Mad to Live

Mad to Live: Queers Under the Influence of the Beats
Presented by RADAR, The SF Public Library & Qcc
June 13, 20, 27 at 6:00pm
Readings
San Francisco Public Library/ Koret Auditorium
Free
Info: www.queerculturalcenter.org

Rhiannon Argo	Lynn Breedlove
Diane di Prima	Keith Hennessy

A three-part series featuring contemporary queer poets, writers and performers whose underground voices, outlaw stance and wild talent have made them heirs to the Beats’ literary legacy. Curated and hosted by Michelle Tea, each event pairs a non-fiction beat historian to contextualize these performers in history, and give a a clear picture on the beats’ impact on our culture at large.

June 13th: Ali Liebegott, Justin Chin, Kirk Read. Marcus Ewert, and Miranda Mellis

 June 20th: Lynn Breedlove, Keith Hennessy, Kirya Traber, Red Jordan Arobateau and Eileen Myles

 June 27th: Rhiannon Argo, Meliza Banales, Sara Seinberg, Buttafly Soul and Diane di Prima

Kirk Read
Kirk Read is the author of “How I Learned to Snap” and the forthcoming essay collection “This is the Thing.” He curates events around town and cohosts the open mics series K’vetsh and Smack Dab. He recently completed his MFA at San Francisco State in “fiction,” although most of what he wrote is completely true. He has worn many hats at St. James Infirmary, the city’s free clinic for sex workers. He is working on a novel as well as two anthologies – a male sex worker book and a collection about the intersections between gay male and transmale communities. His out-of-date website is kirkread.com

Justin Chin
Justin Chin’s third book of poetry, Gutted (Manic D Press), was awarded the Publishing Triangle’s 2006 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry, and is a finalist in the Lambda Literary Awards. His other books of poetry are Bite Hard, and Harmless Medicine (Manic D Press), which was a finalist at the Bay Area Book Reviewers Association Awards, and the Asian American Literary Awards. He is also the author of three collections of essays,  Burden of Ashes (Alyson Press), Mongrel: Essays, Diatribes and Pranks (St. Martin’s Press), & Attack of the Man-Eating Lotus Blossoms (Suspect Thoughts Press).

Lynn Breedlove
Lynn Breedlove is a political satirist known for Tribe 8, his novel
Godspeed, now a short, soon a feature film, and his comedy solo show on his trans body and the LGBTLMNOPQRST community, One Freak Show. He’s a radio DJ, and hosts Gender Pirates, SF Trans Picnic 05, and SF Trans March 07. He’s cute and harmless when asleep and identifies as a baby sheep.

Keith Hennessy
Keith Hennessy is a middle-aged queer hippy-punk performer, choreographer, teacher and organizer. His interdisciplinary research engages improvisation, spectacle, ritual and public action as tools for investigating and revisioning political realities. Hennessy directs Circo Zero, works often in France, and tours internationally. www.circozero.org

Rhiannon Argo
Rhiannon Argo is a San Francisco based writer whose stories have been published in several anthologies, and in her own hand-made chapbooks. She recently took her trash-talking tales on the road with the new generation of Sister Spit, and is currently working on her first novel entitled, Switch.

Ali Liebegott
Ali Liebegott’s modern epic, The Beautifully Worthless, (Suspect Thoughts
Press) won a Lambda Literary Award for Debut Fiction.  In 2007 she published
a novel, The IHOP Papers, with Carroll & Graf Press.  She’s currently
writing and illustrating, The Crumb People, a novel about a post September
11th obsessive duck feeder and formulating plans for a Beautifully Worthless
sequel.  In 1997, 1999, and 2007 she toured the country with Sister Spit’s
Ramblin’ Road Show.  She teaches adults how to read, write and do basic
math.

Meliza Banales
Meliza Banales is the author of Say It With Your Whole Mouth (Monkey Press) and the forthcoming 51 Poems About Nothing At All.  She is the 2002 winner of the People Before Profits Poetry Prize and has fiction and non-fiction in Without A Net, Baby, Remember My Name, and the first ever Encyclopedia of Activsim and Social Change.  Her film, Do the Math, with Mary Guzman was the winner of a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant and will screen in this year’s Outfest Film Festival in Los Angeles.

sara seinberg
sara seinberg is a writer and photographer living in san francisco. she is currently working on some scripts, some essays, making new visual work, and writing a novel called the madness of a simple red stone , a modern re-telling of the myth of pandora. she is hoping to fulfill a lifelong dream of following in the footsteps of jo from “facts of life” by learning to ride a motorcycle.