BGSQD

Dale Peck in conversation with Jonathon Kyle Sturgeon
2015-05-30 19:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Dale Peck discusses his new memoir, Visions and Revisions, with critic and editor Jonathon Kyle Sturgeon. Visions and Revisions revisits Peck’s experience as an AIDS activist and writer from 1987, when ACT UP was founded, to 1996, when new treatments dramatically extended the life expectancy of people with AIDS.

Photograph by Gregg Evans
Dale Peck is the author of twelve books, including the novels Martin and John, Now It’s Time to Say Goodbye, and Greenville, and the essay collection Hatchet Jobs. His novel Sprout when the inaugural Lambda Literary Award for young adult literature, and his stories have been included in the annual O. Henry Award and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Peck was a member of ACT UP in the early 90s and served on the steering committee of Downtown for Democracy, a arts-baed PAC that raised more than a million dollars for progressive candidates during the 2004 election. He co-founded Mischief + Mayhem, a publishing collective, and has taught in the graduate writing program of the New School since 1999.

Newfangled 6: Robert Siek hosts Chase Berggrun, Tom Capelonga, & Paul Tran
2015-05-29 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Join us for the 6th installment of Newfangled, poetry readings by emerging poets hosted by Robert Siek. Newfangled 6 will feature Chase Berggrun, Tom Capelonga, & Paul Tran.

CHASE BERGGRUN is a genderqueer poet and the author of Discontent and Its Civilizations: Poems of Erasure, winner of the 2012 jubilat Chapbook Contest judged by Peter Gizzi, and their work has been published or is forthcoming in Apogee, No Tokens, The Cortland Review, Cutbank, BOAAT, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. They are Assistant Poetry Editor at Washington Square Review, and an MFA candidate in Poetry at NYU.

TOM CAPELONGA is a 27-year-old native of New York City. His work has appeared in FourTwoNine magazine and Podium. He lives in Manhattan.

PAUL TRAN is a Vietnamese American historian and spoken word poet. He won “Best Poet” and “Pushing the Art Forward” at the national college poetry slam, as well as awards and fellowships from Kundiman, Poets House, Lambda Literary, Napa Valley, VONA, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work can be found in CURA, Nepantla, cream city review, and RHINO, which selected him for the 2015 Editor’s Prize. Since 2013, Paul has taught the Untitlement Project at New Urban Arts in Providence, Rhode Island, and coached the Brown University, Barnard College & Columbia University, and Providence youth slam teams. He currently lives in New York City, where he’s writing his first book and working at New York University.

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

Bi Book Club: Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men
2015-05-28 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
The Bi Book Club meets once a month to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise. People of all orientations and genders welcome! Dinner after nearby.
Our current book is Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men edited by Robyn Ochs & H. Sharif Williams (Dr. Herukhuti.) For our meeting in May we will discuss the final two sections of the book: Section 8: Traveling, and Section 9: Relationships. Pick out some phrases or paragraphs that you’d like to discuss, that inspired you, or that struck you because of their elegant turn of phrase or the meaning behind it. If you haven’t had time to finish the readings, come anyway because we read passages from the book aloud for discussion. As usual, we’ll also be using the text as a jumping off point to further discussion of bisexual issues and personal experiences.
Getting Books: We urge you to purchase your print copy at BGSQD and support the only LGBT bookstore in New York City. Especially since they are hosting us in their space! If you prefer e-books, just get them your usual way.
Deciding Books: The group votes on what book to read next.
The Bi Book Club meets at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division on the last Thursday of each month.

Gay in the Great War: A Reading with Music from Flower of Iowa, in Honor of Memorial Day
2015-05-27 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Gay men have served in our nation’s military since the beginning. Lance Ringel’s historical novel Flower of Iowa centers on the unexpected romance between a young American soldier and his best buddy, a British soldier, in 1918 France during the final months of World War I. Ringel and his spouse, actor Chuck Muckle, will read selections from the eBook and Muckle will perform music from the Great War. Kirkus Reviews declared Flower of Iowa “accomplished, touching historical fiction” while Stephen Fry called it “a truly wonderful WW1 novel … so truthful and touching.”

A journalist and writer for four decades, Lance Ringel has penned five novels and three plays. He served as principal writer for Vassar Voices, a staged reading honoring Vassar College’s sesquicentennial, which made its debut at Jazz at Lincoln Center starring Meryl Streep, Lisa Kudrow and Frances Sternhagen. Ringel also wrote the narrative for At Home in the World, a music-and-words collaboration directed by John Caird that played across Japan last year and will debut in New York and Washington next month. Flower of Iowa is his first published work. He and Chuck Muckle have been together for 38 years.

Chuck Muckle will appear in the feature film X-Mas starring Seth Rogen and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, to be released this November. His many theater credits include Four Play the Musical (world premiere tour); the solo show At Wit’s End (An Evening with Oscar Levant); Paradise Lost, directed by Hal Prince with Judy Kaye and John Cullum, at NYC Opera Workshop Project (music arranger Jonathan Tunick); and The Golden Apple with Howard McGillin and Nancy Opel at Bard Summerscape (music director Jonathan Tunick). He has toured in South Pacific and Camelot with Robert Goulet, and A Christmas Carol with John Astin.

DOOR GIRLS by Max Steele zine launch and reading featuring Doug Keeler, Justin Allen and Erin Markey
2015-05-23 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Please join Max Steele for the release of his new zine DOOR GIRLS at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division for a launch party and reading featuring Doug Keeler, Justin Allen and Erin Markey.

Justin Allen is a writer from Northern Virginia whose work traces the ways geographies, both URL and IRL, shape identity.

Photograph by Brett Lindell
Doug Keeler is a poet, temptress, and karaoke queen. He has written for the Helix Queer Performance Network’s Critical Squad (https://helixqpn.org/tagged/doug+keeler), and recently participated in the BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange workshop NEEDING IT: Solo Performance in Queer Community. His current projects include the poetry series “reasons to get up in the morning” (https://whyigotup.tumblr.com/) and diatribe blog POP-OFF QUEEN (https://popoff-queen.tumblr.com/). His major influences include José Esteban Muñoz, Nomi Malone, and Brent Corrigan.

Photograph by Bobby Miller
Erin Markey is a comedic writer/performer, actress and singer who has shown work at BAM, Under The Radar Festival, New Museum, PS 122, Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, New York Comedy Festival, San Francisco Film Society, and frequently at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. She is currently a 2013-2015 artist-in-residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange writing a musical, A Ride On The Irish Cream which will premiere at Abrons Arts Center in January 2016. She is a 2014 Franklin Furnace Fund recipient.

Photograph by Dietmar Busse
Max Steele is a writer and performer. He’s written the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher since 2006 and in 2015 started a new zine, DOOR GIRLS, about night life.

TELL 13: Crushes
2015-05-22 19:30 - 22:00 | 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.
Crushes is the theme of the thirteenth installment of TELL. Featuring DJ Tikka Masala, Linda Saegert, Max Steele, and Elsa Waithe.
$5-10 suggested donation – no one turned away for lack of funds

Drae Campbell is a writer, actor, director, story teller, dancer, and nightlife emcee. Besides winning the 2011 Miss LEZ title, 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, YOU MOVE ME won the Audience Award for Outstanding Narrative Short at OUTFEST 2010 and has been shown in fesivals globally. She just won the grand prize at the first annual San Miguel De Allende Storytelling Festival in Mexico. Drae was dubbed “the next lezzie comedian on the block” by AfterEllen.com for her comedic stylings on the interwebs. Campbell throws a monthly party in Brooklyn called PRIME. Check her out online (her reel and her website www.draecampbell.com) and around town.

DJ Tikka Masala has been working in NYC nightlife since 2004, creating community on the dance floor, mixing a range of music that spans geographies, time and genres and responds intuitively to the audience at hand. She’s DJ-ed at the White House, Performa, Mass MOCA, Jacob’s Pillow, The Brooklyn Museum, and clubs all over the world. Tikka Masala, who is also multi-instrumentalist, composes and produces music for the Obie and Bessie award winning Brooklyn based feminist acrobatic dance company, LAVA, and has performed/scored live music at Dixon Place, The Mix Festival, BAM and BAX.
Hip Hop, House, classic reggae, global electronic music, South Asian folk music and classical traditions inspire her sensibilities in the studio and in the nightclub. During the day she works for Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice’s communications team.

Linda Saegert is a butch who currently works in sales. Being a Gemini, has had many careers: social worker, nurse, retail store manager and French Chef! In love with the woman of their dreams, they have 6 dogs! Linda also has 2 grown sons. Linda considers themself Genderqueer.

Max Steele is a performer and writer living in Brooklyn. He has presented work at Dixon Place, the New Museum, Deitch Projects, BAM, Joe’s Pub, Envoy Enterprises, PPOW Gallery, UPenn’s Kelly Writers’ House, the Afterglow Festival and the Queens Museum of Art. He writes the psychedelic porno poetry zine Scorcher, and his writing has been featured in Dossier Journal, Spank, East Village Boys, Birdsong, Vice, Noisey, and Best Gay Stories 2014. He has been an Artist in Residence at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange since 2012.

Elsa Waithe is a 26 year old comedian from Norfolk, Va. She’s a 3x winner of the ViRginia Beach Funnybone’s Clash of the Comics. Comedian, Actor, Motivational Speaker, Epicenter of every awesome party, and Inventor of the Nike Swoosh.

DEADLINE: Works-in-Progress from Cutting-Edge Queer Artists: May Edition!
2015-05-21 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Sabrina Chap brings you this works-in-progress series featuring new work from cutting-edge queer artists. Built on the notion that there’s no greater inspiration than a deadline, this series forces renegade artists to bring new and developing work to an audience for the first time. Part experimentation + part guaranteed failure = 100% awesomeness.
The May edition of DEADLINE will feature:

Leigh Hendrix – Theater – solo performance piece
Jamie Leo – Theater
Linda Lafayette – Writing
Jon Weatherman – Fiction

Interested in presenting your work in a future installment of Deadline? Fill out the form!
Artists of any kind are encouraged to submit.
https://goo.gl/forms/Z84O7GgVdB

Check out this article on the August edition of Deadline in Next Magazine: “BGSQD’s Deadline Gives Queer Artists Room To Create And Grow” by Chris Hernandez

Queer New York and Beyond: The Social Event Photography of Efrain John Gonzalez
2015-05-20 18:00 - 22:00 | NY
In conjunction with the Bureau’s current exhibition, A Buried Past, Forgotten Stories: The Sexual Underground of the Meatpacking District before Gentrification—The Photographs of Efrain John Gonzalez, we are very pleased to welcome Efrain back to the Bureau for another presentation of his photographs!
The presentation will feature Efrain John Gonzalez’s photographs of the events he covered in New York city from the 80’s til the present
Allana Star Parties
Annie Sprinkle Performances
Black and Blue Ball
Cave Canum
The Clit Club
Crowbar on 10th st
Drag kings in East Village
The Drag March
Folsom Street East
Gay Pride march on Fifth Avenue
gay protests
Gay Cable Network with Lou Maletta
Kate Bornstein
The Limelight
New York tattoo convention
Plato’s retreat on 34th St.
The Rated x show on 68th St.
Ron Athey
SMack Parties
The Duplex on Grove St.
The Sirens
Wigstock in Tompkins Square Park
…to name a few

Que(e)rying Theory #5: Leo Bersani's "Is the Rectum a Grave?"
2015-05-17 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Que(e)rying Theory is a discussion group about queer theory and critical theory for thinkers from all contexts. Reading texts both vintage and new, we will ask questions such as: What is queerness? What do queer politics look like? How do we find the tools for living in a precarious world? And finally, what can theory mean in our own lives? In dialogue with one another, we will fearlessly relish in the complexities of theory, and collectively work towards richer understandings of our past, present, and future. Discussions will be moderated by Connor Spencer, and for a small donation, wine, beer, and sparkling water will be available to help lubricate our conversations.
Que(e)rying Theory #5 will address Leo Bersani‘s 1987 essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?,” found in his book Is the Rectum a Grave? and Other Essays (U of Chicago, 2009).
Leo Bersani’s infamous essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?” not only launched a critical intervention into conversations about gay male sexuality at the height of the AIDS epidemic, but also inaugurated a long-standing debate in queer theory about relationality and the social order. We will be revisiting the essay in light of Bersani’s recently published reflection on the piece from After Sex? (Duke UP 2011), in which he recants and recalibrates some of his core arguments.

Both Leo Bersani’s Is the Rectum a Grave? and Other Essays and After Sex? On Writing Since Queer Theory, edited by Janet Halley and Andrew Parker, are available for purchase at the Bureau.

Please support the Bureau by purchasing your copy from the Bureau! Thank you!

PDFs of “Is the Rectum a Grave?” are available online, but please email the organizer if you need a copy of Bersani’s essay in After Sex?
connspencer [at] gmail [dot] com

***
Connor Spencer is a writer living in New York City. He studied English at New York University, where he conducted bi-coastal archival research on the artists David Wojnarowicz and Gary Fisher. In 2014, he was a finalist for the Marshall Scholarship. Connor tweets about leftism, queer politics, and dog costumes @conneriks.

Image: ACT UP (Gran Fury). Installation view: “Let the Record Show…” November 20 1987 – January 24 1988. Courtesy New Museum, New York. Photo: Fred Scrutin

Bullied No More
2015-05-16 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
A reading and discussion on gay people and having suffered being bullied by their peers through the years, in school, at home, and even in the workplace with Christopher Rosalie, Perry Brass, and Nicholas Bowman.
Reception at 7
Reading at 7:30

“My name is Christopher Rosalie. My pen name is Christopher Trevor. I’m proud to be a published author with more than thirty-five books to my credit, books of erotica and suspense mostly. At the end of March my two latest books, “Owned Men” and “Tickled Mindless” were released. Very soon I will be releasing my first self-published book, “Masters and Submissives of Subjugation.” I am also a budding photographer and I plan to make some of my stories into short films.
I’m a versatile writer in that I write a diversity and range of stories of erotica…and I also write about and advocate against gay bullying and all types of bullying.
Writing is my passion. When it comes to fiction I write the ideas I get that come to me from practically out of nowhere at times. I see that as a true gift that I have been given, to create stories that I enjoy writing and that others enjoy reading out of thin air. I’ve often said that when I’m writing I need to entertain myself first.
When it comes to writing about bullying I would say that I am fueled by my anger over the injustices that have been perpetrated upon gay people…bullied, harassed, bashed, and even murdered, all for something that none of us had a choice in, simply for being who we are.
Given the opportunity I would like to write a weekly column on the subject of gay bullying, because sadly, from what I see in the media, this scourge is not going away any time soon.
When I became a writer I never planned to be a writer on the subject of bullying, but it was when I read about the suicide of Tyler Clementi and the murder of Matthew Shepard that all changed, it all changed in a heartbeat.
When I read in the newspapers and saw on the news of how Mr. Clementi had been bullied to the point that he committed suicide and of how Matthew Shepard had been so brutally murdered I felt that I had to do something to make my own voice heard where these issues were concerned.
Because you see, after I read about Tyler Clementi’s suicide and the case that evolved from it, it brought back memories, many horrible, horrible memories of how I myself was relentlessly bullied, starting as far back as in the first grade in school. It was at that time, many years ago that I first learned the words faggot, fairy, queen, queer, (before we gay people took that particular word back for ourselves and use it now in an empowering fashion) and a host of other derogatory words that were used to describe gay people.
But the bullying didn’t just happen to me and other gay kids in school, it happened in our own neighborhoods; it was hurled at us from members of our own families, and sadly it even happened to me and others in the workplace, which for me personally at my former job turned into a literal living hell.
As a writer I work many long hours at my craft. I wake up two hours early every day in order to do some writing and I spend a few hours every night after work writing as well. What I write about, whether it be my own brands of erotica or the heinous subject of gay bullying, both subject matters are very important to me. They both speak to me in very informative voices; the two subject matters are a huge part of who I am. My gay peers are very important to me.
It is important to me if I can somehow make a positive difference for any gay people being bullied today, in school, in their homes, or even in the workplace. It is important to me to help these people find a voice.
Again, subjects, erotica and gay bullying are very important to me on a personal and universal level. Thank you.”

Perry Brass has published 19 books, including How to Survive Your Own Gay Life, The Manly Art of Seduction,The Manly Pursuit of Desire and Love, and his recent novel King of Angels, a gay Jewish, Southern coming-of-age novel set in Savannah, GA, in 1963, the year of J.F.K.’s murder. In 1969, he co-edited Come Out!, the world’s first gay liberation newspaper published by New York’s Gay Liberation Front. In 1972, he co-founded the Gay Men’s Health Project Clinic, New York’s first clinic for gay men, still operating as the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center. He is a founding coordinator of the New York Rainbow Book Fair.

Nicholas Bowman is the pseudonym of a semi-retired journalist who publishes erotica in print in anthologies edited by Christopher Trevor and online as Nate Stone on such sites as Katharsis.xxx and MetalbondNYC.com. The Nate Stone stories will be published soon in a book tentatively titled, My Balls Are Yours, Sir: 13 Tales of Sadism and Imagination.

Chicago in New York
2015-05-15 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
This reading brings together five poets from Chicago and the Midwest who currently find themselves in New York. Readers include Cortney Lamar Charleston, H. Melt, Angel Nafis, José Olivarez, and Diamond Sharp.

Cortney Lamar Charleston lives in Jersey City, NJ but originates from South Holland, IL. He is an alumnus of the University of Pennsylvania’s performance poetry collective, The Excelano Project, and a founder of BLACK PANTONE, an inclusive digital cataloging of black identity. His poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in Rattle, Beloit Poetry Journal, Eleven Eleven, Folio, The Normal School, Chiron Review, J Journal, Kweli Journal, Winter Tangerine Review, CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action and elsewhere. He has received nominations for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net.

H. Melt is a poet and artist who was born in Chicago. Their work proudly documents Chicago’s queer and trans communities. Their writing has been published by Chicago Artist Writers, Lambda Literary, and Them, the first trans literary journal in the United States. It is also forthcoming in the anthology Writing the Walls Down. They are the author of SIRvival in the Second City: Transqueer Chicago Poems and work at the Poetry Foundation. Find more about them at hmeltchicago.com.

Angel Nafis is a Cave Canem Fellow. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Union Station Magazine, MUZZLE Magazine, Mosaic Magazine and Poetry Magazine. She is an Urban Word NYC Mentor and the founder, curator, and host of the quarterly Greenlight Bookstore Poetry Salon reading series. She is the author of BlackGirl Mansion (Red Beard Press/ New School Poetics, 2012) Facilitating generative writing workshops and reading poems across the United States and Canada, she lives in Brooklyn.

José Olivarez is the son of Mexican immigrants. Originally from Calumet City, IL, he lives in the Bronx. He is a graduate of Harvard University, the Poet-Linc Manager for Lincoln Center Education, and he is an editor at Painted Bride Quarterly. He has performed and taught at high schools, universities, and book festivals across the country, and his work has been published or is forthcoming inThe BreakBeat Poets, The Acentos Review, Specter Magazine, Side B Magazine, Union Station Magazine, and Luna Luna Magazine among other places. His work has also been featured on Yahoo’s Ball Don’t Lie basketball blog, Chicago Public Radio, and on Mass Poetry’s PoeTry on the T program. His first book, Home Court, is available at https://homecourtpoems.tumblr.com/purchase.

Diamond Sharp spends her days being alive, black, and missing Chicago. You can read her writing in PANK, Fjords, Doll Hospital Journal and others.

Isherwood's America
2015-05-14 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Chris Freeman, Christopher Bram, Bill Goldstein, David Drake, and other special guests will read their favorite passages from the work of Christopher Isherwood, and there will be a discussion of THE AMERICAN ISHERWOOD (2015, University of Minnesota Press, edited by Chris Freeman and James Berg). Reception and signing following the discussion.

Chris Freeman is professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. His first book, THE ISHERWOOD CENTURY, won a Lambda Literary Award; he is on the board of the ONE Archives Foundation and the Monette-Horwitz Trust. He is a longtime contributor to THE GAY AND LESBIAN REVIEW.

Christopher Bram is the author of, among others, FATHER OF FRANKENSTEIN, which was adapted in the film GODS AND MONSTERS. His recent book EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGED AMERICA, shows how central gay literature is in the American canon.

Bill Goldstein is former founding editor of the books site of nytimes.com, book critic for NBC’s “Weekend Today in New York.” As editorial curator for “Times Talks,” the public speaker series of The New York Times, he programs and frequently moderates panel discussions on the arts, culture and politics. His book reviews, author interviews and coverage of the publishing industry have appeared regularly in The New York Times, Newsday, People and other publications

David Drake burst onto the scene with his one-man show THE NIGHT LARRY KRAMER KISSED ME twenty years ago. Writer, actor, and director, Drake has appeared on television, in films, and on stage in LAW & ORDER, THE GOOD WIFE, PHILADELPHIA, and THE BOYS IN THE BAND.

Reading Celebrating Mark Doty's Deep Lane
2015-05-13 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Join us for a reading celebrating the long-awaited publication of Mark Doty’s new book of poems, Deep Lane (W. W. Norton).
Gerald Stern says, “Mark Doty writes with absolute exactitude, with one eye on the ideal or absolute and one on the real; the ghost of Walt Whitman on one hand, and a laundromat on 16th Street in New York on the other. There is not a finer, more delicate, more sublime poet writing today in the English language. It’s a poet’s job to show us what we knew but never saw before; and it’s a poet’s job to tell us over and over what love is. Doty is this poet.”
Copies of Deep Lane will be available for purchase.
Please be advised of limited seating!
Hosted by friend of the Bureau Larry Kaplun.

Mark Doty is the author of nine books of poetry and four books of prose. His many honors include the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a Whiting Writers’ Award, and in the UK, the T. S. Eliot Prize. He serves as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University, and lives in New York City.

Get HARD with Wayne Hoffman
2015-05-10 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Author Wayne Hoffman reads from his steamy and comic debut novel, HARD, newly republished this month by Bear Bones Books. HARD follows a group of young AIDS activists trying to get laid and fight City Hall during NYC during the 1990s crackdown on gay businesses. Publishers Weekly called it “an intriguing exploration of politics and psyche,” while another reviewer quipped: “Think Woody Allen meets ACT UP.” Wayne will also give us a quick peek at AN OLDER MAN, the sequel to HARD, which is due out in June.

photo credit Frank Mullaney
Wayne Hoffman is the author of three books—HARD, SWEET LIKE SUGAR (winner of the Stonewall Book Award), and the forthcoming AN OLDER MAN. His essays and short stories have appeared in such collections as BEST GAY STORIES 2010, FRESH MEN 2, and MAMA’S BOY. As a cultural reporter, he has written for the Washington Post, Village Voice, The Nation, Billboard, and Instinct magazine; he is currently executive editor of Tablet magazine. He lives in the West Village and the Catskills.

Four Poets Celebrate Lyricism from a 21st Century Perspective
2015-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Austin Alexis, Charlie Bondhus, Dean Kostos, & Lynn McGee read from their recent books.

Austin Alexis is the author of one full-length collection: Privacy Issues, published by Lotus Press (Wayne State University Press, distribution). It was selected by California’s poet laureate emeritus, Al Young, to receive the Naomi Madgett Poetry Award. His two chapbooks, both published by Poets Wear Prada, are Lovers and Drag Queens and For Lincoln & Other Poems. One of his poems is included in a song cycle entitled Love Poems by composer David Morneau, recorded by Naxos. His plays have been performed and/or read at The Samuel French Short Plays Festival, Vineyard Theater, the NYC LGBT Center, Performance Space 122 and elsewhere. His short fiction, essays and poetry have appeared or are forthcoming in The Ledge: Poetry and Prose, Paterson Literary Review, Home Planet News, Poetry Pacific (Canada), The Long-Islander and the anthology Rabbit Ears: TV Poems, the first anthology of poetry about television.

Charlie Bondhus’s second poetry book, All the Heat We Could Carry, won the 2013 Main Street Rag Award and the Publishing Triangle’s 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry. His work appears or is set to appear in numerous journals, including Poetry, The Gay & Lesbian Review, CounterPunch, The Alabama Literary Review, and Midwest Quarterly. He is the poetry editor at The Good Men Project (goodmenproject.com).

Dean Kostos’s collections include This Is Not a Skyscraper (recipient of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award, selected by Mark Doty, forthcoming from Red Hen Press in April of 2015), Rivering, Last Supper of the Senses, The Sentence That Ends with a Comma, and Celestial Rust. He co-edited Mama’s Boy: Gay Men Write about Their Mothers and edited Pomegranate Seeds: An Anthology of Greek-American Poetry (its debut reading was held at the United Nations). He translated and compiled a suite of Ancient, Byzantine, and Modern Greek poems for an event sponsored by Rockefeller Foundation.
His work has appeared in over 300 journals, including The Bangalore Review (India), Boulevard, Chelsea, Cimarron Review, The Cincinnati Review, Mediterranean Poetry (Sweden), The Same, Southwest Review, Stand Magazine (UK), Vanitas, Western Humanities Review, on Oprah Winfrey’s website Oxygen.com, and elsewhere. His libretto, Dialogue: Angel of War, Angel of Peace, was performed by Voices of Ascension. His literary criticism has appeared on the Harvard UP Web site and Talisman. A multiple Pushcart-Prize nominee, and a finalist for the Gival and Jot Speak (UK) awards, he has taught at Wesleyan, The Gallatin School, and CUNY. His poem “Subway Silk” was translated into a film and screened in Tribeca and at San Francisco’s IndieFest. He is currently working on another collection of poems and a memoir.

Lynn McGee recently won the Bright Hill Press manuscript contest and her chapbook, Heirloom Bulldog, is forthcoming in late Spring 2015. Her full-length manuscript, Sober Cooking, is forthcoming from Spuyten Duyvil Press in January 2016. Her poems appear in recent or current issues of Storyscape, the American Poetry Review, Sensitive Skin magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Hawai’i Review, The Same and many other journals. With poet Gerry LaFemina, she co-curates the Lunar Walk Poetry Series in Brooklyn, and she works as a news writer for a CUNY college.

Queers Abroad: Poets Jee Leong Koh and John Marcus Powell Read
2015-05-08 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Two expatriate poets who have lived in New York long enough to consider themselves New Yorkers read their recent work.

Jee Leong Koh is the author of four books of poems, most recently “The Pillow Book” (Math Paper Press). His work has been anthologized in “New Poetries V” (Carcanet Press) and “Villanelles” (Everyman’s Library). He lives in New York City.

John Marcus Powell is a poet who is also an actor. He is Welsh and for the past 25 years has lived in New York. Before that he lived in London, Paris, Rome, and Oran. Harold Pinter, his favorite writer and a great influence, directed him in The Man in the Glass Booth, encouraged his writing, and helped him get his short stories published in Joe McCrindle’s Transatlantic Review. He flirts with any anarchic poet he meets and at the moment is romantically involved with Whitman, Rimbaud, and Borges.

Andrea Cohen, Patrick Donnelly, and Paul Lisicky: A Poetry Reading
2015-05-07 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Photograph by Francesca G Bewer
Andrea Cohen’s poems and stories have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New Republic, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. Her previous poetry collections include The Cartographer’s Vacation, winner of the Owl Creek Poetry Prize, Long Division, and Kentucky Derby. She has received a PEN Discovery Award, Glimmer Train’s Short Fiction Award, and several residencies at The MacDowell Colony. She directs the Blacksmith House Poetry Series in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the Writers House at Merrimack College. Her new collection, Furs Not Mine, will be released by Four Way Books in March.

Paul Lisicky is the author of LAWNBOY, FAMOUS BUILDER, THE BURNING HOUSE, and UNBUILT PROJECTS. His work has appeared in CONJUNCTIONS, DENVER QUARTERLY, FENCE, THE IOWA REVIEW, PLOUGHSHARES, TIN HOUSE, and elsewhere. His awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He has twice been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Men’s Fiction and in Autobiography. He teaches in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, in the low residency program at Sierra Nevada College, and at the Juniper Summer Writing Institute. He is the editor of STORYQUARTERLY and serves on the Writing Committee of the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. A memoir, THE NARROW DOOR, is forthcoming from Graywolf Press in January 2016.

PATRICK DONNELLY’s books of poetry are The Charge (Ausable Press, 2003, since 2009 part of Copper Canyon Press) and Nocturnes of the Brothel of Ruin (Four Way Books, 2012), the latter book a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and the former book a 2004 finalist for The Publishing Triangle Award for Gay Male Poetry. Donnelly is director of the Poetry Seminar at The Frost Place (Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH, now a center for poetry and the arts), and an associate editor of Poetry International. With his spouse Stephen D. Miller, Donnelly translates classical Japanese poetry and drama, including the Japanese poems in The Wind from Vulture Peak: The Buddhification of Japanese Waka in the Heian Period (Cornell East Asia Series, 2013). In 2013, Donnelly received a U.S./Japan Creative Artists Program award to fund a 3-month residency in Japan during 2014.

Examining the Gay Rights Movement: Its History and Possible Future Direction
2015-05-06 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Walter Frank will examine the history of the modern gay rights movement in the United States and will also discuss the upcoming Supreme Court case on same sex marriage and what the impact of a favorable or unfavorable decision might be on the future direction of the movement.
Walter Frank’s most recent book, Law and the Gay Rights Story: The Long Search for Equal Justice in a Divided Democracy (Rutgers University Press, 2014) will be available for purchase.

Walter Frank retired from his position as Chief of Commercial Litigation for The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in April 2005. Since then he has explored the relationship of constitutional law and democracy in several law review articles. His book, Making Sense of the Constitution, was named one of the outstanding university press books for the year 2012. His most recent book, Law and the Gay Rights Story: The Long Search for Equal Justice in a Divided Democracy, has received a number of favorable reviews, including in the New York Review of Books, the Gay and Lesbian Review, Publishers Weekly Online and the Lambda Literary Review.

Strange NYC
2015-05-03 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
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Three local speculative fiction writers– Richard Bowes, Robert Levy, and Sam J. Miller— read stories of the weird, the queer, and the otherworldly.

Richard Bowes is nominated for a 2015 Nebula Award. His most recent novel, DUST DEVIL ON A QUIET STREET was on the 2014 World Fantasy and Lambda Awards short lists. His publications include six novels, four story collections, seventy short stories. He has won two World Fantasy, the Lambda, Million Writers and IHG awards. Recent and forthcoming appearances include: Datlow’s The Doll Collection, Tor.com, XIII, Farrago’s Wainscot, Uncanny, F&SF, Interfictions, “Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2015”, “In the Shadow of the Tower.”

Robert Levy is an author of unsettling stories and plays whose work has been seen Off-Broadway. A Harvard graduate subsequently trained as a forensic psychologist, his first novel, the contemporary dark fairy tale THE GLITTERING WORLD, was published worldwide in February by Gallery/Simon & Schuster. Robert can be found in his native realm of Brooklyn, as well as online at TheRobertLevy.com.

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Lightspeed, Apex, Asimov’s, Electric Velocipede, Strange Horizons, The Minnesota Review, and The Rumpus, among others. He is a nominee for the Nebula Award, a winner of the Shirley Jackson Award and a graduate of the Clarion Writer’s Workshop. He lives in New York City, and at www.samjmiller.com

Speak OUT with Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus
2015-05-02 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Speaking OUT –Open Mic story telling and experience sharing
Join the photographer/author Rachelle Lee Smith, co-host Sam LaRoche, and subjects from the new book Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus while they speak OUT about their experiences in the book and beyond.
Subjects will discuss how they have changed alongside the change in society and today’s political climate and reflect upon their hand-written stories from over the last decade. There will be audience participation and you are encouraged to share your stories!
It is a powerful experience to have our voices strengthened by joining one collective voice. We are more significant together than we are alone. While the stories we share may differ, ranging from experiences with homophobia to youthful bravado and everywhere in between, together they create the narrative of growing up queer.

Rachelle Lee Smith is an award winning and nationally and internationally shown and published photographer and the author of the recently published Speaking OUT: Queer Youth in Focus.
Speaking OUT is a decade long collaborative photographic essay that explores a wide spectrum of experiences told from the perspective of a diverse group of young people, ages fourteen to twenty-four, identifying as queer (i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or questioning).
The body of work has been published in magazines such as The Advocate, School Library Journal and showcased by the Equality Forum, the Human Rights Campaign, National Public Radio, The Huffington Post, World Pride and the U.S. Department of Education.
The ongoing photographic essay was published this year by PM Press and Reach & Teach with a foreword and afterword by HRC’s Candace Gingrich and Graeme Taylor.
“Rachelle Lee Smith has created a book that is not only visually stunning but also gripping with powerful words and even more inspiring young people! This is an important work of art! I highly recommend buying it and sharing it!”
—Perez Hilton, blogger and television personality
Book published by PM Press and Reach and Teach

Sam LaRoche is a spoken word poet, musician and artist. Find out more about Sam by following her on Instagram @blacksheepmixtape.

NYC Launch of My Body Is Yours by Michael V. Smith and Nothing Looks Familiar by Shawn Syms
2015-04-30 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Two Canadian queer authors take New York by storm!

Improv artist, sex radical, genderqueer uni professor Michael V. Smith launches a memoir, My Body Is Yours (Arsenal Pulp Press), exploring his emancipation from masculinity. In a night of hijinks and stunnery, you can expect: sexy confessions, giveaways, tear-jerking, and a naughty touch of stand up improv hairyness.

Like Michael, Shawn Syms is also hairy—and so are the situations described in his debut short-fiction collection Nothing Looks Familiar (Arsenal Pulp Press). With a particular focus on the lives of the downtrodden and marginalized, the book marries a vivid and distinct sense of place―the sights and smells of a meatpacking plant; a church-basement meeting hall full of sexual abusers―with universal themes such as the nature of friendship and relationships, and the configuration of the self. Each author will take you to places both dark and light—real, and imagined.

Michael V. Smith is a writer, comedian, filmmaker, performance artist and occasional clown. His novel, Cumberland (Cormorant Books, 2002), was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada First Novel Award. Smith won Vancouver’s Community Hero of the Year Award and the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers. He teaches creative writing in an interdisciplinary fine arts department, Creative Studies, at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan.

Shawn Syms has written about sexuality, politics and culture for over 25 years in more than 50 publications. He’s the author of the short-story collection Nothing Looks Familiar, and he edited the first book of literary fiction about social media, Friend. Follow. Text. Shawn is currently at work on a novel about the power of dirty money, fetishistic sex and compulsive gambling.

NYC Launch of Best Sex Writing of the Year
2015-04-29 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Join Cleis Press in launching Best Sex Writing of the Year—a thought-provoking collection that traverses the spectrum of the contemporary sexual landscape.Editor Jon Pressick and contributors David Henry, Sterry, Stoya, and Lux Alptraum will read from their contributions as well as conduct an informal question and answer session exploring the intersections between sex and writing and how those can then be informed and affected by society and our personal selves.

Always thought provoking, these passionate yet incisive essays boldly confront the controversies surrounding our most deeply held assumptions about sexuality.

Jon Pressick (SexinWords.ca) is a Toronto-based writer, editor, blogger, radio personality and gadabout specializing in topics related to sex and sexuality for more than fifteen years.
Currently, Jon contributes to Kinkly.com and has been published on/in New York Magazine, MetAnotherFrog.com, Xtra, Quill & Quire and in the books Secrets of the Sex Masters and Best Sex Writing 2013. He primarily publishes to his blog, Sex in Words, sharing and contributing analysis of sex-related news stories, feature interviews and erotic fiction.
As one of the hosts and producer of Toronto’s sex radio institution Sex City, Jon has interviewed some of the sex community’s biggest names, including Cindy Gallop, Candida Royalle, Sunny Megatron, Susie Bright, Tristan Taormino, Kate McCombs, Reid Mihalko, Carol Queen, Dr. Charlie Glickman and many others (including many of the contributors to this collection!).
When he pulls himself away from the keyboard, Jon occasionally performs burlesque, DJs, speaks at sexuality conferences, acts as a juror for the Feminist Porn Awards, curates an erotica library and offers prostate pleasure and erotica workshops.
Throughout the years, Jon’s efforts have earned him TNT’s Sex Journalist of the Year Award and recognition as one of Broken Pencil‘s “50 People and Places We Love”.

Lux Alptraum is a writer, sex educator and consultant specializing in sex technology. Past projects have included gigs as the editor, publisher, and CEO of Fleshbot; a sex educator at an adolescent pregnancy prevention program; an HIV pretest counselor and the founder of ThatStrangeGirl, an alternative porn site, and Boinkology.

David Henry Sterry(davidhenrysterry.com), author of sixteen books, is a performer and activist. His bestselling memoir Chicken Self: Portrait of a Man for Rent has been translated into a dozen languages.Hos, Hookers, Call Girls and Rent Boyswas featured on the cover of the Sunday New York Times Book Review.

Stoya is an adult performer and writer. She recommends that you refrain from Googling her while at work. Read more of her words at graphicdescriptions.com.

Notes from the Underground – the Cabaret Scene in 1980s Japan
2015-04-26 18:30 - 21:00 | NY
A slideshow presentation by Japanese photographer Kazuo Sumida, which follows his uncle through the night, in the gay cabarets and bars of a small-town’s red-light district in the 1980s.
Tosa Late Night Diary, the book of photographs from which the slide presentation draws, is available for purchase from the Bureau.
Featuring a musical performance by Jarvis Earnshaw.

Kazuo Sumida has been active as a photographer for forty years, shooting in Japan, New York, Russia and France. A visiting lecturer of photography in Manila and Vladivostok, his publications include Memories of My Father: A Journey to Siberia, New York Subway Story and Tosa Late Night Diary.

Live from the Bureau! An Open Mic Night—Hosted by Charles Rice-Gonzalez
2015-04-25 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
LIVE from the BUREAU! An Open Mic Night
Organized by Andrew Bell
LIVE from the BUREAU! is a program featuring the original work of fledgling, emerging, established and seasoned live-performers, poets and visual artists. Come for songs, burlesque, spoken word, diary musings, violin solos, puppetry, and other queer induced happenings, including a pop-up gallery, with the overarching theme of: Oppression and Resistance/Fear and Hope. Expect individuals and small gangs, elders and twinks, the sacred, the profane, the tragic, the hilarious and everything in between, and come ready for anything.

The April installment of Live from the Bureau! is curated by El Museo del Barrio and hosted by Charles Rice-Gonzalez.

Featuring a special guest performance by RUBYCON.

SIGN UP TO PERFORM AT THE EVENT
FIRST COME, FIRST SERVED

Drew Bell is a full-time painter and Bureau volunteer happy to be making his contribution as an event organizer.

Tina Horn’s “Love Not Given Lightly” Book Release
2015-04-24 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Come celebrate this landmark in Tina’s career! Expect glitter, leather, refreshments, and a hot meat injection to your brain.
Love Not Given Lightly is the first major collection of nonfiction stories from award-winning filmmaker, journalist, and advocate Tina Horn. In her vast experience in sexual undergrounds, Tina has befriended pro-dommes, porn stars, kinky fetishists, rent boys, and more. Instead of writing a sex worker memoir, she opted to tell the stories of the people she met along the way. Illuminating human issues of desire, gender, beauty, and ultimately friendship, the stories in this book will do no less than alter the way you think about modern sexuality in America.

Tina Horn is a queer punk writer and professional macho slut. She produces and hosts the sexuality podcast, “Why Are People Into That?!”, now in its second season. Her writing on sex worker rights, dirty talk, and kink communities has appeared in Vice, Nerve, and Best Lesbian Erotica 2015. She has won two Feminist Porn Awards and once sold a golden dildo to Beyonce. Follow her ass (@TinaHornsAss)

Bi Book Club: Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men
2015-04-23 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
The Bi Book Club meets once a month to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise. People of all orientations and genders welcome! Dinner after nearby.
Our current book is Recognize: The Voices of Bisexual Men edited by Robyn Ochs & H. Sharif Williams (Dr. Herukhuti.) We plan to continue reading 2 sections per month of Recognize until we’re done with the book. Pick out some phrases or paragraphs that you’d like to discuss, that inspired you, or that struck you because of their elegant turn of phrase or the meaning behind it. If you havent had time to finish the readings, come anyway because we read passages from the book aloud for discussion. As usual, we’ll also be using the text as a jumping off point to further discussion of bisexual issues and personal experiences.
Getting Books: We urge you to purchase your print copy at BGSQD and support the only LGBT bookstore in New York City. Especially since they are hosting us in their space! If you prefer e-books, just get them your usual way.
Deciding Books: The group votes on what book to read next.
The Bi Book Club meets at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division on the last Thursday of each month.

Publishing Triangle Awards Finalists Reading
2015-04-22 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Nine finalists for Triangle Awards will read brief excerpts from their nominated works, including fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
The authors of the following nominated books will read at the Bureau on the eve of the Publishing Triangle Awards Ceremony:

Sideways Down the Sky, by Barry Brennessel (MLR Press);finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction)

How a Mirage Works, by Beverly Burch (Sixteen Rivers Press); finalist for the Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry

Little Reef and Other Stories, by Michael Carroll (University of Wisconsin Press); finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

Wagstaff: Before and After Mapplethorpe, by Philip Gefter (Liveright/W.W. Norton); finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction

The End of Eve, by Ariel Gore (Hawthorne Books); finalist for the Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction

Unaccompanied Minors, by Alden Jones (New American Press); finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

I Don’t Know Do You, by Roberto Montes (Ampersand Books); finalist for the Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry

New York 1, Tel Aviv 0, by Shelly Oria (Farrar, Straus and Giroux); finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction

When Everything Feels Like the Movies, by Raziel Reid (Arsenal Pulp Press); finalist for the Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction

The winners for the book awards will be announced at the awards ceremony on April 23, 2015 at the Auditorium of the New School in New York City.
For more information visit publishingtriangle.org

Poetry Reading: Michael Klein, Joan Larkin, and Tony Leuzzi
2015-04-18 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Poets Michael Klein, Joan Larkin, and Tony Leuzzi will read their poems. Each poet will read old and new poems, thereby promoting their past publications and generating buzz for their recent work.

Photograph by Shef Reynolds
Michael Klein’s third book of poems, The Talking Day (Sibling Rivalry Press) was both a Thom Gunn Award Finalist and a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. His second book, then, we were still living (GenPop Books), was a Lambda Literary Award finalist and his first book, 1990, tied with James Schuyler’s Collected Poems to win the award in 1993. His new book, A Life in the Theater will be published in the fall of 2015 by Sibling Rivalry Press. He also has written a collection of short, lyric essays, “States of Independence” which won the 2011 BLOOM Chapbook contest in non-fiction judged by Rigoberto Gonzalez and was published in 2012 and two memoirs Track Conditions (Lambda Literary Award finalist) and The End of Being Known, both published by the University of Wisconsin Press. His poems, essays and interviews with American poets have appeared in Poetry, American Poetry Review, Bloom, Fence, Tin House, Ploughshares, Provincetown Arts, Poets & Writers and many other publications. He has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Binghamton University, Manhattanville and for the last 20 years has been part of the graduate writing faculty at Goddard College, in Vermont. For many years he was on the faculty of the summer program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was a fellow in 1990 and now teaches at Castle Hill Center for the Arts in Truro, Massachusetts. He lives in New York City and Provincetown, Massachusetts and teaches at Hunter College.

Photograph by John Masterson
Joan Larkin’s fifth poetry collection, Blue Hanuman, was published in spring 2014 by Hanging Loose Press. Among her previous books, My Body: New and Selected Poems received the Publishing Triangle’s Audre Lorde Award. Other work includes Lambda Award winner Cold River, which served as the basis for her play The AIDS Passion; Sor Juana’s Love Poems, translated with Jaime Manrique; and the twenty-poem chapbook Legs Tipped with Small Claws. Joan was an activist publisher during the feminist literary explosion of the ’70s and ’80s, coeditor of several anthologies of poetry and prose, and author of two books in the Hazelden recovery series. She has taught writing at Brooklyn College, Sarah Lawrence College, and the Drew University MFA program in poetry, among many other places, most recently serving as Grace Hazard Conkling Writer in Residence at Smith College. Her honors include the Poetry Society of America’s Shelley Memorial Award, the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Photograph by J. Alfred
Tony Leuzzi’s third book of poems, The Burning Door, was published by Tiger Bark Press in spring 2014. His previous poetry collection, Radiant Losses (2010), won the 2009 New Sins Editor’s Prize, judged by Rane Arroyo. He has authored several chapbooks, including “Fake Book” (Anything Anymore Anywhere Press 2011) and “40,000 Crows” (Hank’s Loose Gravel Press 2012). In fall 2012, BOA Editions published Passwords Primeval, Leuzzi’s interviews with 20 leading American poets. As a visual artist, Leuzzi has held exhibitions of his collage, assemblage, and erasure paintings, many of which have informed or are informed by his poems. Currently an Associate Professor of Literature and Creative Writing at Monroe Community College, in Rochester, NY, Leuzzi has earned the Wesley T. Hansen Award for Excellence in Teaching and the State University of New York’s Chancellor’s Award for Creativity and Scholarship. He also oversees the college’s Creative Reading Series in fiction and poetry. His poems and interviews have been published or are forthcoming in National Poetry Review, Sentence, Great River Review, Arts& Letters, Provincetown Arts, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. He is a staff writer of book reviews and literary criticism for The Brooklyn Rail.

Rough Night Reading Series presented By Raspa Magazine
2015-04-17 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Rough Nights is a reading series created by Raspa Magazine in attempt to connect our audience and featured authors in way that extends past the page. We believe that through increased visibility and access the relationship between audience and authors can grow moreintimate and help spur understanding amongst ourselves as peers and for those outside our community.
Featuring:
Mónica Teresa Ortiz
Charlie Vasquez
Heidi Andrea Restrepo
Dan Vera
Raspa Magazine is a response to the paucity of queer Latino literature readily available to readers. It is a biannual queer literary magazine that focuses on the Latino perspective. Raspa intends to showcase the experience of queer Latino artists, thereby providing a better understanding for ourselves as peers and for those outside of our community. Raspa Magazine was started in Austin, Texas by César Ramos in the fall of 2012.

Mónica Teresa Ortiz is a writer and native Texan based in Austin. She holds a B.A. from UT-Austin, an MFA from UT-El Paso, and a chapbook called On a Greyhound Straight from the 915. Her work has appeared in Bombay Gin, Huizache, Pilgrimage Magazine, Paso del Rio Grande del Norte, Borderlands, As/US, The Texas Observer, Autostraddle and Black Girl Dangerous. A two-time Andres Montoya Letras Latinxs Poetry prize finalist
Charlie Vasquez is a queer Bronx-born writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican decent and author of the novels, Buzz and Israel, and Contraband. He has edited two anthologies of Latino literature The Best of PANIC! (Fire King, 2010) and From Macho to Mariposa (Lethe, 2011) with author Charles Rice-González. Charlie is the director of the Bronx Writers Center and is the New York City coordinator for Puerto Rico’s “Festival de la Palabra”. He currently resides in the Bronx.

Heidi Andrea Restrepo Rhodes is a feminist, second generation Colombian immigrant, writer and political activist. Committed to the arts as a practice of creative justice and community healing. Much of her work seeks to act as social documentation, as well as provocation. Her creative writing has been or is forthcoming in Wilde, The Progressive, Yellow Medicine Review, 2014 National Queer Arts Festival, and Nepantla. She currently resides in Brooklyn.

Dan Vera is a writer, editor, and literary historian living in Washington, DC. He is the author of two poetry collections: Speaking Wiri Wiri (Red Hen, 2013), the inaugural winner of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize, and The Space Between Our Danger and Delight (Beothuk Books, 2008). His poetry has been included in the writing curricula at colleges and universities and has appeared in various journals, including Notre Dame Review,Delaware Poetry Review, Gargoyle, and Little Patuxent Review, in addition to the anthologies Queer South, Divining Divas, and Full Moon On K Street. Named a 2014 Top Ten “New” Latino Author to Watch (and Read) by LatinoStories.com, he’s edited the gay culture journal White Crane, co-created the literary history site, DC Writers’ Homes, and chairs the board of Split This Rock Poetry.

Our Name
The title Raspa was carefully chosen for its linguistic significance. The word itself is reflective of the progression of the Spanish language. It is an integration of formal Spanish and colloquial speech. Through colloquial usage the traditional word raspar, which means “to scrape,” has morphed into raspa, the rainbow-colored shaved ice many of us grew up enjoying on hot summer days. It is from this current colloquial usage that Raspa draws its visual connotation: The rainbow-colored ice resembles the diversity symbol of the pride flag, and the cone suggests the inverted triangle that was once used to mark homosexual internment camp victims and is now being reclaimed as a symbol of pride and gay rights.

Poetry Reading with Brent Armendinger, Julia Bloch, Maxe Crandall, and Brian Teare
2015-04-16 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Join us for a poetry reading with Brent Armendinger, Julia Bloch, Maxe Crandall, and Brian Teare

Brent Armendinger is the author of The Ghost in Us Was Multiplying, newly released by Noemi Press, as well as two chapbooks, Undetectable and Archipelago. His work has recently appeared in Aufgabe, Bloom, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, and Web Conjunctions. Brent is a recipient of fellowships from Headlands Center for the Arts and Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Pitzer College, where he is an Associate Professor of English and World Literature.

Julia Bloch grew up in Northern California and Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Letters to Kelly Clarkson, a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Valley Fever, both from Sidebrow Books, and the manuscript in progress Contract Method, portions of which are forthcoming in Dusie and Little Red Leaves. Other work has appeared recently in Fact-Simile, The Offending Adam and The Volta. She works as associate director of the Kelly Writers House, teaches literature and creative writing at Penn, and coedits the online journal of poetry and poetics Jacket2.

Maxe Crandall‘s chapbook “Together Men Make Paradigms” was published last summer by Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs. The play premiered at Dixon Place and was shortlisted for the Leslie Scalapino Award. A 2014 Poetry Project Emerge-Surface-Be Fellow and a 2014 Poets House Fellow, Maxe just published a dance review in Women & Performance, has a 15-page poem about Cher forthcoming in Vetch, and is writing a new poets play, BOCCACCIO ON ICE.

A former NEA Fellow, Brian Teare is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the American Antiquarian Society. He is the author of four critically acclaimed books—The Room Where I Was Born, Sight Map, the Lambda Award-winning Pleasure, and Companion Grasses, a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award. His fifth, The Empty Form Goes All the Way to Heaven, will be out from Ahsahta in September. An Assistant Professor at Temple University, he lives in Philadelphia, where he makes books by hand for his micropress, Albion Books.
