Radar – Old School
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| Twelve literary performers re-interpret and re-imagine living gay back in the day. A three-part series co-presented with the GLBT Historical Society and sponsored by Zellerbach Family Foundation. The first week’s installment stars Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ben McCoy, Max Wolf Valerio and Tara Jepsen!
Sponsored by Zellerbach Family Foundation and GLBT Historical Society.
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence at UC Berkeley’s June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program, a 2009 Sins Invalid performer and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili, North America’s touring cabaret of queer and trans people of color performing artists. She is finishing her second book of poetry and her first memoir, and is happy about the forthcoming publication of The Revolution Starts At Home: Transforming Partner Abuse Through Community Accountability, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, by South End Press in 2010.
Ben McCoy is a writer, performance artist, and short film vixen. McCoy has performed work all across the country via the Sex Workers Art Show Tour, and has performed one person shows in both San Francisco and Boston. She recently crossed the continent with Sister Spit: Next Generation. Stories that may pull at your heart strings, or encourage a well-manicured fist to be raised (along with a well-arched eyebrow), McCoy tells you what its like to live life on the T-List. Through recent shamanic experiences, a vision quest revealed that Ben’s animal totem spirit is none other than Lindsay Lohan. Hey, girl!
Tara Jepsen is a writer and performer from San Francisco, California. Among her many performances, she has featured at the Porchlight storytelling event, the Progressive Reading Series, the RADAR reading series at the downtown San Francisco public library, at the St. Mark’s Poetry Project in New York, at SF Sketchfest 2009 and at San Francisco’s Litquake. She toured extensively with seminal all-female cabaret Sister Spit’s Rambling Road Show in October and November of 2007, as well as summer 1997, fall 1998, and summer 1999. Her short film, Diving for Pearls (co-written, directed and acted with Beth Lisick), won the “Most Innovative Short” award at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2004) and was selected for the “Best of Newfest” screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Diving for Pearls was removed from YouTube for an unknown offense, possibly nudity. She co-curates and co-hosts San Francisco’s longest running queer open mic (13 years and going strong!), K’vetsh, with Kirk Read. www.tarajepsen.com
Max Wolf Valerio is a writer and poet and the author of The Testosterone Files , a 2006 Lambda Literary Award Finalist. The Testosterone Files is a memoir about his FTM transition which began in 1989 shortly after meeting Lou Sullivan the year before. Max’s essays have appeared in many places including: This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation edited by Gloria Anzaldua and AnaLouise Keatings (Routledge), and the earlier historic This Bridge Called My Back edited by Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga. He has appeared in many documentaries on being trans including: You Don’t Know Dick, directed by Candace Schermerhorn and Buster Cam, Gendernauts and Max from the feature Female Misbehavior both directed by Monika Treut, and Octopus Alarm dir. Elizabeth Shrang, and acted in Unhung Heroes directed by Lazlo Ilya Pearlman. Originally a poet only, his poetry chapbook appeared in 1984, Animal Magnetism (eg press). Max is working on many projects including a novel, The Church of the Transsexual Jesus, and at least one collection of poetry, The Invisibility of Parallel Forces. He lives in San Francisco with a 3-legged dog, Ziggy. Sponsored by Zellerbach Family Foundation, W&F Hewlett Foundation and WA Gerbode Foundation. This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc. through a grant it has received The James Irvine Foundation. |
