7pm
Join your favorite emerging and established authors this summer for the 2nd installment of readings and conversations around all things sapphic—how identity, sexuality, and desire inform their writing, the queer literary lineages they draw from, what it means to celebrate and center sapphic love, and much more.
For the second event of the series, Andrea Abi-Karam, Bishakh Som, Maura M. McDanel, and Megan Milks will be discussing sapphic spaces. We define “sapphic” as an umbrella term for attraction and relationships between women, inclusive of trans and cis women as well as nonbinary people who align and identify with these experiences. In this series, we aim to uplift sapphic writers who are often marginalized or excluded from the narrow scope of sapphic representation in mainstream media.
We encourage all guests to wear masks on the night.
Andrea Abi-Karam is a trans, arab-american punk poet-performer cyborg. They are the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019) and with Kay Gabriel, they co-edited We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics (Nightboat Books, 2020). Their second book, Villainy (Nightboat Books, Sept 2021) reimagines militant collectivity and was recently released by Nightboat Books. They are a leo obsessed with queer terror and convertibles.
Bishakh Som is an Indian-American trans femme visual artist, author and teacher. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Autostraddle, The Strumpet, Black Warrior Review and The Brooklyn Rail, amongst other publications. Her graphic novel Apsara Engine (The Feminist Press) is the winner of a 2021 L.A. Times Book Prize for Best Graphic Novel and a 2021 Lambda Literary Award winner for Best LGBTQ Comics. Her graphic memoir Spellbound (Street Noise Books) was also a 2021 Lambda Literary Award finalist. You can see her work at www.bishakh.com.
Maura M. McDanel is a poet & performer. She’s the author of Only Interested in Everything, a poetry chapbook published by Meekling Press. Before heading west, she lived in Chicago where she focused on live performance, as well as producing oddity and storytelling shows. Her work includes themes of sapphic identity, queer westerns, eco-feminism, and the tension that emerges from using 90s/early 00s nostalgia as context for the present. The queer cowb0y as archetype is kind of everything to her and she thinks there is something telling about the first CD someone bought. Let her know yours if you see her. TLC’s CrazySexyCool was her first, purchased at a pawn shop. She holds an MFA in writing and poetics from Naropa University in Boulder, CO where she currently teaches.
Megan Milks is the author of Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body, finalist for the 2022 Lambda Literary Award, and Slug, a revised edition of their award-winning first collection Kill Marguerite and Other Stories. They are co-editor of the anthology We Are the Baby-Sitters Club and teach writing and gender studies in New York.
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In order to keep our events program running in uncertain times, we're asking attendees to hold their place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the event on any product in store or in our bar & café. If you have a change of heart or plans, write to events@mcnallyjackson.com and we'll gladly refund you and release your spot, up to 24 hours before the event. Thanks for understanding, and for supporting your local bookstore.
