Join author Donald Mengay and photographer Hrvoje Slovenc for a reading and conversation about Mengay’s debut novel, The Lede to Our Undoing.  The work explores the challenges of being queer in the American Midwest or Rust Belt––so-called flyover America. The narrative is set in the 1970s, but it speaks to the broad retrenchment of rights occurring today: It presents the challenges for queer people in MAGA America, though before it got the name. It also explores the stifling effects of evangelical religion on queer identity, relationships, and culture. After a short reading, conversation, and Q&A, the author will sign copies for purchase at the event.

Copies of The Lede to Our Undoing  (Saddle Road Press, 2023, paperback, $25) will be available for purchase at the event. To reserve a copy, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “reserve a copy of The Lede to Our Undoing” in the subject line.

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

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel: youtube.com/@bgsqd

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.

Donald Mengay grew up in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, where he worked in a factory for a time and managed a bookstore. He began writing fiction in his early twenties while pursuing a degree in Psychology at Metropolitan State University in Denver. He earned a Masters in English Lit at the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in Comparative Lit from NYU. He taught Queer and Post-Humanist Lit at the City University of New York for over thirty years, as well as English at the University of Paris, Nanterre.  During his years teaching he published several articles of queer criticism in academic journals that include among others Genders, Genre, and Minnesota University Press. He has also published a book entitled Dis/Inheritance: New Croatian Photography, from Ikon Press. The Lede to Our Undoing is his debut novel, the first in a trilogy.  He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Hrvoje Slovenc (b. Zagreb, Croatia, 1976) is a Croatian/American photographer based in New York. He holds MFA in Photography from Yale University School of Art (2010) and MS in Biochemistry from University of Zagreb, Croatia (2000). Selected exhibitions include Traversing the Past, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago; Biennial, the Bronx Museum of the Arts; Past is Now, Munchner Stadtmuseum in Munich, Germany; Marble Hill, Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, Croatia; New Media, Sex, and Culture in the 21st Century, Museum of New Art in Detroit; New Acquisitions 2003-2013, Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, Croatia; and Young Artists’ Biennial in Bucharest, Romania. His work is in the permanent collections of Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, as well as Museum of Contemporary Art and Museum of Arts and Crafts in Zagreb, Croatia.