I'm very chuffed that the nice folks at Edinburgh's Forest Publications have gone into a second printing with my wee short story chapbook, Here's To Wang!
In other news, Zorras play Words Per Minute in Glasgow this Sunday at 3:30pm at Creation Studios. It's a grand wee series, check it out here.
And soon I shall be visiting Canadialand, and doing a bunch of readings/performances. Read about them on my myspace. (Special note about the Lab Cab Festival: there are TWO readings per day, one at 1:15 pm and one at 4:15pm on both the 18th and 18th of September).
Tomorrow night (Monday) I'm reading at Tropitextualties at The Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, 8pm, free. Hosted by Nick-E Melville.
Tuesday night Zorras present Faceplant: A Showcase of the Brilliantly Unpopular. It's at The Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo Place, and it's also free! Featuring Anita Govan, Jim Ferguson, Andra Simons, Alabaster De Plume and Zorras. Hosted by A. Valliard.
If anyone knows anyone in Berlin, please send them to the Entazubert festival! I have a screening of my film, Here -- about queer and genderqueer migrants to Edinburgh -- on Saturday at 6:30. Full schedule here.
Thoughts on state and police brutality at the G20 in Toronto coming soon...
Wherein I babble without notes but tell you about a few things.. including Diane Arbus at Edinburgh's Dean Gallery, ending soon! And Zorras in London and the Pride version of Cachin Cachan Cachunga! Sometimes you can "click to play", sometimes you have to click on "download this"... many thanks to the beautiful C for hooking me up.
Tomorrow night is the 10th Cachín Cachán Cachunga! at The Street. The wonderful Andra Simons is in from London, don't miss him -- he's a rare treat. And his stellar new book is here with him. The Joshua Tales is available tomorrow night, and also from Tree House Press. Cachín will also feature a new story from Hamish MacDonald and other yumminess. Dance the night away with DJ Supernowoczesna, too!
xo Now I'm going back to have fun with Andra, bye!
I want you to order these fantastic new zines published by Nine and www.jinxremoving.org You will not be sorry.
The first is Sex Industry Apologist. This zine contains Nine's bang-on critiques of media representations of sex work, and of the crap attitudes of mainstream feminists and other sex work abolitionists. The zine is also chock-full of Nine's brilliant reflections on her experiences working at a project for sex workers -- ranging from racism in sex work to the necessity for a sense of humour in a world full of assholes. Nine has a sweet knack for making her argument in a convincing way, without leaning to extremism or forgetting to allow for people's distinct situations in life. Plus she's damn funny.
The second zine is The Collected Scathings of Ioana Poprowka. Poprowka is a pseudonymic queer trans woman who wrote for Scotland's The Skinny for two years. Her "scathings" (which are remarkably lacking in the bitterness one might expect from that word) cover such topics as trans representation in the media and pop culture, passing, the separation of trans identity from sexuality, and the right to change your gender on official documents. I was especially pleased to see Poprowka's excellent critique of Edinburgh Festival's Ladyboys of Bangkok and the "cloying stench of the freakish" in the way the show is presented to the public... that show's marketing has always left me feeling a bit sick. Poprowka writes about difficult (and sometimes enraging) topics with balance and an admirable thoughtfulness. She also switches between personal essays and media critiques with ease and skill.
Nine will be reading from Poprowka's work at the next Cachín Cachán Cachunga, 16 February at The Street in Edinburgh.
"Scottish-Canadian poet Sandra Alland and musician Y. Josephine have a more experimental take on spoken word performance than your average word-spitter. Having emerged from the Edinburgh queer cabaret scene a few years ago, Zorras deliver their musical stories bilingually, mixing text, sound poetry, percussion, guitar, megaphones, singing and projected visual images. Though I'd wager their live performance is more true to their artistic vision than an audio recording, they are still interesting on CD, mixing it up between more musical numbers like the guitar-folk 'Nest' and more radio-dramatized pieces like 'Here's To Wang." I personally love the 'In the Details' spoken interludes, humorous musings on the idiosyncrasies of the Bulgarian language." - Curve Magazine, Feburary 2010
In other news, Cachín Cachán Cachunga is Tuesday at 7:30pm at The Street. Don't miss Alison Smith and Penny Stenhouse. Also Zorras and Lily, and a few filmic and musical surprises!
