Dressed smart like a London bloke, before he speak his suit bespoke. – Kanye West. Change “he” to “she” and “his” to “their,” and you’ve found the all-inclusive spirit of Bespoke at the Bureau.
 

Feeling a bit drab in your literary lifestyle? Craving some chic with your geek? Save the date: On Tuesday, April 24, the Bureau will feature Eileen Myles, Joe Okonkwo, Diana Oh and one “wild card” to inaugurate Bespoke, a bimonthly queer series where featured readers dress fun, fancy, or flirtatious, supporting the Bureau and resisting fascism. Our sinfully sartorial series presents fashionable femmes, dapper dykes, chic twinks, trendy trans* folk, & frothy FTMs. Featured writers are encouraged to suit up or dress down : readers’ choice.
 

Your hosts are the dangerously deviant trio Christina “CQ” Quintana (writer/playwright/dyke about town), Jerome Ellison Murphy (poet, critic and NYU Creative Writing Program administrator) and Tim Murphy (longtime LGBTQ journalist, activist and author of the novel Christodora), who invite you to turn out in your Tuesday best (dress up is welcome & encouraged, not mandatory) every other month for drinks and chat before & after our reading.
 

Writers! When else will you join a lineup of such stylish stature? Cast your name into the Bespoke rainbow top hat for your chance at being the featured “wild card” reader, and give your CV a makeover! Be ready with a short & sassy selection.

Coming down the runway:

Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, performer and art EILEEN MYLES. Eileen Myles is a poet, novelist, performer and art journalist who needs no introduction! Their twenty books include Afterglow (a dog memoir), a 2017 re-issue of Cool for You and I Must Be Living Twice/new and selected poems, and Chelsea Girls. Eileen is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Andy Warhol/Creative Capital Arts Writers grant, four Lambda Book Awards, and the Shelley Prize from the PSA. In 2016, Myles received a Creative Capital grant and the Clark Prize for excellence in art writing. Currently they teach at NYU and Naropa University and live in Marfa, TX and New York.
 
 

Joe Okonkwo is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and editor, whose debut novel Jazz Moon won the Publishing Triangle’s prestigious 2016 Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction. Set against the backdrop of the Harlem Renaissance and glittering Jazz Age Paris, it was published by Kensington Books in 2016. Joe’s short stories have appeared in Promethean, Penumbra, CooperStreet, Storychord, LGBTsr.org, Chelsea Station, and Shotgun Honey. His work has been anthologized in Love Stories from Africa (his first fiction published outside the U.S.), Best Gay Love Stories 2009, and Best Gay Stories 2015.
 
 

Diana Oh is an actor/singer-songwriter/theatremaker/performing artist. She is the inaugural 2016 Van Lier Fellow in Acting with the Asian American Arts Alliance, one of Refinery 29’s Top 14 LGBTQ Influencers, the First Queer Korean ­American interviewed on Korean Broadcast Radio, Creator of #AsianPeopleareNotMagicians on Mic.com, Creator of {my lingerie play}: a concert & installation series in lingerie staged in an effort to provide a saner, safer, more respectful world for women to live in featured in People, on stage at EST, The Lark, Joe’s Pub, All For One, and on stage at Rattlestick Theatre September 2017 in co-pro with Ma-Yi. She will be in concert in April 2017 at The Center (www.gaycenter.org). The Wall Street Journal & Upworthy call her “bad­ass.” mylingerieplay.com