Great news! It is now possible to make a TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION to Write Here, Write Now! Through the WHWN Advisory Group’s good efforts, non-profit agency Sanctuary will be acting as our fiscal agent until we are fully incorporated as a church and able to oversee tax deductible donations on our own. Please contact us at info@writeherewritenow.org
Mar 262012
Mar 192012
Write Here Write Now Open Mic
Thursday, April 5, 2012
7:00pm until 9:00pm
Unity Somerville, 6 William St. (on College Ave.), Davis Square, Somerville, MA
This is an all-gender open mic event for queer/genderqueer/transgender folks and their allies.
We welcome the queer and queer-allied community to join us as we create and hold space for folks to read their own words.
A sign-up sheet will be available at the event for 5-minute reading slots. As this is still a new event, if you intend to read, you may want to bring a couple 5-minute pieces in case we have surplus reading slots.
People are encouraged to bring flyers for the community table.
Queer Soup (www.queersouptheater.org) will be tabling delicious baked goods and beverages!
We ask that you help us make this a low-scent event by not wearing perfume/cologne or other scented products.
The $5-$20 sliding scale door donation will help fund WHWN’s pro bono work within the community.
Questions? whwnOpenMic@gmail.com
Mar 172012
S. Bear Bergman-An Evening of Storytelling
Unity Somerville, 6 William St. (on College Ave.), Davis Square, Somerville, MA
Tuesday, April 3, 2012
8:00pm until 10:00pm
$10-$30 sliding scale
Join us for an evening of storytelling by storyteller, theater artist, instigator and gender-jammer S. Bear Bergman as a benefit for Write Here Write Now!
S. Bear Bergman is the author of Butch Is a Noun (reissued with a new foreword by Arsenal Pulp Press, 2010) and Lambda Literary Award-finalist The Nearest Exit May be Behind You ( Arsenal Pulp Press, 2009) as well as the editor (with the inimitable Kate Bornstein) of the multiple-award-winning Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation (Seal Press, 2010). Bear is also the creator and performer of three award-winning solo performances and a frequent contributor to anthologies on all manner of topics (see hir CV for an extensive list of publications of presentations). Bear can be found many days in an airport lounge, writing stories on hir laptop and letters on any piece of paper that can pretend to be stationery.
Since 2001, Write Here Write Now (www.writeherewritenow.org) has been dedicated to providing safe, supportive, and financially accessible services and spaces for LGBTQQIA people in the Boston (metro) and Western Massachusetts area and serves national and international communities through the use of the internet and other electronic and social media.
Bear will have a delicious display of books for sale and will be happy to autograph upon request. There will be beverages and yummy baked goods for sale at the reading, too!
Mar 162012
Every time I am honored to host the Wednesday night writing workshop, I make a pot of vegan soup and a batch of seriously NOT vegan cookies. Or muffins. Or a cake, if there is a birthday in the group that I know about ahead of time. Every time these writers gather at my home, I brew up a pot of coffee, heat up an urn of hot water, and set out a selection of teas and cocoa. I pop popcorn. I fill a bowl with fruit. I have been accused of bribing writers with food. This accusation is party true. Chose to be here, in this room, instead of doing all the other fine and fascinating things the world has to offer, and you will be shown some care and some comfort. Slog your way over to my house, commit to putting your truth down on the page, take the courageous step of reading your new and pulsing work to this room of writers, and you will be given some warmth and some sweetness.
Why take the additional time and make the extra effort to have a hot meal and a sweet delight to offer to the folks who make community with me on Wednesday nights? Because at the heart of the WHWN ministry is the Rule of Benedict, and at the heart of the Rule is the principle of radical hospitality.
Hospitality means offering a place where we can all be ourselves, whole and holy. It means offering full acceptance and uncompromising support. And hospitality means making sure that guests feel greeted, comforted, and well cared for. I am asking you to rush over, often just after a full day’s work, and to spend an evening together that will mean you don’t get home until late. So, I want you to know that you will be fed in every possible way. We are all so very hungry–for attention, for respect, for a safe and loving place to be, for care and for witness. I want you to feel, if only for a few hours, every other week, that you are in a place that can be home. I want you to know that you will be fed.
Mar 102012
I’ve just finished my first week back in service after a discernment retreat at Le Vatout (www.levatout.com), a dear friend and client’s bed and breakfast in Waldoboro, Maine. If you are looking for a place to have quiet and reflective time surrounded by unimaginable majesty, give Dominika a call. I am deeply grateful to be able to make my own retreats there, and I know for certain that my continued service to the LGBTIQQAA literary community through Write Here, Write Now depends largely on the peace and introspection I am able to gain there.
While I was on retreat, the Queer Memoir: Leather event, a fundraiser for WHWN took place. You can view the video for the event here on the WHWN website, and I highly recommend that you do. This is what chosen family looks like. This is how community works. My thanks to all the good folks who were a part of making this event happen.
If you are interested in hosting a WHWN fundraising event please contact us and let us know how we can help you with that. If you would simply like to make a one time, or ongoing gift to support our work, click the support button for information on what your gift will make possible. And as always, you can help in a profound way by simply spreading the word about WHWN.
Thanks to the support of the Advisory Group, and the ongoing fundraising efforts of so many of you, WHWN is looking forward to a year of exciting offerings. In addition to the regular Wednesday night writing workshops, we plan on:
-Adding our FIRST satellite writing workshop, in Lansing, Michigan. Stay tuned for more information on how to be trained to be a WHWN workshop facilitator in your own town.
-A one-day painting and writing workshop in Somerville.
-A one-day songwriting workshop, in Somerville.
-A once a month Skype workshop, starting in June.
-A new page to the WHWN website to feature fresh writing for workshop members.
-Our yearly WHWN barbecue.
-And of course, the new WHWN open mic, happening every other month!
I am so honored to be able to serve the LGBTIQQAA community in these ways, and I hope that I will see each and every one of you at one or more of these offerings!
In service,
Toni
Mar 072012
WHWN is in it’s twelfth year of providing community building literary services to the LGBTIQQAA community. No one has ever, or will ever, be turned away for lack of funds. Learn more about how you can help support this work here
Mar 072012
On Saturday March 3rd 100 leather folks gathered at the Queers for Economic Justice office in NYC for Queer Memoir: Leather a benefit for Write Here, Write Now. The evening was guest curated by Sassafras Lowrey and featured readings by: Sara Vibes, Sinclair Sexsmith, Emily Millay-Haddad, Kelli Dunham, Sassafras Lowrey, Ignacio Rivera and Laura Antoniou. The evening brought in $394 ! For folks who couldn’t join us in NYC the entire two hours of storytelling is available to be viewed online!
Queer Memoir: LEATHER!
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New York’s only queer storytelling event is back with a special guest curator, Sassafras Lowrey, editor of the Kicked Out anthology and nationally known storyteller.
This Leather themed storytelling evening is a benefit for Boston’s Write Here Write Now founded by Toni Amato
Announcing the amazing line-up of storytellers:
Laura Antoniou
Sinclair Sexsmith
Emily Millay-Haddad
Kelli Dunham
Ignacio Rivera
Sara Vibes
Sassafras Lowrey
Laura Antoniou is the author of the well known Marketplace series of erotic novels, but has also written dozens of short stories, essays and other works in various genres for over 25 years. Winner of the NLA Lifetime Achievement Award in 2011, she has presented, taught and ranted at over 150 conferences and events since the early 80′s, delivering enlightenment, entertainment and indictments. She has also appeared at colleges and universities, including NYU, Rutgers, Columbia and the University of Washington.
Over the years, her work has been translated into Spanish, German, Japanese and Hebrew; in 2010, she hit the world of e-books as the Marketplace moved to Circlet Press, and Laura came out as Christopher Morgan, best-selling writer of gay male erotica, including the novel Musclebound. Together with her wife, Karen Taylor, she has written a ritually correct leather Passover seder, titled Avadim Chayanu, available for free upon asking. All of her other available works can be found listed at her website, lantoniou.com
Laura is personally featured in Writing Below the Belt; Conversations with Erotic Authors, by Michael Rowe, and The Burning Pen; Sex Writers on Sex Writing, by M. Christian. The first Chris Parker story written outside of a Marketplace book was chosen to be in Take Me There, Tristan Taormino’s 2011 collection of transgender erotica. She was also a columnist for Girlfriends magazine from 1995-1997, editor of Badboy and Bi-Curious, and a regular contributor to the SandMUtopia Guardian from 1993-2000
Sara Vibes a black, polyamorous, queer, kinky, dandy, macho femme princess born and raised in New York City. She is The 25th International Ms Leather 2011 and an active member in The Leather, BDSM, Poly, and LGBT communities in New York City and beyond. She has taught at Playhouse in Baltimore, Dark Odyssey, and International Mr. Leather and many other events and places during her title year. She will also be a contributor of the Perverts of Color Anthology and Salacious Magazine. Her mission is to make sex education accessible to everyone. She hopes to rip the veil off of the shame surrounding sex and sexuality through self love and exploration with people that care about each other.
Sinclair Sexsmith runs the award-winning personal online writing project Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Gender, and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top at sugarbutch.net. With work published in various anthologies and websites, including Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica, she is the guest editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012, and her first full-length erotica anthology, Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, will be published by Cleis Press in April 2012. Mr. Sexsmith writes, teaches, and performs focusing on the subjects of sex, gender, and relationships. More information on her at mrsexsmith.com.
KELLI DUNHAM is a ex-nun, genderqueerious stand-up nerd comic and author of four books of humorous non-fiction, including two children’s books being used by Sonlight conservative home schooling association in their science curriculum. She has appeared on Showtime, the Discovery Channel and was once asked to emcee a livestock auction. Her website is kellidunham.com. She is the co-founder, with Genne Murphy, of Queer Memoir. Her hilarious new family-secret revealing show, Normal at Nite: Good Times & Family Matters with Perfect Strangers (a collaboration with R Eric Thomas) is debuting February 18th at NYC’s Stonewall Inn.
Ignacio Rivera aka Papí Coxxx identifies as a Queer, Trans, gender-fluid, polyamorous, kinky, Black-Boricua. Ignacio, who prefers the gender-neutral pronoun “they,” is a lecturer, activist, wanna-be-filmmaker, sex educator, sex worker, and performance artist, sharing spoken word, one-person shows, and storytelling internationally. Their work has appeared in ColorLines, Ebony, Yellow Medicine Review and in their chapbooks, Las Alas, co-authored by Maceo Cabrera Estévez; Ingridients; and Thoughts, Rants and What Some Might Call Poetry. A proud mom of a 21 year-old daughter, Ignacio is the recipient of a Marsha A. Gómez Cultural Heritage Award from LLEGÓ: The National Latina/o Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Organization
They are also the founder of Poly Patao Productions (P3), which is dedicated to producing sex-positive workshops, performances, educational opportunities and events that are specially geared toward queer women, transgender, multi-gender, gender queer, gender-non-conforming and gender variant folx of color.
Ignacio has been facilitating workshops, doing lectures and creating events for kinky, kinky-curious Queer/Trans POC’s and their white queer and trans allies for over a decade. http://
Emily Millay Haddad is an independent filmmaker, writer, director, activist and media professional living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She had the words to call herself a “feminist” when she was five, a “white girl” when she was nine, a “lesbian” when she was 17, a “bisexual” shortly after that, and a “queer” when she was 19. At 20, she was “polyamorous;” at 21, she learned about “kiki” dykes in the butch/femme spectrum of 1950s dyke bars and finally had a word for her gender. By 24, she had the words for “kinky” and “switch.” And at 27, she learned the hard way that being “working class” was more than just her history or an economic label. She brings all these words and many more, as well as the life experiences they inadequately describe, to her labor and her yearning as an artist and a lover.
Emily Photo credit: Kjerstin Rossi
Sassafras Lowrey is an international award winning queer author, artist and activist and has been involved in leather community for nearly a decade. Sassafras’ prose have been included in numerous anthologies and ze tours to colleges, universities and community centers across the country facilitating workshops that support LGBTQ/leather people in telling their stories. Sassafras lives in Brooklyn, New York with hir Daddy. You can learn more about Sassafras at www.PoMoFreakshow.com
Photo by: Syd London
Feb 282012
Eleven years ago, in the late winter of 2001, I offered my first Boston area Wednesday night writing workshop. I had moved to Somerville from Vermont the year before, and had been couch surfing with some generous friends after the end of my marriage left me jobless and homeless. The Boston LGBTIQQAA community welcomed me, supported me, and fully embraced me, in every way. I owe such a debt of gratitude to Gunner Scott and his monthly open mic, GenderCrash, as well as to folks like Kristen Porter, of Dyke Night, Ren Jender, who curated the Amazon Poetry Slam, Abe Rybeck and The Theater Offensive, and Aliza Shapiro, of Truth Serum Productions. My heart is full with gratitude to each and every event producer, individual, and group who creates our rich and diverse LGBTIQQAA culture, and I count myself blessed to be a member of that community. I am even more blessed to be able to be of what service I may to that same community through the offerings of Write Here, Write Now.
Please understand, I have been a very fortunate queer, indeed, from the earliest days of my coming out. San Francisco in the late eighties and early nineties was a place both devastating and delightful. We were fierce and we were fighting and we were dying every day. We were loud and we were loving and we learned that Silence truly equals Death and what we didn’t whisper passionately into each other’s ears, we shouted in the streets at the top of our lungs. I learned, there, what chosen family can be, what community can be, what home can be. And I have never, for one minute since then, wanted to do anything other than extend the same hand of compassion and passion, service and support, to the LGBTIQQAA folks around me.
Two very important members of the queer and leather literary communities, at that time, and very much so, still, today deserve my thanks.
Dorothy Allison, who offered inexpensive writing workshops out of A Different Light Bookstore, in the Castro, gave me a chance to tell the sorts of stories about poverty and childhood, abuse and survival, that I never knew I had permission to write until her book, Trash, was published. In those small, back room classes, Dorothy created a community or emerging writers who challenged and cheered each other on to be the best storytellers they could be. She taught us the value of honest critique and the necessity for kindness, as well. I would not be a writer, today, much less an editor and writing coach, had it not been for Dorothy’s unmitigated generosity of heart.
Laura Antoniou, who will be reading at The Queer Memoir, Leather event, this Saturday, along with so many other fine writers, gave me my very first professional publication, when she picked my story, “Lost In Space” for her Leather Women II anthology. I am not at all shy to admit that when that book came out, I would lurk in the erotica section of A Different Light, waiting to see if someone would pick up Leather Women II, look over at me, and realize an actual author was standing next to them…
First times are giddy. My first writing class with Dorothy, my first publication with Laura. I hope that each and every time I sit down to work with an author, I remember the sweet vulnerability that I brought to these women, and that I am able, now, in my own time, to provide the gentle and kind, yet firm and thoughtful insight and guidance that Dorothy and Laura have given to me. They showed me what a literary home could look like, and I hope to continue to serve and support LGBTIQQAA storytelling and literary voices.
Feb 032012
Dear Folks-
As I look back at January, my first full month back in service, I am reminded of just how profoundly grateful I am for the encouragement, patience, and support that all of you have so generously showered upon me since October, and still continue to send my way. While I wish that I were able to offer the Wednesday Night Writing Workshop on a weekly basis, instead of every other week, and while I miss dearly the many hours of pastoral and editorial work which once filled my days, it is a pure joy to be back to work. I know that I would not be here at all, much less able to take my first halting steps toward full recovery, were it not for the abundance of your prayers, well-wishes, and donations.
In January, under the guidance and supervision of the new Advisory Group, I resumed about one half of my usual service schedule. I’m still a slow moving beast, with only a few good hours of focus and energy in me each day. The larger events, like Wednesday Night Writing Workshop, and the Write Here Write Now Open Mic Reading, are true and deep pleasures, and I find myself drained in the best of all possible ways. Still, I would not trade this work for the world, and with the help of some fine professionals I can feel myself growing stronger. And while I am still so very far from where I would like to be, working to regain so much physical and cognitive function, I know that with your continued support, I can look forward to as full and lasting a recovery as is possible.
Along with the new open mic reading series: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Write-Here-Write-Now-Open-Mic/225722107500378
there are a number of exciting Write Here Write Now projects and events planned for 2012. On March 3rd, in New York City, you can attend a special Leather themed Queer Memoir (www.queermemoir.com) as a benefit for Write Here, Write Now, featuring readings by Sinclair Sexsmith, Emily Millay-Haddad, Killi Dunham, Ignacio Rivera, Sara Vibes, and guest curated by Sassafras Lowrey. Keep an eye out for more information about April, when, S. Bear Bergman, storyteller, theater artist, instigator and gender-jammer, (www.sbearbergman.com), will be offering an evening of storytelling in support of the work of Write Here Write Now.
I am also pleased and honored to be serving as an editor and consultant to Sassafras Lowrey as ze prepares hir debut novel, Roving Pack, for publication this coming fall. Keep your eyes out for this one folks. Sassafras is about to blow the lids off every stereotype, misconception, or complacency about homeless queer kids. I will also be going back to work with REACH Beyond Domestic Violence, as writing coach to their Survivors’ Speakers Bureau. These are the big projects and events, and you can be sure that as I grow stronger, dozens of other opportunities to serve will come my way.
Thank you, again and again. And please, keep an eye on Write Here Write Now as the year progresses. With the help of the Advisory Group, we have some new and wonderful plans for 2012. I look forward to working with all of you to create a deeply sustainable and far-reaching ministry in service to our necessary and sacred stories.
In grateful service,
Toni
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