Join us at Sideshow on Tuesday, July 12th. Featured readers include Ellis Avery, Samantha Barrow, E Charles Crandall, Kestryl Cael Lowrey, Morgan W., Renair Amin, & Ashley Young.
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Sinclair Sexsmith
Tuesday, July 12th
at The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm
Free! (We’ll pass the hat for the readers)
Philadelphia, PA native Renair Amin is no stranger to the arts. As an author, she has written for various print and on-line publications. She has acted in various plays, as well as written short one-acts that have been presented at Unity Fellowship Church of Christ New York and Restoration Temple Ministries. In addition, her short play, The Ride, was a featured staged reading at the 3rd Annual Potpourri’s Reading Festival. Renair has been able to use her voice to empower others through her workshops, as well as her poetry. As a spoken word artist, Renair has performed nationally, gracing stages in Atlanta, Rochester, Philadelphia and in New York City, where she hosts Speak Your Myne Harlem, a monthly open mic showcase of her creation. Just as passionate working behind the scenes, she has produced several artistic venues to showcase the various talents of the LGBT community. In 2006, Renair formed Pmyner, Ltd., a media and entertainment company created to provide services to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender literary, visual and performance arts communities which caused her to be named one of the Top 5 Lesbian Entrepreneurs by LezNation Magazine (2010.) In the Fall of 2010, she was awarded the Urban Lyfe Award for Best Spoken Word Artist. Subsequently, Renair Amin has answered the Call on her life and has entered into ministry under Restoration Temple Ministries where she serves as Minister-Elect. Her first poetry collection, Mental Silhouette, was be released in May 2011.
A graduate of Cheryl B’s Atomic Reading Series, Ellis Avery is the author of two novels and a memoir. Her first novel, THE TEAHOUSE FIRE (Riverhead 2006), set in the tea ceremony world of 19th century Japan, won three awards and has been translated into five languages. Her second, THE LAST NUDE, inspired by the Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka, is forthcoming from Riverhead in January. Avery teaches creative writing at Columbia University.
Samantha Barrow is a poet, performer, activist and writer. She just completed her MS in Narrative Medicine at Columbia University, where she is now a Distinguished Graduate Research Scholar. She works with the International Trauma Studies Program in NYC to fortify her work writing with and advocating for survivors of sexual assault & teaches Creative Resiliency workshops with. Saliha Bava. She’s been known to ride her motorcycle around the country, sharing her poems in bars, universities, libraries, cafes and sex shops. She has received multiple grants from the Leeway Foundation to tour and to facilitate Sound / Body / Love / Poem; gently erotic poetry workshops for survivors of sexual abuse. She is the author of GRIT and tender membrane (Plan B Press), Jelly (a chapbook, Tiger / Monkey Alliance), and Chap (self published). Her poetry, prose, reviews and interviews have been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Philadelphia City Paper, Off Our Backs, Avalon Magazine, The Ledge Magazine, Lesbian Nation, Feminist Review, and Edible Vineyard. She lives in New York City www.SamanthaBarrow.com
E Charles Crandall teaches writing at Temple University in Philadelphia. E blogs at Velvetpark, Lambda Literary, and as co-creator of the blog Breeders Digest: Helping Straight People Help Themselves (http://www.breedersdigest.org). E prefers life in melodrama, outfits on the complicated side, and Stevie Nicks on the rocks, with shawls.
Kestryl Cael Lowrey is a dandy trans butch performance artist with too many stories to tell. Hir full-length performances include XY(T), 348, and RADCLYFFE: The Completely Honest and Mostly True Story of Victorian England’s Second Most Notorious Invert. Ze was a member of “The Language of Paradox,” a performance ensemble founded and directed by Kate Bornstein. Cael’s writing appears in anthologies such as Kicked Out, and ze is half of the performance duo, PoMo Freakshow. Learn more at PoMoFreakshow.com
Morgan W. is an Uptown aficionado, a writer, student, teacher, chiller, adventurer and a big ole gay-gay. She writes stories, poems, rants, blogs, journal entries, manifestos and emails, checks to Sallie Mae and old school snail mail, hand-written letters. She shares most (okay some) of these works in and around New York, most recently at a bar in Bronxville, a small, tight-wad of a town in Westchester County where her alma mater resides. She spends her time leading workshops in jails and prisons, working hard for the money and scheming up ways to teach dope-ass classes on college campuses, high school classrooms, residential facilities and anywhere else they’ll let her talk sex, drugs and rock & roll. She’s the proud owner of a shiny new thesis, a long-distance cat (his name: Ray) and a heart made of egg and cheese sandwiches on which she could entirely subsist, for decades.
Ashley Young is a black feminist queer dyke; poet, non-fiction writer and teaching artist. She is the creator of an online writing project for women of color called Brown Girl Love (www.browngirllove.com) and is currently working on a memoir. She works as the Education Program Assistant at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture and as a teaching artist for Urban Stages. She lives with her partner and four cats in New York City.