BGSQD

WMN Pop Up at the Bureau
2022-12-15 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come visit the WMN pop up shop at the Bureau on Thursday, December 15, 2022, from 5 to 7 PM! Issues of WMN and merch will be available for purchase.

About WMN:
Venezuelan designer/artist Florencia Alvarado, American photographer Jeanette Spicer and Swedish designer Sara Duell, are the dykes behind WMN – a publication of lesbian art and poetry. We have individually come to identify ourselves as lesbian in different ways and at various times, but found commonality between our love for WMN, and interest in art and representation of marginalized communities.
When thinking of our own identifications, we realized that the term lesbian was in ways a signifier of the past, and could even be considered radical. This awareness sparked our inspiration and desire to gather and share work of other people identifying as lesbian, in order to create a conversation around different terms of identification, and how and why we use them. This zine is meant to provide a much needed space to show the intimacy, struggle, wonder and everything in between, of what it means to be a lesbian in this political climate and time.
WMN – lesbian art and poetry publication was founded in May 2019 in Brooklyn NY.

Office Hours Poetry Fall 2022 Showcase Reading (virtual event - online only)
2022-12-16 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join us Friday, December 16th, at 7:00 PM EDT for the Office Hours Fall 2022 Showcase Reading, a virtual event taking place online only. 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.
Readers:
Abba Belgrave
Carrie Hohmann Campbell
Ryan Dzelzkalns
Ashley Harris
Emily Hockaday
James Fujinami Moore
Sarah Sala
Shakeema Smalls
Avia Tadmor
Annie Wei

Suggested donation to benefit Office Hours Poetry Workshop: $5 – $10
You can make a donation when you register on Eventbrite.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
Registration on Eventbrite required to join this event on Zoom.
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access link” (beneath “When and Where/location/online”). But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
Closed-captioning will be available.
Click here to register
Also live-streaming at youtube.com/@bgsqd

Emily Hockaday’s [in person reader] first full-length collection, Naming the Ghost, is out from Cornerstone Press. Her second collection In a Body is scheduled for October 2023 with Harbor Editions. She has had work in a variety of anthologies and print and online journals. She tweets @E_Hockaday.

Shakeema Smalls [virtual reader] is from Georgetown, South Carolina. Her work has been published in a variety of outlets including Blackberry: A Magazine, Radius Lit, Free Black Space, Vinyl Poetry and Prose, and Rigorous, among others, with upcoming work in Hayden’s Ferry and Emergent Literary. She was a Tin House 2022 Winter Workshop participant and a 2022 PEN Emerging Voices Fellow.

Carrie Hohmann Campbell [virtual reader] lives on a small farm in northwest Pennsylvania with her family. Her second chapbook Drawn to Extinction was published by Finishing Line Press. She teaches creative writing as an Assistant Professor of English at PennWest University. Contact her at carriehohmanncampbell.com.

James Fujinami Moore‘s [virtual reader] debut collection is Indecent Hours (Four Way Books, 2022). His work has appeared 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.

Avia Tadmor [in person reader] was born in Jerusalem. Her poetry received support from Yaddo, the Rona Jaffe Foundation/ Bread Loaf, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The New Republic, New England Review, The Adroit Journal, Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Avia was named a 2022 Gregory Djanikian Scholar by the Adroit Journal.

Ashley Harris [virtual reader] is from Manassas, Virginia. Her work has been published in Aquas de pozos, Yellow Chair Review and Cartridge Literary magazine. She currently has a chapbook entitled “If the Hero of Time was Black”, published by Weasel Press. Her work was also present in the anthologies For all the songs we sing and The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superheroes.

Ryan Dzelzkalns [virtual reader] has poems appearing with Catapult, DIAGRAM, The Offing, The Shanghai Literary Review, Tin House, and others. He received an MFA from New York University and a BA from Macalester College where he was awarded the Wendy Parrish Poetry Prize. His writing has been translated into Latvian (the language of his grandparents) and has been anthologized in a handful of collections. He was recently a Fulbright scholar in Tokyo, where he still lives. Read more at RyanDz.com

Sarah M. Sala [in person reader] 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.

TELL 83: Space (in person & live-streaming)
2022-12-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Space is the theme of the 83rd TELL, on Saturday, December 17, 2022, 7 PM IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Renair Amin, Gabriella Belfiglio, & MJ Moneymaker.
The event will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Donations by card can be made at the register or via Venmo @bgsqd with TELL 83 in the message. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
We ask that all attendees bring proof of vaccination and wear masks. Thank you!
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

RENAIR AMIN is an award-winning educator, international speaker, coach, pageant queen, and four-time published author specializing in the areas of relationship wellness, empowerment, and LGBTQ faith-based trauma. Renair has a Master of Arts in Religious Education and Doctor of Ministry degree from New York Theological Seminary. Dr. Amin utilizes her academic journey, extensive training, and experiential wisdom to change the lives of people she encounters regionally and globally. She is also a relationship wellness expert who centers her work on helping individuals develop and reinforce self-esteem while enhancing personal and professional relationships in their lives. She began this work in 2014 through her custom Holokeria Coaching practice which has evolved into Pink Love Wellness, LLC, through which Renair provides an array of services that holistically address her client’s needs. Dr. Amin is also the founder of LGBTQ Faith Matters, a platform dedicated to healing spiritual trauma in communities of color, and the host of the “It’s All About Pink Love” Podcast. Renair believes her purpose is to heal hearts to heal the world.

Gabriella M. Belfiglio lives in Brooklyn, NY with her wife, five-year-old, and five cats. She teaches self-defense, conflict resolution, and karate. She is the winner of the W.B. Yeats Poetry Award. She received a fellowship with Saltonstall Arts Foundation. Her work has been published in many anthologies and journals including The Centrifugal Eye, Paterson Review, Avanti Popolo, Poetic Voices without Borders, The Potomac Review, and Lambda Literary Review. She is part of the activist/poetry trio, The Ferlinghetti Girls. For more info visit: www.gabriellabelfiglio.info

Not a gimmick, jus’a name. MJ Moneymaker is a Chinese-Puerto Rican American, veteran, activist, artist, writer. Storytelling through any medium, shares experience, adds to life..

Closed for holidays!
2022-12-24 - 2022-12-25, 2022-12-31 - 2023-01-01
The Bureau will be closed on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Belle Époque (in person event)
2023-01-04 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be IN PERSON at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.

Please join us for Belle Époque (1992), directed by Fernando Trueba and starring Fernando Fernán Gómez, Jorge Sanz, Maribel Verdú, and Penélope Cruz.

We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $5-$10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.

You can send donations through Venmo to @Open-LoveNY.

Synopsis: During the Spanish Civil War, a young army deserter is helped by an artist with four daughters, each of which he has a relationship with. Running time: 1 hour 49 minutes. In Spanish with English subtitles.

Author Event: On Learning to Heal by Ed Cohen (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-01-13 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join professor Ed Cohen on Friday, January 13 at 7:00pm (ET) for the launch of his new book, ON LEARNING TO HEAL. He will be in conversation with Emily Lim Rogers.
The event will consist of a reading, book talk, Q&A, and signing.
About ON LEARNING TO HEAL: At age thirteen, Ed Cohen was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease—a chronic, incurable condition that nearly killed him in his early twenties. At his diagnosis, his doctors told him that the best he could hope for would be periods of remission. Unfortunately, doctors never mentioned healing as a possibility. In ON LEARNING TO HEAL, Cohen draws on fifty years of living with Crohn’s to consider how Western medicine’s turn from an “art of healing” toward a “science of medicine” deeply affects both medical practitioners and their patients. He demonstrates that although medicine can now offer many seemingly miraculous therapies, medicine is not and has never been the only way to enhance healing. Exploring his own path to healing, he argues that learning to heal requires us to desire and value healing as a vital possibility. With this book, Cohen advocates reviving healing’s role for all those whose lives are touched by illness.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel

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

Ed Cohen is Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Rutgers University and author of A Body Worth Defending, also published by Duke University Press. He hosts a therapeutic practice for people interested in healing: healingcounsel.com.

Emily Lim Rogers is the Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Disability Studies at Brown University. She writes about chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, biomedicine, and debility. Her work has appeared in Medical Anthropology Quarterly and Somatosphere, and she is a contributor to the forthcoming anthology Crip Authorship: Disability as Method (NYU Press, 2023).

Gender.Network Launch Party (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-01-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
A hybrid in-person/virtual launch party and conversation about the first installment of Gender.Network, an interactive digital exhibition of flyers, photos, artwork, cartoons, letters, poems, and other media created by trans, Two-spirit, non-binary, and gender liberation activists, organizers, and artists during the 1960s–1990s.
Gender.Network has grown out of ongoing conversations with elders, researchers, and activists, who suggested many of the materials, events, and people that are represented in the exhibition. Each person we spoke with helped connect us with others, who in turn suggested further materials to research and people to contact.
We hope that you will do the same! Please join us at this event to share your thoughts both about what is here and what is still missing, and help shape the future of this project.
In collecting and curating these materials, we honor the activists, organizers, and artists who continue to lead the way forward and remember those whose voices, images, and energy live on in these materials.
Curated by Sky Syzygy
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required for those attending in person. Seating is first come, first served.
If you would like to join this event via Zoom, you will need to register on Eventbrite.
Click here to register
Once you have registered on Eventbrite you will receive an email with the link you need to join the event on Zoom – or you can simply return to the Eventbrite page and click on “Access link” (beneath “When and Where/location/online”). But you will only be able to access this AFTER you have registered.
Closed-captioning will be available on Zoom.
Also live-streaming at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Deep gratitude to Christian Camacho-Light, Roxana Fabius, and the membership of A.I.R. Gallery, who have provided a home base, administrative, fiscal, and moral support for this project.
Endless thanks and admiration to our advisory committee: Che Gossett, Finn Enke, Jeanne Vaccaro, Malcolm Shanks, and Susan Stryker.
Major thanks to Ritu Ghiya for her incredible web design.
This project would not exist without the many questions, insights, anecdotes, stories, and conversations that have helped guide and shape our research. Thank you to Aiden Bettine, Ariel Goldberg, AJ Lewis, Charley Burton, Chelsea Goodwin, Chris Vargas, Christina Linden, Cicely Haggerty, Daria Dorosh, Darla Bjork, Dee Dee Chamblee, Dee Farmer, Dena Muller, Donna Kessinger, Efrain John Gonzales, Frances Woods-Baugh, Gayle Rubin, Harmony Hammond, Harrison Apple, Ignacio Rivera, Jamison Green, Jaune Quick-to-see-Smith, Jessica Xavier, Joanna Rivera, Jolene Rickard, Jonathan Thunderword, Joshua Burford, Jude Patton, Judy Grahn, Judy Greenspan, Kai Pyle, Kaspar Saxena, Kat Griefen, Kay Turner, Kelly Wooten, Lauren Berke, Leah DeVun, Leo Valdes, Lou McCarthy, Madsen Minax, Marisa Richmond, Martha Wilson, Minnie Bruce Pratt, Muriel Miguel, Nancy Azara, Pat Califia, Reneé Imperato, Sandi Salas, Shannon O’Neill, Sharon Day, Simon Fisher, Suzanne Iacenza, Venus de Mars, Xiomara Niculescu, and so so many more for your time and energy and brilliance.
Gender.Network is made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; by Humanities New York with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities; with public funds from Creative Engagement, a regrant program supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by LMCC; and by The Puffin Foundation, Ltd.

Jeanne, Eli, Felix, and River read and launch books (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-01-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Four acclaimed trans authors based in Canada and New York read from their latest works: H. Felix Chau Bradley reads from Personal Attention Roleplay; River Halen reads from Dream Rooms; Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch reads from The Good Arabs; Jeanne Thornton reads from Summer Fun and/or new work. Personal Attention Roleplay is praised by Casey Plett as “a perfect album of stories”; Dream Rooms is described by Gail Scott as “a marvelous confection of the author’s definition of ‘revolution’”; and The Good Arabs as “bold and deeply necessary” by Liz Howard. Summer Fun won the 2022 Lambda Award for transgender fiction.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel
Please note: masks are required for all attendees. Thank you!
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.

H Felix Chau Bradley is the author of Personal Attention Roleplay, which was a finalist for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award and the Kobo Rakuten Emerging Writer Prize, as well as the poetry chapbook Automatic Object Lessons. They are the fiction editor for This Magazine and the host of Strange Futures, a speculative fiction book club. They live in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal).

River Halen is an award-winning, transgender writer of Catalan and Danish descent living in Tio’tia:ke/Mooniyang/Montreal. Their poems and essays dealing with relation, ecology, transformation, and sexuality have been published widely in Canada, as well as in the U.S., Australia, and in translation in Japan. Their first book, Match, was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and their most recent book, Dream Rooms, a collection of essays and poems, is praised by the Bay Area Reporter as “unique and mesmerizing.”

Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch is a writer living in Tio’tia:ke. Their work has appeared in The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 anthology, The New Quarterly, Arc Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. They were longlisted for the CBC poetry prize in 2019. Their book, knot body (2020), published by Metatron Press, was shortlisted for the QWF Concordia First Book Award, and their second book, The Good Arabs, was published by Metonymy Press in September 2021, and received the honorary mention for the Arab American Book Award for Poetry. They are the non-fiction editor at The Puritan. They are also an acquisitions editor at Metonymy Press. They are currently translating Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay’s La fille d’elle-même from the French, forthcoming Fall 2023. With co-editor Samia Marshy, they are editing El Ghourabaa, an anthology of weird and experimental queer and trans writing by Arab and Arabophone writers.

Jeanne Thornton is the author of Summer Fun (Soho 2021), The Black Emerald (Instar 2014), and The Dream of Doctor Bantam (OR 2012). She is the copublisher of Instar Books and the editor, with Tara Madison Avery, of the Ignatz Award-winning We’re Still Here: An All-Trans Comics Anthology. Her fiction has appeared in n+1, WIRED, The Evergreen Review, and more.

TELL 84: "This One Time ..." (in person & live-streaming)
2023-01-21 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
“This One Time …” is the theme of the 84th TELL, on Saturday, January 21, 2022, 7 PM IN PERSON at the Bureau! Featuring: Darlinda Just Darlinda, Veronica Garza, Fareeha Khan, and Morgan Sullivan.

The event will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Donations by card can be made at the register or via Venmo @bgsqd with TELL 84 in the message. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
We ask that all attendees bring proof of vaccination and wear masks. Thank you!
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

Coined “Mastermind of Bizarre Extravaganza” by The Village Voice, Darlinda Just Darlinda has been working as an International Performance Artist and Burlesque Performer since 2004. Darlinda is the Creator of the Year in Rainbow. Darlinda has produced shows The New York Times calls “shockingly explicit.” Darlinda has also performed Off Broadway in Year in Rainbow LIVE (Joe’s Pub 2022), One Woman Rainbow (Joe’s Pub 2019) and with Taylor Mac in The Lily’s Revenge (Obie 2009) & 24 Decades of Popular Music (Macarthur Award 2016). USA Today says “It’s hard to top Darlinda” www.darlindajustdarlinda.com

Veronica Garza is a Brookyn-based stand up comedian who is originally from Dallas, Texas. She performs all over New York City and has been featured on MTV’s “Decoded”, NPR, Sirius XM, and Daily Mail.

Photo: Bridget Badore @bridgetbadore www.bridgetbadore.com
Fareeha Khan is a comedian and artist based in Brooklyn. She’s been on Comedy Central’s “Tight Five” presented by Ilana Glazer and has toured her stand up with Man Repeller. She recently self published a zine she wrote and llustrated, Is Making Art Under Capitalism Futile?, which you could cop on her Etsy shop if you felt so inclined: https://www.etsy.com/shop/CoolExistentialZines

Morgan Sullivan (he/they) is an NYC-based actor, screenwriter, filmmaker and dog dad of two longhaired dachshunds. As a transgender advocate, many of the projects he works on address topics affecting the LGBTQI+ community. Morgan can be seen in multiple television projects as well as starring in Matthew Puccini’s Sundance-selected film, Dirty. His own films Here With You and Going Away with collaborator Noah Schamus have screened internationally and at U.S. Festivals including Frameline, Outfest, and Newfest.

Morgan is the proud founder of the Trans Film Collective, a NYC-based collective focused on building community among trans filmmakers and trans film actors. He is also an active member of Room Tone, a group creating practical solutions for equitable work experiences in the entertainment industry for people of all backgrounds. He believes that accurate representation is key in order for the trans community to thrive, and is excited to create more work that centers trans narratives.
More info: www.morgan-sullivan.com

Two Novels About Complicated Friendships: Randi Triant and Ann Wadsworth (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-01-27 19:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join authors Randi Triant and Ann Wadsworth on Friday, January 27th at 7 PM ET, for a reading and conversation about their latest novels, What We Give, What We Take and Libretto, two stories of complicated relationships and grief and loss around HIV/AIDS.
Randi Triant’s latest LGBTQ+ novel, What We Give, What We Take, was selected for Parade Magazine’s “20 Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2022 We Love.” Foreword Reviews said, “At once tender, cruel, sensitive, and raw, What We Give, What We Take is a searing novel in which wounded people make hard decisions in order to survive.” In 1967, Fay Stonewell, a water tank escape artist in Florida, leaves for Vietnam to join the Amazing Humans—a jerry-rigged carnival there to entertain the troops—abandoning her disabled teenage son, Dickie, to the care of an abusive boyfriend. Decades later, Dickie is forty, living in Massachusetts with a man who’s dying of AIDS, and doing everything he can to escape his past.
In Ann Wadsworth’s Libretto, freelance journalist Allyn Crosbie, whose reporting concentrates on musical theater and opera production, arrives in central Italy in pursuit of a quick story about a new production that’s in danger of falling apart. In the ancient city of Perugia she becomes entangled with the lives of Elaine Bishop, a brilliant but troubled stage director, and Vincent Norrie, a composer who’s battling a life-threatening illness. Ally joins them — and a colorful cast of local characters — in their efforts to head off the opera’s librettist, who’s attempting to sabotage Elaine’s premiere. Although Allyn falls for Elaine, the novel “excels at depicting the complicated love between Ally and Vincent, two queer characters whose intimacy is vivid and authentic.” The book is “a leisurely, moving tale of intimacy and art, with a lovingly drawn Italian setting.” (Quotes from the starred Kirkus Review)

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

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

Randi Triant is the author of three LGBTQ novels, What We Give, What We Take, A New Life, and The Treehouse. Her short fiction and nonfiction have appeared in The Gay & Lesbian Review, Art & Understanding, Christopher Street, and two anthologies of writing about HIV/AIDS: Art & Understanding: Literature from the First Twenty Years of A & U and Fingernails Across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora. She has taught writing at Boston College and Emerson College.

Ann Wadsworth is the author of two novels, Libretto and Light, Coming Back. Light, Coming Back was short-listed for the Ferro-Grumley Prize, the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, and the Stephen Crane First Fiction Award. German and French translations are available with the title Mrs. Medina. Her short stories have appeared in several publications, including Christopher Street and Blithe House Quarterly. She has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and the recipient of a Wellspring Grant from the Boston Athenaeum. She lives in Boston.

Finding Your Voice Through Self-Publishing (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-01-28 14:30 - 16:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join a conversation about self-publishing and finding your voice, hosted by the Bureau of General Services – Queer Division. The speakers are Fashion Photographer and author of NAKNA and Face of Beauty, Mikael Shultz; and illustrator and author of A Visual Diary, and Jojoba, Anthony Amiewalan. They will discuss their process of self-publishing their books, share their respective works through reading and photo essays, and the influence their gay identities has in their art. Darius Somers, Pratt University professor, and architect, will guide the discussion, revealing the various themes that shape the presenters’ work.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel

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

Books by Mikael Shultz and Anthony Amiewalan will be available for purchase at the event.

Uranus Comics Reading (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come to our comic book anthology reading with creators Jennifer Camper, Ivan Monforte, Katie Fricas, Jack Waters, Mike Diana & Carlo Quispe. We are celebrating almost 20 years of making underground experimental comics together with the release of Uranus Comics 3: Uranus Attacks! Narratives of alien invasions, disaster and monster scenarios reveal our deeper concerns regarding the pandemic, ongoing colonialism and nuclear war.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel

Copies of Uranus Comics 3: Uranus Attacks! are available for purchase at the Bureau and can be purchased at the event. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Participants’ bios:

Jennifer Camper’s books include “Rude Girls and Dangerous Women” and “subGURLZ”, and she edited two “Juicy Mother” comics anthologies. Her work appears in numerous publications and she was the founding director of the Queers & Comics Conferences.

Mike Diana born in Upstate New York moved to Florida with his family when young. He was convicted in court for creating obscene material due to his handmade fanzine called Boiled Angel.

Katie Fricas is a queer cartoonist and library worker in NYC. Her first graphic novel, Checked Out, is forthcoming from Drawn & Quarterly in 2024.

Iván Monforte (he/they) is a New York City-based artist who uses conceptual strategies to explore themes of race, class, gender, stigma, and the pursuit of love. They are the recipient of a UCLA Art Council Award, a Lambent Fellowship in the Arts from the Tides Foundation, and an Art Matters grant for research in Samoa and have participated in residencies at Sidestreet Projects, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Lower East Side Printshop, Center for Book Arts, and Smack Mellon.

Carlo Quispe is a Peruvian born, Brooklyn based Queer cartoonist, creator of Uranus Comics, (originally published by Printed Matter in 2010).

Jack Waters is an artist, film maker, performer, and cofounder of Allied Productions, Inc.’s Le Petit Versailles community garden. Follow Jack’s Pestilence Project pestilenza.tumblr.com/

Book Launch: "Alice and Fay, A Fairy Adventure" by Mare Davis (in person event)
2023-02-04 14:00 - 15:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Author Mare Davis will be reading from her new children’s book Alice and Fay, A Fairy Adventure. Along with the reading, there will be a fun activity for families to share.
For kids ages 4 and up!
Copies of Alice and Fay, A Fairy Adventure will be available at the Bureau and will be available for purchase at the event.
You can also purchase the book from our online store:

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

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.
We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.
A former contributor to both Just Out Portland (Oregon’s biweekly LGBTQ newspaper) and Options (Providence’s LGBTQ monthly), writer Mare Davis has previously published three books of poems: Twenty-eight Days, My Father’s House, and Dangerous Kisses. She holds a Ph.D. in English Literature and currently teaches college composition at Johnson & Wales University. Alice and Fay, A Fairy Adventure is her first book for children – albeit of all ages – inspired in part by her many visits to the South of France where she owns a home with a group of friends.

Satanic Panic Book Launch (in person and live-streaming)
2023-02-05 15:00 - 17:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Please join us on Sunday, February 5th, at 3 pm, the final day of Catalina Schliebener Muñoz‘s exhibition at the Bureau, Satanic Panic, for the launch of their book on the Satanic Panic series.
Cata will be joined in conversation by artist and activist Avram Finkelstein.
This series references the moral panic that originated in the US in the 1980s, spreading through many parts of the world in the late 1990s, including their home country of Chile. This collective hysteria drew on cold war mythologies, misogynist ideas surrounding care work, racist tropes about outsiders, and conservative responses to the AIDS crisis. As a queer, brown, South American immigrant living in the US and working in the field of early childhood education, Schliebener Muñoz is particularly interested in the fact that many of those accused of crimes tied to this moral panic were queer and/or BIPOC childcare workers.
The Satanic Panic series comprises two primary types of work: large-format collages/murals, and installations of juxtaposed objects such as porcelain figurines and articulated plastic characters from different Disney/Pixar movies. The collages combine fragments of Disney books published in the 1990s with portions of pedagogical books created in the 1960s and 70s. Questions raised by the work center how the activities and games outlined in these books replicate the gender, sexuality, race, and class stereotypes of the adult world, and how those interact with the equally regulated fantasy world of Disney. In this series, Schliebener Muñoz explores the possibility of creating third images that in a subtle way bring all the narratives depicted in the original material into question.

To reserve a copy of the book ($25), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

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

The exhibition Satanic Panic was made possible through a Visual Grant from the Café Royal Cultural Foundation.

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz, is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. Their work draws on images, objects, and narratives associated with childhood and explores gender, sexuality, and class. Their work has been exhibited in Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago, Chile), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY), Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, NY), Children’s Museum of Manhattan (New York, NY), Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Centro Cultural de España (Santiago, Chile), Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Center for Books Arts (New York, NY), Catalyst Arts (Belfast, Northern Ireland), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn, NY), Hache Galería (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Galería Jardín Oculto (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Galería Metropolitana (Santiago, Chile), and Bureau of General Services—Queer Division (New York, NY), among others. A recipient of multiple FONDART Grants (Cultural and Arts Development Fund of the Government of Chile), Schliebener Muñoz also received grants from DIRAC (Board of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Relations of Chile) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York, NY). They also received a Queer Artist Fellowship from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2017), and an Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Fellowship from the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018).
In addition, Schliebener Muñoz has extensive teaching experience, from early childhood education to undergraduate education, on topics ranging from philosophy and art theory to art instruction in schools, studios, and museum settings. They are currently working as a teaching artist with the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and The Queens Museum, and they facilitate gender and sexuality trainings for the Early Childhood Professional Development Institute at the City University of New York (CUNY). They received a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales (ARCIS; Santiago, Chile).

Avram Finkelstein is a founding member of the Silence=Death and Gran Fury collectives. His work has shown at and is in the permanent collections of MoMA, the Whitney, the New Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum. He is featured in the artist oral history project at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art, and his book for UC Press, After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction, and an International Center Of Photography Infinity Award in Critical Writing And Research. He has written for frieze, BOMB, OnCurating, and Art21, been interviewed by the New York Times, Artforum, NPR, Slate, and Interview, and spoken at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton and NYU. He is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant.

Book Launch: Sexuality Beyond Consent by Avgi Saketopoulou (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-08 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join queer and feminist psychoanalyst Avgi Saketopoulou on Wednesday, Feb. 8th at 7:00pm (ET) for the launch of her new book, SEXUALITY BEYOND CONSENT. Avgi Saketopoulou will be in conversation with professor Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson. The event will consist of a reading, discussion, Q&A, and signing, followed by a short reception with food and drink.
About SEXUALITY BEYOND CONSENT:
Arguing that we have become culturally obsessed with healing trauma, Sexuality Beyond Consent calls attention to what traumatized subjects do with their pain. The erotics of racism offers a paradigmatic example of how what is proximal to violation may become an unexpected site of flourishing. Central to the transformational possibilities of trauma is a queer form of consent, limit consent, that is not about guarding the self but about risking experience. Saketopoulou thereby shows why sexualities beyond consent may be worth risking-and how risk can solicit the future.
Moving between clinical and cultural case studies, Saketopoulou takes up theatrical and cinematic works such as Slave Play and The Night Porter, to chart how trauma and sexuality join forces to surge through the aesthetic domain. Putting the psychoanalytic theory of Jean Laplanche in conversation with queer of color critique, performance studies, and philosophy, Sexuality Beyond Consent proposes that enduring the strange in ourselves, not to master trauma but to rub up against it, can open us up to encounters with opacity. The book concludes by theorizing currents of sadism that, when pursued ethically, can animate unique forms of interpersonal and social care.
Copies of Sexuality Beyond Consent will be available for purchase at the event.
You can also pre-order the book from our online store:

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

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

Dr. Avgi Saketopoulou (she/her) is an award-winning psychoanalyst living and working in NYC. She is a member of the faculty of NYU’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. Her interview on relational psychoanalysis is part of the permanent collection of the Freud Museum in Vienna and in 2021, she co-chaired the first US-based conference dedicated to the work of Jean Laplanche.
Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson (he/him) is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at Northwestern University, author of “After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life” (2018), and co-editor of the “Sexual Cultures Series,” NYU Press.

CELEBRATING OLD, QUEER & KICKING! (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Jonathan Ned Katz talks about his art & history, work & life.
For his 85th birthday, historian, and visual artist Jonathan Ned Katz celebrates old queers.
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel

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

Jonathan Ned Katz is a historian activist, and visual artist. He has published five books on the history of sexuality and intimacy, most recently The Daring Life and Dangerous Times of Eve Adams (2021). He founded the free US LGBTQ public history website OutHistory.org (2008). In 2013 a solo exhibit of Katz’ visual art was held at the Leslie-Lohman Museum, NYC and Katz published a memoir, Coming of Age in Greenwich Village. That show was curated by Jonathan David Katz (no relation).

Opening Reception for It Will End in Tears. Charlie Welch
2023-02-10 18:00 - 20:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
The Bureau is proud to present It will end in tears., a solo exhibition of collages by Charlie Welch.
It will end in tears. will be on view at the Bureau from February 10 through April 9, 2023.
Charlie will host a collage party at the Bureau on Saturday, March 11th. Details forthcoming.

Artist’s statement:

“The collages included in It Will End in Tears. began as meditations, typically created first thing in the morning. I have multiple sources that I use for references, as well as many folders of images that I’ve been saving for many years. One day I started playing with layering and cropping of images in order to tell different stories, unrelated to their original contexts, and usually those stories are about desire.”

Charlie Welch received a BFA, with a focus on photography, from Otis Art Institute of Parsons School of Design in Los Angeles in 1989. After graduating he moved to New York where he worked as a photo assistant for Josef Astor and David Seidner. In 1994 he began working in window displays at Barneys, Bergdorf Goodman and Ralph Lauren. In 1998 he began assisting as a prop stylist and set designer and went solo three years later. In 2006 he moved to Barcelona to continue his art studies at Metàfora International Workshop focusing on sculpture, installation and public intervention. At the end of 2008 he returned to New York and resumed working as a prop stylist, set designer and photographer, while also putting more focus on his personal work.
His experience from commercial work comes into play with his fine art. Photography is his main medium, but he also incorporates sculpture and collage. Constructed environments and playful sets are signatures of his work, which conveys narratives about identity formation, public and private selves, and how we navigate daily life.
Charlie is a co-founder of the NY Queer Zine Fair and co-organizer from 2015-2018. He also was part of the Queer Action Figures collective (1994-96) and one half of KNOWSGAY, along with Paul Anthony Moreno. Charlie’s projects include short films, collage, photography, limited edition stickers, t-shirts, posters, objects and zines. He draws his inspiration from dirty sailors, fancy desserts and sad pop songs.
He is also an award-winning pie baker.

My Government Means to Kill Me by Rasheed Newson with Jelani Alladin (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-12 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Come celebrate and enjoy a reading and Q & A with acclaimed author, Rasheed Newson, author of the debut novel MY GOVERNMENT MEANS TO KILL ME, which was named a notable book of 2022 by the New York Times Book Review. He will be in conversation with Broadway actor Jelani Alladin, who narrated the audiobook.
A fierce and riveting queer coming-of-age story following the personal and political awakening of a young, gay, Black man in 1980s New York City.
Earl “Trey” Singleton III arrives in New York City with only a few dollars in his pocket. Born into a wealthy Black Indianapolis family, at 17, he is ready to leave his overbearing parents and their expectations behind.
In the city, Trey meets up with a cast of characters that changes his life forever. He volunteers at a renegade home hospice for AIDS patients, and after being put to the test by gay rights activists, becomes a member of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP). Along the way Trey attempts to navigate past traumas and searches for ways to maintain familial relationships—all while seeking the meaning of life amid so much death.
Vibrant, humorous, and fraught with entanglements, Rasheed Newson’s My Government Means to Kill Me is an exhilarating, fast-paced coming-of-age story that lends itself to a larger discussion about what it means for a young gay Black man in the mid-1980s to come to terms with his role in the midst of a political and social reckoning.
Copies of My Government Means to Kill Me are available at the Bureau and will be available for purchase at the event.
You can also purchase the book from our online store:

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

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

Rasheed Newson is a writer and producer of Bel-Air, The Chi, and Narcos. He currently resides in Pasadena, California with his husband and two children. My Government Means to Kill Me is his debut novel.
Jelani Alladin originated the role of Kristoff in the Frozen musical and narrated the audiobook of My Government Means to Kill Me.

Book Launch: Scenes of Projection by Jill H. Casid (in person & streaming)
2023-02-17 17:00 - 19:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join queer-feminist theorist, artist and historian Jill H. Casid at the Bureau on Friday, February 17th at 5 PM for the launch of the Spanish translation of her book, Scenes of Projection/Escenas de proyección. A reading with special guests and a book signing will be followed by a reception.
Guest readers include Camilo Godoy, Vick Quezada, and Catalina Schliebener Muñoz.
About Scenes of Projection/Escenas de proyección:
Theorizing vision and power at the intersections of the histories of psychoanalysis, media, scientific method, and colonization, Scenes of Projection poaches the prized instruments at the heart of the so-called scientific revolution: the projecting telescope, camera obscura, magic lantern, solar microscope, and prism. From the beginnings of what is retrospectively enshrined as the origins of the Enlightenment and in the wake of colonization, the scene of projection has functioned as a contraption for creating a fantasy subject of discarnate vision for the exercise of “reason.”
Jill H. Casid demonstrates across a range of sites that the scene of projection is neither a static diagram of power nor a fixed architecture but rather a pedagogical setup that operates as an influencing machine of persistent training. Thinking with queer and feminist art projects that take up old devices for casting an image to reorient this apparatus of power that produces its subject, Scenes of Projection offers a set of theses on the possibilities for felt embodiment out of the damaged and difficult pasts that haunt our present.

Escenas de proyección toma los instrumentos proyectivos de la revolución científica –desde el telescopio de proyección y la cámara oscura, hasta la luz solar y el microscopio– para demostrar que la escena es un complejo dispositivo de poder que produce su propio sujeto. En la medida que saca al yo de su vulnerabilidad e instala la fantasía de una visión de un sujeto racional e inmanente respecto de todas las figuras minoritarias, raciales, queer, feminizadas, perpetúa una estructura de dominación.
A lo largo de este libro, Jill H. Casid nos lleva desde los orígenes míticos de la representación hasta instancias ejemplares del arte contemporáneo, con el objetivo de explorar el potencial de transformación de las tecnologías de proyección e invertir su dirección en virtud de posiciones no normativas. Es decir, traza conexiones reprimidas entre elementos de la escena y elementos que cruzan de una escena a otra, para así abrirla y reinventar el sujeto, inaugurar devenires, liberar el potencial del por qué-no, del no no-aquí y del no no-todavía.

Copies of Scenes of Projection/Escenas de proyección (both English and Spanish versions) will be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

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

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel
Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.

About Casid:
A queer-feminist theorist, historian and artist, Casid holds the position of Professor of Visual Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The author of Sowing Empire: Landscape and Colonization (Minnesota, 2005) and Scenes of Projection: Recasting the Enlightenment Subject (Minnesota, 2015) which has just been released by Metales Pesados in Spanish translation, Casid is currently bringing to completion Photogenic: Essays on Refusing Photography and Necrolandscaping, the first part of a two-book project on Form at the Edges of Life. Casid’s artwork has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York and Documenta 15.
@jillhcasid
jillhcasid.net

Camilo Godoy is an artist and educator born in Bogotá and based in New York City. He has participated in residencies at Movement Research, International Studio & Curatorial Program (ISCP), coleção moraes-barbosa, Recess, New Dance Alliance, among others. Godoy’s work has been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Leslie-Lohman Museum, CUE, OCDChinatown, PROXYCO Gallery, New York; Moody Center, Houston; UNSW Galleries, Sydney; Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Quito; among others. He has performed at Danspace Project, Movement Research at the Judson Church, Center for Performance Research, New York; Toronto Biennial; and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt. Godoy teaches at Bard College, Parsons School of Design, Recess, Whitney Museum, and School of Visual Arts.

Vick Quezada grew up in El Paso, Texas right where the United States and Juarez, Mexico border converge. Quezada currently lives in Western Massachusetts where they are a Visiting Lecturer in Sculpture at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA. Quezada is currently a Yale Mellon Arts & Practitioner Fellow at the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. Additionally, in 2023 their works will be shown at Des Moines Art Center, Grand Rapids Art Museum, Artspace New Haven, Atlantic Wharf Gallery Boston, American Museum of Ceramic Art Pomona, and Presa House Gallery in San Antonio, TX. In 2021, they were a select recipient of the Andrew W.Mellon Fellowship co-sponsored by the Ford Foundation in Latinx art. In 2020 Quezada was hand selected from a “large-scale survey” of 40 emerging artists from the US and Puerto Rico to be featured in El Museo del Barrio’s groundbreaking, La Trienal. From 2019-20 Quezada was the artist-in-residence at the Latinx Project at NYU where they gave public talks, and workshops. In 2018, Quezada was selected as the University Massachusetts Contemporary Arts -University Massachusetts at Amherst Curatorial Fellow, along with Fred Wilson, who curated the show, 5 Takes On African Art. Their work has been featured in Hyperallergic, BOMB Magazine, The Boston Globe, The New York Times, Art News, Trans Studies Quarterly, and Remezcla. Quezada holds a BA from the University of Texas at El Paso and an MFA from UMASS Amherst.

Catalina Schliebener Muñoz is a Sudamerican, Chilean-born visual artist who works primarily with collage, installation, and murals. Their work draws on images, objects, and narratives associated with childhood and explores gender, sexuality, and class. Their work has been exhibited in Museo de Arte Contemporáneo (Santiago, Chile), Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (New York, NY), Bronx Museum of the Arts (New York, NY), Children’s Museum of Manhattan (New York, NY), Boston Center for the Arts (Boston, MA), Centro Cultural de España (Santiago, Chile), Centro Cultural Recoleta (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Center for Books Arts (New York, NY), Catalyst Arts (Belfast, Northern Ireland), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Brooklyn, NY), Hache Galería (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Galería Jardín Oculto (Buenos Aires, Argentina), Galería Metropolitana (Santiago, Chile), and Bureau of General Services—Queer Division (New York, NY), among others. A recipient of multiple FONDART Grants (Cultural and Arts Development Fund of the Government of Chile), Schliebener Muñoz also received grants from DIRAC (Board of Cultural Affairs, Ministry of Foreign Relations of Chile) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (New York, NY). They also received a Queer Artist Fellowship from the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art (2017), and an Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Fellowship from the Bronx Museum of the Arts (2018). In addition, Schliebener Muñoz has extensive teaching experience, from early childhood education to undergraduate education, on topics ranging from philosophy and art theory to art instruction in schools, studios, and museum settings. They are currently working as a teaching artist with the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art and The Queens Museum, and they facilitate gender and sexuality trainings for the Early Childhood Professional Development Institute at the City University of New York (CUNY). They received a Bachelor of Philosophy and a Bachelor of Visual Arts from the Universidad de Arte y Ciencias Sociales (ARCIS; Santiago, Chile).

SECOND TUESDAY PRESENTS: A PILL FOR PROMISCUITY – GAY SEX IN AN AGE OF PHARMACEUTICALS
2023-02-18 18:30 - 21:00 | The LGBT Community Center Room 301, 208 West 13th Street Room 301, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join editor, Andrew Spieldenner, in conversation with contributors Justice Jamal Jones and Ted Kerr, for the launch of the recently released book A Pill for Promiscuity – Gay Sex in an Age of Pharmaceuticals (Rutgers University Press 2023), which brings together artists, academics, and artists from various disciplines to reflect on how gay sex has altered in a post-PrEP era.
Register to Attend: https://gaycenter.org/a-pill-for-promiscuity/
Please note that February 2023’s Second Tuesday will be taking place on a Saturday. To request an accommodation for this event, please contact Richard Morales at rmorales@gaycenter.org or 646.502.6370 by February 10, 2023.
ABOUT A PILL FOR PROMISCUITY – GAY SEX IN AN AGE OF PHARMACEUTICALS
A Pill for Promiscuity brings together academics, artists, and activists—from different generations, countries, ethnic backgrounds, and HIV statuses—to reflect on how gay sex has changed in a post-PrEP era. Some offer personal perspectives on the value of promiscuity and the sexual communities it fosters, while others critique unequal access to PrEP, and the increased role Big Pharma now plays in gay life. With a diverse group of contributors that includes novelist Andrew Holleran, trans scholar Lore/tta LeMaster, cartoonist Steve MacIsaac, and pornographic film director Mister Pam, this book asks provocative questions about how we might reimagine queer sex and sexuality in the 21st century.
The Bureau will be on hand at the event to sell copies of A Pill for Promiscuity (Rutgers University Press, 2023, paperback, $16.95). We encourage you to reserve a copy of the book if you plan on purchasing it. Please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve a copy of A Pill for Promiscuity” in the subject line.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

ABOUT THE EDITORS
Andrew Spieldenner is the Executive Director of MPact: Global Action for Gay Rights and associate professor of communication at California State University San Marcos. Openly living with HIV, he writes about LGBTQ community, HIV, and disability, while serving as co-editor for the collections Intercultural Health Communication and Post-AIDS.

Jeffrey Escoffier (1942-2022) was a research associate and faculty member at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. He was one of the founders and the publisher of the pioneering LGBTQ journal “OUT/LOOK,” and is author of the books, “Bigger Than Life, American Homo,” and “Sex, Society, and the Making of Pornography” (Rutgers University Press).

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Justice Jamal Jones (she/he/they) is a filmmaker, actor, and writer based in New York City. As a Black Queer Alchemist, they integrate Black Feminist Queer theory alongside Black diasporic spirituality, such as Vodou (Voodoo), into their work. Their debut film “How To Raise a Black Boy” was a reimagining of Jones’ childhood linking their boyhood to their identity as a nonbinary artist. The film was internationally recognized at over 30 film festivals, earning 10 awards. Justice is a 2021 Sundance Ignite Fellow, and in 2022 was a commissioned director for MTV and Calvin Klein. Jones was also a guest on Good Morning America’s Hulu special “A Conversation Between Black Men,” where Jones was an advocate for Black trans and nonbinary individuals. In 2023 Jones’ sophomore film “Crossroads Blues” was set for pre-production, alongside the release of the anthology, “A Pill for Promiscuity.” Jones enjoys dinner parties with friends, the occasional glass of green Chartreuse, and playing with their kitty, Esu.

Canadian-born Theodore (Ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn-based writer and organizer whose work focuses on HIV/AIDS, community, and culture. In 2022, his book “We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production,” with co-author, Alexandra Juhasz, was published by Duke University Press. His writing has also appeared in Women’s Studies Quarterly, The New Inquiry, BOMB, CBC (Canada), Lambda Literary, POZ Magazine, The Advocate, Cineaste, The St. Louis American, IndieWire, HyperAllergic, and other publications.

RED CLAY SUZIE: Coming of Age Queer in the Deep South (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-19 15:00 - 16:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
In conversation with Jeffrey Dale Lofton, including readings by the author from his award-winning debut novel RED CLAY SUZIE, a fictionalized memoir of growing up gay and physically misshapen in a deeply conservative family and community in the Deep South.
Jeffrey will be joined in conversation by author Ryan La Sala
Copies of Red Clay Suzie (Post Hill Press, 2023, hardcover, $28) are available for purchase at the Bureau and can be purchased at the event or on our online store:

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

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

Jeffrey Lofton hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House. He calls the nation’s capital home now and has for over three decades. During those early years he spent many a night trodding the boards of the DC’s theaters and performing arts centers, including the Kennedy Center, Signature Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, and Studio Theatre. He even scored a few television screen appearances, including a residuals-rich Super Bowl halftime commercial, which his accountant quipped “is the finest work of your career.”
Ultimately he stepped away from acting for other pursuits, including helping war veterans tell their stories to add richness and nuance to historical accounts. At the same time, he focused on pursuing post-graduate work, ultimately being awarded Master’s degrees in both Public Administration and Library and Information Science. Today, he is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise.

Ryan La Sala writes about surreal things happening to queer people. He is the author behind the luminous and terrifying horror The Honeys. His previous titles include the riotously imaginative Reverie, and the brilliantly constructed Be Dazzled, both of which made the Kids’ Indie Next List. He has been featured in Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Tor.com. Ryan is the host of the infamous Bad Author Book Club Podcast, and a frequent speaker at events/conferences. When not writing, Ryan does arts & crafts, and rollerblades around Central Park. His next book, BEHOLDER, will be published in October 2023 with Scholastic Press.

Book Launch: Sexually Explicit Art, Feminist Theory, and Gender in the 1970s (in person event & live-streaming)
2023-02-24 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Christian Liclair in conversation with the artist and writer Jillian McManemin about his book Sexually Explicit Art, Feminist Theory, and Gender in the 1970s and, in particular, the subversive pleasures of BDSM. Drawing on the theorization of sadomasochism from Michel Foucault over P. Califia to DIY manuals from the 1970s, Liclair and McManemin discuss artistic representations of BDSM as a pleasurable experiment to disrupt sexual subjectification and challenge the body’s heteronormative organization, which have been perpetuated by psychoanalytical concepts of sexual desire.
Book cover art: Joan Semmel, Red, White and Blue (1973). Oil on canvas, 46″ × 54″.
Copies of Sexually Explicit Art, Feminist Theory, and Gender in the 1970s will be available for purchase at the event.
Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!
This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.
Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.
Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd

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

Christian Liclair is an art historian and critic. He is currently Editor-in-Chief at the Berlin-based art quarterly TEXTE ZUR KUNST. He received his Ph.D. from Freie Universität Berlin in 2021. After being a Visiting Fellow at the Graduate School for Art and Sciences at Harvard University, he co-established the DFG-funded research project “Aesthetic of Desire: Counter-hegemonic Visualizations of Bodies, Sexuality, and Gender” at Freie Universität Berlin.

Jillian McManemin is a writer, artist, and Founder of the Toppled Monuments Archive. She has written for Hyperallergic, ART PAPERS, The Broadcast, The Brooklyn Rail, BOMB Magazine, Art Agenda, Metrograph Editions, among other publications including forthcoming pieces with TEXTE ZUR KUNST and SITUATIONS Gallery.

TELL 85: POTPOURRI (in person & live-streaming)
2023-02-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
Potpourri is the theme of the 85th TELL, guest-hosted by Nonye Brown-West. Storytellers: Neje Bailey, Calvin S. Cato, and Lois Thompson.
The event will also be live-streamed at youtube.com/@bgsqd
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau and the storytellers.
We will pass a bag at the start of the event. Donations by card can be made at the register or via Venmo @bgsqd with TELL 85 in the message. Thank you for supporting the Bureau and TELL!
All are welcome to join, with or without a donation.
We ask that all attendees bring proof of vaccination and wear masks. Thank you!
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.

My name is Neje Bailey. I am the last Bailey standing whose bloodline predates freedom and I’m Queer … boy, do I have a story for you!

Named one of Time Out New York’s Queer Comics of Color to Watch Out For, Calvin S. Cato has dazzled audiences around the world. His television appearances include Oxygen, Netflix, and an unaired pilot for Vice Media called Emergency Black Meeting. His comedy has been featured in numerous festivals including San Francisco Sketchfest, Brooklyn Pride, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Gotham Storytelling Festival, and FlameCon. In early 2021, Calvin was published in Kweendom, an anthology of essays by queer comedians and entertainers.

For the past ten years, Lois Thompson has produced and hosted Blacklight Comedy Show at The Brooklyn Moon. Always an all-female line-up, Blacklight has become a must-do stage for NYC and visiting comedians alike. Since 2016, she has also produced the comedy portion of the Brooklyn Pride Celebration.
When Lois isn’t making folks laugh with her irreverent comedy, she is helping people fulfill the dream of home ownership through her 20+ year career as a real estate broker.

OLNY Poly Movie Night: Vita and Virginia (in person event)
2023-03-01 18:30 - 21:30 | Bureau of General Services–Queer Division, 208 West 13th Street, Room 210, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be IN PERSON at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division.

Please join us for Vita and Virginia (2018), directed by Chanya Button and starring Gemma Arterton, Elizabeth Debicki, and Isabella Rossellini.

We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau (in room 210 of The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center at 208 West 13th Street) for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The event is free, although a $5-$10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.

You can send donations through Venmo to @Open-LoveNY.

Synopsis: The story is based on the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West as recorded in their letters to each other. Vita’s popular writing helped keep Virginia and her husband Leonard’s publishing business afloat while Virginia was inspired by Vita to write Orlando. Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Second Tuesday Presents: Who Does That Bitch Think She Is?
2023-03-14 18:30 - 21:00 | The LGBT Community Center Room 301, 208 West 13th Street Room 301, New York, NY, 10011, United States
Join author Craig Seligman, in conversation with Liz Brown, for the launch of his recently released book Who Does That Bitch Think She Is? (Public Affairs Books, 2023), which explores the exciting new history of drag told through the life of the remarkable, flawed, and singular Doris Fish.

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

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

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

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

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

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