Having been included in THEM’s, Ms. Magazine’s, Nylon’s, and SF Chronicle’s Most Anticipated books-lists for 2024 and receiving advanced praise from Torrey Peters, Kathleen Hanna, Jarett Kobek, Lydia Lunch, Susan Stryker, Rob Doyle, Eliot Duncan, and Publishers Weekly – it is time for the lyrical, literary, trans feminine LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING by Alvina Chamberland to finally be released into the world and the wild.

Join us on Wednesday, March 20th, at 7 PM, for a special evening with Alvina Chamberland reading from the novel, and the performance icon Penny Arcade reading from her forthcoming memoir, followed by a discussion on art, literature, literary favorites, and creating political content that is also artistically deep and complex. LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING will be for sale at the store, and the author will be available to sign your copy.

MORE ON LOVE THE WORLD OR GET KILLED TRYING:

WINNER OF THE 2022 NOEMI PRESS BOOK AWARD IN PROSE

“Perhaps some hearts are so big they must constantly burst and break.”

Through playful poetic prose, sharp social commentary and self-deprecating gallows humor Love the World or Get Killed Trying dives into the mind of Alvina, a trans woman on the eve of turning 30. The reader is invited to follow her journey through the breathtaking wilderness of Iceland and busy city boulevards of Berlin and Paris as she probes questions of eternity, sexuality, longing, death, love, and how hard it is to remain soft when you’re a ceaseless target of straight men’s secret lust and open disgust. This novel tackles universal issues through a trans woman’s specific lens – insisting on these experiences speaking to far more than just issues of sexuality and gender.

Reaching its climax through an urgent wildfire scream-of-consciousness, cry-of-love-manifesto, Love the World or Get Killed Trying is a raw and vulnerable work of magical brutalist autofiction; abstract in the sense of poetically digging beneath the surface, and experimental in the sense of trying to find out new things and express them in new ways, while concretely asserting that if trans women one day collectively outed every man who seeks them out, a full-blown revolution would ensue by nightfall.

To reserve a copy of Love the World or Get Killed Trying (Noemi Press, March 15, 2024, paperback, $18), please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “please reserve copy of Love the World” 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.