What better way to start off another year on our exhilarating ride toward redemption/oblivion, than a reading by three of the sharpest minds around? In a rare NYC appearance, writer and critic TRAVIS JEPPESEN will read from his work. On the same bill: the great essayist SVETLANA KITTO and the legendary BRUCE BENDERSON. Hosted by JASON NAPOLI BROOKS
 
Drinks will be served for a donation. Admission is $10 suggested donation to benefit the Bureau (no one will be turned away for lack of funds).
 
 
Travis Jeppesen is the author of the novels Victims, Wolf at the Door, and The Suiciders, as well as two volumes of poetry and a collection of art criticism, Disorientations: Art on the Margins of the “Contemporary”. In 2018, his book See You in Pyongyang, about his time living and studying in North Korea, was published. His essays and criticism have appeared in Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, Artforum, Afterall, Art in America, Texte zur Kunst, Flash Art, Bookforum, Spike, Frieze, and Mousse, among other publications. Jeppesen is based in Berlin and Shanghai, where he teaches at the Institute for Cultural and Creative Industry at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His new collection of essays, Bad Writing, is forthcoming from Sternberg Press.
 
 
Svetlana Kitto is a writer and oral historian in New York City. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Guernica, Interview Magazine, and BOMB, among other publications. She co/curates the reading and performance series Adult Contemporary, which is presented quarterly with Hauser & Wirth.
 
 
Bruce Benderson is a novelist, essayist, journalist and translator, widely published in France. Benderson’s erotic memoir Autobiographie érotique, about a nine-month sojourn in Romania, won the prestigious French literary prize, the Prix de Flore.His book-length essay, Toward the New Degeneracy, looks at New York’s Times Square, where rich and poor once mixed in a lively atmosphere of drugs, sex, and commerce. Benderson argues that this kind of mingling of classes has been the source of many modern avant-garde movements, and he laments the disappearance of that particular milieu. His novel User (1994) is a lyrical descent into the world of junkies and male hustlers. He is also the author of James Bidgood (Taschen, 1999), about the maker of the cult film Pink Narcissus.
 
 
Jason Napoli Brooks’ fiction and non-fiction have appeared in various publications, such as Ninth Letter, Asymptote, Bomb Blog, Colors, and the gay fiction anthology Satanica. His first novel, Shelter, was the recipient of The Chapbook Award for Best Fiction of 2006. From 2014-2017 Brooks published the psychedelic mystery series Cock of the Walk in zine format. It reached a wide audience and is now being translated intoSpanish. Brooks wrote the script for the multimedia theater work, Soundstage, starring actor Rebecca Hall and created/directed by Rob Roth, which premiered in New York City at Here Arts Center in September 2018. Brooks is the founder, curator, and emcee of the long-running Enclave Reading Series, which takes place at Club Cumming, actor Alan Cummings’ nightclub in the East Village.