Love is a Battlefield

TRASH TALKIN’ TUESDAYS!
4 Literary Events whose participants are Talkin’ Trash and Takin’ Names!

All Events at 7:30pm
The Center/Ceremonial Room
Tickets: $5- $15

June 21st
Love is a Battlefield
Curated & Hosted by Cindy Emch

Cindy Emch Photo: Lynnly Labovitz

Can a poem contain lethal force? Can a kiss spark a revolution? Where do love and politics come together and create new spaces and ways to love and love and fight in our world? The line between love and hate is a common philosophical point, and in the queer community, sex and sexuality crossed from the personal to the political long ago. When passions come into play, most intense places, the most pleasurable, the most frightening, and the most painful are closer than we ever imagine. Join some of San Francisco’s fiercest poets as they shout, share and serenade you with their journeys into the intimate battlefield of love and war. Curated / Hosted by Cindy M. Emch.

Featuring:
Meliza Bañales, Elsa E’der, Marlo Gayle, Daphne Gottlieb, Fresh! White, Marlo Gayle and more.

Meliza Banales Photo: courtesy of the artist	Daphne Gottlieb Photo:Susan Hunsicker
Marlo Gayle Photo: Lindsay Walker	Elsa E’der Photo: Lynnly Labovitz
Fresh!	Mario Balcitas

Love is a Battlefield

Meliza Bañales
Meliza Bañales has been called, “The girl with the sense of humor of a jackknife.” She originally hails from Los Angeles and is the youngest of four kids from working-poor parents. The first Latina to ever win a Bay Area slam championship, she has been a fixture in the poetry slam community for the past six years. She has performed in just about everywhere–parks, bars, street corners, universities, restaurants, cross-country, internationally– and with just about everyone from school children to Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Ana Castillo. Her work can be found in numerous anthologies and magazines, including Revolutionary Voices, Lodestar Quarterly, and Laundry Pen, and through her own publications, published on both Chula and Monkey Press. Her work has often been called “edgy”, “political”, and “muy caliente”. Always looking to fight the good fight, Meliza’s work uses humor and personal stories to display larger truths and oppressions. She has co-written the play Starfuckers (2004), is a regular contributor to On Our Backs, and released the album Happy Accident (2004). Her first collection of poems, Say It With Your Whole Mouth, can be found on Monkey Press.

Elsa E’der
Elsa started reading at UC Berkeley with the publication of SMELL THIS. Since then, she’s had poems published by UCLA Asian American Studies Dept., and in other U.S. and Canadian women’s, lesbian, women-of-color and filipino american anthologies. Throughout, Elsa has worked to bring more diverse voices to the airwaves through television and film festivals. Elsa’s roots are in Hawaii.

Marlo Gayle
Marlo Gayle is a right nasty bastard whose writings have appeared in Sex Toy Tales, Familiar Men, 5 Minute Erotica, and Suspect Thoughts (http://www.suspectthoughtspress.com/)”

Daphne Gottlieb
San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the author of Final Girl (Soft Skull Press, 2003), Why Things Burn (Soft Skull Press, 2001) and Pelt (Odd Girls Press, 1999). Final Girl was named one of the The Village Voice’s Favorite Books of 2003, and received rave reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Village Voice. Why Things Burn was the winner of a 2001 Firecracker Alternative Book Award (Special Recognition – Spoken Word) and was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for 2001.

Fresh! White –
Fresh! is a self identified Rock Star, healer and Native NY’er who insists on focusing on all of our commonalities and respecting everyone’s differences.

Host: Cindy M. Emch
Cindy is a working writer who has had her poetry published in Lodestar Quarterly and has self-published the chapbooks “Autumn Leaves Don’t Always Turn” and “Notes From A Big Tough Journal.” Emch is the founder, host and curator of Queer Open Mic at the Three Dollar Bill Cafe, the newest home for rowdy revolutionary performance poetry in San Francisco. In her spare time she has managed to climb over 200 trees, explore 45 out of the 50 states, had nine piercings and four tattoos, had eight childhood scars, two of which should’ve had stitches and didn’t, and drinks WAY too much coffee.