Ryan Berg, author of No House to Call My Home: Love, Family, & Other Transgressions, will talk about his work in New York City as a caseworker for LGBTQ teenagers in foster care, especially those who are about to age out of the child welfare system. Berg begins this account of LGBTQ teens in the NYC foster care system with statistics that are at once shocking and painfully familiar: Children placed in foster care are more likely than veterans of war to develop post-traumatic stress disorder. LGBTQ teens make up 40% of homeless youth and are especially vulnerable. 70% of LGBTQ youth in group homes reported violence based on LGBTQ status.

A panel discussion with Ryan Berg will follow. Participants include Kate Barnhart of New Alternatives, Joey Lopez of The Ali Forney Center, and Ziggy Keyes of The True Colors Fund.

To reserve a copy of No House to Call My Home: Love, Family, & Other Transgressions please email Greg at contact@bgsqd.com

Suggested donation of $5 to benefit the Bureau. No one turned away for lack of funds.

Ryan Berg is a Lambda Literary Foundation Emerging Writers Fellow and received the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction Literature. His work has appeared in Slate, The Advocate, Ploughshares, Local Knowledge and the Sun. Berg has been awarded artist residencies from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. NO HOUSE TO CALL MY HOME is his first book. He’s worked as a youth worker in New York and Minneapolis. He’s currently the program manager for the Minneapolis and Suburban Host Home Programs of Avenues for Homeless Youth.