Queer Book Club – Via Zoom (Reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers)

Queer Book Club - Via Zoom (Reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers)

When

August 28, 2023    
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm

Where

The DC Center for the LGBT Community
2000 14th Street, Suite 105, Washington, District of Columbia, 20009

Event Type

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Due to COVID-19 , we are all meeting remotely via Zoom. We would love for you to join us.

For security reasons we ask that community members reach out to us via email for the Zoom info. Send a quick email to : supportdesk@thedccenter.org

The group will be reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers (About the Author).

The Queer Book Club meets on the fourth Monday of the month to discuss queer books by queer authors.

4 thoughts on “Queer Book Club – Via Zoom (Reading The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers)”

  1. To whom it may concern:

    Good afternoon!

    What is the process for consideration of a book please?

    I ask in regard to _in other words you/_ selected by Timothy Liu for the Hilary Tham Capital Collection published by the Word Works (a D.C. press!) which is reviewed here: https://oceanstatereview.org/2023/05/11/a-review-of-kevin-mclellans-in-other-words-you/

    This book traffics in the second person. These queer meditations are both directly addressed to and overheard by a beloved You—Self / Other / Reader conjoined in a dance of enjambed vocables, a syntactic pas de deux of monostiches and couplets punctuated by fragmentary prose epistles. We are reminded of the demands that the libido makes, the joys of (w)rote habits ruptured by the new, all of it backed up by an 80s soundtrack pulsing hard out of the Castro all the way to the U.K. So fasten your seatbelts. The you you left with will not be the same you upon return.
    —Timothy Liu

    Vulnerable, sexy, hopeful, and in every way human, Kevin McLellan’s in
    other words you / is a wonder. I was brought so deeply into the intimacy, the neighborliness of the worlds McLellan opens to. The bros putting sunscreen on each other. The robin the size of a pigeon. Bodies morphing into dream bodies on endless screens. In this beautiful book the invitation of the / is also testament to a world where AIDS and so many ruptures have robbed us of generations: that devastation, that yearning for new connection. But how? How do we keep reaching out, running through the rain past the neighbors, asking someone to meet for a cheese and pickle sandwich? I loved these poems and felt like crying almost the whole time. Is this elegy? Insofar as it is also deep, deep celebration. The world goes on somehow. This book is the somehow— Gabrielle Calvocoressi

    The astounding poems that comprise—vividly inhabit—Kevin McLellan’s in other words you/ waver between biblical lamentations and a contemplative sense of memorialized irony. They are a series of snapshots—an embodiment of—gay male longing and queer desire told through a series of time fractured images, song fragments, objects, and muted emotions: a remembrance of the past, vividly illuminated. McLellan vividly conjures those moments of emotional panic and sadness that jolt us from consciousness into a dream world of not just regret but a veneration, a reverence that borders on holiness. The enormous power of these poems is embedded in their quietness, their contemplation, transfiguration of the loss of the everyday.
    —Michael Bronski

    Thank you for consideration!

    Best wishes,
    Kevin

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