DEADLINE: Works-in-Progress from Cutting-Edge Queer Artists: June Edition!
2015-06-11 19:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | 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 June edition of DEADLINE will feature:

Geoffrey Bridgman – Literature

Lauren Schleider – Visual Art

Jamila Reddy – Multi-DisciplinaryPerformance Art

Kyle Rogers – Theater

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

Launch Party for VYM, the drag magazine!
2015-06-12 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Celebrate the art of drag with the launch of VYM Magazine!
VYM, the drag magazine, celebrates its inaugural issue with an evening of readings and performances! VYM is a love letter to the art that exists in (and is inspired by) the world of Drag. Editors Johnny and Sasha Velour believe that a wonderful concept, such as drag, deserves an artful forum dedicated to all its incarnations — from camp and humor, fashion and art, to politics and theory. This new 100 page magazine features comics, essays, illustrations, interviews, photography, poetry, and more from more than 20 of todays most talented independent artists. To start with a bang, Johnny and Sasha asked their contributors to define the indefinable, “What is Drag?” Their answers are as varied and valid as the art itself, and their work reminds that there is no “right way” to do drag.

The evening will feature readings and performances by many of the issue’s contributors including: Crimson Kitty, Lady Winifred, Didi Panache, K. James, Wo Chan, Donald C. Shorter, Jr., and more!

Johnny Velour (Editorial Director) (a.k.a. John Jacob Lee) is a theatre artist and choreographer who has spent most of his career in one form of drag or another. He has toured internationally with Cats and The Wedding Singer.
Sasha Velour (Artistic Director) (a.k.a. Sasha Steinberg) is a comics artist, designer, and drag queen. Sasha holds a BA in Literature from Vassar College, an MFA in Cartooning from CCS, and studied queer arts on a Fulbright Fellowship in Moscow, Russia. He is the creator of the Stonewall comic series. ahsasha.com

Bureau Book Club Discusses Larry Kramer's The American People, Volume 1: Search for My Heart
2015-06-14 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for a discussion of Larry Kramer’s The American People, Volume 1: Search for My Heart
Larry Kramer’s first novel, Faggots, shocked a generation with its Swiftian indictment of ’70s clone sex culture on the West Side and Fire Island. His play The Normal Heart, a searing polemic against apathy and evil set during the outbreak of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, has moved generations of audiences. For thirty years, he’s been at work on a multi-thousand-page epic attempting to situate queers at the center of American history. It takes us from Abraham Lincoln orgies to monkeys swapping AIDS before the dawn of human civilization, from a Jewish family outside Washington, DC to secret Nazi camps in North Dakota. Lawrence D. Mass, co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis, says the book demands a reconsideration of “nothing less than the entirety of [American] history, calling it “Eloquent, powerful, epochal, defiant, relentlessly in your face and tough as shit on everyone and everything.” Volume 1 is ready. Are you?

The book was released April 5, and due to its length – 775 pages – we’re holding our discussion June 14. Buy it anytime at the Bureau. Don’t feel you need to have finished – or started – the book to join us. Stay tuned for news about possible special guests!

The discussion will be moderated by Ben Miller, a writer and researcher in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Learn more about him at benwritesthings.com, he tweets @benwritesthings

“He’s been struggling with this history for many years…How much did he find out? How much shame and horror at all that was and is being enacted and endured? Shame for whom?…He decides to finally belly up to this assignment on that day when he hears the President refer to ‘The American People’ and realizes that the president of the United States is not talking about him or his people, and that he, Fred Lemish, had best do something about it.” – the opening lines of The American People

Evening with West Village writer Kate Walter reading from her debut memoir: Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing (Heliotrope Books)
2015-06-19 19:00 | NY
Journalist and professor Kate Walter reads from her debut memoir: Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing (Heliotrope Books)

Reception at 7
Reading at 7:30

How long does it take to get over heartache? Journalist and teacher Kate Walter wondered if she’d ever feel whole again after her long term lesbian partnership ended.

A resident of Greenwich Village who spent years recording neighborhood life, Walter now releases her debut memoir Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing (Heliotrope Books, June 2015).

Dedicated to “women who have been dumped after 25 years,” Walter’s memoir describes her broke, brokenhearted state after being left by her partner of two decades. While many older women—gay and straight—experience divorce, Walter’s was more stressful since she was not legally married. But rather than dwelling in regret, Looking for Kiss carries a universal message about loss and recovery: you can heal your life and land up in a better place.

With brave and revealing details, Walter confesses her grief and rage and questions her past choices. Seeking answers and spiritual solace, she joins a gay-positive church, visits psychics, throws herself into yoga and chanting, and starts dating again at 60.

Like the urban landscape that serves as her backdrop, Walter’s fast-paced dialogue has a raspy realness and soulful edge. She describes loneliness and longing with humorous and poetic prose. Anyone seeking hope will cheer this funny, gutsy narrator who loses love but finds herself.

Kate Walter has been living in downtown Manhattan since 1975 when she escaped across the river from New Jersey. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Newsday, New York Daily News, AM-NY, the Advocate and many other outlets. She teaches writing at CUNY and NYU

Deeply Leisured with Queenie Bon Bon
2015-06-21 18:00 - 21:00 | NY
DEEPLY LEISURED is a hybrid performance that spans the genres of stand up comedy, performance, lecture, and consciousness-raising story telling. Queenie Bon Bon presents narratives detailing her deep love for her clients & coworkers, and the eternal joys and mysteries of working with bodies. She also shares stories on coming out as a sex worker to her mother, whorephobia and internet dating, and tips on covering up when you peed on the carpet at your workplace. A tender and true look into her lived experience as a sex worker, coworker solidarity, as well as social and political issues surrounding sex work, DEEPLY LEISURED is a performance full of intrigue and inspiration.
Suggested donation $5 to $15
Deeply Leisured premiered at Melbourne Fringe Festival and has since showed at Sydney’s infamous queer warehouse performance venue The Red Rattler, Hares and Hyenas Queer Bookshop as part of Scarlett Alliance’s National Sex Worker Forum, at Adelaide Fringe Festival and has also been performed as a fundraiser for the English prostitute’s collective in London. Queenie Bon Bon is an up and coming political comedic writer and performer. Aside from performing Deeply Leisured, she has done readings on the delights of being human furniture, fragmented realities and talked panels about the importance of decriminalisation and myth busting. Queenie is part of the Debbie’s (Australian sex worker art collective) and has spent several years working on a sex worker oral story telling archival project, and is now writing her first novel. Queenie has worked as a dancer, in massage parlours and in brothels over Australia as well as in the UK.

Rainbow Book Fair Readings: Lammy Winners 2015
2015-06-24 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Before we say goodbye to June and Pride, let’s take a couple more hours to celebrate the winners of the 2015 Lambda Literary Awards with some of the winners who live right here in New York City. Readers will include Diana Cage, author of Lesbian Sex Bible: The New Guide to Sexual Love for Same-Sex Couples (winner for Lesbian Erotica), as well as Whitney Strub, a contributor to Understanding and Teaching U.S. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History (winner for LGBT Anthology) and some still to be determined guests.

Diana Cage was editor of the lesbian magazine On Our Backs and host of The Diana Cage Show on SiriusXM Radio. Her work has appeared in Curve, Girlfriends, Quartz, Shewired, The Advocate, Esquire, and other publications. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches writing at Pratt Institute.

Whitney Strub is an associate professor of History and director of the Women’s & Gender Studies program at Rutgers University-Newark. He is the author of Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right (Columbia, 2011) and Obscenity Rules: Roth v. United States and the Long Struggle over Sexual Expression (Kansas, 2013).

Opening reception: Hunter Reynolds and Maxine Henryson: I-Dea The Goddess Within Gay Pride 1994
2015-06-26 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Hunter Reynolds and Maxine Henryson
I-Dea The Goddess Within
Gay Pride 1994
June 18 to September 6, 2015
Bureau of General Services—Queer Division
@The LGBT Community Center
208 West 13th Street, Room 210
New York, NY 10011
contact@bgsqd.com
Opening Reception on Friday, June 26, 7 to 10 PM

The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division is pleased to present a selection of iconic photographs from I-DEA, The Goddess Within, a historic collaboration of the performance artist Hunter Reynolds, aka Patina du Prey, and documentary photographer Maxine Henryson. From 1993 to 2000, Henryson and Reynolds traveled to Berlin, Antwerp, Los Angeles, New York and other cities, creating guerrilla-like street performances and interventions. Spinning in a large white dress, Patina existed as a mythical dervish figure that deliberately disrupted gender norms in order to relate to the viewer as a shamanistic transgendered embodiment of fantasy and healing. I-DEA, The Goddess Within challenged notions of queer identity, performance art, and the social landscape of the 1990’s.

For this exhibition, the artists will present a selection of photographs from Gay Pride in New York on the 25th anniversary of Stonewall and the Gay Games in 1994. The years of 1993 and 1994 were two of the most devastating years of the AIDS epidemic. During this anniversary year there was a dispute between the organizers of the Pride Parade (Heritage of Pride), Mayor Giuliani, and the political activists participating in the annual parade, such as ACT UP, the Dykes on Bikes, and the Radical Faeries, who did not want to participate in the commercial marketing of the Gay Games or the changing of the Parade route to pass by the United Nations. The LGBTQ parade, for the first time, split into two parades: the official parade and the Radical Queers parade. The Dykes on Bikes led some 60,000 Radical Queers and Faeries from the Stonewall Inn up 5th Ave to Central Park. Many of the participants were naked and queers jerked off in front of St Patrick’s Cathedral. The community was fractured; the oppression of Giuliani era was beginning, and our parade was split.
Since 1992, Reynolds had been living in Berlin and returned to perform the Memorial Dress for Creative Time’s official Gay Games Art Event. Reynolds recalls that “I wanted to do a healing dervish dance on the steps of the NYPL under the pink triangle of the banner Becoming Visible: The Legacy of Stonewall, The New York Public Library’s groundbreaking 1994 exhibition, which was the largest and most extensive display of lesbian and gay history ever mounted in a museum or gallery space. It was spontaneous combustion. The parade stopped and thousands cheered. The naked Radical Faeries spun with me. It was a truly spectacular and moving moment in my life. I was so grateful to be alive and proud to be Queer.”

Hunter Reynolds has been using photography, performance and installation for over thirty years to express his experience as an HIV-positive gay man. He was an early member of ACT UP, and in 1989 co-founded Art Positive, an affinity group of ACT UP, to fight homophobia and censorship in the arts. His work addresses issues of gender, identity, socio-politics, sexual histories, mourning, loss, survival, hope and healing. Hunter Reynolds was born in 1959 in Rochester, Minnesota. Reynolds is an AIDS activist and a Visual AIDS artist member and has been the recipient of grants and residencies, including several Pollock Krasner awards. He has had numerous solo exhibitions including: Iceberg Projects, IL; P.P.O.W Gallery, NY; Participant Inc., NY; Hallwalls, NY; White Columns, NY; Artist Space, NY; Simon Watson Gallery, NY; Creative Time, NY; Momenta, NY; Bernard Toale Gallery, MA; ICA Boston, MA; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, CA; NGBK, Germany; and DOCUMENTA, Kassel, Germany. His work is numerous public and private collections including The Society for Contemporary Art Chicago, IL; Yale University Art Gallery, CT; the Addison Gallery of American Art, MA and The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, MD. The Fales Library and Special Collections/New York University houses the archives of Hunter Reynolds in its Downtown Collection. Hunter Reynolds is represented by P.P.O.W. For more information about the artist please contact: info@ppowgallery.com

Maxine Henryson is an artist and bookmaker who creates sensual, poetic photographs of the seemingly every day. She explores perceptions of the feminine in the world, examining the differences and similarities between cultures. Her work traces evidence of divinity, rituals, place, memory and history in the West and East.
Born in Jackson, Mississippi, she lives and works in New York. She studied sociology at Simmons College (B.S.) and University of London (Masters of Philosophy) and has an M.A.T. from the University of Chicago in studio arts and M.F.A. from the University of Illinois at Chicago in photography. Her photographs have been widely exhibited in the United States and Europe and are in numerous public and private collections including the Celanese Photography Collection, the Russian Museum, Norton Museum of Art, and the Middlebury College Museum of Art. Selected group exhibitions include ARC Gallery, Chicago (The Body in Revue), Gallery Espace, New Delhi (Marvelous Reality/Lo Real Maravilloso), Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York (Lives of the Hudson), Unscharf (out of focus), after Gerhard Richter at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg Germany and O.K. Harris Gallery, New York (Illuminators). Her most recent solo exhibitions were at A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn in 2014 (Ujjayi’s Journey.) and Kleinschmidt Fine Photographs, Wiesbaden, Germany. (Calculated Coincidence). Maxine Henryson taught photography at the International Center of Photography, New York, and Bennington College (1996-2006). Henryson’s artist books are Ujjayai’s Journey (Kehrer, 2012), Red Leaves and Golden Curtains (Kehrer, 2007) and Presence (Artist Publications, 2003). Henryson is represented by A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn.

Then, and Then, and Now: 2 Gay Memoirists from Different Generations Discuss Their Gay Histories
2015-06-27 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Brad Gooch and David Crabb will read from and discuss their respective memoirs. Brad Gooch’s Smash Cut is a searing memoir of life in New York City in the 1970s and 1980s, and Crabb’s Bad Kid is a hilarious, poignant story about a boy growing up gay (and Goth) in San Antonio, Texas at a time and place where it was hard to be one, near impossible to be the other.

Photograph By Henny Garfunkel
Brad Gooch is the author of the acclaimed biographies City Poet and Flannery: A Life of Flannery O’Connor (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award), as well as other nonfiction and three novels. The recipient of National Endowment for the Humanities and Guggenheim fellowships, he earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University and is professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey. He lives in New York City.

Photograph By Julia Gillard
David Crabb is a performer, writer, teacher & storyteller in New York City. He is a Moth Story Slam host and three-time Moth Slam winner. His solo show “Bad Kid” was met with critical acclaim from The New York Times, MTV, Flavorpill, NY Metro and many others, and named a New York Times Critics’ Pick. The show has been performed in NYC since 2011 & completed a sold-out run in Virginia in 2013. “Bad Kid” will play in Texas and California in 2015.

Sharp Edges: Butcher’s Sons & Paris Demands
2015-07-01 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
The Sharp Edges book launch features new novels by Lethe Press’ Scott Alexander Hess (The Butcher’s Sons) and Mike Miksche (Paris Demands). These two authors will face off in a lively interview segment about their provocative books set respectively in the gritty streets of Hell’s Kitchen circa 1930 and in Paris’ glorious underbelly. It’ll be an evening of edgy conversations, live music, book giveaways, and of course French cheeses and Hell’s Kitchen (butchered) meats.

Reception @ 7PM, Interactive Interview @ 8PM

Scott Alexander Hess earned his MFA in creative writing from The New School. He blogs for The Huffington Post, and his writing has appeared in Genre Magazine, The Fix, and elsewhere. Hess co-wrote “Tom in America,” a short film starring Sally Kirkland and Burt Young. The Butcher’s Sons is his third novel. His debut novel Diary of a Sex Addict has been translated into German. Originally from St. Louis, Missouri, Hess now lives in Manhattan, New York.

Mike Miksche’s work has appeared in Instinct, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, and The Blue Lyra Review. He is the writer of Hole and Corner, a weekly column for Daily Xtra, which explores the profound connections forged through BDSM and public sex (https://www.dailyxtra.com/contributor/Mike%20Miksche). Paris Demands is his first novel.

DEADLINE: Works-in-Progress from Cutting-Edge Queer Artists: July Edition!
2015-07-02 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 July edition of DEADLINE will feature:

Jesse Phillips-Fein – Dance

Melody Jane – Performance Art

Taylor Derwin – Fiction

Kate Brandt – Film

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

Bureau Closed For Independence Day Weekend
2015-07-03 - 2015-07-05 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Friday, July 3rd, Saturday, July 4th, and Sunday, July 5th.

Together Again: Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat Fellows Reunite
2015-07-09 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
Three fiction writers and two poets from the 2007 and 2008 Lambda Literary Emerging Writers Retreat read from their work.

Shelley Ettinger is a longtime activist in LGBTQ, anti-racist, anti-war and union struggles. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in dozens of literary journals. Vera’s Will is her first novel.

Charles Rice-González, born in Puerto Rico and reared in the Bronx, is a writer, long-time community and LGBT activist, co-founder of BAAD! The Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance and a Distinguished Lecturer at Hostos Community College – CUNY. He received an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Goddard College. His debut novel Chulito(Magnus Books 2011) has received nearly a dozen awards including a 2013 Stonewall Book Awards – Barbara Gittings Literature Award Honor from the American Library Association and a “Small Press Highlights” mention from the National Book Critics Circle. He co-edited From Macho To Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction (Tincture/Lethe Press 2011) and his award-winning play I Just Love Andy Gibb will be published in Blacktino Queer Performance: A Critical Anthology (Duke Press 2016). He serves on the boards of the Bronx Council on the Arts and the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures.

Michael Montlack is the author of the poetry collection Cool Limbo (NYQ Books) and the editor of the Lambda Finalist essay anthology My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them (University of Wisconsin Press). His work recently appeared in Cimarron Review, Barrow Street, Mudfish, The Cortland Review and Assaracus. He lives and teaches in New York City and has been awarded residencies/fellowships from VCCA, Ucross, Lambda Literary Foundation and Oberpfalzer Kunstlerhaus in Germany.

Carol Rosenfeld is a New York City-based writer and poet. Her short stories have appeared in several lesbian erotica and LGBT horror anthologies. Her debut novel, The One That Got Away, is being published in June 2015.

Ely Shipley’s first book, Boy with Flowers, won the Barrow Street Press book prize judged by Carl Phillips, the Thom Gunn Award, and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. His chapbook, On Beards: A Memoir of Passing, is forthcoming from speCt! books. His poems and essays appear in the Western Humanities Review, Prairie Schooner, Willow Springs, Florida Review, Phoebe, Greensboro Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Witness, Diagram, Gulf Coast, Fugue, Third Coast, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA from Purdue University and a PhD from the University of Utah. He is an Assistant Professor at Baruch College, CUNY.

For Sizakele Book Release: 14 Years In The Making
2015-07-10 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene will read from her brand new book, For Sizakele. She will also perform electric, sugarcane-flavored poetry. Her performance will be followed by a question and answer session and book signing. This performance is a celebration of the over 14 years of love, work, sweat, passion and magic it has taken to bring forth this very necessary book. This event is part of the For Sizakele World Tour.
Suggested donation: $5

Please Note: To reserve your copy of For Sizakele in advance, please purchase your copy here: https://myloveisaverb.ticketleap.com/for-sizakele-bureau-nyc/ (Purchasing For Sizakele now reserves a copy for you. Your copy of the book will be available when you arrive at the event. This is the only way to ensure that you will have a copy before they sell out.) ￼

About the book: For Sizakele by Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene
Taylor, a queer Nigerian college student, is in a passionate relationship with Lee, a Black American basketball-playing pianist. When Taylor develops romantic feelings for Sy, a Cameroonian photographer whose similarities make them instant family, Taylor battles Lee’s jealousy. As Taylor encounters challenges to her femme and African identities, she finds ways, through the kinship of her friends, to define herself on her own terms. For Sizakele addresses transcontinental identity, intimate partner violence, queer gender and how we love as illuminators of who we are. ￼

Photograph By An Xiao
Yvonne Fly Onakeme Etaghene is an Ijaw and Urhobo Nigerian dyke performance activist, poet, dancer, educator, actress and visual artist. She engages a radical vulnerability and candor in her artwork and uses storytelling to build an authentic human connection through passionate artistic expression. Etaghene is a mixed-media visual artist who has produced 4 solo art exhibitions and performed internationally. She is the founder of Sugarcane, an LGBTQ Of Color writing workshop based in the principles of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People. She wrote and performed in two multi-media one-woman shows, Volcano’s Birthright{s} and GUAVA. Etaghene has published 4 chapbooks of poetry: afrocrown: fierce poetry (2000), write or die (2004), tongue twisted transcontinental sista (2006) and skin into verse (2014.) She released an album of poetry and music entitled liberty avenue, nigeria, usa (2004.) Etaghene is the author of For Sizakele, a novel that addresses transcontinental identity, intimate partner violence and how we love as illuminators of who we are. www.myloveisaverb.com, twitter: @myloveisaverb

Hand Crafted Art Fair @ BGSQD
2015-07-12 14:00 - 19:00 | NY
Art and crafts for sale by a diverse selection of local queer artisans. Please stop in to support the arts, meet the artists and hang at the bureau!

Sam Branman: Ten Yards Clothing is a queer sportswear label making bright, colorful sportswear. From custom leggings, singlets, wedding outfits, and drag, to harnesses, scarves, hats, cute crop tops, tees, tanks, and skirts, we got it all! Ten Yards Clothing also sells vintage 80’s jewelry for those who really want a conversation starter.

James McNally is a working artist living in the Brooklyn area . for most of his life.He has showed his work at coffee shops and east village bars and Clubs.he works usually mixed media on anything suitable he can find.Clothing .found objects smashed guitars or jusr oil on canvas.

Jerek Carper: Established in Chicago, based in Brooklyn. O’boros soaps are the products of adventurous fragrance blends and traditional home made hot process soap.

Daniel Casanova: All these earrings have been made using Japanese seed beads and Swarovski crystals and pearls. My partner and I have just started making these recently but we have had very good feedback.

Robin Crutchfield: As a performance artist/writer/musician in the 1970s, Robin found critical acclaim as part of the No Wave movement with bands DNA and Dark Day transitioning into solo work with trancelike harp and drone. He continued his creative pursuits in various arenas, including recent endeavors exploring the use of cotton crochet slipstitch methods. His whimsy includes pointy hats, dolls, and colorful catch-call bags. Also, some of his music CDS and books-“Eleven Faerie Tales” and “A,B,C, Desire” an erotic alphabet, will be available. Perhaps even some handwhittled wands.

Caleb Kruzel: Goon Soul specializes in leather accessories and altered clothing. At his table you will find harnesses, rings, customized digs, screen prints, and other handmade oddities.

Chioma Okotieuro: I have been making jewelry of one sort or another for the last 17 years. I started a non profit called Good Works and began to make bracelets to fund my endeavors to do “give” to people in need ‘just because’ and Chi Intentioned was born. I make earrings, bracelets, pendants, necklaces, rings, waistbeads and headpieces using crystals, stones, shells and good intentions.

Gemini: Bearly knits handmade scarves, cowls, and shawls are made by musician and former model, “Gemini.” Bearly knits crochet and knitwear utilizes only the best materials for its pieces and each design is completely one of a kind. Custom yarn options are also available upon request.​​
Don’t just standout…be unforgettable with Bearly Knits.

(DLOnLocation2015) Your Words Give Me a Headache
2015-07-13 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Kajsa Dahlberg, Female Fist, 20 min, HD video, 2006
Dylan Mira, Untitled (Agua Viva), 13 min, HD video, 2013
Mariah Garnett, Picaresques, 20 min, 16mm transferred to HD video, 2011

Your Words Give Me A Headache is a group program that brings together the work of contemporary feminist filmmakers thinking about language, the fluxes between literature and moving image, matters of expression, experience, representation and communication’s failure. The films tackle social relationships and unconventional story-telling, ranging from the unlike relationship between a grown up filmmaker and the infant she’s trying to work with in her movie (Garnett), to family’s lack of communication mediated by Clarice Lispector’s master piece Agua Viva (Mira) and the unfulfilled promise of a feminist, anarchist, queer porn project that can’t even be represented on camera by a spokesperson (Dahlberg).

Curator: Clara López Ménendez

Dirty Looks: On Location is a series of queer intervention in New York City spaces. Over the course of July, artist film and video will appear in these queer social spaces and former sites of queer sociality (like shuttered bars, bathhouses, and former meeting zones). A new piece, a different setting on each night of July. The summer in New York is hot, sticky and social. Installing moving image works around the city in bars, centers and “haunted” venues allows for the free flow of viewers to engage and celebrate with work, in evening events that commemorate contemporary moving-image production and its precedents in queer culture.
Click here for a complete listing of Dirty Looks: On Location, July 1-31, 2015

What Makes a Queer Relationship Queer? The Queer Relationships Project Presentation and Discussion
2015-07-15 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
What makes a Queer Relationship Queer? What makes it successful? Our relationships challenge the heteronormative model, yet we don’t have common and visible alternatives.
The Queer Relationships Project is a new online resources archive and oral history project, aimed at making models, theories and practices easily accessible and visible. In this presentations, we would like to to share some things we learned so far, and to hear about your experiences, challenges, inspiration and dreams. In a culture where the dominant heteronormative model still reigns supreme in mainstream politics, and even gains more hold in the LGBT community (ie, the same-sex marriage agenda), this project has a strong political goal: we want this project to serve as a tool for our under-represented community, to keep these alternative and radical relationships and their structures visible, known and accessible, and to present them as viable and relevant.
Disco is a local activist and community organizer in the queer and Radical Faeries communities in New York City. Their personal journey of exploring different relationships has been an exciting part of living in a queer community. These experiences, together with multiple discussions with friends, lovers and family inspired them to create The Queer Relationships Project (https://www.queerrelationships.org), in hope to become better partners, lovers and friends, and to engage in a discussion on a topic that has great influence on our everyday lives as queers.

Book Launch and Reading of Try Me by Niel Rosenthalis (Deadly Chaps Press)
2015-07-16 19:00 - 21:30 | NY
This is the launch party and reading for Try Me (Deadly Chaps Press), a chapbook of poems by Niel Rosenthalis. Friends of the poet will read as well, including Rickey Laurentiis, Joanna C. Valente, Robert Whitehead, and Marni Ludwig.
Not just insight, but the strange detours consciousness must take to know itself–“I’m interested in the edge/I strive toward;” not just desire, but the strange ways it flashes in and out of time; there’s no one writing quite like Rosenthalis. “Buscando ser más,” said Paulo Freire, and this is poetry that demands more, from experience, the self, the poem itself. Then there’s the rueful elegance: “the decade was lit from behind”; “let me capitulate, O eyeless flies…” A deep sense of responsibility to the art shines through experiment and erasure. Try Me is an extraordinary debut.
— D. Nurkse
Rosenthalis’s Try Me is both a dare and a plea, as well as a meditation on time as it relates to questions of the body, sex, desire, and love, not as hierarchy, but in every thrilling combination and order. Rosenthalis blends the lyric with the conceptual both to get at “the specific, not the small,” and as a kind of balm or “heal-over of cruelty.” “I am a genius,” he writes, “I want to show the world true feeling,” and he does. Rosenthalis’s love poems wear philosophical masks, while his logic and its aesthetics fulfill the imperative of the title to “turn tomorrow on.”
— Marni Ludwig

Nathaniel Rosenthalis earned his B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a candidate in the M.F.A. poetry program at Washington University in St. Louis. His poems have appeared in Yes, Poetry and Tinge. Essays appear or are forthcoming from the Los Angeles Review of Books, Essay Daily, and Jam Tarts Magazine.
Rickey Laurentiis was born in New Orleans, Louisiana. He is the author of Boy with Thorn, selected by Terrance Hayes for the 2014 Cave Canem Poetry Prize (University of Pittsburgh Press, September 2015). His poems appear in Poetry, The New Republic, Fence, Boston Review, among other journals. He currently resides in Brooklyn, New York.
Joanna C. Valente is sometimes a mermaid and sometimes a human. She is the author of Sirs & Madams (Aldrich Press, 2014) and received her MFA at Sarah Lawrence College. Her second collection Marys of the Sea is forthcoming from ELJ Publications in 2016. Some of her work appears or is forthcoming in The Huffington Post, Columbia Journal, Similar Peaks, The Paris-American, The Atlas Review, BORT Quarterly, among others. In 2011, she received the American Society of Poet’s Prize. She founded Yes, Poetry in 2010,and is the Managing Editor for Luna Luna Magazine. More can be found at joannavalente.com.
Robert Whitehead is a poet. He received his MFA in Writing from Washington University in St. Louis in 2013, and has been a fellow at the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets, Ashbery Home School, and The Rensing Center. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Assaracus, Gulf Coast, Vinyl, LIES/ISLES, Verse Daily, Upstart and elsewhere. He is currently the Grant Writing Associate at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Assistant Editor for Vinyl Poetry. He lives in Brooklyn, where he co-curates Shirley, a monthly reading series.
Marni Ludwig is the author of Pinwheel, selected by Jean Valentine for the 2012 New Issues Poetry Prize and Little Box of Cotton and Lightning, chosen by Susan Howe for a 2011 Poetry Society of America Chapbook fellowship. She holds degrees from Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, and Washington University in St. Louis. She’s from Brooklyn, NY.

Bi Book Club: The Summer of Sex
2015-07-23 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.
The Bi Book Club theme for July & August is “The Summer of Sex.” Our book for July is The Prince of Punk Rock by Jenna Galicki (on sale now at the Bureau). This is a very sexy, very bisexual erotic romance.
I love her, but I also love him.
She’s everything to me.
He sets my world on fire.
It’s our dirty little secret, and it’s about to blow our record deal sky high.
I’m Tommy Blade, the Prince of Punk Rock, and this is our story.
What are your favorite sex scenes? Favorite dramatic scenes? 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. Give us your critique of the book. What worked, what didnt, how was bisexuality represented? 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.
Our next book: Memoirs of a Gigolo, by Livia Ellis, Omnibus Vol. 1-4 available at the Bureau.
We will be voting on what book we want to read after that, so check the list of Bisexual Book Award finalists for this year and last year for some ideas.
Getting Books: We urge you to purchase your print copy at the Bureau 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.

RSVP on Bi Meetup

The Bi Book Club meets at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division on the last Thursday of each month.

TELL 14: Vacations
2015-07-30 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.
Vacations is the theme of the fourteenth installment of TELL. Featuring Mizz June, Mariel Reyes, Jamila Hammami, & Larry Darnell Penn Whitfield.
$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.

Jamila Hammami is a queer first generation Tunisian Arab American woman of color community organizer & social worker from the south, now based in NYC. She is a hard high femme homo and a founder and Executive Director of the Queer Detainee Empowerment Project and on the advisory board of the Queer Undocumented Immigrant Project (QUIP), a project of United We Dream (UWD). She comes to this work with a background in reproductive justice, working to center woman, specifically trans and queer, of color’s voices in movements, and witnessing the impacts of migration and racism in her formative years in Texas.

Photograph by Kelsey Dickey (2015)
From the planet of the Lower East Side….Mizz June got her start in activism and musical theater. She was the first out black transwoman to be a guest cast member on a daytime soap opera (“All My Children”). She has appeared in two music videos (Tamar-Kali’s “Pearl” (Album Version) and Justin Vivian Bond’s “Golden Age of Hustlers”). She has performed at multiple venues and she is about to be featured in a soon to be released independent musical titled “Wild Ponies”. She just released a demo version of her debut single, “Get Lifted”(https://www.reverbnation.com/mizzjune/song/22152061-get-lifted) and she will be releasing her debut EP “Who Is Mizz June” soon (Release date TBA).
www.facebook.com/the1theonlymizzjune
https://twitter.com/mizzjunemusic
youtube.com/mizzjunemusic

While somewhat of a shy performer and storyteller, Mariel Reyes has written & produced works for some of your favorite experimental theater spaces in NYC (Dixon Place, Brooklyn Arts Exchange) and has also appeared on screen in the film “Appropriate Behaviour” which premiered at Sundance in 2014.

Larry Darnell Penn Whitfield is a NYC based actor, writer, singer and aggressive mover. He is creator of Confessions of a Plussizetwink a one man cabaret series. Southern and sassy roots govern his everyday creativity. Live. Love. Create.

An Evening with Richard Stevenson and Mark Zubro
2015-08-05 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
Join us for a talk with and readings from two of the giants of the LGBT mystery genre.

Richard Stevenson is the pseudonym of Richard Lipez, author of fifteen books, including the Don Strachey private eye series. A former editorial writer at The Berkshire Eagle, Lipez contributed to Crimes of the Scene: A Mystery Novel Guide for the International Traveler and reviews mysteries for The Washington Post. His reporting, reviews, and fiction have appeared in Newsday, the Boston Globe, The Atlantic, and many other publications. Four of the Strachey books have been filmed by HereTV. Red White Black and Blue, the twelfth Strachey book, won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Mystery of 2011. Lipez grew up and was educated in Pennsylvania and as a Peace Corps volunteer taught English in Ethiopia. He is married to sculptor and video artist Joe Wheaton and lives in Becket, Massachusetts.

Mark Zubro is the author of thirty-two novels and five short stories. His book A Simple Suburban Murder won the lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Men’s mystery. Dying to Play is his most recent mystery and features gay private eye Mike King. His latest book is the third and last volume in his epic gay science fiction trilogy Alien Victory. Mark spends his time reading, writing, napping, and eating chocolate.

DEADLINE: Part 1 of Two-Part August Edition on Racism
2015-08-06 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
On August 6th and 13th, curator Sabrina Chap will host a special two-part edition of Deadline focusing on racism.
Deadline asks performance artists, filmmakers, and writers to stop posting on Facebook and create new works that engage racism on some level. As at every edition of Deadline, audience members are asked to provide short, anonymous written responses to each performance as a way of providing feedback to the artists.

Part 1, on August 6th, will feature:

Nefertiti Asanti – poetry
Zave Martohardjono – film
Robert Hyers – personal essay
Damien Luxe – performance art
Jamie Leo – personal essay

Deadline is a 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.

Hosted by Sabrina Chap.

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

Bureau closed on Sundays: August 9th - September 6th
2015-08-09, 2015-08-16, 2015-08-23 | NY
The Bureau will be closed on Sundays until after Labor Day Weekend: August 9th, 16th, 23rd, 30th, and September 6th. We will resume Sunday hours beginning on September 13th.

DEADLINE: Part 2 of Two-Part August Edition on Racism
2015-08-13 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
On August 6th and 13th, curator Sabrina Chap will host a special two-part edition of Deadline focusing on racism.
Deadline asks performance artists, filmmakers, and writers to stop posting on Facebook and create new works that engage racism on some level. As at every edition of Deadline, audience members are asked to provide short, anonymous written responses to each performance as a way of providing feedback to the artists.
Part 2, on August 13th, will feature:

Kate Brandt – film
Jamila Reddy – performance
Sacred Walker – performance

Deadline is a 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.Hosted by Sabrina Chap.

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

Real QTs: A Night of Art & Performance
2015-08-19 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
get down with REAL QTs!
Real QTs is a multi-genre showcase of intersectional lgbtq performing artists that honors and reps how multitudinous and interconnected the categories “trans*” and “queer” can be. Our aim is to create a space for off-the-margins queer and trans voices that often go unheard given a general privileging of cis, white, economically-advantaged experiences.
it’s a raw/emotive/raunchy/REAL event that celebrates our many talents, experiences, and intersecting identities.
featuring
robert reid drake
rex leonowicz
GypjaQ
Cancer Rising (ft. Jesse Manuel Graves & Devyn Manibo)
Suggested donation of $5 for the Bureau.
No one turned away for lack of funds.

GypjaQ is a musician from Harlem with eclectic artistic express. With beats from LawlySe, GQ brings a new style, a new thought, a new groove. Call it, aNvKai.

Robert Reid Drake is a soft butch, pansy poet currently living in Washington, DC. He is a former host & curator of Juniper Bends, a free & femme-centric reading series in Asheville, NC. His work has appeared in Assaracus, Wussy Magazine, and Crab Fat Magazine, as well as the collaborative zine, Doing It Mostly Wrong. On the internet he is sweet, sweet, sweeterthanspit.

if dionysus were an intersectional feminist performing artist/poet, then dionysus rex leonowicz would be. rex is a working class trans/queer/non-binary femme from queens, new york, now living in oakland, california. he’s obsessed with cats, life as drag, self-professed freaks, & sparkles. some of his work can be found in it’s night in san francisco, but it’s sunny in oakland, the queer south, lambda literary’s poetry spotlight, gertrude journal, shampoo, etc. he loves e-mail and new friends, so get in touch at leonowitch@gmail.com if you feel so inclined!

TELL 15: Housing/Home
2015-08-20 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.
Housing/Home is the theme of the fifteenth installment of TELL. Featuring Lady Quesa’Dilla, Kirya Traber, Kei Williams, & Chavisa Woods.
$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.

Alejandro Rodríguez AKA Lady Quesa’Dilla — Alejandro is a native Tejan@ from the El Paso and Ciudad Juárez border. Their work is at the intersection of cultural identity, drag, and community. “The Brown Queen,” an autobiographical solo performance about growing up queer in the southwest, premiered at HERE Arts Center in the spring of 2010. Most recent solo performances include “My Tia Lupe” and “The Faggot in the Pink House”. Alejandro has performed in New York City, El Paso, Texas, Chiapas, Mexico, and Montreal, Canada. Alejandro is a member of The House of Bushwig, as Lady Quesa’Dilla, duties include Volunteer Coordinator for the annual Bushwig Festival.
Alejandro can also be found as an Information and Referral Specialist at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Community Center in Manhattan; and as a Teaching Artist in The Bronx and Brooklyn.
Alejandro holds a BA in Theater from Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts, and a MA in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and is an alum of The Hemispheric Institute for Performance and Politics.
Resides in Brooklyn.
Lady Quesa’Dilla is the reigning Miss Coney Island Queen of Drag.

Artist photograph by Bethanie Hines
Kirya Traber is a cultural worker, a nationally awarded writer and performer, a Black queer woman, a high femme, and an Oakland girl with a Brooklyn address. Born and raised in northern California, Kirya relocated to New York in 2011, where she received her MFA in Acting from the New School for Drama, and just completed a year as the Lincoln Center Education Artist Fellow. Kirya is the recipient of the California Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, Robert Redford’s Sundance foundation award for Activism in the Arts, Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s Certificate of Recognition, an Astrea Lesbian Writers Fund award for Poetry, and is a former judge for the LAMBDA Literary awards in LGBT Drama. Kirya is an alumnus of the 2010 VONA/Voices retreat for writers of color, and the 2012 EmergeNYC intensive at the Hemispheric Institute, and is a 2014 Space Grantee at Brooklyn Arts Exchange. Kirya has toured the United States and Canada as a poet and solo performance artist, and her written work can be found in the pages of, Other Tongues, an anthology by Inana Press, and in her 2009 chapbook, black chick. She has worked as an arts educator with youth and adults, in school and community based settings, and within the juvenile justice system.

Kei Williams is the founder of Woodruff, a creative entity that they use to produce all of their artistic endeavors. A self-taught visual artist & graphic designer, they serve as a community manager through consulting entrepreneurs in order to sustain the economic development, along with affirming the culture, of Harlem NY. Since high school when they created the “Underground Café” located in Central NY which caters to the needs of inner-city youth, they have been dedicated to addressing the impacts of racism and sexism that have generationally plagued the communities of Black folks and people of color. They are currently an organizer and member of Black Lives Matter (NYC). When not being superboi or stoop sipping in Harlem, they play with their adorable “borkie” Spartacus. Kei connects with the world under the Twitter handle @BlackBoiKei.

Chavisa Woods is the author of two books of fiction, The Albino Album, a novel, (550 pages) Seven Stories Press (Distributed by Random House), 2013; and Love Does Not Make Me Gentle or Kind, full-length fiction (Fly by Night Press, 2009). The Second Edition of this book was released by Autonomedia Press under the Unbearables imprint in 2013. Woods was the recipient of the 2013 Cobalt Prize for fiction and was a finalist (second nomination) for the 2013 Lambda Literary Award for fiction. Woods has appeared as a featured author at such notable venues as The Whitney Museum of American Art, City Lights Bookstore, Town Hall Seattle, The Brecht Forum, The Cervantes Institute, and St. Mark’s Poetry Project. Her writing has appeared in such publications as The Evergreen Review, New York Quarterly, The Brooklyn Rail, Cleaver Magazine, and Jadaliyya. Woods was the recipient of the 2009 Jerome Foundation award for emerging authors, recently served as the guest prose editor for Great Weather for Media’s 2015 anthology, and is currently completing her third work of full-length fiction.
Woods has presented lectures and conducted workshops on short fiction and poetry at a number of academic institutions, including: New York University (NYU), Penn State, Sarah Lawrence College, Bard College, Brooklyn College, Brooklyn Tech and the New School.

Queer Love In Film and Print, Italian-American Style: An Evening with Annie “L is for Lion” Lanzillotto and Trans Writer-Director Mikki “Alt
2015-08-21 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Writer-Director Mikki del Monico’s romantic comedy “Alto” was selected as the upcoming Feature Screening for NewFilmmakers New York, Wednesday 8/26/15 at Anthology Film Archives. Alto is: Two Girls. One Gun. The Mob. Get your first taste here.
Author-Poet-Actor-Songwriter Annie Lanzillotto will reprise her cameo in the film and read from her memoir “L is for Lion,” including the premiere of clips from her soon-to-be-released audiobook of the same title.
Don’t miss this opportunity to ask questions about the creative process from a DIY perspective. Producer Toni “From Crowd Funding to Completion” D’Antonio will be on hand to share her hard-earned knowledge on making an indie film in NYC.
Reading, Performance, Q&A, Sneak Peeks, Ticket Raffles, Special Guests. Plus surviving Italian American families in and (mostly) out of the Mob.
Learn more at www.altothemovie.com and www.annielanzillotto.com |
Suggested Donation: $5 to Benefit BGSQD but NO ONE turned away for lack of funds!

Mikki del Monico works out of a true passion for the craft of storytelling. His feature script, Indelible, won an Alfred P. Sloan Screenwriting Award and went on to win their Feature Film Production Grant. His music video for the band, Antigone Rising, premiered on CMT and was recently nominated for an OUTMUSIC Award. In addition to writing and directing, he has also worked as a film editor, book editor, researcher, proofreader, personal trainer, and digital media teaching assistant on a ship that sailed the Atlantic Ocean. He holds an MFA in Film from Columbia University. Alto is his directorial debut.

Photo: Carolina Kroon, 2011. carolinakroonphotography.com
Annie Rachele Lanzillotto is a New York poet and performance artist, author of the book of poetry, SCHISTSONG (Bordighera Press 2013), and vocalist/songwriter of the albums BLUE PILL, CARRY MY COFFEE, and ELEVEN RECITATIONS. Lanzillotto teaches solo performance to The Apprentice Company at The Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Newfangled 7: Robert Siek hosts Ricardo Hernandez, Joshua Kleinberg, & Tommy "Teebs" Pico
2015-08-22 19:00 - 22:00 | NY
Join us for the 7th installment of Newfangled, poetry readings by emerging poets hosted by Robert Siek. Newfangled 7 will feature Ricardo Hernandez, Joshua Kleinberg, & Tommy “Teebs” Pico.

RICARDO HERNANDEZ is a graduate of Baruch College and recipient of fellowships from Poets House and Lambda Literary. He lives in Queens.

JOSHUA KLEINBERG is an MFA candidate at Columbia University. His poetry was awarded an Academy of American Poets prize and has appeared in Chorus: A Literary Mixtape (2012, MTV Books) and New Poetry from the Midwest (2015, New American).

TOMMY “TEEBS” PICO is the author of absentMINDR (VERBALVISUAL, 2014)—the first chapbook APP published for iOS mobile/tablet devices—was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has poems in BOMB, Guernica, and [PANK]. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker. @heyteebs

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: The Summer of Sex: Memoirs of a Gigolo, by Livia Ellis
2015-08-27 18:30 - 20:30 | NY
The Bi Book Club meets monthly to discuss bi-themed books and the issues they raise.
Day/Time: 4th Thursdays, 6:30-8pm. Dinner after nearby (usually Village Den.)
The Bi Book Club theme for July & August is “The Summer of Sex.” Our book for August is Memoirs of a Gigolo, Omnibus Vol. 1-4, by Livia Ellis, (order your copy from BGSQD.) This is a sexy, funny, bisexual erotic novel.
In this collected omnibus edition of the first four e-books in the series, you’ll learn why Oliver turns to a life as a male escort when he is a titled English Lord (and a tabloid favorite). Follow him as he travels the globe (Tokyo, Bangkok, etc.) bedding a Latin pop star, two princesses, and a beautiful Russian fellow escort as charming and duplicitous as himself. This book has a very humorous tone. You won’t want to stop reading.
Pick out some phrases, paragraphs or scenes that you’d like to discuss, or just join in on our read-a-long. Last month we had a blast reading bisexual scenes from our erotic romance book out loud with everyone taking different roles. Give us your critique of the book. What worked, what didnt, how was bisexuality represented? 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.
Next Book: Call It Wonder the new memoir by Kate Evans.
Getting Books: We urge you to purchase your print copy at the Bureau 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.

RSVP on Bi Meetup

The Bi Book Club meets at the Bureau of General Services-Queer Division on the last Thursday of each month.
