatrick , Pricks in the Tapestry (Birds, LLC) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Sarah M. Sala, Devil’s Lake (Tolsun Books) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Julia Serano, 99 Erics: A Kat Cataclysm Faux Novel (Switch Hitter Press) – Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Jenn Shapland , My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House) – Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Ross A. Slotten, Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis (University of Chicago Press) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Bishakh Som, Apsara Engine (Feminist Press) – Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
Julie Marie Wade, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press) – Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Tuesday, May 11
Ellen Bass, Indigo (Copper Canyon Press) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
John Birdsall, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (W. W. Norton) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Tommye Blount, Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Eric Cervini, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Juliana Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical (Feminist Press) – Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
francine j. harris, Here Is the Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Sophie Yanow, The Contradictions (Drawn and Quarterly) – Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

*If you do not see the email on the day of the event, please check your email settings, your Spam box, and/or your promotions and social tabs. If you’re having any trouble, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

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

The Publishing Triangle
511 Avenue of the Americas, #D36
New York, NY 10011

2021 Publishing Triangle Awards Finalists Readings
2021-05-11 19:00 - 21:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
The Bureau is thrilled to host two nights of online readings by Publishing Triangle Awards finalists!
On Monday, May 10, and Tuesday, May 11, the Publishing Triangle will hold its seventh Finalists Reading (in two parts), featuring 17 nominees for the Publishing Triangle awards. This sterling batch of LGBT authors will read excerpts from their books, which represent the best in LGBT writing published in 2020, on the nights before our awards are announced.
Readings begin at 7 PM EDT on both Monday, May 10, and Tuesday, May 11.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the links you need to join the events. Registration is for BOTH readings.
These virtual readings are FREE, but donations to support the Bureau are always welcome! You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite. Thank you for your support!
On the mornings of May 10th and May 11th, you will receive an email with the appropriate link for that night’s event on Zoom.*
Click here to register for both readings

All of the Publishing Triangle Awards finalists are available for purchase on the Bureau’s online store. Click on any title below to view or click here to view all finalists by category.
25% off all Publishing Triangle Awards finalists with this discount code: FGKXL9GEX0YM
This code is good for a single use on Publishing Triangle Awards finalists titles only, but you can purchase as many of these titles as you like! So take advantage of this limited-time offer and fill up your cart! Enter the discount code (below the total) when you check out.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Monday, May 10
Mark Bibbins, 13th Balloon (Copper Canyon Press) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
S. Brook Corfman, My Daily Actions, or The Meteorites (Fordham University Press) – Finalist for the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature
Jameson Fitzpatrick , Pricks in the Tapestry (Birds, LLC) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Sarah M. Sala, Devil’s Lake (Tolsun Books) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Julia Serano, 99 Erics: A Kat Cataclysm Faux Novel (Switch Hitter Press) – Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Jenn Shapland , My Autobiography of Carson McCullers (Tin House) – Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Ross A. Slotten, Plague Years: A Doctor’s Journey Through the AIDS Crisis (University of Chicago Press) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Bishakh Som, Apsara Engine (Feminist Press) – Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
Julie Marie Wade, Just an Ordinary Woman Breathing (Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press) – Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Tuesday, May 11
Ellen Bass, Indigo (Copper Canyon Press) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
John Birdsall, The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (W. W. Norton) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Tommye Blount, Fantasia for the Man in Blue (Four Way Books) – Finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry
Eric Cervini, The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. the United States of America (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Juliana Delgado Lopera, Fiebre Tropical (Feminist Press) – Finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
francine j. harris, Here Is the Sweet Hand (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Natalie Diaz, Postcolonial Love Poem (Graywolf Press) – Finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry
Sophie Yanow, The Contradictions (Drawn and Quarterly) – Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

*If you do not see the email on the day of the event, please check your email settings, your Spam box, and/or your promotions and social tabs. If you’re having any trouble, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.

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

The Publishing Triangle
511 Avenue of the Americas, #D36
New York, NY 10011

Sexual Hegemony: Max Fox in conversation with Hannah Black and Kay Gabriel
2021-05-13 19:00 - 20:30
Christopher Chitty’s posthumous Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy and Capital in the Rise of the World System was published in 2020. Join editor Max Fox for a conversation with Hannah Black and Kay Gabriel to discuss its genesis and meaning for the queer marxist project of liberation.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Sexual Hegemony before or on Thursday, May 13th, 2021, and receive 25% off!

About Sexual Hegemony: Statecraft, Sodomy and Capital in the Rise of the World System :
In Sexual Hegemony Christopher Chitty traces the five-hundred year history of capitalist sexual relations by excavating the class dynamics of the bourgeoisie’s attempts to regulate homosexuality. Tracking the politicization of male homosexuality in Renaissance Florence, Amsterdam, Paris, and London between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as twentieth-century New York City, Chitty shows how sexuality became a crucial dimension of the accumulation of capital and a technique of bourgeois rule.
Whether policing male sodomy during the Medici rule in Florence or accusing the French aristocracy of monstrous sexuality in the wake of the French Revolution, the bourgeoisie weaponized both sexual constraint and sexual freedom in order to produce and control a reliable and regimented labor class and subordinate it to civil society and the state. Only by grasping sexuality as a field of social contention and the site of class conflict, Chitty contends, can we embark on a politics that destroys sexuality as a tool and an effect of power and open a front against the forces that keep us unfree.
Book cover art: Jesse Mockrin, Some Unknown Power, 2018, Oil on linen, 26 × 18 in (66 × 45.7 cm)

Office Hours Poetry Spring 2021 Showcase Reading
2021-05-14 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join us Friday May 14th at 7:00 PM EDT for the Office Hours Spring 2021 (Virtual) Showcase Reading! Our current fellows will give a brief reading in celebration of another strong semester of poetry making, community building, and surviving in difficult creative times.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit Office Hours Poetry Workshop: $5 – $10
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Carrie Hohmann Campbell is the author of the chapbooks Drawn to Extinction (Finishing Line Press) and incongruent: someday (dancing girl press). She has degrees from Allegheny College and New York University. She and her family live in northwestern Pennsylvania where she precariously balances teaching creative writing at Edinboro University, homesteading, and writing.

Laura Cresté is the author of You Should Feel Bad, which was selected for a 2019 Poetry Society of America Chapbook Fellowship. She holds an MFA in Poetry from New York University and her poems have appeared in journals including No Tokens, Tinderbox, Breakwater Review, and Bodega. In Fall 2021, she will be a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown.

Linda Harris Dolan is a poet, editor, and educator. As a teaching artist at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, she holds one-on-one writing sessions with pediatric patients. She earned an MFA in Poetry from NYU, where she was a Starworks Creative Writing Fellow, and an MA in English & American Literature from NYU. Her work appears in Barrow Street, The Brooklyn Review, Cordella, and Breakwater Review, among others, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

J. Freeborn is a teacher and the anthology books managing editor at The Poetry Society of New York.

Emily Hockaday is the author of four chapbooks. Her poems have appeared in numerous journals, and, along with Jackie Sherbow, she coedited the anthology Terror at the Crossroads. She can be found on the web at www.emilyhockaday.com and @E_Hockaday.

Paco Márquez is author of Portraits in G Minor (Folded Word Press, 2017). His poems can be found in Fence, Apogee, Live Mag! and Huizache. Originally from León, Mexico, Paco has spent most of his life in Sacramento and the San Francisco Bay Area. Find out more at: pacomarquez.net

Holly Mitchell is a poet from Kentucky, now based in New York. A winner of an Amy Award from Poets & Writers and a Gertrude Claytor Prize from the Academy of American Poets, Holly received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Holly’s poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Afternoon Visitor, Fence magazine’s digital series Elecment, and No, Dear, among other publications.

James Fujinami Moore‘s debut collection indecent hours is forthcoming from Four Way Books in 2022. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Barrow Street’s 4×2, The Brooklyn Rail, Guesthouse, The Margins, the Pacifica Literary Review, and Prelude. He has received support from Poets House, Bread Loaf, and the Frost Place, and received his MFA from Hunter College in 2016. He lives in Los Angeles, and online at jamesfujinamimoore.com.

Sarah M. Sala is a queer poet of Polish-Lebanese descent. Her debut collection, Devil’s Lake is now out from Tolsun Books. She is the founder of the free poetry workshop, Office Hours, and Co-Poetry Editor at the Bellevue Literary Review. Her work appears in BOMB, the Southampton Review, and the Los Angeles Review. Visit her at sarahsala.com and @sarahmsala.

Noel Sikorski is a Senior Lecturer in the Expository Writing Program at NYU. Her poems have appeared in American Poets Magazine, Georgetown Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and The Bellevue Literary Review.

Avia Tadmor was born in Israel. Her poems appeared in New England Review, the Adroit Journal, Crab Orchard Review, Apogee, Nashville Review, and elsewhere. She received support from the Vermont Studio Center and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Avia holds a BA from Harvard University and an MFA from Columbia University. She lives in New York.

TELL 73: Animals
2021-05-15 18:00 - 19:30
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.
Animals is the theme of the 73rd TELL, on Saturday, May 15, 2021, 6 to 7:30 PM (EDT). Featuring: Rawya El Chab, Kenny Hahn, and Fernando Vieira.
The event will take place on Zoom.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom meeting link on the day of the event.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the storytellers and the Bureau.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Photograph by Grace Chu
Drae Campbell is an actor and performer who has appeared on stages all over NYC and on the internet, movies and tv. She’s been spotted on the tv shows New Amsterdam and Bull and on the web series Dinette directed by Shaina Feinberg. She can also be found online on Refinery29, IFC.Com and BRICTV to name a few. Some fave stage acting credits: Only You Can Prevent Wildfires, Ricochet Collective, Non-Consensual Relationships With Ghosts, La Mama, My Old Man, Dixon Place, Oph3lia at HERE, The Nosebleed at The Public Theatre. Drae also appeared as a radical lesbian in Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History Of Popular Music at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Drae’s been hosting and curating TELL at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for 7 plus years. If you like queer stories, TELL is also a Podcast! www.draecampbell.com

Rawya El Chab is a Brooklyn-based performance artist and theater-maker from Beirut, Lebanon. A multidisciplinary storyteller, Rawya’s career trajectory combines classical training in theatre with contemporary art and community engagement, with extensive experiences in physical, interactive, and street interventions. She has performed in major productions, working with leading theatre and cinema directors in Lebanon. Coming of age in the aftermath of the Civil War in Beirut, she has come to understand and experience theater and art as a critical space and practice where the state of emergency is suspended to give place for social, ethical and aesthetic reflections. Her philosophy and vision emphasize the democratization of the tools of theater as a means to respond and dismantle oppression and the reclaiming of public space as an extension of art-practice. Her process is immersed in ludic practices, engaging with ideas and concepts, and developing performances as a social commentary. Since she moved to New York in 2018, she has joined the Target Margin Theater working on several projects. She’s currently writing, directing and performing a piece, in collaboration with Aline Salloum, titled The Meltdown, that will feature during the Global Forms Festival at the Rattlestick Theater, on the 3d of June 2021.

Kenny Hahn (he/She) is a queer actor, playwright, director, devised theatre-maker, comedian, and passionate pie-maker. His play, Love Me Tender, premiered at the Wild Project Theater in September 2018, he performed at NYWinterfest 2019 and the Prague Fringe Festival 2019 with the show “In The Woods Where the Men Work, and he will be competing in this years YAAASFest Comedy Festival at the Broadway Comedy Club. Her pies can be tasted at any Hahn family dinner, or if she likes you, your family dinner.
Instagram: @kennythehahn

Fernando Vieira is an Ecuadorian born, New York-based writer, director, and performer. Most of his works document the effect of heteronormativity and misogyny on the lives of women and queer individuals. In 2016, he debuted as a playwright with the monologue “Me voy porque puedo,” (I’m leaving because I can), which he also directed. His latest play “Goodbye, Little George,” explores the subject of gender identity and homophobia. He recently debuted a documented performance titled “Unlabeled”, where he discusses life as a queer non-conforming person. Vieira has been part of artistic cohorts at institutions such as NYFA, Creative Capital, and Leslie-Lohman Museum.

Radical Black Love
2021-05-21 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Francesca Barjon, Jade Bryan, Jaysen Henderson-Greenbey, Anesu Nyatanga, Junauda Petrus, & Hari Ziyad to talk about Radical Black Love
Radical Black love has developed a Black political movement focused on mutual care. Radical Black love requires that we are concerned for and responsible to one another. In an anti-Black world such as this, to choose to love and support Black people is a highly rebellious and potentially dangerous act. In this panel, activists and authors will explore what Radical Black love means to them and how it sparks imaginations of a free world for us all.
Radical Black Love is the fourth in a series of five virtual events* presented by Reclaim Pride Coalition and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division in the weeks leading up to the Queer Liberation March, on Sunday, June 27th, 2021.
FREE event!
You can livestream this event on the Bureau’s or Reclaim Pride Coalition’s Facebook pages or YouTube channels. You’ve got options! Registration is not required in order to join the event. Click on any of the links below to join us tonight, Friday, May 21, 2021, at 6 PM EDT:
Reclaim Pride Coalition’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/queermarch/posts/3105235273042357
The Bureau’s FB page: https://www.facebook.com/BGSQD/posts/3956243421137943
The Bureau’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QluJxMrES04
RPC’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I2PNybs0Vpg
In conjunction with these events, the Bureau’s online store now features a section devoted to titles recommended by Reclaim Pride Coalition members–click here to view recommended books on radical Black love.

Panelists’ biographies:
Francesca R. Barjon (she/her) is a Haitian-American community organizer and screenwriter based in NY. Francesca’s writing and perspective is informed by her experience as a Black bisexual woman organizing the Queer Liberation March in NYC. She focuses on bridging cultural gaps and facilitating difficult conversations while empowering Black people, LGBTQIATS+ people, disabled people and other marginalized groups. She lives by the tenet “none are free, until all are free” and strives to practice radical empathy in building relationships and community. Lastly, as a healthcare consultant, Francesca has considered how social determinants of health impact the LGBTQIATS+ community and make members vulnerable to various physical and mental health issues.

Jade Bryan (she/her) graduated with a BFA degree in film production from one of the world’s top film schools at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Jade founded DeafVision Filmworks, Inc. and Jade Films and Entertainment, LLC, and has produced and directed such award-winning documentaries as “Listen to the Hands of Our People”, ”On and Off Stage: The Bruce Hlibok Stories”, “9/11 Fear in Silence: The Forgotten Underdogs” and “Reaching Zenith: A Black Deaf Filmmaker’s Journey.”
Jade completed her first feature, “If Your Could Hear My Own Tune”, which toured the festival circuit from 2010-2012. She worked tirelessly on the film for nine (9) years, which she produced in 2001. Jade in talks about producing it into a musical play (staged reading) this summer/fall of 2018. The new title is “Feel My Song.”
“The Shattered Mind” is her most recent feature film she completed in 2014 and toured 47 film festivals around the globe. “The Shattered Mind” won 17 awards; included Best Sound, Audience Award, Special Jury Prize, Best Exhibition Film and Best Narrative Feature and Short.
One of Jade’s projects, “The Two Essences”, a comedy sitcom pilot, will be her first television series. She is also pitching another pilot, “The Innocent Project,” about deaf females hero complex. And she is also working on a documentary, “Black and Deaf in America”, about various issues regarding deaf (African-Americans) who were impacted by police brutality, racism, black erasure and oppression in the educational system.
Jade believes in promoting inclusion, awareness, and positive representation of Deaf Talent of Color in television and film. She created the #DeafTalent® Movement on social media in 2012.

Jaysen Henderson-Greenbey (they/them) is a NYU Gallatin alum and former leader of NYU’s Queer Union, a position they held for three years. Their undergraduate concentration, “Storytelling from the Margins: Black Women’s Narratives,” explored themes of blackness, queerness, and marginality in literature, film, and music. Jaysen is a writer whose work explores the intersections of race, sexuality, and gender.

Anesu Nyatanga (he/him) studied Social & Cultural Analysis at New York University’s college of arts and science, and he believes in using an intersectional framework to support marginalized individuals in a variety of capacities. He worked with the New York City’s Mayor’s Office of Operations and Civic Engagement Commission. Here he coordinated interpretation services for limited-English proficient voters during NYC elections. While at NYU, he served as the Vice-Chair for the Student Senators Council and as a Senator-at-Large for Black and Trans students. He was the inaugural Gender & Sexuality Chair of the Governance Council for Marginalized and Minority Students, which serves to unify and provide a channel of access to institutional bodies between all student organizations and committees in the Global Network. Additionally, he was one of the thought leaders for Shades, a student group for LGBTQ people of color. On his days off, Anesu loves to weight lift, go to the movies, and argue about pop culture icons with his friends.

Junauda Petrus-Nasah (she/her) is a writer, a soul sweetener, runaway witch, and performance artist of Black-Caribbean descent, born and working on unceded Dakota land in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her work centers around wildness, queerness, Black-diasporic-futurism, ancestral healing, sweetness, shimmer and liberation. Her first YA novel, The Stars and The Blackness Between Them received a Coretta Scott King Honor Award. And she really, really loves to eat and write about delicious food. She is the co-founder with Erin Sharkey of Free Black Dirt, a Black, experimental healing art collective. She is currently working on her second novel Black Circus, set in the 90s about a young, Black woman studying circus with a mysterious elder former circus performer.

Hari Ziyad (they/them) is a screenwriter, the editor-in-chief of RaceBaitr, and the bestselling author of Black Boy Out of Time (2021). They are a 2021 Lambda Literary Fellow, and their writing has been featured in Vanity Fair, Gawker, Out, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Ebony, Mic, Slate and Salon among other publications.

*Watch recordings of the previous three RPC/Bureau panels on the Bureau’s YouTube channel (click on links to view):
No Place to Call Home: Queer and Trans Houselessness, 2021, took place on April 15, 2021.
Generations of Queer Activism took place on April 27, 2021.
We Keep Us Safe: Prison Abolition and Transformative Justice took place on May 7, 2021.

IN WAVES AND WAVES ::: MOVEMENT//MEANING//PRESENCE THROUGH SPACE
2021-05-22 11:00 - 13:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join the Office Hours Community for a Craft Class and Reading with poet Nicole Wallace. Through a series of generative prompts and readings she’ll guide you to write new work and engage with the world.

Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register
IN WAVES AND WAVES ::: MOVEMENT//MEANING//PRESENCE THROUGH SPACE
A craft writing workshop with Nicole Wallace centering on the possibilities space holds within our writing — through our words, formatting, and language(s) — to expand, disrupt, and transform movement, meaning, and presence. We will consider the ways written work translates into the spoken and vice versa and spend time locating the way our words/work exists in the expanse of space, time, and language.

Nicole Wallace is the author of the chapbook, WAASAMOWIN (IMP, 2019). Most recently, Nicole was the June/July 2020 poetry micro-resident at Running Dog and was a 2019 Poets House Emerging Poets Fellow. They are a member of the Indigenous Kinship Collective and Managing Director of The Poetry Project. Recent work can be read in print in Survivance: Indigenous Poesis Vol. IV Zine and online at Running Dog, A Perfect Vacuum, and LitHub. Originally from Gakaabikaang, located in Minnesota, Nicole is of mixed settler/European ancestry and is a descendent of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa (Ojibwe). They currently live and make work on unceded, occupied Canarsee and Lenape territory (Brooklyn, NY).

Office Hours Poetry Workshop provides post-MFA poets access to continued support for manuscript-development and everyday writing. The workshop culminates in a public reading each fall and spring to showcase sizzling new work. We welcome all poets, especially people of color, LGBTQ+, and those who are woman-identified. Our name derives from our side hustle. Many of us are freelance, adjunct instructors, who continue to thrive in the margins of academia.

Maurice Sendak in Queer Perspective
2021-05-27 18:00 - 19:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join Golan Moskowitz as he reads to us from his new book, Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (2020), and converses with leading scholars Jack Halberstam and Kenneth Kidd about the book’s implications for queer studies.
Maurice Sendak (1928–2012), best known for his Where the Wild Things Are (1963), was a fierce, romantic, and shockingly funny truth seeker who intervened in modern literature and culture. Raising the stakes of children’s books, he painted childhood with the dark realism and wild imagination of his own sensitive “inner child,” drawing on the queer and Jewish sensibilities that shaped his singular voice. Interweaving literary biography and cultural history, Wild Visionary follows Sendak from his parents’ Brooklyn home to spaces of creative growth and artistic vision—from neighborhood movie palaces to Hell’s Kitchen, Greenwich Village, Fire Island, and the Connecticut country home he shared with Eugene Glynn, his partner of more than fifty years. Moskowitz analyzes Sendak’s investment in the figure of the endangered child in symbolic relation to collective touchstones that impacted the artist’s perspective—the Great Depression, the Holocaust, and the AIDS crisis.

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.

Click here to register

Purchase Golan Y. Moskowitz’s Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context on or before Thursday, May 27th, 2021, and receive 25% off: $26.25 (regularly $35)

Participant biographies:
Jack Halberstam is Professor of Gender Studies and English at Columbia University. Halberstam is the author of seven books including: Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters (Duke UP, 1995), Female Masculinity (Duke UP, 1998), In A Queer Time and Place (NYU Press, 2005), The Queer Art of Failure (Duke UP, 2011), Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Beacon Press, 2012), and a short book titled Trans*: A Quick and Quirky Account of Gender Variance (University of California Press). Halberstam’s latest book, 2020 from Duke UP is titled Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire. Places Journal awarded Halberstam its Arcus/Places Prize in 2018 for innovative public scholarship on the relationship between gender, sexuality and the built environment. Halberstam is now finishing a second volume on wildness titled: The Wild Beyond: Music, Architecture and Anarchy.

Kenneth Kidd is Professor of English at the University of Florida, where he also serves as Associate Director of the Center for Children’s Literature and Culture. He’s the author of three monographs,Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale;Freud in Oz: At the Intersections of Psychoanalysis and Children’s Literature; and Theory for Beginners: Children’s Literature as Critical Thought. He has co-editedWild Things: Children’s Culture and Ecocriticism; Over the Rainbow: Queer Children’s and Young Adult Literature; Prizing Children’s Literature: The Cultural Politics of Children’s Book Awards; and Queer as Camp: Essays on Summer, Style, and Sexuality. With Elizabeth Marshall he co-edits the Routledge series Children’s Literature and Culture.

Golan Moskowitz is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University, where he teaches courses on Jewish gender and sexuality, American pop culture, Holocaust studies, and comics and graphic novels. He is the author of Wild Visionary: Maurice Sendak in Queer Jewish Context (Stanford University Press, 2020) and of several publications on intergenerational memory in post-Holocaust family narratives.

Jonathan Ned Katz talks: The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams
2021-05-28 18:00 - 19:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Historian Jonathan Ned Katz discusses his biography of the spirited, resistant, Jewish, lesbian, immigrant, pioneer, deported from the U.S., who experienced the Nazis’ reign of terror. Published May 18, 2021, by Chicago Review Press.

Registration on this page is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $5.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on this page.

Purchase The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams before or on Friday, May 28th, 2021, and receive 25% off! $22.50 (regularly $30).

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
Jonathan Ned Katz is the author of four pioneering books on the US history of LGBTQ life, sexuality, and intimacy. He is the founder of OutHistory.org, and he has taught and spoken at Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. He is also the recipient of the Magnus Hirschfeld Medal for outstanding contributions to sex research and Yale University’s Brudner Prize, among many accolades.

Jackie Ess In Conversation With Torrey Peters
2021-05-29 19:00 - 20:00 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join us for an author talk and Q&A with Jackie Ess and Torrey Peters (Detransition, Baby) to discuss Jackie’s new book, DARRYL.
“Underneath the sharp satire and hilarious sexual irreverence this is a deadly serious book: a brilliant novel of a seeker, like The Pilgrim’s Progress refracted by queer internet culture.” —Torrey Peters, author of Detransition, Baby: a novel

Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Suggested donation to support the Bureau’s work: $5
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Purchase Darryl and/or Detransition, Baby on or before May 29, 2021 and receive 25% off!

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

Jackie Ess is a writer, cultural mischief-maker, and minor internet celebrity. A co-founder of the Bay Area Trans Writers Workshop, her work can be found in Heavy Feather Review, the Zahir, the New Inquiry, Vetch, and the anthology We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics. Darryl is her first novel. Find her on Twitter @Jackie_Ess.

Torrey Peters is an American author. Her debut novel, Detransition, Baby, is one of the first written by a trans woman to be issued by the big-five publishing houses, Penguin Random House, and has received mainstream and critical success. The novel has been nominated for the prestigious 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction.

LOOKING IN A 50+ YEARS GAY-CENTERED REAR VIEW MIRROR:
2021-05-30 19:00 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
For over a half-century continuously, Don Kilhefner, Ph.D. has been a radical, gay, community organizer and forward-thinking, gay-centered ideologue in Los Angeles, nationally and internationally.
THEN:
Member of the first Peace Corps to go to Ethiopia
Co-founded L.A.’s Gay Community Services Center, the world’s largest
Co-organized L.A.’s first Gay Freedom Day (Pride) marches
Co-founded the Radical Faeries, an international gay-centered spiritual and consciousness movement
Co-founded the Gay Elder Circle of Los Angeles
Organized hundreds of community-based conferences and workshops

NOW:
Gay community-based shaman
Jungian depth psychologist
Writer for LA Progressive
Queer eldering and intergenerational consciousness
Collaborating with his biographer, August Bernadicou, both true homos who have been around every block!

A RARE & EXCITING EVENING OF GAY CONSCIOUSNESS RAISING AND LOWERING
Closed-captioning will be available.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the day of the event, Sunday, May 30th.
Suggested donation $5 to benefit The LGBTQ History Project Inc. and the Bureau.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register

Craft Class and Reading with Laura Esther Wolfson
2021-06-17 18:30 - 20:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
Join the Office Hours Community for a Craft Class and Reading with Laura Esther Wolfson!
Translating a Poem, Translating the World
No foreign language knowledge required. All levels welcome.
In this course, we will look at multiple English translations of an eight-line Russian poem, Я вас любил (“I Loved You”), by Alexander Pushkin, as a jumping-off point to ponder how slight shifts in word choice and emphasis change how the reader perceives a piece of writing and how all writing is a form of translation—of the world. No foreign language knowledge required. All levels welcome.
The course will also include freewheeling excursions into two of Laura’s adjacent obsessions: Russian literature and literary translation.
Suggested donation is $10 (but not required). All donations go directly to the course instructor. Writers of all backgrounds welcome. You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
Registration on Eventbrite is required in order to receive the Zoom link on the morning of Thursday, June 17th.
Click here to register

Laura Esther Wolfson‘s debut essay collection, FOR SINGLE MOTHERS WORKING AS TRAIN CONDUCTORS, was awarded the 2017 Iowa Prize for Literary Nonfiction and published by the University of Iowa Press in 2018. She is currently working on her second book, entitled SUPER-PRICEY ROYAL BLUE FRENCH LACE BRA.
Her writing has been honored with the 2017 Notting Hill Essay Prize,
published in leading literary venues on both sides of the Atlantic, and cited in The Best American Essays. She is a Fellow at MacDowell (2018) and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (2017). She holds an MFA from the New School and lives in New York City.
She served for many years as the interpreter for Russian-speaking authors at the PEN World Voices Festival and as a PEN prison writing mentor. She has had a long career as an interpreter and translator, working from Russian, French and Spanish to English. Laura translated Stalin’s Secret Pogrom (Yale University Press, 2001), on the events leading up to the Night of the Murdered Poets. The book went on to win the National Jewish Book Award for Eastern European history. https://lauraestherwolfson.com/
