BGSQD

Union Square Slam Presents: Lo Anderson!
2017-02-28 19:30 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | NY
*Mark your calendars: the last Tuesday of every month will feature a local musical performer.*
The stunning Lo Anderson will be blessing USS with her down-to-earthy vibes and damn near angelic voice.
About our Show:
7:30pm: Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Open Mic (Music + Poetry Are Welcomed Here!)
8:45pm: Lo Anderson!
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Open Mic // $5

Feminists Read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, by Audre Lorde
2017-03-05 17:00 - 19:00 | NY
Join us to discuss Audre Lorde‘s autobiography/biomythography, ZAMI : A NEW SPELLING OF MY NAME (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1982). In the words of the feminist publication off our backs’ review (quoted on the cover of the book), “ZAMI is a fast-moving chronicle. From the author’s vivid childhood memories in Harlem to her coming of age in the late 50’s, the nature of Audre Lorde’s work is cyclical. It especially relates the linkage of women who have shaped her. … Lorde brings into play her craft of lush description and characterization. It keeps unfolding page after page.”

Please support the Bureau and purchase your copy of ZAMI: A NEW SPELLING OF MY NAME at the Bureau! Thanks!

USS presents Kirwyn Sutherland
2017-03-07 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Slam is thrilled to host a lively open mic, with none other than Philly’s own fantastic Kirwyn Sutherland!!
6:30pm: Free Writing Workshop
7:30pm: Sign-Ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Open Mic
9:00pm: Feature — Kirwyn Sutherland
// All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible //
Suggested Donation $3-$10
(all proceeds go to supporting the Bureau and sending USS reps to national events)
About our Feature:
Kirwyn Sutherland was inspired to write poetry while watching the HBO series Def Poetry Jam. Issues of racial discrimination, apartheid, and survival as a black man discussed in the poetry of Amiri Baraka, Craig muMs Grant, and Black Ice hit home for Kirwyn. Writing poetry became a vehicle for introspection, community building, connecting with people from diverse cultures, and healing. These early writings culminated in a chapbook, self- published March 2013, entitled X: A Mixtape. The majority of the proceeds from this book went to a $500 book scholarship (Delores Sutherland Scholarship) to a freshman student. Kirwyn’s second chapbook, published by Two Pens & Lint June 2014, entitled X: A Mixtape Re-mastered contained a combination of new and old poems on the topics of slavery, racial discrimination, mental health, and biological sciences. Kirwyn has featured at several open mic and slam venues in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, DC, Delaware, and Detroit. Additionally, he was one of 5 poets to represent Philadelphia at the 2015 National Poetry Slam. The team made the Semi-finals of the competition (top 20 out of 72 teams). Kirwyn has participated in workshop/residencies at Cave Canem, Poet’s House, Pearlstein Art Gallery at Drexel University, Philadelphia Sculpture Gym, and Lincoln University. Kirwyn’s poetry has been published in Tobeco Literary Arts Journal, Drunkinamidnightchoir, APIARY magazine, and Public Pool. Kirwyn currently serves as editor-at-large of Public Pool and list editor at WusGood magazine.

Elska Magazine issue (10) Mumbai (India) - Launch Party
2017-03-09 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Come celebrate the launch of the tenth edition of Elska Magazine, this time dedicated to Mumbai, India. Noticing how underrepresented South Asian men are in gay media, we were inspired to showcase the local boys and local stories from India’s biggest city. The founder of Elska Magazine, Liam Campbell, will be there to say a few words about Elska and talk about the experience of meeting and shooting men In India and around the world. Come hang out with us, ask questions, have a chat, maybe meet some boys… and pick up a copy of the latest issue. Free “Elska Mumbai” posters will be available to everyone who buys a copy from the Bureau on the night.
Featuring:
Liam Campbell – founder, editor, and chief photographer of Elska Magazine
Mark Blakey – assistant for the making of issue (07) Cardiff (Wales) and issue (08) Yokohama (Japan)

ACLU People Power Action Event - March 11
2017-03-11 16:30 - 18:30 | NY
Join us on March 11 for a livestream viewing of the ACLU’s launch of People Power. We’ll watch the Resistance Training live and talk about next steps for organizing to resist Trump’s attacks on our basic freedoms.
Please RSVP here:
https://go.peoplepower.org/event/attend/1227

Note about capacity: we’ve capped attendance at 75 but probably can fit around 50 folks. We know that not everyone will actually be able to make it. If you have arrived to the RSVP page (link above) after we’ve reached capacity, you can still try to make the event, as it’s always likely that some folks will not show up. We will have a list of RSVP’s at the door! Please try to arrive at 4:30 given how many attendees we have. We will try to admit those who might not have been able to RSVP around 4:45, until our space is full. Thanks for your interest!

The schedule for the day, FYI: 4:30-5, introductions and strategic intentions 5-6, national training lifestream 6-6:30, group discussion We’ve got to leave at 6:30 to clear the space for an evening event! So looking forward to meeting you.

From the American Civil Liberties Union website:
“In the weeks following President Donald Trump’s inauguration, we have seen the harms that his policies cause people around the world and the danger his actions represent for our civil liberties. Trump’s use of executive power has prompted the protest and defiance of millions, echoing the voices of many who know that our basic American values are being tested by our president.
The ACLU will continue to defend our basic freedoms and hold this administration accountable for every unlawful or unconstitutional measure they propose. We will use the courts as one avenue to aggressively advance our agenda, but we cannot do it alone.
That is why the ACLU is launching a major new grassroots mobilization platform, PeoplePower.org, in response to the growing number of people who believe that Trump’s actions cannot go unchallenged.
We’ve hired a group of digital organizers who have worked with activist groups, the White House, and Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign to help build and launch PeoplePower.org. With this platform, we hope to help organize the mass resistance to President Trump’s bankrupt policies. With a nationwide presence through our 50-plus state affiliates, the ACLU is well-positioned to take on the incredible responsibility of grassroots organizing coast to coast. This type of program is new for us at ACLU, but it is necessary if we are going to overcome the Trump administration’s attempts to curtail civil rights and eventually advance a 21st century civil liberties agenda.
On March 11, the ACLU will hold a “Resistance Training” town hall in Miami, Florida. An email ask went out today to the organization’s over 2.5 million members to organize thousands of grassroots events in communities across the country to watch the ACLU town hall. Full details on the training are forthcoming.
PeoplePower.org will use digital tools to communicate with and help train volunteers to resist President Trump’s unlawful policies across the country. The ACLU will promote ideas for action to defend sanctuary cities, resist deportation raids, oppose the Muslim Ban, maintain Planned Parenthood funding, and support other priorities. But the program will also seek to amplify organic, bottom-up grassroots actions. PeoplePower.org will be a one-stop hub for everyone looking to influence the national debate.
We ask you to join us as we build communities ready to resist Trump’s agenda and to protect our constitutional rights. The fight may not be easy, but it will be worth it.”
Suggested donation of $5 – $10 to support the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

TELL 32: Dating
2017-03-11 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
DATING is the theme of the thirty-second installment of TELL. Featuring Micah Brown, Katie Liederman, and Shane O’Neill.

$10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

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

Micah Brown is a non binary NYC native and self-proclaimed wise guy who works as a barista in NoLita, and is never short of stories or perspective. With an emphasis on Spotify playlist-based self care, he’s been navigating adulthood and neurodivergence without any major injuries (so far).

Katie Liedermanis a writer, playwright and director whose next play, about a sordid love affair between a magician and a saxophone player opens August 2017. She also hosts a monthly travel storytelling event at Metropolitan called TRIPS and you should come talk to her after the show if you have a story to tell.

Shane O’Neill is a writer, performer, video maker, and homosexual living in Brooklyn, NY. His writing and videos have been featured on The New York Times website, Refinery29, and ArtNews New York. He and his work have appeared onstage at Joe’s Pub, the LaMama Theater, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater, and at too many gay bars and queer DIY party spaces to list here. He has toured extensively in the U.S. and Europe via his musical persona Shane Shane. “Jane Johnson for the Stay At Home Shopper,” an original musical he wrote with Jill Pangallo, recently debuted at the OUTsider festival in Austin, TX. You can see him in New York City at his monthly comedy/variety shows “Tonight’s Special with Shane Shane” and “S.U.C.K. (Stand Up Comedy Klub).” He has a boyfriend named Dusty, a cat named Wanda, and a lovely family–both chosen and by blood–in the Great Midwest, all of whom he loves a great deal.

Join the Bureau at the New York Live Arts Live Ideas Festival: Mx'd Messages
2017-03-14 - 2017-03-19 | NY
The Bureau will have a pop-up shop at the Live Ideas Festival, Mx’d Messages, in the lobby of New York Live Arts, March 14—19.
MX’D MESSAGES
Curated by Mx Justin Vivian Bond
Trans-genre artist Mx Justin Vivian Bond curates a series examining the idea of a world without binaries–across gender, politics, theology, sensory perception and race.
Richard Move and MoveOpolis!, kick off the festival with the world premiere of XXYY and a special performance celebrating the 20th anniversary of Martha@…
Mx’d Messages continues March 14-19 with a keynote conversation, lunch time reading series, an afternoon film program curated by Dirty Looks, Happy Hour panel discussions on trans-theology, afrofuturism, activism and social justice, caregiving and choral workshops, Prime Time genre bending performance events including the TEAM’s RoosevElvis (Re_MX’D), Mx Bond’s House of Whimsy and more, and ends with a queer punk rock dance party.
Live Ideas is an annual humanities festival of arts and ideas, exploring the ideas, controversies and thinking informing a different bodily-oriented theme each time out. Past festivals have included The Worlds of Oliver Sacks, James Baldwin, This Time!, SKY-Force and Wisdom in America Today, curated by Laurie Anderson, andMENA/Future-Cultural Transformations in the Middle East North Africa Region.

VIEW THE FESTIVAL BROCHURE FOR FULL LISTING OF EVENTS

219 West 19th Street, between 7th and 8th Avenues
NY, NY 10011

USS presents Raena Shirali and David Winter
2017-03-14 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Slam is thrilled to host a lively open mic, and dynamic duo Raena Shirali and David Winter!!
6:30pm: Free Writing Workshop
7:30pm: Sign-Ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Open Mic
9:00pm: Feature — Raena Shirali and David Winter
// All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible //
Suggested Donation $3-$10
(all proceeds go to supporting the Bureau and sending USS reps to national events)
About our Feature:
Raena Shirali’s collection, GILT, fiercely unveils its first generation, East Indian speakers’ reconciliation of her identity as it engages with and critiques both Indian and American culture’s treatment and expectations of women. David Winter’s chapbook Safe House, and his current manuscript Archived Light, explore how queer and raced bodies live and love in a violent world. By performing their poems in conversation with each other, these two poets pose questions such as: How do we discern safe space from violence in drag? How can fragmentation and lyric explore our unknowable selves, lovers, heritages? How do we reconcile the personal body with the political, the self with its surrounding cultures? How can violence be music, and music be violent? How does communication fail us; how then, can silence (of lovers, families, cultures, nations) be a source of trauma? And can such silences be reclaimed as spaces for meditation or healing?
Indian American poet Raena Shirali’s first book, GILT, is forthcoming in 2017 with YesYes Books, and her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Blackbird, Crazyhorse, Four Way Review, Indiana Review, Muzzle Magazine, Ninth Letter, and many more. She received her MFA from The Ohio State University. Her honors include a 2016 Pushcart Prize, the 2016 Cosmonauts Avenue Prize, recognition as a finalist for the 2016 Tupelo Quarterly Poetry Prize, the 2014 Gulf Coast Poetry Prize, recognition as a finalist for the 2014 Ruth Lilly Fellowship, and a “Discovery” / Boston Review Poetry Prize in 2013. She will be the Spring 2017 Philip Roth Resident at the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University, and currently serves as a poetry reader for Muzzle Magazine.

David Winter wrote the chapbook Safe House (Thrush Press, 2013), and is currently working on a full-length manuscript entitled Archived Light, which has been a semi-finalist for the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award and a finalist for the May Swenson Poetry Award. From 2010-2012 David led creative writing workshops with NYC non-profits in locations such as the LGBT Community Center, the 14th Street Y, Riker’s Island, and PS 279. More recently, he has received an MFA from The Ohio State University, a 2016 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and a 2016-18 Stadler Fellowship from Bucknell University. David’s poems appear in publications such as The Baffler, Day One, Four Way Review, Muzzle, Ninth Letter, The Offing, and For Some Time Now: Performance Poets of New York City.

Union Square Slam presents Natasha Hooper and our Last Open Slam
2017-03-21 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Union Square Slam is delighted to host, all the way from San Diego, nationally-ranked poet and goddess of grace, NATASHA HOOPER!!
AND! It’s your very last chance to qualify for Union Square Slam’s Finals Stage on April 18th. Get down here and sign up early!
6:30pm: Free Writing Workshop w/ IS Jones
7:30pm Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Slam and Feature
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Suggested Donation $5-$10
About our Feature:
In a short period of time, Natasha Hooper has made her mark on the spoken word community, performing on various stages across the country, spanning from California to New York. She ‘s performed with the likes of Jasmine Mans at the infamous Busboys and Poets in Washington, D.C. and competed in the largest individual poetry competition, the Individual World Poetry Slam, ranking among the top 25. A force to be reckoned with, Natasha holds the record in San Diego for the most consecutive slam wins in a single season. Recently, she also became a driving force in helping her slam team, San Diego Poetry SLAM, become the #2 team in the nation during her first trip to the National Poetry Slam in Decatur, GA.

Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism
2017-03-24 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
A reading and discussion on resistance movements past and present, and the special role of LGBTQ movements in American radicalism, by L.A. Kauffman, author of the new book, DIRECT ACTION.

As Americans take to the streets in record numbers to resist the presidency of Donald Trump, L.A. Kauffman’s timely, trenchant history of protest offers unique insights into how past movements have won victories in times of crisis and backlash and how they can be most effective today.
This deeply researched account, twenty-five years in the making, traces the evolution of disruptive protest since the Sixties to tell a larger story about the reshaping of the American left. Kauffman, a longtime grassroots organizer, examines how movements from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have used disruptive tactics to catalyze change despite long odds. The book highlights the centrality of feminist and queer organizers to the creation of a vibrant, decentralized tradition of resistance and activism.
Kauffman’s lively and elegant history is propelled by hundreds of candid interviews conducted over a span of decades. Direct Action showcases the voices of key players in an array of movements – environmentalist, anti-nuclear, anti-apartheid, feminist, LGBTQ, anti-globalization, racial-justice, anti-war, and more – across an era when American politics shifted to the right, and a constellation of decentralized issue- and identity-based movements supplanted the older ideal of a single, unified left.
Suggested donation of $10 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.
L.A. Kauffman has spent more than 30 years immersed in radical movements, as an organizer, strategist, journalist, and observer.

READ ALOUD TO CAUSE TROUBLE: Impropria Persona Release Party
2017-03-25 19:30 - 21:00 | NY
READ ALOUD TO CAUSE TROUBLE brings together a gaggle of wobbly-kneed armchair revolutionaries who don’t vote to celebrate the release of IMPROPRIA PERSONA, a collaborative chapbook by Kay Gabriel and David W. Pritchard (Damask Press, 2017) with an evening of poems and provocations.

READERS:

KAY GABRIEL is the author of Elegy Department Spring (BOAAT Press, forthcoming) and, with David W. Pritchard, Impropria Persona. She is aufgehoben or bust, baby.

DAVID W. PRITCHARD is a poet and a scholar, though he is not a poet-scholar. He is the author, with Kay Gabriel, of Impropria Persona. He is currently working on a super-poem entitled REVOLUTION OR DECADENCE for which he has been paid 50 cents by an anonymous donor. In this way he is the last living residue of literary patronage.

A.B. ROBINSON has been called a Surrealist in both condemnation and praise. She is not a Surrealist.

CAM SCOTT is a poet, critic, and practicing non-musician from Winnipeg, Canada, Treaty One territory. He performs under the name Cold-catcher and as always, the motivating question is For whom?

ZACHARY LAMALFA was recently described as a poet whom one could easily imagine enjoying a career as a civil engineer or architect, which made everyone else in the room laugh very hard. He is one thing about the city.

Nonprofits, Foundations, and Resisting the Savior Mentality
2017-03-26 18:00 - 20:00 | NY
What is the role of wealth and privilege in social movements, and how can we change it? A conversation on foundations, nonprofits, capitalism and social change with scholar and organizer Sujani Reddy and journalist and organizer Jordan Flaherty, featuring poetry by Sabina Ibarrola.

Sujani Reddy is a writer and educator whose work focuses on U.S. imperialism, mass criminalization and migrant justice. She is Associate Professor of American Studies at SUNY Old Westbury, the author of Nursing and Empire: Gendered Labor and Migration from India to the United States (UNC Press), and a co-editor of The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press). Both books are also published by Orient BlackSwan in South Asia. You can hear her discuss the history of nursing and empire at: https://whomakescentspodcast.com/2016/06/02/episode-22-sujani-reddy-on-nursing-and-empire.

Sabina Ibarrola is a green witch and herbalist in the Wisewoman tradition. Drawing on her training in herbal medicine and earthspirit wisdom, Sabina is building her teaching and clinical practice, combining a passion for plants and plant medicine with a fierce dedication to collective liberation and helping people love their beautifully diverse bodies. Sabina also works at LAVA Brooklyn, and is associate creative director of Heels on Wheels Glitter Roadshow. She lives in Brooklyn, NY. sabinaibarrola.com.

Jordan Flaherty is an award-winning journalist, producer, and author. His print journalism has been featured in publications from the New York Times to Colorlines, as well as in seven anthologies. He has been a guest on shows from Anderson Cooper 360 to Democracy Now, and he has produced television documentaries and news reports for Al Jazeera America, Al Jazeera English, and The Laura Flanders Show. He was the first journalist to bring the case of the Jena Six to a national audience, he played himself on HBO’s television series Treme, and he was a target of the New York City Police Department’s spying programs. He is the author of the new book No More Heroes: Grassroots Responses to the Savior Mentality. You can see more of his work at jordanflaherty.org.

MORE ABOUT NURSING AND EMPIRE:
How is nursing tied to histories of capitalist imperialism in India and the United States? How was its professionalization shaped through the institutionalization of gender, race, class, caste, sexuality, regional and religious hierarchies? How does this process relate to the fundamental role that the institutions promoting a “savior mentality” have played in establishing a colonial “civilizing mission” at home and abroad? How do we find the stories of marginalized women workers in the archives? What happens when we ask Indian nurses about their own life stories? Spanning two centuries and multiple geographic spaces, Nursing & Empire pursues these questions in order to shed light on histories of capitalist expansion, and marginalized women’s histories of resistance and labor migration.”In this beautifully written and brilliantly argued book, Sujani Reddy demonstrates the urgency of understanding Indian nurse migration to the United States in relation to the many reconfigurations of ‘Anglo-American capitalist imperialism’ over two centuries. This is an indispensable and groundbreaking contribution to the history of women and labor migration, and it sets a new standard for the global study of imperialism, capitalism, and race.”–Jennifer Guglielmo, author of Living the Revolution: Italian Women’s Resistance and Radicalism in New York City“Sujani Reddy neatly traces the development of modern racialized nursing practices by going beyond simply analyzing migration to examining the historical emergence of nursing in India and the United States. Nursing and Empire explores labor markets, intimate industries, and gender with a writing style that is simultaneously deeply analytical and richly descriptive. An absolutely exciting and one-of-a-kind book.”–Sharmila Rudrappa, author of Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India

MORE ABOUT NO MORE HEROES:
From the Crusades to Black Lives Matter, No More Heroes is a grassroots history of resistance to the savior mentality. This book weaves the stories of LGBTQ organizers, teachers, international volunteers, sex workers, FBI informants, indigenous organizers, and prison abolitionists into a narrative of revolutionary change that travels from Alaska to Palestine, from Karl Marx to Muhammad Ali, and from KONY 2012 to the Red Cross.No More Heroes brings us real life stories of life-or-death conflict: Riad Hamad, a Lebanese middle school teacher in Texas betrayed by FBI informant Brandon Darby. Monica Jones, a Black transgender sex work activist arrested for “walking while trans” in Phoenix, Arizona. Haidar Eid, a professor resisting colonialism and liberalism in his daily life and work in Gaza City. Sophie Lucido Johnson, a recent college graduate who finds her youthful idealism channeled by others to displace unionized African American teachers in New Orleans.

No More Heroes explores the growing response to these dynamics: grassroots and street-based uprisings like the Arab Spring, Occupy Wall Street, and Black Lives Matter, creating accountable movements focused on real, systemic change.

“No More Heroes exposes the savior complex for what it really is: imperialism camouflaged as a rescue operation. A perfect gift for the age of Trump.”
-Robin D. G. Kelley, Author, Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination

“From systemic racism to climate change, there are no easy fixes to the deep- rooted crises of our time. In this marvelous, enormously instructive book, Jordan Flaherty explores how we too often allow the struggle for change to be undermined by would-be saviors—and how today’s grassroots social movements, led by communities on the frontlines of crisis, are charting a far more powerful path forward.”
– Naomi Klein, Author, This Changes Everything and The Shock Doctrine

No More Heroes is a vitally useful intervention in the current political moment. Spot-on analysis, gripping examples, and a clear, urgently necessary argument about how we need to re-think harmful “rescue” frames and the leadership models they foster will make this book immensely useful to contemporary movements. No More Heroes helps us understand how our movements’ debates about leadership, respectability politics and co-optation relate to long-standing investment in ideas of saving that have got to be dismantled if we are going to build the new world we so desperately need and long for.
– Dean Spade, Author, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law

“Buy this book if you believe a better world is possible and want to know how to get there. From Jordan Flaherty, the journalist that broke the story of The Jena Six, comes this thrilling people’s history of current movements for revolutionary change. A powerful, engaging, exciting book for anyone concerned about the state of the world.”
-Cynthia McKinney, 2008 Green Party Presidential Candidate; former Georgia Congresswoman

See more at jordanflaherty.org/saviors.

Union Square Slam presents George Abraham's Book Release Party
2017-03-28 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
We are so thrilled to celebrate George Abraham‘s release of their first book, al youm! Please join us for a free writing workshop, a lively open mic, and George!
6:30pm Writing Workshop w/ IS Jones
7:30pm Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm Open Mic
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Suggested Donation: $5-$10
Praise for al youm:
“George Abraham is the poetic love child of Whitman and Darwish, an exile living in the borderlands of his own Palestinian body. Through these poems–daringly experimental, explosively confession–he rebuilds himself out of his own erasure. In his words, ‘your body isn’t a temple–/ your body is the heaven the temples bow to.'”
– Phil Metres, author of Sand Opera, winner of the Arab American Book Award
“George Abraham’s al youm engages my brain and my heart in ways both relentless and tender. These poems do such exciting things with form—they are simultaneously ancient and futuristic, considering old hurts and old histories while constantly reimagining what is possible in terms of what a poem can do—visually, syntactically, emotionally— on the page. However, their technical skill comes in no way at the expense of their pulsing, living heart—these poems hurt, and bloom, and I will never, ever stop thinking about them. ”
– Safia Elhillo, author of The January Children
“George Abraham’s poems are both guide and gift. Here is writing through the body in space and time; through ancestral memory and trauma; here is breath, soul, life — in America; in Palestine. Abraham’s poems arrive as ingenious and necessary solutions to equations we don’t yet know we need. This book is how we heal.”
– Marwa Helal, author of Invasive Species (forthcoming with Nightboat Books)

About the Author:
George Abraham is a Palestinian-American poet attending Swarthmore College. They competed in the College Union Poetry Slam Invitational (placing 2nd out of 68 international teams), the National Poetry Slam, and the Individual World Poetry Slam. They are a Pushcart nominee, a 2-time recipient of the Favianna Rodriguez Award for Artistic Activism, and a recipient of the Ghassan Kanafani Palestinian Literature Scholarship. They are the author of al youm: for yesterday & her inherited traumas – a winner of the Atlas Review’s 2016 chapbook contest. Their poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Diode, Kweli, the Margins, Thrush, Apogee, and Sukoon, as well as the Ghassan Kanafani Anthology of Palestinian Literature. They hope to continue bringing awareness to Palestinian human rights and socio-economic struggles through art.
More work and contact info can be found at his artist website: https://gabrahampoet.wixsite.com/gabrahampoet

Belladonna* WITH Sam Ace & Aristilde Kirby (co-presented by Vetch)
2017-03-30 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Belladonna* Collaborative & Vetch Magazine present: Sam Ace & Aristilde Kirby will read at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division on March 30, at 7pm.
New chaplets from each reader will be available at the event.
Vetch is the first magazine of its kind, a journal of poetry solely by trans writers. We aim to publish work that is as excited about being poetry as it is engaged with the social conditions that allow for its production. Say it has an aesthetic and doubles down hard, wouldn’t that be fun. Belladonna* Collaborative’s programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Samuel Ace is the author of Normal Sex, Home in three days. Don’t wash., and Stealth (a collaboration with Maureen Seaton). He has received the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund Award, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award and is a two-time finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His work has appeared in or is forthcoming from Poetry, Fence, Posit, Vinyl, Troubling the Line: Genderqueer Poetry and Poetics, Best American Experimental Poetry 2016 and many other publications. www.samuelace.com

Aristilde Kirby is a poet born in the Bronx, NY, but currently lives in Carrollton, GA. She is 25, a UGA Master Gardener, was previously published in Vetch (no. 2 & 3). She has a few things in the works, and hopefully forthcoming. You can just call her Aris, say her name like Paris without the P or Aeris from FFVII, but with & without the lisp. She’s a black lesbian in either case. You can find her on twitter @motjustine

The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition
2017-03-31 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for the opening reception party for The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition on Friday, March 31st. We’ll screen clips from the new feature film, Nothing Without Us, by Harriet Hirshorn and Mary Patierno. From New York to Nigeria. Burundi to the American South beginning at 7 PM.

The readings by Eileen Myles and Sassafras Lowrey have been postponed. We’ll keep you posted.

We did it, and we’ll do it again! A multimedia activist exhibit celebrating the Lesbian Avengers, formed 25 years ago during another surge of hardcore misogyny, and anti-gay, white Nationalist hate. Includes still photos, flyers, posters, slide shows, and video. Were you there? We welcome your participation. This mobile exhibit won’t take on its final form until late April. In June, it will begin to pop up all over the country. Including a neighborhood near you!

Also exhibited, images of powerful women fighting AIDS worldwide from the new feature film, Nothing Without Us, by Harriet Hirshorn and Mary Patierno. From New York to Nigeria. Burundi to the American South.

The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition will be on view at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division from March 31 through June 4, 2017.

Related upcoming events:
Friday, April 21 Lesbian Avengers 25 event series, “Resist, Rebel, Transgress” in co-operation with Lambda Literary. Includes Avenger co-founder and writer Sarah Schulman and writer Carmen Machado
Friday, May 12 Lesbian Avengers 25 event series, “Resist, Rebel, Transgress” featuring a screening of the powerful film, Nothing Without Us, by Harriet Hirshorn and Mary Patierno about women fighting AIDS worldwide.
Friday, June 2 Lesbian Avengers 25 event series, “Resist, Rebel, Transgress” in co-operation with Lambda Literary. Includes Lesbian Avengers and writers, Susana Cook, Ana Simo (co-founder), and others.
photo: Carolina Kroon, Dyke March, Washington, DC, 1993

Book Launch for Claudia Cortese’s Wasp Queen and Gillian Cummings’ My Dim Aviary
2017-04-01 19:30 - 21:30 | NY
Please join us for the launch party of Claudia Cortese’s Wasp Queen and Gillian Cummings’ My Dim Aviary. Gillian and Claudia are press sisters whose books were just published by Black Lawrence Press.
Ocean Vuong says that “Claudia Cortese has given to Lucy what Anne Carson has given to Geryon: a life as desperate and fraught as our own, which is to say, a human rendition of the poetic potential. . . . I finished this Wasp Queen only to read it all over again, finding and losing myself, gladly, at every turn.
D. Nurkse says that My Dim Aviary is a book filled “with the ache of individuation, the estrangement of sexuality—‘a swan gouging its breast with its bill.’ Searing in its originality, My Dim Aviary is a masterful conception, a trance, a prayer of abandonment.”
There will be cupcakes! There will cake! There will be plastic tiaras! There will be purple mood lighting! There will be a most glorious mix playing (Whitney Houston, Bikini Kill, Pat Benatar…)
Grey Vild (bio below) will be emceeing; Claudia and Gillian will read from their gorgeous books; and these brilliant humans will also be reading:
Jayson P. Smith is a writer/performance artist from the Bronx. Their poems & interviews appear / are forthcoming in journals such as Gulf Coast, Vinyl Magazine, & The Offing. J is a 2016-17 Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow with The Poetry Project, & has received previous support from The Conversation Literary Festival & Millay Colony for the Arts. They currently live in Brooklyn and the internet at jaysonpsmith.com.
Kaveh Akbar‘s poems appear recently or soon in The New Yorker, Poetry, Ploughshares, APR, Tin House, and elsewhere. His debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, will be published by Alice James Books in September 2017.
Joanna C. Valente is a human who lives in Brooklyn, New York. They are the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014), The Gods Are Dead (Deadly Chaps Press, 2015), Marys of the Sea (2016, ELJ Publications) & Xenos (2016, Agape Editions).
Grey Vild is a Queer Art Mentorship & Brooklyn Poets fellow & a MFA candidate in poetry at Rutgers University. His work can be found at Them, Vetch, Harriet: The Blog and elsewhere.

Union Square Slam presents Timothy DuWhite and our Capturing Fire Qualifier
2017-04-04 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Come on out for our Very Here, Very Queer CAPTURING FIRE QUALIFIER, featuring Capturing Fire’s 2015 Champion and all-around No BullPoop No Fux Giving Poet/Prophet/Pidgeon Whisperer Timothy DuWhite!!

6:30pm Free Writing Workshop with I.S. Jones
7:30pm Sign-Ups and Socialize
8:00pm Slam and Feature
$5 // All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible

COMPETING POETS: must be self-identified queer to compete! must have three 3 minute poems! must consider registering for Capturing Fire and competing anyway, regardless of who wins this qualifier!
About our Feature:

Timothy DuWhite is the current Program Manager at New York Writers Coalition, a non-profit dedicated to providing writing workshops to under-served communities. Prior to his time at NYWC, Timothy worked as the Program Coordinator at Urban Word NYC, a champion in youth literacy, and as the Online Communications Specialist at Believe Out Loud, an online network invested in bridging the gap between the faith and LGBTQ communities. He received his BA in English/Creative Writing from Montclair State University, where he developed his love for spoken word poetry and performance. Timothy’s work has been featured at venues/sites such as the United Nations/UNICEF, Apollo Theater, Nuyorican Poet’s cafe, The Rumpus, Bowery Poetry Club, La Mama Theater and many more. In 2015, Timothy developed a writing workshop entitled “HIV & the State: Coalition Building beyond the Condom,” in which he communally debunks popular narratives surrounding HIV as it relates to black people. Timothy’s political work and analysis has granted him appearances/keynote speeches at institutions such as San Diego State University, Columbia University, Oregon State University, Columbia College Chicago, and many more. When he isn’t off trying to save the world, Tim can be found working on his next play, and listening to 90’s R&B.
About Capturing Fire:

Capturing Fire is a DC-based international spoken word and poetry festival where queer-identified writers gather for 3 days of individual poetry slam competition, alongside panels, workshops and performances during the day. The Poetry Slam focus of Capturing Fire will be June 9 and 10 with a series of Queer Arts Events starting Sunday June 4 at The Sparkle Open Mic at Busboys & Poets. We will be holding Capturing Fire during Capital Pride Weekend which culminates with the LGBT March on Sunday June 11, 2017 at 10am. For more information, please refer to https://capfireslam.org/

A Discussion of Umberto Saba's 'Ernesto' with Peter Cameron, Benjamin Taylor, Jaime Manrique, and Stefano Albertini
2017-04-06 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Please join NYRB Classics in celebrating the publication of Umberto Saba’s Ernesto, a classic of gay Italian literature available in a new translation by Estelle Gilson. Peter Cameron, Benjamin Taylor, Jaime Manrique, and Stefano Albertini will discuss Saba’s life and work.

Peter Cameron is the author of six novels, including ‘Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You,’ and two collections of short stories. He lives in New York City and Vermont, where he runs Shrinking Violet Press, which publishes limited editions of finely-crafted books. He has written afterwords to many books, including New York Review of Books’ ‘The Outward Room’ by Millen Brand and ‘Totempole’ by Sanford Friedman.

Benjamin Taylor‘s family memoir, ‘The Hue and Cry at Our House,’ will be published in May of 2017 by Penguin Books. He is also the author of ‘Proust: The Search,’ named a Best Book of 2016 by Thomas Mallon in The New York Times Book Review; ‘Naples Declared: A Walk Around the Bay,’ named a Best Book of 2012 by Judith Thurman in The New Yorker; and of two novels, ‘Tales Out of School,’ winner of the Harold Ribalow Prize, and ‘The Book of Getting Even,’ winner of a Barnes and Noble Discover Prize. He edited ‘Saul Bellow: Letters,’ named a Best Book of 2010 by Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times and Jonathan Yardley at The Washington Post, and Bellow’s ‘There Is Simply Too Much to Think About: Collected Nonfiction.’ A faculty member in the New School’s Graduate School of Writing, Taylor also teaches in the Graduate Writing Division of the School of the Arts at Columbia University. A past fellow and current trustee of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, he is also president of the Edward F. Albee Foundation. ‘Debriefing,’ his edition of the short fiction of Susan Sontag, is due from Farrar, Straus & Giroux in November of 2017.

Jaime Manrique was born in Colombia. He is a bilingual novelist, essayist, translator, and poet. His novels include ‘Latin Moon in Manhattan,’ ‘Our Lives Are the Rivers,’ and ‘Cervantes Street.’ He has been the recipient of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, a winner of Colombia’s National Poetry Award, and the International Latino Book Award. Mr. Manrique’s work has been translated to twelve languages. He is currently a Distinguished Lecturer in the Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures at the City College of New York. He has just completed a new novel, ‘Like This Afternoon Forever.’

2017 NYC Queer Comic Fair
2017-04-08 13:00 - 19:00 | NY
WabiSabiZinez and Carmine Street Comics are proud to present the first (hopefully) annual New York City fair geared entirely towards queer sequential art (comics, graphic novels, illustrated stories, photo-comics, or any other interesting take on the medium of still-visual narrative storytelling).

The fair is free and open to the public, thanks to our hosts, the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, located on the second floor of The LGBT Center NYC, 208 W 13th St., room 210.

Vendors include:

WabiSabiZines: WabiSabiZineZ.Storenvy.Com / @Wabi_Sabi_Zinez
Carmine Street Comics: carminestreetcomics.com / @CarmineStComics
Bearpad: bearpadshop.storenvy.com / @bearpadshop
Tim Bauer: cargocollective.com/tbauerillustration
Doable Guys: doableguys.tumblr.com/
Easy: easythecomic.com
Greg Fox / Kyle’s Bed & Breakfast: Kylecomics.com
Mikey Hope / Preternatch: preternatch.deviantart.com/gallery/
Comics by Patrick J Reilly: comicsbypatrick.com/
Lucky Sanford: luckysanford.com
Sci-Fi Explosion: twitter.com/scifiexplosion
Susse Sønderby: unteleported-tomatoes.net / @sussesonderby
Ship Jumper: ShipJumperComic.com
SquareBears: Instagram.com/squarebears
Stevie Wilson: swinku.tumblr.com
Woolybearz: woolybearz.tumblr.com / @woolybear
Bill Zanowitz: crimefighterinquiry.com / comicbookbears.com

Great Weather for Union Square Slam
2017-04-11 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Great weather for media has a brand new anthology called “The Careless Embrace of the Boneshaker.” We are excited to bring you some of the poets from this anthology to our stage.

Here are the poets:

Taylor Steele
Liv Mammone
Craig Kite
Brendan James Gillett

Founded in January 2012 by former Uphook Press editors Jane Ormerod, Thomas Fucaloro, and Brant Lyon, great weather for MEDIA focuses on the unpredictable, the fearless, the bright, the dark, and the innovative…

They are based in New York City and showcase both national and international writers. As well as publishing the highest quality poetry and prose, they organize numerous readings, performances, and book releases in New York City and across the country. Find them every Sunday on the Lower East Side at the Parkside Lounge, 317 East Houston St, for their reading series, great weather presents Spoken Word Sundays. Featured readers and a poetry open mic, 4:00 – 6:00 pm. They’d love to see you! This is a terrific New York City poetry open mic.

6:30pm Writing Workshop w/ IS Jones
7:30pm Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm Open Mic
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Suggested Donation: $5-$10

Author Readings and Discussion with Stefani Deoul & Ann Aptaker
2017-04-13 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us as Stefani Deoul reads from and discusses her crazyfunkycool new YA novel, On a LARP, which features the fresh and feisty bit-bending teen heroine, Sid Rubin. As an added attraction, Lammy-winning historical criminal fiction writer, Ann Aptaker will take the stage to talk about and share a reading from Genuine Gold, Book Three of the popular Cantor Gold Crime Series.
Please support the authors and the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division and purchase copies of On a LARP, Criminal Gold, Tarnished Gold, and Genuine Gold at the Bureau!
We look forward to seeing you there!

STEFANI DEOUL is the author of the award-winning novel The Carousel and the newly released YA novel On a LARP. She has written for numerous publications, including Curve Magazine, Outdoor Delaware and Letters from CAMP Rehoboth, penned short stories, and written both film and television treatments. As a television producer her resume includes TV series such as Haven for the SyFy Network, The Dead Zone, Brave New Girl, Dresden Files and Missing.

Lambda Literary Award winner and native New Yorker ANN APTAKER has earned a reputation as a respected, if cheeky, exhibition designer and curator of art during her career in museums and galleries. Taking the approach that what art authorities find uncomfortable the public would likely enjoy, exhibitions Ann has curated have garnered favorable reviews in the New York Times, Art in America, American Art Review, and other publications.

TELL 33: Betrayal
2017-04-15 19:00 - 21:30 | Online event, New York, NY, United States
TELL is an evening of story telling from the mouths and minds of queers in NYC hosted by Drae Campbell at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division since February 2014.
BETRAYAL is the theme of the thirty-third installment of TELL. Featuring Erica Caldwell, Amalia Q, Persephone Sarah Jane Smith, and Pamela Sneed.

$10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

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

Erica Cardwell is a writer and radical educator. Her essays and reviews have appeared in Hyperallergic, Sinister Wisdom, the Lightwork Annual, The Feminist Wire, Bitch Media, and EMERGE: An Anthology of the 2105 Lambda Literary Fellows. Erica hopes to complete a draft of her first book, Stone Fruit- a collection of personal essays by December.

Amalia Q is a latinx queer unicorn from LA. As the daughter of immigrant parents, the pull to overachieve and give back was immense; therefore, as of late, Amalia had been trying to practice self-care by slowing down and hanging out with tiny humans (aka kids). Amalia holds masters degrees from all the schools and knows a whole lot about microaggressions, substance use, and mental health. You can find Amalia on a dance floor near you!

Persephone Sarah Jane Smith (They/Them/Theirs)
A singer songwriter and poet that lives in Bushwick with far too many hobbies to list. Thier Latest endeavor is running for City Council in their District. Greatest skill though is telling Humorous stories from their tragic life.

Pamela Sneed is a New York based poet, writer and actress. She has been featured in the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Time Out, Bomb, VIBE, and on the cover of New York Magazine. In 2015, she appeared in Art Forum, Black Book and The Huffington Post. She hosted Queer Art Film at the IFC in New York City. She is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom Than Slavery, published by Henry Holt in April 1998, KONG & other works, published by Vintage Entity Press (2009) and a chapbook Lincoln (2014). In 2015, she published the Chaplet Gift with Belladonna. She has performed for sold out houses at Lincoln Center, P.S. 122, Ex-Teresa in Mexico City, The ICA London, The CCA in Glasgow Scotland, The Green Room in Manchester England, BAM Cafe, Joes Pub, The Public Theater, Central Park Summer Stage, Bronx Summer Stage and recently Columbia University’s Tribute to James Baldwin, The Whitney Museum and BRIC. She appears in Nikki Giovanni’s, The One Hundred Best African American Poems. She has taught at Sarah Lawrence as a guest faculty member and is an online Professor at Chicago’s School of the Art Institute teaching Human Rights and Writing Art. She was a mentor/consultant for the poet-Linc program at Lincoln Center and directed a final show at Lincoln Center Atrium in 2016. She has recently presented at a symposium at NYU on Humor, Politics and the AIDs crisis. In summer 2016, she has received a residency at Denniston Hill and is an SAIC visiting artist in the MFA low residency program. She is completing a collection of short stories “Anna Mae/For Black Women Survivors,” and has a forthcoming chapbook Sweet Dreams with Belladonna2017.

Union Square Slam presents Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib and Team Selection Finals!
2017-04-18 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
!! TIME !! FOR !! TEAM !! SELECTION !! FINALS !!

featuring
HANIF WILLIS-ABDURRAQIB

ARE YOU READY FOR POEMS?!

6:30pm: Writing Workshop by Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
7:45pm: Slam, First Round
8:30pm: Feature: Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib
9:00pm: Slam, Second Round

Writing Workshop, by donation/pass-the-bag
Feature/Slam: suggested $7-$10, collected at door

* * * We’ll also be selling limited edition copies of Union Square Slam’s Inaugural Year Team Slam Chapbook — all proceeds go to getting the team to Nationals this year ♥ * * *
Bureau of General Services – Queer Division
(inside the LGBT Center)

208 W 13th St., #210 (btw 7th and 8th Ave)
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
About our Feature:

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. His first collection of poems, The Crown Ain’t Worth Much, was released by Button Poetry in 2016. His first collection of essays, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, is forthcoming from Two Dollar Radio in winter 2017.

Open Love New York Poly Movie Night: Carrington
2017-04-20 18:30 - 21:30 | NY
Open Love NY presents Poly Movie Night, a FREE series of feature films that focus on the portrayal of consensual / ethical non-monogamy in cinema. This month we’ll be meeting at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division which is located on the second floor of The LGBT Center, Room 210.
Please join us for Carrington (1995), directed by Christopher Hampton and starring Emma Thompson (Harry Potter) and Jonathan Pryce (Game of Thrones).
We’ll meet at 6:30 pm at the Bureau for pre-screening socializing and start the movie at 7 pm. The more people come, the more likely we’ll continue the event! The event is free, although a $10 suggested donation to help fund future events is much appreciated.
Synopsis: “Who on earth is that ravishing boy?” asks writer Lytton Strachey when he first sees Carrington. Despite his initial disappointment that Carrington is not a boy, he becomes very fond of her while she falls in love with him. The film is based on the lives of the early twentieth-century painter Dora Carrington and gay Bloomsbury writer Lytton Strachey. Running time: 2 hours.

Resist, Rebel, Transgress: Sarah Schulman & Carmen Machado
2017-04-21 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
In conjunction with the Bureau’s current exhibition, The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition:
“Resist, Rebel, Transgress” in co-operation with Lambda Literary. Reading from their work: Avenger co-founder and writer Sarah Schulman, and writer Carmen Machado.
Suggested donation of $5 to $10 to benefit both the traveling exhibition The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition and the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Carmen Maria Machado’s debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press. Her fiction and nonfiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy, Best Horror of the Year, and Best Women’s Erotica. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sarah Schulman is the author of 18 books, most recently the novel THE COSMOPOLITANS, selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the top 20 American novels of 2016, and CONFLICT IS NOT ABUSE, which bell hooks called “awesome brilliant.” Sarah is on the advisory board of Jewish Voice for Peace, faculty advisor to Students for Justice in Palestine, and on the advisory board of Claudia Rankine’s Racial Imaginary Institute. She is currently writing the book to a musical based on the songs of Joan Armatrading.

The Lesbian Avengers: 25th Anniversary Exhibition is on view at the Bureau through June 4, 2017.
We did it, and we’ll do it again! A multimedia activist exhibit celebrating the Lesbian Avengers, formed 25 years ago during another surge of hardcore misogyny, and anti-gay, white Nationalist hate. Includes still photos, flyers, posters, slide shows, and video. Were you there? We welcome your participation. This mobile exhibit won’t take on its final form until late April. In June, it will begin to pop up all over the country. Including a neighborhood near you!

Related upcoming events:

Friday, May 12 7 p.m. Lesbian Avengers 25 event series, “Resist, Rebel, Transgress.” A screening of the powerful film, Nothing Without Us, by Harriet Hirshorn and Mary Patierno about women fighting AIDS worldwide.
Nothing Without Us is the first and only documentary telling the story of the inspiring women at the forefront of the global AIDS movement. Combining archival footage and interviews with female activists, scientists and scholars in the US and Africa, Nothing Without Us: The Women who Will End AIDS reveals how women not only shaped grassroots groups like ACT-UP in the U.S., but have also played essential roles in HIV prevention and the treatment access movement throughout sub-Saharan Africa. The film explores the unaddressed dynamics that keep women around the world at risk of HIV, while introducing the remarkable women who have the answers to ending this 30-year old pandemic.

Friday, June 2 7 p.m. Lesbian Avengers 25 event series, “Resist, Rebel, Transgress” in co-operation with Lambda Literary. Includes Lesbian Avengers and writers, Susana Cook, Ana Simo (co-founder), and others.

Union Square Slam Presents: Kate & Izzi!
2017-04-25 19:30 - 21:30 | NY
*Mark your calendars: the last Tuesday of every month will feature a local musical performer.*
Tonight, we are beyond excited to bring you the entrancing sounds of this sister duet!
About our Show:
7:30pm: Sign-ups and Socialize
8:00pm: Open Mic (Music + Poetry Are Welcomed Here!)
8:45pm: KATE & IZZI
All Ages // Wheelchair Accessible
Open Mic // Suggested $5-10 donation
About our Feature:
Kate & Izzi are sisters making music. We grew up in DC, went to school in New York, lived in Berlin and taught music in a refugee camp. Now we’re creating original music in our basement. Kate & Izzi will be releasing our first EP this summer.

The Publishing Triangle Finalists Reading
2017-04-26 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join eight of the best LGBT writers of 2016 on Wednesday, April 26, at 7 PM, at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division as they read from their work, all of which are finalists for the prestigious Publishing Triangle and Ferro-Grumley awards to be announced on Thursday, April 27, at the Publishing Triangle Awards Ceremony & Reception, at The Auditorium of the New School, 66 West 12th street (between Fifth and Sixth Avenues).

Featuring:
Kathy Anderson: Bull and Other Stories (Autumn House Press), Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Lucy Jane Bledsoe: A Thin Bright Line (University of Wisconsin Press), Finalist for The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
Elizabeth M. Edman: Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Beacon Press), Finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Matthew Griffin: Hide (Bloomsbury USA), Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Alan Lessik: The Troubleseeker (Chelsea Station Editions), Finalist for The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBTQ Fiction
Paul Lisicky, The Narrow Door (Graywolf Press); finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction
Joe Okonkwo: Jazz Moon (Kensington), Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
Will Schwalbe: Books for Living (Alfred A. Knopf), Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

Kathy Anderson is the author of Bull and Other Stories (Autumn House Press, 2016), winner of the 2015 Autumn House Press Fiction Prize. In addition to being a finalist for the 2016 Publishing Triangle’s Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, Bull and Other Stories was a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Awards and the 2016 Foreword INDIES Awards and was longlisted for The Story Prize, 2016. She is also a playwright and member of the Dramatists Guild. She lives with her wife in Philadelphia, PA.

Lucy Jane Bledsoe‘s new novel, A Thin Bright Line, was just released. She’s the author of a collection of short stories, a collection of narrative nonfiction, and four novels, including The Big Bang Symphony. Her recent short story, “The We of Me,” published in The Rumpus, was chosen by Ploughshares Magazine as the best story published in lit mags that week.
Her fiction has won a Yaddo Fellowship, the 2013 Saturday Evening Post Fiction Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, the Sherwood Anderson Prize for Fiction, a Pushcart nomination, a California Arts Council Fellowship, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, and two National Science Foundation Artists & Writers Fellowships. Her stories have been translated into Japanese, Spanish, German, Dutch, and Chinese.
Lucy loves teaching workshops, cooking, traveling anywhere, basketball, doing anything outside, and telling stories. She’s traveled to Antarctica three times, as a two-time recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Artists & Writers in Antarctica Fellowship and once as a guest on the Russian ship, the Akademik Sergey Vavilov. She is one of a tiny handful of people who have stayed at all three American stations in Antarctica. She has also stayed in a number of field camps, both on the coast and in the Transantarctic mountains, where scientists are studying penguins, climate change, and the Big Bang.

Photograph by Keryn Lowry

Liz Edman is an Episcopal priest and political strategist. She is the author of Queer Virtue: What LGBTQ People Know About Life and Love and How It Can Revitalize Christianity (Beacon Press, 2016). Liz has lived and worked on the front lines of the most salient contemporary issues where religion meets sexuality, serving as an inner city hospital chaplain to people with HIV/AIDS from 1989 to 1995 and helping craft political and communications strategies for marriage equality efforts. In 2017, she partnered with Parity to create Glitter+Ash Wednesday, a project to increase the visibility of progressive, queer-positive Christians and to explore Christian liturgical tradition through a queer lens. She lives in New York.

Matthew Griffin is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has taught writing at the University of Iowa and University of Louisiana at Lafayette, and he worked for several years as Assistant to the Director of Highlander Research and Education Center, a renowned hub of grassroots organizing for social justice throughout the South and Appalachia. His first novel Hide was the winner of the 2017 Crook’s Corner Book Prize, a Stonewall Honor Book, and longlisted for the PEN/Bingham Prize for debut fiction. His writing has appeared in The Guardian, Granta, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. He was born and raised in North Carolina and now lives with his husband and too many pets in New Orleans, Louisiana, where he teaches at Tulane University.

Alan Lessik is a novelist and writer, zen practitioner, amateur figure skater, and LGBT activist, non-profit leader and world traveler. His debut novel, The Troubleseeker, was published by Chelsea Station Editions in 2016. He has had non-fiction articles and commentaries published in the Advocate, San Francisco Bay Guardian, andFrontiers as well as recorded as part of KQED Radio Perspectives. He was the co-founder of Out & Equal, the Deputy Director of the AIDS Research Institute at UCSF and Treasurer of the Federation of Gay Games. Currently he is the Executive Director of Civicorps. Alan lives in San Francisco.

Photo by Star Black

Paul Lisicky is the author of five books: The Narrow Door (a New York Times Editors’ Choice), Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Conjunctions, Fence, The New York Times, The Offing, Ploughshares, Tin House, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, among others. He is an associate professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Brooklyn.

Joe Okonkwo is a Pushcart Prize nominee who has had stories published in a variety of print and online venues including Promethean, Penumbra Literary Magazine, Chelsea Station, Shotgun Honey, and Best Gay Stories 2015. In addition to his writing career, he has worked in theater as an actor, stage manager, director, playwright and youth theatre instructor. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from City College of New York. Jazz Moon is his debut novel.

Will Schwalbe has worked in publishing (now with Macmillan); digital media, as the founder and CEO of Cookstr.com; and as a journalist, writing for various publications, including The New York Times and the South China Morning Post. He is the author of the New York Times best seller The End of Your Life Book Club and coauthor, with David Shipley, of Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better. His most recent book, Books for Living, is a memoir about the books that found him when he needed them most.

Vexilloids: a Protest Flag Workshop with LACTIC Incorporated, with support from Queer Threads
2017-04-27 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join Randi Shandroski and Ickarus of LACTIC Incorporated at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division on Thursday, April 27th from 6 ‘til 9PM for a workshop presenting the history of vexilloids which will conclude with the participants’ creation of their own.

Presented in collaboration with John Chaich, curator of the Queer Threads book and exhibition, in light of current events, LGBTQ Pride Month, and the March on Washington in June.

Textiles and materials will be provided although participants are strongly encouraged to bring some of their own fabrics. No prior sewing experience needed although highly recommended.

PLEASE NOTE:
This event is limited to 15 participants. Please RSVP via ickarus@lacticincorporated.com.

EOAGH Spring 2017 Launch!
2017-04-29 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
EOAGH Spring 2017 Launch!
Featuring: Abigail Child, Kenyatta JP Garcia, Phoenix Nastasha Russell, Kerry Downey, Jay Lucero, Pazia Miller, and Isabelle Shallcross.
Hosted by Trace Peterson at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
Saturday, April 29 at 7-9 PM,
Abigail Child is a media artist and writer who pushes the envelope of sound-image-text relations with humor, liveliness and complex “plangent, friable, nacreous, lambent, sinewy…and syncopated” montage. An award-winning filmmaker, Child is the author of six books of poetry, among them, A Motive for Mayhem, Scatter Matrix and her most recent MOUTH TO MOUTH, as well as a book of criticism, THIS IS CALLED MOVING: A Critical Poetics of Film (2005) from University of Alabama Press.
Kenyatta JP Garcia is the author of Slow Living (West Vine Press) and This Sentimental Education. They were raised in Brooklyn but currently live in Albany, NY. They spend their nights being paid to put boxes on shelves while their days are dedicated to dreaming.
Phoenix Nastasha Russell is an accomplished poet. Several of her poems have been published in art books like “Rivers of Emotion” and on websites like Poetry.com. She has performed her art work of words in all sorts of venues and has gotten the highest of acclaims. Nastasha’s art oft times incites gut wrenching laughter and at other times intense contemplation as she fires of verse after verse of spellbinding lexis. When she orates her art you can tell that she is truly in her element. Nastasha will entice you and delight you, just like her namesake she’s like a Phoenix taking flight on wings of searing light….her words will never disappoint cause you’ll know and feel just where she’s coming from.
Kerry Downey (born Fort Lauderdale, 1979) is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and teacher. Downey’s work explores how we interact with each other physically, psychologically, and socio-politically. Encompassing video, works on paper, writing, and performance, their work reimagines the possibilities and limitations of language, gender and intimacy. Their work has recently been exhibited at the Queens Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College, the Drawing Center, and Taylor Macklin. In 2015, Downey was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Emerging Artist Grant. They hold a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Hunter College.
Jay Lucero aka Silverfemme is a senior at Hunter College. They were awarded the Martin Luther King Jr. Award from Queensborough Community College. Jay is a poet, actor, and activist born and raised in NYC. They are a magical brown oddity that embodies no and all genders. Instagram: @silverfemme.
Pazia Miller is a queer poet and public school teacher living in Brooklyn. She is currently working on two different poetry collections, one of which is a long form confessional poem in blank verse. Her poetry lives in small corners of the internet and can be found on The Bridge.
Isabelle Shallcross (she/her) writes poems about the South, nature, and being a sad and problematic person under capitalism. Her favorite writers include Chris Kraus, Ross Gay, and Mira Gonzalez. She has received a scholarship to study poetry at the Bread Loaf School of English and is originally from Alabama.

Anti-Fascist Book Club
2017-04-30 15:00 - 17:00 | NY
A reading group for those fighting fascism! We will begin with Hannah Arendt and James Baldwin and expand from there. Hopefully our readings will inspire thoughtful and informed activism.

For the first meeting we will be discussing the first 100 pages of Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism (available at the Bureau—please support the Bureau by purchasing your copy from us. Thank you!)

Questions? Write to Grey Vild: greyvild@gmail.com
