One of the great advantages of living in New York City is that we can hear new ideas as they are being created, instead of having to wait years for those books to appear on bookstore shelves. First Mondays allows us to share accomplished writers’ processes as they are happening and gives us an intimate insight into their new work in-progress, long before publication or performances. Join us every first Monday at Performance Space New York for a special opportunity to hear the future.
7pm
Written by Eszter Balint, with songs by Eszter Balint and Stew, Directed by Lucy Sexton
Eszter Balint is a singer-songwriter who grew up as a member of the legendary avant-garde theater company Squat Theatre. She’s had 3 solo albums and featured roles in films by Jim Jarmusch, Woody Allen, and Steve Buscemi and worked alongside David Bowie and Louis CK.
Lucy Sexton is the creator of the seminal feminist performance duo DANCENOISE, directed critically acclaimed Off Broadway show Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell dramaturged Nora Burns’ David’s Friend, and produced documentaries by Charles Atlas for BBC, Arte (France), and Bullitt Films (Denmark).
7pm
With: Andrés Cerpa, Urayoán Noel, and Deborah Paredez
Rigoberto González is author of 17 books of poetry and prose, he is currently director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers-Newark.
Urayoán Noel teaches at New York University. His most recent book is Transversal (University of Arizona Press).
Andrés Cerpa is the author of Bicycle in a Ransacked City: An Elegy (2019) and The Vault (2021) from Alice James Books, longlisted for the National Book Award.
Deborah Paredez is the Co-Founder of CantoMundo, and her most recent book is Year of the Dog (BOA Editions), a finalist for the 2021 CLMP Firecracker Award in Poetry and winner of the 2021 Writers League of Texas Poetry Book Award.
7pm
We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics
Edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel
With Andrea Abi-Karam, Aristilde Kirby, Kay Gabriel, Stephen Ira, zavé martohardjono, Bianca Rae Messinger
Andrea Abi-Karam is the author of EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), co-editor with Kay Gabriel of We Want It All, and author of VILLAINY (Nightboat, 2021).
zavé martohardjono makes multidisciplinary performance works that dream up more just futures and contend with the political histories our bodies carry. zavemartohardjono.com
Aristilde Kirby is like the breath of the wings of a butterfly & the play of the ripples on the water.
Kay Gabriel is the author of Kissing Other People or the House of Fame (Rosa Press, 2021), A Queen in Bucks County (Nightboat, 2022), and a co-editor with Andrea Abi-Karam of We Want It All (Nightboat, 2020).
Stephen Ira is a poet and essayist recently nominated for Best of the Net, whose work can be found in Poetry, Fence, and tagvverk, among others.
Bianca Rae Messinger is a poet and translator living and working in Buffalo, NY.
1pm
6:30pm
With Jess Row, Asiya Wadud, and Monica Youn
As part of On Nationalism: The Fragility and Possibility of We, The Racial Imaginary Institute has partnered with Sarah Schulman and Performance Space New York to present readings from three works-in-progress that engage the political and affective effects of nationalism.
Monica Youn is the author of the forthcoming collection FROM FROM (Graywolf Press 2023) and three previous books of poems. She teaches at UC Irvine.
Jess Row is the author of Your Face in Mine and White Flights: Race, Fiction, and the American Imagination, among other books. He teaches at NYU.
Asiya Wadud Asiya Wadud is the author of Crosslight for Youngbird, day pulls down the sky/ a filament in gold leaf (written with Okwui Okpokwasili), Syncope and No Knowledge Is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body.
6:30pm
With Geo Wyeth and Tracie Morris
Geo Wyeth makes music and performance in Rotterdam and Amsterdam, Netherlands. He is black-like-Mariah, trans transmission scrambled egg head, originally from the 212.
Tracie Morris is a sound poet and author from Brooklyn, New York.
6:30pm
With Jeanne Thornton/Nahshon Anderson/Torrey Peters
Jeanne Thornton is the author of The Dream of Doctor Bantam and The Black Emerald, both Lambda Literary Award finalists, as well as the co-publisher of Instar Books.
Nahshon Anderson‘s debut book, SHOOTING RANGE, a gritty and gut wrenching memoir of Black trans life in Hollywood, is almost ready for the world.
Torrey Peters, a writer living in Brooklyn, is the author of the cult novellas The Masker, Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, and Glamour Boutique.
6:30pm
With Matt Brim and John Keene
Matt Brim is the author of James Baldwin and the Queer Imagination (2014), and he teaches at the College of Staten Island where he is finishing a book titled Poor Queer Studies.
John Keene is the author of Counternarratives (New Directions) and other books, teaches at Rutgers University-Newark, and lives in New Jersey.
6:30pm
With Nancy Kricorian, Nuar Alsadir, Bina Sharif, Susan Abulhawa
Nancy Kricorian is the author of three novels about post-genocide Armenian diaspora experience, and is currently at work on her fourth, which is set in an Armenian neighborhood in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War.
Nuar Alsadir, a poet, essayist and psychoanalyst, is the author of Fourth Person Singular (2017) and More Shadow Than Bird (2012).
Bina Sharif is a playwright, director, actress and a visual artist.
Susan Abulhawa is an author, activist and founder of Playgrounds for Palestine. Abulhawa is the author of The Blue Between Sky and Water and Mornings in Jenin.
6:30pm
Raquel Gutiérrez is a writer of personal essays, memoir, art criticism, and poetry and is a 2017 recipient of the Creative Capital.
Ru (Nina) Puro is the author of Each Tree Could Hold A Noose Or A House, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize and the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, Deming Fund, & others.
Camille Roy’s last book is Sherwood Forest (Futurepoem) and her next is a book of selected prose, forthcoming from Nightboat.
Gail Scott is the author of the novels The Obituary (Coach House/Nightboat), My Paris (Dalkey Archive), and the forthcoming Furniture Music, in part an ode to the downtown Manhattan poetry scene.
Pamela Sneed, New York-based poet, writer, performer and visual artist, is author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom than Slavery, KONG and Other Works the chaplet, Gift (Belladonna*) and the prose collection Sweet Dreams (Belladonna* 2018).
1:00pm
Co-organized by Ken Chen and Sarah Schulman.
In honor of Avant Garde Women Writers who we have lost, continuing in last year’s tradition begun with Kathy Acker, we offer a collective marathon reading of Dictee by THERESA HAK KYUNG CHA. Born in South Korea, an immigrant at age 12, Theresa emerged as a San Francisco artist and moved to NY where she was preparing a show at Artists Space while working at the design department of the Met. She created highly inventive and innovative interdisciplinary visual and textual work using four languages and a number of mythological traditions. At age 31 in 1982, she was murdered and Dictee was published to become a classic Avant-garde art text widely taught and highly inspiring.
Special Guests
John Cha (Theresa’s Brother)
Yong Soon Min (artist)
Lawrence Rinder (director, Berkeley Art Museum)
Ken Chen (director, Asian American Writers’ Workshop)
Berenice Reynaud (scholar, curator, critic, teacher)
Readers
Nuar Alsadir, Lee Ann Brown, Alexander Chee, Ava Chin, Monika Gagnon, Erica Cho, Patricia Spears Jones, Mia Kang, Myung Mi Kim, Catherine Lord, Stefanie Mar, Tracie Morris, Carlos Motta, Meena Nanji, Bina Sharif, Aldrin Valdez, Cecilia Vicuna, Sarah Wang, John Yau, Monica Youn and more.
6:30pm
New Poets of Native Nations – New Works In Progress
Heid E. Erdrich (Ojibwe) is the author of five collections of poetry and NEW POETS OF NATIVE NATIONS from Graywolf Press.
Layli Long Soldier (Lakota) is author of WHEREAS (Graywolf Press) which won a National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry and the PEN / Jean Stein Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Poetry.
Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) is a Brooklyn, NY composer, musician and artist.
Gwen Westerman (Dakota and Cherokee) is the author of the poetry collection FOLLOW THE BLACKBIRDS and is a fiber artist, historian, and professor of Humanities at Minnesota State University Mankato.
6:30pm
With Gordon Beeferman, Jack Waters, and Christina Wheeler.
Composer/pianist/organist and writer Gordon Beeferman has created and performed innovative opera, chamber and orchestra music, avant-jazz, and collaborative work with choreographers, writers, and other artists.
Jack Waters multi media musical opus Pestilence is grounded in the sonic improvisations of NYOBS (Michael Cacciatore, Peter Cramer, John Michael Swartz, and Jack Waters), the “queer skinned kitchen band” melding spoken word, moving image, and the musical strategies of Sun Ra, Brian Eno, Ornette Coleman, and Pierre Boulez.
Composer, vocalist, multi-instrumental electronic musician, and multimedia artist Christina Wheeler’s sonic explorations include a myriad of styles and forms blended through an amalgam of improvised, electronic music sources: processed vocals, vocal loops, hand-triggered sampler, theremin, Q-chord, autoharp, and electric mbira; in addition to solo projects, Wheeler has worked with numerous artists, including The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, Chaka Khan, Nicole Mitchell, and Fred P.
1pm
Free with RSVP
Friends and Collaborators of Gloria Anzaldúa:
Norma Cantú, Santa Barraza, Josh Franco, Liliana Wilson, Aída Hurtado, Randy P. Conner and David Hatfield Sparks, AnaLouise Keating, Irene Lara, Joan Pinkvoss, Kay Turner, and Cherríe Moraga
Readers:
Francheska Alcantara, Nuar Alsadir, Lisa Baltazar, Stella Becerril, Inmaculada Lara-Bonilla, Matt Brim, Will Burton, Lisa Byrd, Yoseli Castillo, Nivea Castillo, Ava Chin, Misha Chowdhury, Kandice Chuh, Elvira Colorado, Hortencia Colorado, Elena Comay del Junco, Arlene Dávila, Oscar Diaz, Dalaeja Foreman, Kay Gabriel, Maria Garcia, Alicia Grullón, Cristóbal Guerra, Manny Lopez, Kelly McGowan, Tracie Morris, Chivita Mantilla Ortiz, Inti Ossio, Ricardo F. Vivancos-Perez, Yolanda Petrocelli, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Celia Herrera Rodriguez, Shellyne Rodriguez, Ixchel Rosal, Marta Sanchez, Chela Sandoval, Alicia Anabel Santos, Sara Jane Stoner, Kenny Torres, Sarah Wang, Nia Witherspoon
6:30pm
With Jessica Hagedorn, Leslie Harris, Holly Hughes, Martha Hodes, and Linda Villarosa
Leslie M. Harris is professor of history at Northwestern University.
Holly Hughes is a Guggenheim fellow and currently a Professor at the Penny W. Stamps School of Art and Design at the University of Michigan.
Martha Hodes is a Professor of History at New York University, and a 2018-19 Guggenheim fellow.
Linda Villarosa, a City College journalism professor, is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine and is working on a book about race, inequality and health for Doubleday.
6:30pm
With Adam Fitzgerald, Adjua Greaves, Erica Hunt, Fred Moten, and Simone White
Adjua Gargi Nzinga Greaves (New Yorker, b. 1980) is a Pushcart-nominated poet concerned with postcolonial ethnobotany, the limits of language, and archive as medium. Greaves has most recently been published in the collections Letters to the Future: Black Women / Radical Writing (Kore Press, 2018), and Creature/Verdure (Pinsapo Journal : Issue 2, 2018), as well as in her chapbook Close Reading As Forestry (Belladonna*, 2017). She will be an artist-in-residence with The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida in early 2020 and serves as Site Director of Wendy’s Subway in Bushwick, Brooklyn.
Simone White‘s most recent book is Dear Angel of Death. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.