Sister Spit, a legendary-in-certain-circles group of writers and performance artists, is in town today and tomorrow.  Led by the eternally awesome Michelle Tea, the raggle-taggle group of wordy gypsies will be hosting workshops at Brown starting, like, an hour from now, and continuing through tomorrow night.

Sister Spit was founded in 1997 as a means to tour queer, feminist, outsider, and otherwise marginalized poetry, spoken word, literature and performance.  This year’s tour (Sister Spit: The Next Generation) features Michelle Tea, Beth Lisick, Rhiannon Argo, spoken word champion Kirya Traber, photographer/curator Sara Seinberg, transgender performance artist Ben McCoy, and Ariel Schrag, whose name I still can not see without immediately singing this song.

I saw the tour last time it went to Boston and it was super, super, super.

Full schedge after the jump:

THURSDAY:

Resisting Assimilation : Ben McCoy’s 101 Ways to Stay Fierce
Date: Thursday, Oct. 22
Location: LGBTQ Resource Center (3rd Floor Hillel, 80 Angell St.)
Time: 2:30 PM to 3:30
Assimilation doesn’t just come at you from within the mainstream hetero-normative culture, it can often hit harder from within what you’d like to think is your very own queer subculture. Being a transperson who has maintained non-operative status, and free of hormones isn’t always a popular vote. Queer and trans peer pressure can happen daily. I think more people need to explore themselves and their interests and connect to themselves rather than biting the bullet on super-imposed ways to live. This kind of thing could just be me and a group of people telling stories and exploring ways to maintain an identity and lifestyle that is uniquely your own without having to apologize or “take one for the team,” even if that team is apart of the queer community.

Curating Multiple Mediums: (Sara Seinberg)
Date: Thursday, Oct. 22
Location: Sarah Doyle Women’s Center (26 Benevolent Street)
Time: 4:00 PM - 5:00
Gathering together time based media, sculpture, performance, and two dimensional objects into a gallery or exhibition space can present difficulties for curators of all experience levels. This workshop helps organizers hone their vision for a show and transform challenges into opportunities. We will cover themes, physical space challenges, equipment limitations, and budget witchery.

Personal Narrative (Michelle Tea)
Date: Thursday, Oct. 22
Location: Sarah Doyle Women’s Center (26 Benevolent Street)
Time: 5:00 - 6:15
What elevates Personal Narrative above the realm of journal writing? How is it different from memoir, or autobiography? What place do zines and blogs have in the Personal Narrative tradition. Discussion will address privacy issues, the vulnerability of the writer, memory, innovation and experimentation within the form, and if writing about one’s life is perhaps a form of mental illness.

Potluck with Sister Spit!
Date: Thursday, Oct. 22
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Location: Sarah Doyle Women’s Center (26 Benevolent Street)

FRIDAY:

Out For Lunch w/ Kirya Traber
Date: Friday, Oct. 23
Location: LGBTQ Resource Center (3rd Floor Hillel, 80 Angell St.)
Time: 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM

The Graphic Novel: A Workshop (Ariel Schrag)
Date: Friday, Oct. 23
Location: J. Walter Wilson 503 (69 Brown St.)
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM
Schrag’s workshop is half powerpoint lecture/half workshop on how to create a graphic novel. She covers many aspects of comic writing and drawing including narrative options, pacing, style, and comic’s symbolic vocabulary. Schrag use examples from my own and other cartoonist’s work. There are built in drawing and writing exercises to accompany the different topics, so bring pen and paper!

Writing Book Proposals: (Beth Lisick and Rhiannon Argo)
Date: Friday, Oct. 23
Location: LGBTQ Resource Center (3rd Floor Hillel, 80 Angell St.)
Time: 4:30 PM - 5:30 PM
You have an idea for a book, but how do you actually sell it? This workshop will demystify areas of the publishing world that all potential authors should know about such as: crafting a pitch, finding the right agent and publisher, and developing a sales and marketing platform. Bestselling author Beth Lisick has appeared on a series of panels about book proposals with high profile agents and publishers, and has helped more than a few people get book deals by helping them refine their proposals.

BIG PERFORMANCE! (with merch-sale, meet&greet, and informal dance party afterward)
Date: Friday, Oct. 23
Location: List 120 (64 College St.)
Time: 9:00 PM - 1:00 AM

Tags: awesomeness, Brown, michelle tea, readings, sister spit, the gays

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