Join the acclaimed biographer Cynthia Carr and cabaret legend Mx. Justin Vivian Bond for a discussion of Candy Darling, the first full portrait of the queer icon and Warhol superstar.

Growing up on Long Island, lonely and quiet and queer, she was enchanted by Hollywood starlets like Kim Novak. Candy Darling found her turn in New York’s early Off-Off-Broadway theater scene, in Warhol’s films Flesh and Women in Revolt, and at the famed nightclub Max’s Kansas City. She inspired songs by Lou Reed and the Rolling Stones. She became friends with Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin, borrowed a dress from Lauren Hutton, posed for Richard Avedon, and performed alongside Tennessee Williams in his own play.

Yet Candy lived on the edge, relying on the kindness of strangers, friends, and her quietly devoted mother, sleeping on couches and in cheap hotel rooms, keeping a part of herself hidden. She wanted to be a star, but mostly she wanted to be loved. Her last diary entry was: “I shall try to be grateful for life . . . Cannot imagine who would want me.” Candy died at twenty-nine in 1974, as conversations about gender and identity were really just starting. She never knew it, but she changed the world.

Packed with tales of luminaries and gossip and meticulous research, immersive and laced with Candy’s words and her friends’ recollections, Cynthia Carr’s Candy Darling is Candy’s long-overdue return to the spotlight.

To reserve a copy of Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, March 19, 2024, hardcover, $30), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve Candy Darling for April 7” in the subject line.

Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

This event will take place in person in room 301 of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.  Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work.

All are welcome to attend, with or without donation.

We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

Cynthia Carr is the author of Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz, winner of a Lambda Literary Award and finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Her previous books are Our Town: A Heartland Lynching, a Haunted Town, and the Hidden History of White America and On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century

Mx Justin Vivian Bond has appeared on stage (Broadway and Off-Broadway, London’s West End), screen (Shortbus, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, Sunset Stories, television (High Maintenance, Difficult People, The Get Down), nightclub stages (most notably a decades long residency at Joe’s Pub at The Public Theater in NYC), and in concert halls worldwide (Carnegie Hall, The Sydney Opera House).

Their visual art and installations have been seen in museums and galleries in the US (Participant, Inc, The New Museum) and abroad (Vitrine, London).

Their memoir Tango: My Childhood Backwards and in High Heels (Feminist Press) won the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Nonfiction.

They are the recipient of an Obie, a Bessie, and a Tony nomination, an Ethyl Eichelberger Award, The Peter Reed Foundation Grant, The Foundation for Contemporary Art Grant for Artists, and The Art Matters Grant.

They have self-released several full length recordings: most notably Dendrophile, and Silver Wells. As one half of the legendary punk cabaret duo Kiki & Herb they toured the world and released two cds: Do You Hear What We Hear? and Kiki and Herb Will Die For You at Carnegie Hall.

Mx Bond has been at the forefront of Trans visibility and activism since the early 1990s.

They have a Masters Degree in Live Art from Central Saint Martins College in London and have taught performance composition and Live Art Installation at NYU and Bard College.

Currently Viv divides their time between residences in New York City’s East Village and the Hudson Valley.

In December of 2019 they made their debut at The Vienna Staatsoper in the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s Orlando as Orlando’s child.

Mx Bond is the narrator of the forthcoming Candy Darling audiobook.