Queer Memoir: WHAT I READ THAT SUMMER (THIS SUNDAY AFTERNOON)

Remember those days of August in childhood when you just couldn't stop reading THAT book that made your little queer heart SING? Queer Memoir's August event is all about telling stories about the stories that made us who we are... With our amazing cast of storytellers: Kathleen Warnock, Kyle Lukoff Morgan Goode Erica Cardwell Karalyn Jeanne Leah Strock Sophia Vazquez-Pazos AND NOW, Red Durkin! Tickets 5-15 bucks sliding scale, no one turn ed away for lack of funds Queer Memoir is New York's first and longest running LGBT storytelling series; giving voice to our collective queer experience and preserving and documenting our complex queer history. Every month, we host some of Queer New York's best known performers, and folks who have never been on a stage in their lives and bring them together to celebrate the ritual and community building value of storytelling. Queer Memoir was founded by comic storyteller Kelli Dunham and playwright Genne Murphy in January 2010. In four years they have created more than 85 Queer Memoir events, drawing in over 7200 audience members and 365 different storytellers. Queer Memoir has collaborated with 13 arts organizations in four states, conducted almost a dozen storytelling workshops and used nearly a hundred venues including the MTA, sharing stories on both the A and Q Trains. BIOS: KATHLEEN WARNOCK Kathleen Warnock is a NYC-based playwright & editor. She was editor of Best Lesbian Erotica for five years, and had a lot of fun with it. She hosts the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series at KGB Bar the third Thursday of every month (since 2004). Her plays have been seen in New York, London, Dublin (Ireland and Georgia), and regionally. Currently, "Some Are People" is running at Philly Gayfest through August 23. She is curator of the Robert Chesley/Jane Chambers Playwrights Project for TOSOS and Ambassador of Love for North America for the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival, and by day she is Googly. SOPHIA VAZQUEZ-PAZOS Sophia Vazquez-Pazos is a contradiction on just about every expectation. An introvert that plays on social media (nycphoenix on twitter). A non-writer with professional publications, a now silent blog and notebooks of angsty poetry. An infertile from a community known for its fecundity. A sober drunk for the past seventeen years. A sexy fat girl in a world of size 4 supermodels. A married bisexual queer girl who loves drag, disco, show tunes and classic Hollywood and goes to church more often than Pride events. A radical social worker playing nice with the system for now. Sophia lives with these contradictions quite happily in Washington Heights with her butch husband Maribelle and her two kittehs, Florencio and Talula.This will be her third time at Queer Memoir and she is still nervous. KYLE LUKOFF Kyle Lukoff still has the first book he ever read independently, with his name and the date inscribed in the front cover (Old Hat, New Hat, starring the Berenstain Bears, August of 1989). He started working at Barnes and Noble as a summer job soon after he turned sixteen, and continued to work at different locations for a decade, during and after college. In 2009 he realized that library school existed, and he received his Masters of Library Science in 2011. He is now the librarian at a private elementary school in Chelsea, and spends most of his working hours talking about books to young children. MORGAN GOODE Morgan Goode is a storyteller and photographer living in Brooklyn. The video of her story "Sugar and Spice," which tells the tale of her middle school adventures with a squiggle wiggle writer, has over 4,000 views on YouTube. She's an editor at large at prettyqueer.com and is currently working on a nonfiction novel, a black comedy about the aftermath of her father's suicide, to be released this fall on Topside Signature Press. LEAH STROCK Leah left her childhood home in Yonkers in the summer of ’76 to share a summer sublet in the East Village with three friends. She was in her last year of high school, eager, underage and ready to explore all that the city had to offer. Her adventures included being chased by Lesbian Feminist Separatists when she tried to tear down their “cocksucking causes cancer” banner at the Gay Pride March… hitchhiking her way down 2nd avenue from chic lesbian lounges on the Upper East Side… hanging out at Bonnie & Clydes in the West Village and ending up later that evening in a full fledged orgy. The summer of ‘76 was a wild ride... and with it came Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown. KARALYN JEANNE Karalyn hails from the working class suburbs of NYC and has lived in Brooklyn for fifteen years. As a cross-cultural adoptee and orphan, she writes and ruminates on issues of attachment; as a social worker, she is captivated and humbled by our ability to make meaning from trauma and loss. After flunking out of college in 1996, she worked as a burger flipper, closet designer, mural painter and executive recruiter before completing her BS in Experimental Psychology through CUNY’s adult degree program in 2007. She earned her MSW in 2009. ERICA CARDWELL Erica Cardwell is a queer romantic, educator, and activist. . Her essays and reviews have been featured in The Paper, The Feminist Wire, Ikons Magazine, and the upcoming edition of Black Queer. Throughout the city, she has shared her work at La Galleria, The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, The Brecht Forum, Raw Fiction reading series, In The Flesh, and, post Hurricane Sandy in Kelly's apartment for Queer Memoir: Awkward. Her webseries, Prints, was a part of Alternative Realities a black lesbian reading series WOW Cafe Theater in December of 2013. Currently, she oversees the art, culture, and women's programming at The Hetrick-Martin Institute. Erica lives in the land of make believe in Astoria, Queens. You can read more of her work atwww.theomnivorous.blogspot.com.