The Bureau Book Club is a home for freewheeling discussion about the books and the issues that captivate us. Inspired by the conversations that break out after so many of the Bureau’s more formal events, we’ll have a one-hour session each month about a different work of fiction or non-fiction. Buy the book from the Bureau and get a 10% discount. We know you have busy lives: if you can’t finish the whole book, why not come and talk about the parts you’ve read? Just come prepared with a favorite quote. The Book Club discussions will be moderated by Ben Miller.

This month’s book will be Laurie Weeks‘ novel Zipper Mouth. Its publisher, The Feminist Press, calls out its “ranting letters to Judy Davis and Sylvia Plath, an unrequited fixation on a straight best friend, exalted nightclub epiphanies, devastating morning-after hangovers.” Michelle Tea calls it “a brilliant rabbit hole of pitch-black hilarity…and drugs, drugs, drugs.” What could be better for August?

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Ben Miller is a Brooklyn-based writer. Current projects include award-winning biographical research on early gay activist Harry Hay that has taken him to archives in California and conferences from Pennsylvania to New Mexico, an adaptation of an early Mozart libretto for performance at Carnegie Hall, serving as dramaturg for Circuit Theatre Company’s production of The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, and new short fiction influenced by his historical research. His teachers in history and writing have included Linda Gordon, K. Kevyne Baar, Marcelle Clements, and Jonathan Safran Foer. Ben is the winner of New York University’s Bessie and Louis Levy Prize for Excellence in American History, and was named Steffi Berne Research Scholar in the Humanities by the same institution. He is a co-founder of Squid Ink Magazine (launching soon), works as Web Associate at the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, and serves on the communications committee of the New York City LGBT Anti-Violence Project. He tweets @benwritesthings.