Queer Memoir: LEATHER
Sunday July 13th at 3.30 PM
Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery, NYC
THIS MONTH’S THEME IS LEATHER AND IS GUEST CO-CURATED BY SASSAFRAS LOWREY
Tickets 5-15 bucks sliding scale, no one turned away for lack of funds
With our storytellers:
Sassafras Lowrey (co-curating this event)
William Johnson
Ashley Young
Victor Tobar
Karen Taylor
Nayland Blake
BIOS:
Sassafras Lowrey got hir start writing as a punk zinester in Portland, Oregon. Ze is the editor of Leather Ever After a finalist for the National Leather Association Writing Award, and the two time American Library Association honored & Lambda Literary Finalist Kicked Out anthology. Hir leather focused debut novel Roving Pack (www.RovingPack.com) was honored by the American Library Association and is a Rainbow Book Award winner (2nd place) for Transgender Fiction. Sassafras is the 2013 winner of the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Berzon Emerging Writer Award. Ze lives and writes in Brooklyn with hir Daddy, two dogs of dramatically different sizes, two bossy cats, and a kitten.
William Johnson
William Johnson is the online editor of Lambda Literary. He is also the editor and publisher of Mary Literary, a literary journal dedicated to publishing gay writing of artist merit and a contributing arts and culture writer for CrushFanazine.
Ashley Young is a black queer feminist writer and poet working as an editor in New York City. She received her BA from Hampshire College, where she studied education and theater and is earning a certification in copyediting at New York University. She is a 2010 Voices of Our Nations Art Foundation Poetry Fellow and a 2011 Lambda Literary Foundation Creative Nonfiction Fellow. Her feminist poetry and prose have been published in Elixher magazine, Rkvry Quarterly Literary Journal, Autostraddle, Her Circle magazine, and more. She authored a chapter in Hot & Heavy: Fierce Fat Girls on Life, Love & Fashion (2012) and is working on her first novel, an Audre Lorde–inspired biomythography.
Victor Tobar is a Queer, gender non-conforming Latin@ writer,performer, artist, activist, and sex- and kink-educator. They are a life-long New Yorker and have been part of the NYC writing and performance scene for the past 15 years (seriously)! He’s also been a member of the NYC public BDSM scene for over a decade. Victor started performing as a teenager, and represented New York as part of the Brave New Voices Youth Slam team in 2000. They helped develop and mentor QQ&A, a creative writing workshop series for Queer and Questioning youth with Urban Word NYC. As part of Mangos with Chili, he’s toured the northeast and Canada. Most recently he curated Ruckus, a monthly performance series that featured Queer and Trans artists of color. The work Victor generates feels like a multi-layered tapestry of nostalgia, desire, struggle, and survival. They are, above all, a story-teller, and they’re honored to have you bear witness.
Karen Taylor first started writing queer erotica to attract the attention of BDSM author Laura Antoniou, in the hopes of getting a hot date. The tactic worked; they celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary last fall. Karen’s work has appeared in numerous anthologies, most recently in “Leather Ever After,” edited by Sassafras Lowrey, “The Love That Never Dies: Erotic Encounters with the Undead,” edited by M. Christian, and the upcoming “She Who Must Be Obeyed: Femme Dominant Lesbian Erotica.” She’ll be reading an excerpt from her piece in “First Person Queer: Who We Are So Far,” a Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology of first-person queer experience, edited by Lawrence Schimel and Richard Labonte.
Nayland Blake is an artist, educator and instigator. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum, SFMoMA, and many others. He has taught and lectured on art queer topics at numerous schools including Harvard, Yale, Bard College, The San Francisco Art Institute and The New School. In 1995 he co-curated “In A Different Light” the first major museum exhibition to examine the impact of Queer Art and Artists in the 20th Century. In 2005 he was named International Pipe Bear.
Co-curated and co-hosted by Queer Memoir co-founder (whoa that’s a lot of co!) Kelli Dunham; Kelli Dunham is everyone’s favorite ex-nun genderqueer comic; Kelli was one of Velvet Park Magazine’s 25 Significant Queers of 2011 and was named to the 2012 Campus Pride Hotlist. She was also given the The Fresh Fruit Festival Award for Distinction in stand-up comedy, although Kelli has never before or since been called distinguished. Kelli is a registered nurse and the author of five books of humorous non-fiction, including two children’s books being used by Sonlight conservative home schooling association in their science curriculum. Kelli’s fifth book, Freak of Nurture, a collection is humorous essays that none other than lesbian comedy godmother Kate Clinton called “laugh out loud outrageous storytelling” is just out from Topside Press and caused author Barbara Carellas to give Kelli the moniker “the David Sedaris of the genderqueer dyke world”
Kelli has three released four comedy CDs: “I am NOT a 12 Year Old Boy” “Almost Pretty” “Why Is the Fat One Always Angry” and “Trigger Warning” all which are on regular rotation on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio’s Rawdog Comedy Station and Pandora’s Margaret Cho Comedy Station.
Kelli was recently the expert on “What Is Normal” in Twist Magazine (known as Tiger Beat’s little sister magazine), on a page facing a full color poster of Justin Beiber. There isn’t even an ironic statement to match that, it’s just strangely true.
Next event? Sunday August 10th at 3.30 Queer Memoir: WHAT I READ THAT SUMMER also at BPC.
Queer Memoir 