Tag Archives: Queens authors

LGBT Queens Book Night!

Posted on by
Reply

I’m really happy to be featured in this year’s LGBT Queens Book Night next Wednesday, November 15th at Queens Pride House in Jackson Heights. The annual event showcases local authors who have recently published fiction, poetry or non-fiction, and brings together writers and readers in the LGBT community.

I’ll be joined by Russell Ricard, author of The Truth About Goodbye, and a resident of Forest Hills. Fun Fact: we’re both married with cats. (Not married to cats; that was supposed to be a play on ‘married with children’).

So what can you expect if you come out to the event? Unbridled literary mayhem. All right, that’s probably promising a bit more than we can deliver. But from past events, I can tell you that it’s a great, laid-back, homegrown event that gets a fairly equal number of writers and fans who are enthusiastic about LGBT literature as well as local pride. Did you know best-selling author Robin Cook grew up in Queens? And Patricia Highsmith. I won’t mention the borough’s most notorious offspring because we’re not exactly proud of him, nor does he qualify as literary. (ugh)

The panel will be moderated by community activist Demetrius Bagley and you can RSVP, see directions, a little more info over at the Facebook event page. I’ll be reading from The Sim Ru Prophecy and talking about the Werecat series and the role of LGBT writers in the era of resistance, among other things. I hope you can check it out!

Queens LGBT Book Night 2016

Posted on by
Reply

lgbtqbn-square-promo

Something very cool happening in November: I’ll be part of the second annual LGBT Queens Book Night, joining a fantastic group of local authors for readings, discussion, Q&A, and general, queer literary hijinks.

If that doesn’t sound fabulous enough to interest you, I thought of a number of reasons why you and every one of your friends, family members, neighbors, coworkers, acquaintances, and Twitter crushes should go.

  1. You’ll hear a preview reading from my just-released title The City of Seven Gods, which is sort of The Persian Boy meets Game of Thrones if they brought along their buddy Gods of Egypt and some hot dude named Gilgamesh showed up, forcing everyone to reconsider their motivations. Now you see why I’m lousy at elevator pitches. Never fear, my talking points get better.
  2. You probably know what you’ll get from me, but there’s something for literarily everyone on the panel. Joe Okonkwo is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and his début novel Jazz Moon is the story of a black, gay poet set against the Harlem Renaissance and Jazz Age Paris. Deborah Emin is the author of the Scags series, which chronicles the coming of age of a young lesbian in the midwest in the 1950s and 1960s. Our curator and moderator Nancy Agabian is a writer, teacher and liteary organizer, whose work has explored Armenian family history and queerness.
  3. Let’s face it. Queer literature is transcendant, subversive, ecstatically affirming, and studies show that it reduces aging by 25-40 percent.
  4. If you’re an aspiring writer, the event is the place to ask us all how we did it, and I promise we won’t be jaded or pompous at all.
  5. Are you single? LGBT community events are a great place to meet that special someone without the shadiness of bars or the pressure of gimmicky dating enterprises. Or, you can double your chances and after the event grab a beer at one of Jackson Heights’ fine drinking establishments.
  6. I’m guessing if you’re here visiting my site, you probably care about the health and sustainability of the LGBT arts community, which creates LGBT visibility, cultural fairness, and political equality, thereby benefiting all of us. LGBT Queens Book Night is an opportunity to think globally and act locally. Coming out to the event supports local writers and builds community!
  7. Last of all, the event is totally free! It’s underwritten by generous sponsors who are listed in the above flyer. You literarily have nothing to lose. (Notice how I cleverly used literarily twice?).

So come on down to Jackson Heights for a great time, and make sure to tell them who sent you (and say hello!).

Join me at the Queens Book Festival YA Stage!

Posted on by
Reply

New Flyer

If you’re in the New York City area this weekend, why not come out to the inaugural Queens Book Festival on Sunday, August 7th at Kaufman Astoria Studios?

It’s a totally free event that is being called: “the largest and most inclusive literary gathering in the ‘World’s Borough’ of Queens.” There will be talks and exhibits by over 100 authors, many, like myself with local ties. The festival will also have a focus on activities for children and teenagers, and I’m quite excited to be part of the Young Adult Stage.

At 12pm, I’ll be on a panel titled: “Expanding the Landscape of Fantasy and YA Imagination.” Here’s the description:

For a genre like Fantasy that includes fairies, witches, werewolves, aliens, and supernatural powers, the inclusion of the diverse worlds of humans is surprisingly lacking. How are the boundaries being pushed in YA Fantasy to be more inclusive and challenging? What is considered “inappropriate” works for young adults?

The other panelists include Carola Dibbell (The Only Ones) and Daniel Jose Older (Salsa Nocturna), and the panel is moderated by book vlogger Dominique Taylor (The Storyscape). I’ll also have signed copies of Banished Sons of Poseidon for purchase.

Sound like a good time? I hope so. 🙂

For directions and the full program, check out the Queens Book Festival website here.

 

LGBT Queens Book Night!!

Posted on by
Reply

QQBN Square promo

I’ll be out and about for a reading event this month. Tim Fredrick of Newtown Literary Journal was nice enough to invite me to participate in LGBT Queens Book Night. The event features four Queens-based authors who have new releases in 2015.

Here’s some information about the line-up.

Andrew J. Peters is the author of the Werecat series, The Seventh Pleiade and its forthcoming follow-up Banished Sons of Poseidon. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, studied psychology at Cornell University, and has spent most of his career as a social worker and an advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth. A lifelong writer, Andrew has been a contributing writer at The Good Men Project, YA Highway, Reading Teen, Dear Teen Me, La Bloga, and Layers of Thought among other media. Andrew lives in New York City with his partner Genaro and their cat Chloë.

Shelley Ettinger is a longtime activist in the LGBTQ movement, and in anti-racist, anti-war and union struggles. Her poetry and short fiction have been published in many literary journals, including *Nimrod*, *Stone Canoe*, *Mississippi Review*, *Cream City Review*, *Blithe House Quarterly*, and *Lodestar Quarterly*. *Library Journal *called her recently published first novel, *Vera’s Will*, “powerful, superbly written,” and “a breathtaking achievement.”

Tim Fredrick is a short story writer and author of the collection We Regret to Inform You: Stories. His stories have been published in Burningword, Pif Magazine, Wilde Magazine, Em Dash Literary Magazine, and Circa. He is also the founding editor of Newtown Literary, a semiannual literary journal focused on publishing the work of writers from and living in Queens, NY.

Rigoberto González is the author 17 books and the recipient of numerous awards including Guggenheim, NEA and USA Rolón fellowships, and a Lambda Literary Award. He is professor of English at Rutgers-Newark and the recipient of the 2015 Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle.

Host: Nancy Agabian is the author of Princess Freak (Beyond Baroque Books, 2000), a mixed genre collection of poems, short prose, and performance texts on young women’s sexuality and rage, and Me as her again: True Stories of an Armenian Daughter (Aunt Lute Books, 2008) a memoir about the influence of her Armenian family’s history on her coming-of-age. Me as her again was honored as a Lambda Literary Award finalist for LGBT Nonfiction and shortlisted for a William Saroyan International Prize. Nancy has an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. She teaches creative writing at Queens College, where she was awarded for excellence in teaching in 2012, and in the Writing Program at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. In 2012, she founded Heightening Stories, a series of community-based writing workshops for the personally brave and socially conscious, online and in Jackson Heights, Queens.

The reading will take place at Queens Pride House, a local LGBT community center with programs for teenagers who are coming out, which I think is especially cool. I’ll be reading from Banished Sons of Poseidon and signing copies.

Check out the Facebook event page and join by clicking here.