Presenter/Reader Bios 2011
Host
Rachel Kramer Bussel (rachelkramerbussel.com) is a New York-based author, editor, blogger and event organizer. She is the editor of over 35 anthologies, including Gotta Have It, Best Bondage Erotica 2011, Fast Girls, Orgasmic, Passion, The Mile High Club, Do Not Disturb: Hotel Sex Stories, Crossdressing, Bottoms Up, Spanked, and Please, Sir and Please, Ma’am, as well as Best Sex Writing series editor. Bookslut has said about her work, “Bussel always portrays sex as delicious, wonderful, and fun.” She is Senior Editor at Penthouse Variations and writes the biweekly Secrets of a Sex Writer column for SexIs Magazine. Her writing has been published in The Daily Beast, The Frisky, The Gloss, Jezebel, Mediabistro, New York Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out New York, The Village Voice, Zink and other publications. Her books have garnered five IPPY (Independent Publisher) awards. She is the former host of In The Flesh Reading Series, aconducts readings and erotic writing workshops nationwide and is the cofounding editor of the popular blog Cupcakes Take the Cake (http://cupcakestakethecake.blogspot.com) and also blogs at Lusty Lady (http://lustylady.blogspot.com).
Readers/Presenters
Cris Beam is the author of I Am J, a young adult novel about a runaway transboy in New York City (Little, Brown, 2011). Her first book, Transparent: Love, Family and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers (Harcourt, 2007) won a Lambda Literary Award and was a Stonewall Honor Book. Cris teaches creative writing at Columbia University, New York University, and Bayview Women’s Correctional Facility in New York. She’s currently working on a book about foster care in the U.S. for Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Norman Beim: Veteran playwright and actor, Norman Beim’s plays have won a number of awards and been produced nationally and internationally. His writing has been endorsed by Horton Foote, Katharine Hepburn, Mario Fratti. As an actor he appeared on Broadway in the original production of Inherit The Wind and has worked with such luminaries as Morgan Freeman, Jerry Stiller, Van Johnson, Robert Ryan, and has appeared in films and on TV.
Christopher Bram is the author of nine novels, including GODS AND MONSTERS, which was made into the movie with Ian McClellen and Lynn Redgrave. His most recent book is MAPPING THE TERRITORY, a collection of essays. His next book, EMINENT OUTLAWS: THE GAY WRITERS WHO CHANGE AMERICA, will be published next February. He lives in New York City and teaches writing at Gallatin College at NYU.
Tim Brough: In 1989, Tim Brough stumbled across his first copy of DRUMMER magazine in San Francisco while attending a Radio Broadcasting convention. Having his mind blown open by the experience, he left the vanilla world of Delaware behind and took a writing/editing job in Los Angeles. It was in SoCal that he began exploring this part of his psyche further and to pursue a new career as a broadcast journalist. Tim came out full bore as a Gay Leatherman in the pages of the Oct 11, 1993 edition of the magazine he edited at the time while living in Nashville, TN. When that publication folded in 1994, it was back to LA, where he got a second wind as a writer and editor. His byline has appeared in magazines as varied Radio & Records, Fetish, Leather Journal, Eagle, Cuir, Frontiers, Bunkhouse, Mach, Powerplay and his own two major publications, the ground breaking Rubber Rebel and Vulcan America. Tim has also participated in all sorts of other exploits, including the infamous Rubber Buddha episode of HBO’s SEXBYTES series. He also appeared as Brutux Kahn in the Zeus/Can-Am production “Brutal Kombat.” He has four published books at this time:, Black Gloves White Magic, Sgt Vlengles’ Revenge, Skin Tight, First Hand.
Peter Carlaftes is a New York-based comic author, screenwriter, playwright, actor, poet, and director. He is the author of three recent books: A Year on Facebook (humor), Drunkyard Dog (poetry) and Triumph for Rent (3 plays) (all Three Rooms Press).
Martin Duberman is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the History Department at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he founded the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. Widely known for his memoir Cures: A Gay Man’s Odyssey (Penguin Books), he is the author of over twenty books, including the biographies Paul Robeson (Lives of the Left Series/Verso) and The Worlds of Lincoln Kirstein (Deckle Edge). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Bancroft Prize, the Lambda Book Award, and the American Historical Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Scholarship.
Vicki L. Eaklor is Professor of History at Alfred University, where she has taught American history and culture for nearly 30 years, and also serves as AU’s percussion instructor. As both teacher and scholar she seeks to reach those who “hated history” in school and make the past accessible without oversimplifying it. She has authored about 30 publications on topics ranging from American reform movements, to music and film, to gender and sexuality. Recent articles include, “How Queer-Friendly Are U.S. History Textbooks?” (2004, http://hnn.us/articles/3200.html) and “Teaching LGBTQ History: Two Situations,” for the “Controversy in the Classroom” issue of the AHA Perspectives on History (May, 2010). Her book Queer America (Greenwood, 2008) has just been released in paperback from The New Press as Queer America: A People’s GLBT History of the United States. A longtime jazz drummer, she relaxes by playing her vintage set and is learning to restore and custom-build drums.
Bobbie Geary was born on the south shore of Long Island and lived, in her formative years, in Manhattan where she graduated from Hunter College and worked at William Morrow & Company and Simon & Shuster (not to mention The Laury Group around classes and other odd jobs for many years). She has her own editorial services business and started The Graeae Press with her partner, Sandy Karp, in New Orleans in 2005. Since Katrina & The Flood she’s lived in-land, on the top of a hill, in Allentown, PA. Bobbie’s novels are eccentric and varied: about whales & painters & post-docs, gays & clammers & house-cleaners; a little sci-fi, a little historical, a little 12th, a little 22nd century; lots of sea coasts, some deciduous forest, a formal rose garden; and, of course, The Village, Coney Island, The American Museum of Natural History; and a touch of Long Island’s East End, northeast Philadelphia and Jackson Square. She does not apologize for any of this. It’s how it came to her—the memorable flotsam & jetsam of real-life transmuted into story. www.graeaepress.com/
Kat Georges is a poet, playwright, director and publisher. Her poetry collection include Punk Rock Journal and Slow Dance at 120 Beats a Minute (Three Rooms Press). Her first full-length collection, Hunger Sinner will be released in Spring 2011. She is the founder & publisher of Three Rooms Press.
Robert Gibbons is a multi-dimensional, multi-talented poet. This will be his second time reading at the space on W 13th. He was recently published in the Uphook Press anthology, hell strung and crooked.
Ken Harvey’s work has been published in over 20 literary magazines His book of short stories, if you were with me everything would be all right, won the Violet Quill Award for Best Gay Fiction of the Year and was named one of the “twenty books of note” by The Lambda Literary Review. The book was also translated into Italian and received enthusiastic reviews in Italy. One of the stories in the collection was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Ken has read his work on On Point, a program on National Public Radio, and is a frequent book reviewer for Edge Publications. When not working on his own writing, he teaches a fiction-writing workshop in Cambridge, MA. He lives in Boston and Toronto with his husband.
Aimee Herman: Performance poet, Aimee Herman, has been featured at various NYC reading series including In The Flesh, The Red Umbrella Diaries, Hyper Gender, and Queer Lit Carnival. She can be read in various journals and anthologies such as and/or journal, Clean Sheets, InStereo Press, Sound Zine, and Uphook Press’s latest anthology, hell strung and crooked.
Matthew Hupert‘s recent poetry collection Ism is a Retrovirus has been lauded by Mondo 2000 editor R.U. Sirius, and raved about by Jack Kerouac and Grateful Dead biographer Dennis McNally, who notes “[Hupert] sees how the words work, listens to them working, feels their meaning and spits ‘em out. I love his poetry.”
Fay Jacobs is a native New Yorker now living in Rehoboth Beach, DE. She is the publisher of A&M Books, a successor to the legendary Naiad Press. Her first book, As I Lay Frying – a Rehoboth Beach Memoir (2004) is in its 3rd printing, a second essay collection, Fried & True–won the 2008 National Federation of Press Women’s Book of the Year for humor. Her Latest, For Frying Out Loud – Rehoboth Beach Diaries is a Foreword Reviews Book of the Year finalist for humor. Fay has contributed to such publications as The Washington Post, The Advocate, Curve Magazine, Washington Blade, OUTtraveler and more.www.aandmbooks.com
Jee Leong Koh is the author of three books of poems, including the recently published Seven Studies for a Self Portrait (Bench Press). His poems have appeared in Best New Poets (University of Virginia Press) and Best Gay Poetry (A Midsummer’s Night Press). Born and raised in Singapore, he lives in New York City, and blogs at Song of a Reformed Headhunter (http://jeeleong.blogspot.com).
Raymond Luczak Road Work Ahead (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2011) is deaf poet Raymond Luczak’s fourth poetry collection and his follow-up to the critically acclaimed Mute (A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2010), which recently garnered a top-eleven spot on the American Library Association’s “Over the Rainbow” list of best LGBT-themed books of the past year. This time, in Road Work Ahead, Luczak sets out on a turbulent journey after ending a 15-year relationship. As he meets kindred souls on his travels, Luczak wonders what it means to love again. Raymond Luczak is the author and editor of more than ten books including Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life (RID Press, 2009) and St. Michael’s Fall: Poems (Deaf Life Press, 1996). He has edited Eyes of Desire 2: A Deaf GLBT Reader (Handtype Press, 2007) and When I Am Dead: The Writings of George M. Teegarden (Gallaudet University Press, 2007). His stories, interviews, essays, poems, and reviews have appeared in BLOOM, TheaterWeek, Art & Understanding, Silent News, The Ragged Edge, The Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Handwave, Deaf Arts UK, Out, The Tactile Mind, Clerc Scar, and Van Gogh’s Ear. www.raymondluczak.com
Erin McHugh is a former publishing executive, longtime gay activist, and author of more than 20 books, including the five-volume The Portable Queer. She lives in Manhattan.
Ronnie Norpel is a dynamic poet and thrilling storyteller, and author of Baseball Karma & the Constitution Blues (Three Rooms Press), a ficto-memoir exploring her days working as a ball girl, usher and fan appreciation manager for the Phillies.
John Marcus Powell has strutted the boards in London’s West End, Off and Off-Off Broadway, and appeared on television and film. Recently he’s been concentrating on writing poetry—a lot of it about being queer in a queer world.
Susan Rosenberg has been a speaker, educator, and lecturer to those concerned with the issues of women in prison, political prisoners, prison reform, and social justice activism. Since 2004, Rosenberg, has served as the director of communications at a faith-based human-rights organization working to alleviate poverty, hunger, and disease in the developing world. Rosenberg received a BA in American history from the City University of New York and an MA in writing from Antioch University. She lives in New York City.
Rakesh Satyal is the author of the novel Blue Boy, a gender-bending comedy about a young Indian American boy’s fascination with the Hindu god Krishna. He is an editor at HarperCollins, where he works with such authors as Paulo Coelho, Clive Barker, Armistead Maupin, and Paul Rudnick. A member of the planning committee for the annual PEN World Voices Festival, he sings a popular cabaret show in the city. He lives in Brooklyn. rakeshsatyal.com
Michael Schiavi is associate professor of English and coordinator of English as a Second Language at New York Institute of Technology’s Manhattan campus. He is author of Celluloid Activist: The Life and Times of Vito Russo (University of Wisconsin Press). His articles have appeared in Cinema Journal, Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, and College Literature.
Lolan Buhain Sevilla is a cultural worker who roots her art in community, study and practice. She works as a community organizer with Filipinas for Rights & Empowerment as well as the Audre Lorde Project. Lolan is also the author of Translating New Brown (Pinayjive Press, 2005), a collection of poetry and short stories, and co-editor of Walang Hiya…Literature Taking Risks Toward Liberatory Practice (Carayan Press, 2010).
Sinclair Sexsmith writes the award-winning personal online project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Sex, Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at www.sugarbutch.net. With works published in various anthologies, including Best Lesbian Erotica 2011, 2009, 2007, and 2006 collections, Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica, Visible: A Femmethology Volume II, Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, and more, she is a columnist for SexIs, CarnalNation, and AfterEllen; the lesbian erotica editor for the Lambda Literary Foundation; and the New York coordinator for the women’s programs at the Body Electric School, with whom she has studied for nearly ten years. Mr. Sexsmith holds degrees in both creative writing and gender studies, studied at Bent Queer Writing Institute in Seattle, and currently teaches community and academic workshops and classes around the US on gender, sexuality, healing, communication, and getting the sex life you want. Monthly in her current home of New York City, she co-produces Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival reading series. She goes by the pronouns she/her and prefers the masculine honorific of “Mr.”
Nell Stark & Trinity Tam—Joint Bio: Nell Stark is an Assistant Professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center at a small school in the SUNY (State University of New York) system. Trinity Tam is a marketing executive in the music industry and an award-winning writer/producer of film and television. They live, write, and parent a rambunctious toddler just a stone’s throw from the historic Stonewall Inn in New York City. They are in the process of co-authoring a four-book paranormal romance series: everafter was published in 2009, nevermore in 2010, and nightrise will come out in August of 2011. sunfall, the final book of the series, is due out in early 2012.
Rob Stephenson is the author of the novel Passes Through. His novella U will come out later this year from Queer Mojo. His essays and fictions have appeared in many journals and anthologies over the years including: Rampike, Harp and Altar, Invert(e), Golden Handcuffs, Madder Love, and Entangled Lives. He’s hard at work on his new novel. His drawings have been exhibited at Intersection For The Arts in San Francisco, The Headlands Center for the Arts, The Katona Museum, and the Wexler Center For The Arts. His film, music, and video projects have been presented at Cinematheque and The Lab in San Francisco, The Eye Music Festival in Seoul, Korea, Haven Arts in the Bronx, Galapagos in Brooklyn. Dixon Place and The Stone in NYC, and The & NOW Festival in Buffalo, NY.
Francine L. Trevens, award winning author and publisher of TnT Classic Books—who publish Jane Chambers, Sidney Morris and Doric Wilson, among others. Ms. Trevens’ fantasy stories have been selling for over 35 years. Her latest book, with illustrations by Maggie Cousins, is Pixie Tales, available as an e book now and paper book soon.
Charlie Vázquez is a radical Bronx-bred writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His fiction and essays have been published in anthologies such as Queer and Catholic (Taylor & Francis, 2007) and Best Gay Love Stories: NYC (Alyson, 2006). His writing has also appeared in print and online publications such as The Advocate, Chelsea Clinton News, New York Press and Ganymede Journal. Charlie hosts a monthly reading series called PANIC! (in the East Village), which focuses on original queer fiction and poetry. Charlie Vazquez is the author of the queer punk adventure novel Buzz and Israel (Fireking Press, 2005), the fiction collection Business as Unusual (Fireking Press, 2007) and the novel Contraband (Rebel Satori Press, 2010).
Kathleen Warnock is a playwright and editor. She is series editor for Best Lesbian Erotica (Cleis), and is curator of the Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project for TOSOS Theater, NYC. She also runs the reading series Drunken! Careening! Writers! the third Thursday of the month at KGB Bar (since 2004). She is a member of The Dramatists Guild. www.kathleenwarnock.com
Kay Williams: Mardo Williams, a 44-year career newspaperman, was 90 when he wrote Great-Grandpa Fussy and the Little Puckerdoodles, a collection of stories based on the antics of his own great-grandchildren. He won an Ohioana Library Award for it, the Library’s first posthumous award. His other books are: Maude (1883-1993) and One Last Dance. The book is beautifully illustrated by Yukiko Mishima. Mardo’s daughter, Kay Williams, author of Butcher of Dreams, will read from Great-Grandpa Fussy. www.calliopepress.com
MORE BIOS TO COME
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