Without A Net

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Without A Net
Readings and discussions on growing up queer & working-class
Michelle Tea, Dorothy Allison; Meliza Banales, Daisy HernÃindez, Ida Dewey Acton, Ricky Lee

Tuesday, June 8, 7:30 pm
LGBT Community Center, Rainbow Room
1800 Market Street San Francisco

Tickets:$15

michelletea

Without A net:
Michelle Tea curates this evening of readings from Without A Net: The Female Experience of Growing Up Working Class. She is also the editor of this collection of writings by females (past, present & future) who grew up broke. Writing frankly with humor, anger, pain and triumph, these essays explore the legacy of impoverished childhoods, the humiliation of the free clinic, the tiny joys of shoplifting, the absurdity of low-wage labor, the struggle out of poverty, intersections of class and race, and much more. Featuring readings and discussion with the book’s contributors including Dorothy Allison, editor Michelle Tea, Meliza Banales, Daisy Hernandez, Ricky Lee and Ida Action.

Michelle Tea is the author of three novelistic memoirs, most recently The Chelsea Whistle; the collection of poetry The Beautiful, and has edited the anthologies Pills Thrills Chills and Heartache: Adventures in the First Person (with Clint Catalyst) and Without A Net: The Female experience of Growing Up Working Class. She lives in San Francisco, where she curates, hosts and bakes cookies for the monthly Radar Reading Series at the San Francisco Public Library. She writes for the San Francisco Bay Guardian, Girlfriends, On Our Backs, SG Girl, BeyondChron.com, The Believer, and other fine publications.

Meliza Banales is a writer/spoken-word artist originally from Los Angeles. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been featured in Laundry Pen, Lodestar Quarterly, & Revolutionary Voices to name a few. She is the 2002 Oakland Grand Slam Champion and the 2002 winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize. Her first collection of poems, Say It With Your Whole Mouth, will be out in October of 2003 from Monkey Press.

Daisy Hernández is the co-editor with Bushra Rehman of Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press, 2002). She has written a column for Ms. magazine, reported for the New York Times, and is now very proud to be in the same anthology as her sister, Liliana. When Daisy is not busy being a dutiful daughter and analyzing the impact of NAFTA on her parents’ lives, she is a hardcore fuck-or- fight, gets-her-nails-done Jersey femme. Daisy is a Gemini.

Ida Dewey Acton is a writer, playwright, visual artist, and cosmetology student, and at the moment she is still managing to eke out a living in San Francisco. She recently wrote, directed, produced, and acted in her play “Hair-trigger Heart”, which sold out all shows at Theatre Spanganga in June 2003. Ida is currently working on her novel “The Sad and Terrible Ballad of Haskal J. Lonesome”. She is a touring and recording veteran of Sister Spit and has performed at the National Queer Arts Festival, The Harvey Milk Readers and Writers Conference, and the Michigan Women’s Music Festival among other places. She loves humid southern summers, clean, crisp pillowcases, and her dogs.

Ricky Lee is a native midwesterner residing in San Francisco. She is a mover of things heavy and a washer of things disgusting. She is a poet, painter, a bassist for the band “ghost cat”, and occasionally raps under the MC name The Real McKnight. She also runs TroubleMaker Productions company that when it has time curates art shows featuring working class artists, shoots pornos that will never be seen by the general public, and has released such noteworthy shorts as “Reservoir Dykes,” as well as the brand new red hot sizzling rap video “Hella Ho’s,” she is currently living off unemployment and will be in need of a new job by the time this book is published– if you want to give her money or a job please contact–[email protected]