If you’re in the NY area, come listen to Rajiv Mohabir read from his gorgeous, award-winning memoir Antiman (out now in paperback) at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division! The winner of our 2019 Prize for New Immigrant Writing, Antiman explores the fraught constellations of race, sexuality, and cultural heritage that have shaped Rajiv’s experiences as an Indo-Guyanese queer poet and immigrant to the United States. Rajiv will be in conversation with queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, speaker and podcaster, Anastacia-Reneé. Anastacia-Reneé’s forthcoming book of poems, Side Notes from the Archivist (HarperCollins, March 2023), is a rich and beautiful collection of verse and image—a multi-part retrospective that traverses time, space, and reality to illuminate the expansiveness of Black femme lives.

Moderated by Chaelee Dalton

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

This event is free and open to all!

Safety protocol

In an effort to prevent the spread of COVID-19:

If you have any symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the days leading up to the event, we ask you to please stay home.

Please note that masks are required at all times inside The LGBT Community Center, where the Bureau is located.

Copies of Antiman are also available at the Bureau’s physical store and can be purchased at the event. To reserve a copy please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com

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

Rajiv Mohabir is the author of Cutlish (2021, Four Way Books, finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, longlisted for the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award), The Cowherd’s Son (2017, winner of the 2015 Kundiman Prize) and The Taxidermist’s Cut (2016, winner of the Four Way Books Intro to Poetry Prize and finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2017), and translator of I Even Regret Night: Holi Songs of Demerara (1916) (2019), which received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant Award and the 2020 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. His essays can be found in places like the Asian American Writers Workshop’s The Margins, Bamboo Ridge Journal, Moko Magazine, Cherry Tree, Kweli, and others, and he has a “Notable Essay” in Best American Essays 2018. Currently he is an assistant professor of poetry in the MFA program at Emerson College. His debut memoir, Antiman, won the 2019 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.

Anastacia-Renee (She/They) is a queer writer, educator, interdisciplinary artist, speaker and podcaster. She is the author of (v.) (Black Ocean) and Forget It (Black Radish) and, Here in the (Middle) of Nowhere and Sidenotes from the Archivist forthcoming from Amistad (an imprint of HarperCollins). They were selected by NBC News as part of the list of “Queer Artists of Color Dominate 2021’s Must See LGBTQ Art Shows.” Anastacia-Renee was former Seattle Civic Poet (2017-2019), Hugo House Poet-in-Residence (2015-2017), Arc Artist Fellow (2020) and Jack Straw Curator (2020).

Her work has been anthologized in: Teaching Black: The Craft of Teaching on Black Life and Literature, Home is Where You Queer Your Heart, Furious Flower Seeding the Future of African American Poetry, Afrofuturism, Black Comics, And Superhero Poetry, Joy Has a Sound, Spirited Stone: Lessons from Kubota’s Garden, and Seismic: Seattle City of Literature. Her work has appeared in, Hobart, Foglifter, Auburn Avenue, Catapult, Alta, Torch, Poetry Northwest, A-Line, Cascadia Magazine, Hennepin Review, Ms. Magazine and others. Renee has received fellowships and residencies from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, VONA, Ragdale, Mineral School, and The New Orleans Writers Residency.

Chae(lee) Dalton is a wintertime poet and summertime ice cream maker. They are the author of the chapbook Mother Tongue (Gold Line Press 2021) and their work appears in The Offing, Pinwheel, Penn Review, and elsewhere. A queer Korean adoptee, Dalton currently live in New York, where they teach kids science and make things with their friends.