Radar Reading Series: Indie Writers & Free Cookies | SF Main Library

Submitted by the Event Organizer

“Show Us Your Spines” Indie Writers Reading | SF Main Library

The Radar Reading Series has been going on for over 14 years now and starting 2018 they will be changing the format from a one-time reading 12 times a year to six month-long residencies that result in a bi-monthly presentation of work.

Show Us Your Spines is a month-long writer residency + reading in collaboration with the SF Public Library’s Hormel Center. For a month QTPOC writers will work with Hormel Center LGBT archives around a specific queer theme, writing/producing a piece that will then be read/presented the following month at the Hormel Center.

Each residency cohort will be comprised of four writers/artists, who will spend one month with a section/theme of the archives chosen by both RADAR and the library. During that month they will write/create a piece inspired by the chosen ephemera.

Tuesday, December 1, 2015
“Show Us Your Spines” Indie Writers Reading | SF Main Library

Radar Productions Presents: December Queer Reading Series at the San Francisco Library featuring

Mahader Tesfai
My name is Mahader Tesfai. I am an African from Eritrea who grew up in the Bay Area and currently reside in both Oakland, California and recently Santa Barbara. As an artist I utilize found objects, acrylic, oil, enamel, color, line work, repetition, surrealism, and symbolism to affirm the nuanced beauty and complexity of African identities and communities, whether in diaspora or in their homelands.

My current work incorporates overlapping faces, text, and symbols with a strong emphasis on lines. These pieces are playing with the idea of individual and shared identity and language. In one piece multiple characters might be sharing eyes, nose, lips, etc. My use of overlapping faces and sometimes bodies, for me, means a variety of things: I’m expressing the multiplicity of identities that exist in one person, the interconnectedness [spiritual, familial, etc.] between people, and the intersection of these realities.

Molly McCloy
A three-time NYC Moth Slam winner with work published in Slate, Nerve, and Swink, Molly McCloy has been called a “happy misanthrope” and “an angel.” Molly performs ten stories a year for Arizona venues, including Odyssey in Tucson, Arizona Storytellers in Phoenix, and a sold-out “Most Of” show for an audience of 850 at Lit Lounge for the Scottsdale Center for the Arts. She holds an M.F.A. in Nonfiction from The New School, lives in Tucson with her wife Rebecca Curtiss, and teaches writing at Pima Community College. She is working on a memoir based on her one-woman show, Mad Dog Grudges.

Toni D. Newman
Toni is from Jacksonville, NC and attended Wake Forest University on academic scholarship where she received her BA degree in Sociology. She is currently pursuing her law degree to fight for lgbt equality especially the T. Toni is the Development Manager for Maitri Compassionate Care in San Francisco. Maitri Compassionate Care provides residential care to men and women in need of hospice or respite care and cultivates the deepest respect and love for life among its residents and caregivers. Maitri was founded in 1987 in San Francisco and is the only AIDS-specific residential care facility in California focused on the underserved community.

In 2011, Toni wrote her memoir I Rise-The Transformation of Toni Newman discussing her 25 year difficult transistion. The memoir I Rise was nominated in 2012 in 2 categories for the Lambda Literary Awards, honored in 2012 by Wake Forest University for Faces of Courage, and has been featured in the Advocate, Huffington Post and Ebony magazine. Toni is the Community Editor for Proud to Be Out-The Digital Magazine and a blogger for Huffington Post’s Gay Voices. In 2015 Toni was honored on the Trans 100 list.

Celeste Chan
Celeste Chan is a hybrid artist, writer, and organizer. She is a queer student of experimentation, schooled by DIY and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. A Hedgebrook, Lambda, and VONA alumna, her writing can be found in Ada, As/us journal, cream city review, Feminist Wire, Glitterwolf, Hyphen, Matador, and Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices (Transgenre Press). Her experimental films have screened in CAAMFest, Digital Desperados, Entzaubert, Frameline, Imperfectu, Leeds Queer Film Festival, MIX NYC, National Queer Arts Festival, Queeristan, and Vancouver Queer Film Festival, among others. Alongside KB Boyce, she co-directs Queer Rebels, a queer and trans people of color arts project. They have curated and shared work in the SF Bay Area, New York, Montreal, Mexico, Seoul, Glasgow, Amsterdam, Berlin, and beyond.

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