Monthly Archive for March, 2005

Bee Lavender/Lauren Sanders reading

Mar ’05
29
12:00 am

Akashic Books & Punk Planet Books presentan evening of readings withLauren Sanders author of WITH OR WITHOUT YOU andBee Lavender author of LESSONS IN TAXIDERMYTuesday, April 12th, 7PMFREE
With or Without You combines the aching adolescent heart of The Catcher in the Rye with the dark suburban soul of The Great Gatsby–set against the starstruck voyeurism of American Idol. This book asks the quintessentially American question: Is life worth living if you can’t be famous?
 
LAUREN SANDERS’s highly acclaimed debut novel, Kamikaze Lust, won a 2000 Lambda Literary Award. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including the American Book Review, Poets & Writers, and Time Out New York. She lives in Brooklyn.
 
Lessons in Taxidermy is the autobiographical tale of growing up destitute and sick in the Pacific Northwest. After surviving a rare genetic disorder and childhood cancer, Lavender retells the events of her tumultuous life–battling her illnesses, learning to fight, young motherhood–in fearless, unapologetic prose and gut-wrenching, yet darkly comic, detail.
 
Bee Lavender is the 33-year-old coeditor of two books, Breeder: Real Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers and Mamaphonic. She is also the publisher of the online edition of Hip Mamamagazine. She also created and publishes Girl-Mom, an advocacy website for teen parents, and Yo Mama Says, a news and commentary website for activists.
 
WITH OR WITHOUT YOU by Lauren Sanders
“I hate the term poetic, but Lauren Sanders’s writing has such a slick mean surface and her subject is such a truly bad girl, a murderer. I mean, so that poetic suits With or Without You just fine. It’s a hot poetic book I wouldn’t kick out of bed.”
–Eileen Myles, author of Chelsea Girls
 
LESSONS IN TAXIDERMY by Bee Lavender
“Bee Lavender is a fantastic writer. Her work is deep and personal and I don’t think there are any places she’s scared to go.”
–Michelle Tea, author of Rent Girl
 
Both authors will be reading and signing their new books at the event.
 

The Cross Gender Caravan

Mar ’05
17
12:00 am

Cross Gender Caravan
Friday May 6th, 7PM
FREE
 
Join us as young transgender writers tell their stories in fiction, essays and poetry. And along the way, they expand the boundaries of both gender and artistic expression. Your genderscape may never be the same again!
 
Featuring:
 
Tennessee Jones a southern ex-punk with high pompadour whose first book, Deliver Me From Nowhere, explores the sex and gender badlands of Middle America through the prism of Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska.
 
Charlie Anders author of Choir Boy, a bittersweet and surreal story of a choirboy who takes female hormones to keep his voice from changing and discovers a world of gender confusion. Charlie publishes other, the magazine of pop and politics for the new outcasts.
 
Andre Hewitt, aka The Urban Hermit author of The Urban Hermitt zine and The Flow Chronicles, a book about nightmare hippies and coming out as queer in the midst of lsd induced- heterosexist- rainbow gathering ?love. Andre writes about counterculture, with soul.
 
Emil Heiple is a zinester exiled from the dirty south, and reborn a boy. His new book, The Body of Loss was born of soils and sweats far from home, and is an exploration of the human body and how most of us will never get it quite right.
 

Belltown Paradise/Making Their Own Plans Book Release Event

Mar ’05
5
12:00 am

Ave Bromberg and Brett Bloom discuss the new book
Belltown Paradise / Making Their Own Plans
Friday, February 25th, 8:00 PM
 
This double-sided volume offers two books detailing inspiring examples of artists, environmental visionaries, and concerned citizens who have had a direct impact in shaping their urban environments. The groups were invited to write their own accounts of their histories, failures and triumphs while working to redesign neighborhoods in creative and exciting ways.
Belltown Paradise?is a concentrated study of urban renovation activities around the corner of Elliot and Vine Streets in the Belltown neighborhood of Seattle. The first three chapters present the work of community activists who successfully preserved open land in one of Seattle?s most densely packed neighborhoods to create the Belltown P Patch, a community garden, and transform three adjacent early 20th century workers? cottages for writer?s residencies and a community center called Cottage Park. The chapters also cover Growing Vine Street, an initiative to slowly convert Vine Street, which runs along one side of the garden, into a ?green? street that cleans rainwater runoff from adjacent high-rise condo buildings while providing pedestrian-friendly space for urban dwellers. The fourth chapter is the first comprehensive chronicle of the work of artist Buster Simpson?s 30 years of public work in Belltown. Buster?s work and dedication have had an important impact on the aesthetics and conceptualization of environmental planning in the Belltown neighborhood.
 
The second book?Making Their Own Plans?shares the histories and tactics of four independent groups from four distinct urban centers: Portland, Oregon; Chicago, Illinois; Hamburg, Germany; and Barcelona, Spain. City Repair (Portland) began a number of neighborhood initiatives aimed at promoting a sense of community; their primary initiative creates public squares in and around the middle of the traffic intersections, resulting in what they call ?intersection repair.? The Resource Center (Chicago) had been working since the late 60s to find creative solutions to environmental and social problems in the city, primarily through reuse and recycling initiatives. A recent plan, detailed in their chapter, works to convert 6000 acres of vacant city land into farms that simultaneously clean the air, produce local organic produce, employ homeless persons, and beautify the city. Park Fiction (Hamburg), starting in 1995, organized exhibitions, design workshops, protests, and spectacles in their successful fight to preserve an open waterfront space and create a community-designed park on the Elbe River. The inhabitants of Can Masdeu (Barcelona) squatted then rehabilitated an old hospital and the surrounding grounds into space for living, gardening, neighborhood events, workshops and classes. Their chapter details their struggles with both local authorities and the exhaustion of radical communal living.
 
In the Field (Brett Bloom and Ava Bromberg) explores complex social constellations created by urban land use. We share ideas and take action inhabiting, transforming, and opening up spaces to new possibilities for creatively generated public space and autonomously produced neighborhood planning. Activities include public projects and written Field Guides, examples are available on the web site: www.inthefield.info
 
They will be on hand to discuss and sign the book.