Steven will be reading from Carry the Word, selling books, and acting a fool this weekend. Come check him out.

He will also be conducting a workshop at ITLA on Saturday. For details, see below.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

The Literary Café, 4pm-7pm

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2007

PHYRE = (fire) 5pm-10pm

@ Sugar 257 Trinity Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia 30303

Directions:
Between Forsyth and Spring Street
From 1-20 West, exit Windsor Street, turn right off exit. Pass two lights to Trinity Avenue, turn right and the building is directly on the left.

Come hear G. Winston James read from The Damaged Good and Voices Risingk at In the Life Atlanta and Charis Books!

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

The Literary Café, 4pm-7pm

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2007

Charis Books and More
1189 Euclid Avenue
Atlanta, GA 30307
Tel:(404) 524-0304

He will also be conducting a workshop at ITLA on Sunday. For details, see below.

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2007

SpeakFire, 11:59pm-3am

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2007

The Literary Café, 4pm-7pm

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 2, 2007

In the Life Atlanta – two workshops

Erotic Play for Men: Serious Business, 12pm-1:15pm, Savannah 2

Are We/You All That We/You Could Be, 1:30pm-2:45pm, Savannah 2

PHYRE = (fire) 5pm-10pm

@ Sugar 257 Trinity Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia 30303

Directions:
Between Forsyth and Spring Street
From 1-20 West, exit Windsor Street, turn right off exit. Pass two lights to Trinity Avenue, turn right and the building is directly on the left.

This is the first book by Dr. Herukhuti, a fiery collection of essays, poetry, creative non-fiction, and experimental writing that challenges conventional thought, offers alternative perspectives, and suggests ways of practicing Afrocentric, queer liberation/transgression.

This book is an important contribution to Black Queer Theory, Black Feminist Thought, and Afrocentric Thought.

Carry the Word: A Bibliography of Black LGBTQ Books is a seminal reference work, featuring over 600 titles by and about black Same-Gender-Loving (SGL) and Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer-identified (LGBTQ) writers and culture, as well as interviews and articles about black SGL authors.

A must-have for booksellers, librarians, academics, community-based organizations, book clubs and readers interested in black LGBTQ books and authors, all proceeds from sales of Carry the Word will benefit Fire & Ink, Inc., supporter and advocate for SGL writers of African descent. Carry the Word is co-published with RedBone Press.

Compiled by Steven G. Fullwood, Reginald Harris and Lisa C. Moore

Edited by Steven G. Fullwood and Lisa C. Moore

Introduction by Reginald Harris

Softcover, 212 pp.
Price: $16.95
But if you order now through vepress.com, you can get it for $10!
Booksellers and wholesalers, please order through redbonepress.com.
Pub. Date: July 2007
Cover art © 2007 by Artis Q. Wright
Cover design: E.M. Corbin
ISBN-10: 0-9752987-4-7
ISBN 13: 978-0-9752987-4-9

Interviews/reviews with:
Samiya Bashir
Cheryl Boyce Taylor
Sharon Bridgforth
Brent Dorian Carpenter
Doug Cooper-Spencer
Rashid Darden
Samuel R. Delany
Alexis De Veaux
R. Erica Doyle
Kenyon Farrow
Roderick Ferguson
Steven G. Fullwood
Thomas Glave
Ernest Hardy
Reginald Harris
Herukhuti
G. Winston James
Lynne d Johnson
June Jordan (review)
Ana-Maurine Lara
Zelda Lockhart
Mingus
Travis Montez
Lisa C. Moore
Curú Necos Bloice
Michelle Sewell
Sylvester (review)
Wallace Thurman (review)
Tim’m T. West
Marvin K. White
Michael Whitley

photo: © 2006 Andrew Lambert

Come hear the incomparable G. Winston James read from his Lammy-nominated collection of poetry, The Damaged Good…

In New York:

Friday, May 18 at 8pm LGBT Community Center 208 West 13th Street New York City

Men of All Colors Together/New York Proudly Presents MEN’S POETRY IN PERFORMANCE featuring:

SALIH FISHER - Contributor to Yemonja, Black Men/White Men, The Road Before Us & Other Countries: Black Gay Voices

E. PATRICK HARDING - Contributor of several beguiling, ribald tales of Jamaica to the MACT/NY Bulletin

G. WINSTON JAMES - Author of The Damaged Good (just published by Vintage Entity Press) & Lyric: Poems Along a Broken Road

HAROLD McNEIL ROBINSON - Contributing Editor of Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS; Contributor to The Road Before Us and Here to Dare

THIS WILL BE A FABULOUS EVENING! ALL ARE URGED TO ATTEND!! Donation $5

And…

In Washington, DC:

Saturday, May 26 at 2-4pm Renaissance M Street Hotel DuPont, Lower Level 1143 New Hampshire NW Washington, DC , 20037 Phone: 202.775.0800

Fire & Ink, Inc DC Black Pride The Authors Lounge will consist of eight vending spaces and seating area. Each author will be able to hold a 10-minute reading session followed by a 10-minute question and answer session with attendees.

Books will be available at each event. To pre-order, visit vepress.com!

We will be selling books and taking in a party or two. If you don’t have VEP books, Convincing the Body by Cheryl Boyce Taylor, The Damaged Good by G. Winston James, or Funny by Steven G. Fullwood, here’s your opportunity to purchase these wonderful books, and maybe get a chance to mingle with one of the authors (I can’t tell you who because it’s a surprise!)

Here’s a link to the site.

Muah! VEP

G. Winston James’s Hit and Run Tour, in support of his latest book of poetry, The Damaged Good, continues to blaze a path across the US!

Join James, Vintage Entity Press, and Lambda Rising for two very special events in March!

Sat March 24 2pm G. Winston James will be making an in-store appearance at Lambda Rising (Washington DC.)

Location: Lambda Rising Bookstore 1625 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, DC 20009 (202) 462-6969 (Fax)(202) 462-7257 shop@lambdarising. com

He will be signing copies of his Lammy-nominated collection, The Damaged Good.

Later that evening at 7pm...

G. Winston will be reading from his collection, The Damaged Good, at Lambda Rising (Baltimore, MD.)

Location: Lambda Rising - MD 241 West Chase Street Baltimore, MD 21201 (410) 234-0069 shop@lambdarising. com

For more information, please contact David Eric Foaney at info@vepress. com.

Below is an excerpt from the interview:

Tim’m: Steven, I’m quite familiar with your work. It’s strikingly “brave” in the rather bluntly comedic way that you broach a number of provocative topics that many people won’t touch. I think of you as the writer who says what other people think about saying. It requires a special sophistication to be truthful about things that we often dance around: our closets, its skeletons, and the dirty laundry they wear. I also remembered when you first contacted me about the work of Brave Soul Collective. Can you speak a bit about your own sense of connectedness to the work we’re doing and how it manifests in your work as an author, publisher, archivist, and culture critic?

Steven: As an author and cultural critic, I am always pushing myself to do better work. That means I cannot afford to stay in safe spaces for too long because I get antsy and I know it’s not where my truth lies. I grew up trying to protect myself from all things hurting and in the hiding spaces I created, there was an awful fallout. Still feeling the aftershock. One detriment was that hiding impacted my ability to really sympathize and connect to people, much less value their love and support in any meaningful way. My writing is one way to be brave, test things out, see if what I say I believe is something I actually believe. As a publisher, it’s my goal to publish writing that is inherently brave by exceptional authors, two of which are Cheryl Boyce Taylor and G. Winston James. VEP is fueled by imagination and love and a fierceness to simply speak life and truth and honor and to challenge those things that frighten and keep us static. It’s a labor of love that has helped me realize how vital the written word is, and how it can transform life. As an archivist, the work I do with the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive is to collect, preserve and make available to the public the universe of non-heterosexual history and culture of people of African descent. It has taken a Herculean effort to bring this project to completion and it’s because of the communities I serve as an information specialist and my dedication to preserve cultures that have been ignored or dismissed up until recently largely because the people who created it have been ignore and dismissed from public discourse. The fact that non-heterosexual blacks folk and abroad have created in every media, for the last century, despite the various homophobic and racists environments they live in, is brave. My job is to makes sure these artifacts are preserved, so someone can get to these stories, read them, and perhaps share them.

Brave Soul Collective is an education, outreach, and support organization for gay / bisexual / transgendered / questioning HIV positive and negative individuals living their lives in truth through the arts. BSC aims to help stop the spread of HIV&AIDS, by serving as a platform for honest discussion about prevention, stigma, and personal responsibility. BSC is committed to encouraging artistic freedom, expression, and creativity in members of the arts, and same gender loving communities.

VEP thanks Tim’m and the BSC for their time, energy and effort in supporting our work.

Take a look. It is very nice.

Friday, February 9, 2007 at 6:00 PM 29 Cornelia Street (btw Bleecker & W. 4th Street NYC 212 989-9319) admission $5.00

Come one, come all!

Cheryl’s latest book, Convincing the Body, will be available for purchase.

Read the VIBE.com conversation with the author about gays and hip-hop and his new book.

How does Black LGBT/SGL culture relate to hip-hop?

Well, consider the literature.

Black LGBT/SGL literature is underground hip-hop. We are telling our truths and we have an audience. We are not anomalies. We have been writing for over a century and the mainstream is beginning to notice. We are more than E. Lynn Harris. We are women and men who are on a mission to see our lives, triumphs and defeats, reflected in art and ourselves. We are not afraid. We will ultimately succeed.

Why is homophobia so rampant in hip-hop culture?

Hip-hop is no different from the cultures it mixes and distills. Frankly the rabid fraternity amongst black men reeks of homoeroticism. It’s something to consider when black men prefer the company of their “boys,” to women. Very homo-social, at the least.

Hip-hop wants to act as if there are no gays and lesbian heads. Wrong. A substantial part of the hip hop generation is non-heterosexual. Over the years there has been a rise in the number of gay hip hop artists and gay hip-hop festivals in the last five years. These artists, writers essentially, have chosen to express themselves in music, and the concurrent literary movement inspires many of these sisters and brothers. I have chosen to express myself as a writer solely. Hip-hop, in its most provocative form, has been about resistance. Been about being cutting edge. Frankly you can’t get more cutting edge that being black and non-heterosexual. Hip-hop’s misogyny and hyper-masculinity has defined it since its inception. Simply by being out challenges those paradigms, and invites a reexamination of what is male and female to the whole community.

Hip-hop has always laid claim to the notion that it was keeping things real. Well you can’t get any realer than what I’m about, which is redefining community by interjecting some much needed commentary about the sexual life of the black community as we know it. Many black heterosexual folk would rather be seen as the model for life as opposed to being in the continuum. Well, they ain’t and they will never be.

Where can one find out more about the culture of black gays and lesbians?

I created the Black Gay and Lesbian Archive for two main reasons. First, to aid in the preservation of cultural materials produced by and about people of African descent who experience same sex desire: lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, same-gender-loving, queer, questioning and in-the-life people. Second, to help reshape history by making these materials available to the public. We folk are going to place our stories up against everything that’s been said about us. We are going to be heard. We are going to create our histories.

Where is this Archive?

The BGLA will be housed at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library, and will be open to the public December 2004.

How does your new book Funny relate to hip hop culture?

I’m a hip-hop writer in the sense that I am mixing styles, different types of humor, and ideas about being black and homo, and pulling inspiration from my literary forbearers like James Baldwin, Audre Lorde and Essex Hemphill, incredible trailblazers who everyone should read. Funny represents for brothers and sisters who normally only get talked about as problems in the mainstream and black media, particularly in light of the “down-low” shit. As a writer, I have been freelancing for years and recently published Funny, a book of humorous essays on being black, male and a “manhandler.” Unlike a lot of books by blacks about sex, Funny is not fiction, it’s real: it’s about my life.

How does HIV risk relate to the work you do, and its effects on the hip-hop generation?

I was one of the co-editors (along with Colin Robinson of the New York State Black Gay Network) of Think Again, a collection of narratives by black men who write about HIV risk. The realness of Think Again is that its contributors are fiercely unapologetic about being black, male and intimately and sexually involved with other men. They are not in the closet or on the down low. Hip hop, like the rest of the world, is fascinated with this “down-low” idea, and really, all it points to is being anti-black, and how black male bodies somehow connotes “criminal.” There is no “down-low,” and too many parasites, I mean, writers, have made $$$ off this malformed idea about black men infecting black women. If readers want to get true stories from real people, Think Again is the real deal. The contributors to the book are amazing, every day people, activists, artists, activists, thinkers, and writers who care about black people and are not out trying to make money off people’s fears.

Writers who immigrate to other countries often spend time thinking and rethinking about how the worlds they live and dream in conflict or complete one another. Some of them are fortunate; they honor home by remembering, and recognize their contemporary life through acknowledgment. Trinidad-born and Queens-bred Cheryl Boyce Taylor is such a writer. A strong presence on the poetry circuit in New York City since the early Eighties, she is the author of two books of poetry, Raw Air (1997), and Night When Moon Follows (2002). In addition her work has appeared in several anthologies, and she is a well-regarded performer. Boyce Taylor, fifty-two years young, possesses a voice that lays bare the simple yet complex realities of being a Caribbean mother and lesbian who writes to inform, comfort, understand and be understood. What becomes clear in my conversations with Boyce Taylor is her love of story. She delights in language, much like her mother-now a seventy-seven-year-old award-winning storyteller who, still to this day, is called upon to spin yarns. Boyce recalls, “[She] told me stories at bedtime. I think that’s where it may have started for me.”

Boyce Taylor began honing her craft at the age of eight by writing letters to teachers, family and imaginary friends. “Our teachers always encouraged students to have adventures during school break, and to write stories about them. I loved that! So I always did, but my brother,” she says with a laugh, “well, he didn’t. Reading and writing was something that really held my attention back then. I clearly remember doing it during summer vacation when life seemed a little dull and dreary.”

School also helped Boyce Taylor shape the language she utilizes in her writing. Bored by the work of British writers whose words she describes as “stiff, archaic and rigid,” Boyce Taylor was enraptured by the language of her people. “Calypso… offered a less rigid, freer style of writing. I wanted to find a way to capture the speaking voice of my family. Calypso offered room for cursing, gossip, sex talk, lawless, unruly language. I loved it.” Boyce Taylor’s compassionate voice is also politically charged. “I write in Trini dialect or patois, to present my people just as they appear in their everyday life, and dialect allows that to happen,” she says. “Now we know how Trini people sound when ‘dey’ mad, when ‘dey’ intimate in ‘dey’ bedroom, when happy/sad. I use Trinidadian dialect in honor of my grandparents who died before I was born. Most of what I know about them is made up, but one thing is for sure: I know how they sounded when they spoke.”

When Boyce Taylor immigrated, alone, to New York in the early 1960s (her mother followed nearly a year later) the seeds of her preoccupations with identity, language and water started taking root. “I was devastated. I didn’t know that I would miss my mother that much,” she says. “I also missed little things that I took for granted, like making ice cream on Sunday, roasting cashew nuts, the dialect, calypso - all of it became so important to me. I knew something was in it that I needed, so I held on for dear life. It was all that I knew.”

Years later writing also came to rescue a twenty-two-year-old mother of one. “[Motherhood] wasn’t what I thought it would be,” she says with a smile. “A little too much work for me!” Again she picked up the pen, and soon after Boyce Taylor began traveling where she found herself immersed, literally, in one of her life-long preoccupations: water. “I didn’t know why I needed to travel to the Caribbean twice a year and get in the water; I just did. My body would be tired, and it called for being submerged in salt water. After that I could go for another nine months.” Water is a reoccurring motif in Boyce Taylor’s work, notably in the multimedia piece “Moon Over River Talking Back,” in which a river complains about being poisoned by humanity, and in her text “Water,” which was commissioned by Jacob’s Pillow with funding by the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown, founder and artistic director of Evidence, a contemporary dance company. Brown was drawn to the richness of Boyce Taylor’s voice, and was determined to work with her. “I began dreaming about water and even when I was awake, water was all over my life. I called Cheryl, and she sent me over ten pages of text within twenty-four hours,” says Brown. Boyce Taylor would recite the text as Brown improvised. “It was a special way to work, and I learn a lot each time we come together,” he says. Currently the two artists are in the research stage of another collaboration, “Redemption.”

Boyce Taylor’s contemporaries tend to use similar adjectives when describing her. “Exuberant, curious, sometimes silly, and truly generous,” says Donna Lee Weber, writer and longtime friend. “I would describe her as vivacious, alert, at times maternal, full of life, persistent and commandeering,” says Pamela Sneed, fellow writer and author of Imagine Being More Afraid of Freedom, Than Slavery, and of the forthcoming collection of memoirs, essays and stories, “20 Minutes Was Forever.”

Indeed for the past three decades Boyce Taylor’s work has made a mark, in New York and nationally. Besides tirelessly performing her work at bookstores, colleges, libraries and other venues, in 1994 she represented New York at the National Poetry Slam, and toured as a road poet with the Lollapalooza Music Festival. Most recently she was named poet-in-residence at the Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center at the Brooklyn Public Library. “I hope to infuse the teens and adults that I will be working with with the joy, wonder, excitement and adventure of poetry,” she says. “The primary goal of the residency is to reach as wide an audience of teens as possible to expose them to writing and reading poetry, and to produce a publication. Poets House, who partnered with Brooklyn Public, will be watching this program closely as a model to duplicate nationwide.”

As for being a lesbian in this position, Boyce Taylor is clear about her primary focus. “Truthfully, being a lesbian has not come up yet. Unfortunately Caribbean folks are still very homophobic,” she says. “I am not closeted (Cee, her lover of four years, inspired the love poems in Night When Moon Follows), but for me being a Caribbean woman poet is the proudest mande that I can wear. I do not wear my rainbow flag to work, but I won’t ever shy away, or be untruthful whenever the topic or discussion conies up. I am a proud lesbian, but it is not my first identity. Poet is.”

And for Boyce Taylor, storytelling is a family affair. In celebration of Mother’s Day she will be performing a reading with her son, Phife, who is a member of the hip hop trio, A Tribe Called Quest. Consider that in the fourteen years while she was raising her son Boyce Taylor concurrently built a successful career as a respected writer, and managed to earn a bachelor’s from York College in theater, another from Long Island University in education and a master’s degree from Fordham University in social work. And she shows no signs of slowing down. In the months ahead Boyce Taylor is keeping busy with other projects, including finishing a manuscript of poetry called “Where There Are Bones.”

Although her projects are numerous, Boyce Taylor’s mission remains steadfast. “As a Trinidadian living in America, I live in a world of duality. It is incumbent upon me to represent both, with equal amounts of fairness and justice. Trinidadian dialect for me makes a political statement,” she says. “It represents the African griot, or oral tradition. It also represents a departure from the language of the colonizer. My job here is to capture all that has been lost through our first passage, and dirough migration. That is the ultimate work of my poetry.”

Lambda Rising Bookstore 1625 Connecticut Ave NW Washington, DC 20009 202.462.6969 T shop@lambdarising.com

Lambda Rising - DE 39 Baltimore Avenue Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971 302.227.6969 T shop@lambdarising.com

Lambda Rising - MD 241 West Chase Street Baltimore, MD 21201 410.234.0069 shop@lambdarising.com

Lambda Rising - VA 322 West 21st Street Norfolk, VA 23517 757.626.0969 T shop@lambdarising.com

Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse 991 Piedmont Avenue Atlanta, GA 30309 404.607-0082 T info@outwritebooks.com

And, as always, you can order The Damaged Good, or any of VEP titles (Convincing the Body and FUNNY), through this website (just tap on the button “Add to Cart”) and your order will be delivered to right to your door!

Time: Saturday, February 17, 2007 8:00 PM

Location: Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse 991 Piedmont Avenue Atlanta, GA 30309 Tel: 404-607-0082

Books are currently available through this website, and at Outwrite Bookstore.

Continue to come to VEP’s website for the latest on G.’s Hit and Run Tour as this multi-talented and sexy writer makes his way across the U.S. and abroad!

For booking inquiries about bulk sales and booking information for all VEP authors, please contact: David Eric Foaney at info@vepress.com.