Introducing a new monthly reading series at the Bureau: The NY Queer Open Mic! We’re shaking things up a bit / trying to create a space where the community can share poetry and politics.
The first half of the event will be dedicated to folks who come early and scribble on the sign-up list. The second half of the mic will go to our features- Tommy “Teebs” Pico & Alok Vaid-Menon.

Tommy “Teebs” Pico is the founder and editor-in-chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that publishes art and writing. He was a Queer/Art/Mentors inaugural fellow, 2013 Lambda Literary fellow in poetry, and has been published in BOMB, [PANK], and THEthe poetry blog. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn and is working on Messy Faggot— his first collection of poetry.

Alok Vaid-Menon is a South Asian artivist who has performed & organized with queer movements around the world. They are committed to building radical queer movements and bodies that resist white supremacy and imperialism and like making art that thinks about these, and other what ifs. You can read some of their work at returnthegayze.tumblr.com and queerlibido.tumblr.com.

Your host for the night is Christopher Soto, a queer latin@ poet and current MFA:Poetry candidate at NYU. Event starts at 7pm on Sunday, October 27th, we hope to see you there!