BGSQD presents: Assotto Saint ‘Sacred Spells Collected Works’ Publication Party

Join Walter Holland, Michele Karlsberg, Jewelle Gomez, Reginald Harris, Pamela Sneed, Gary Paul Wright, Allen Luther Wright and Guy Mark Foster in an evening of poetry, essays, video, plays and music as we celebrate the collected life-work of the interdisciplinary writer, performer, and central figure in the Black Gay cultural arts and AIDS movements.

ALL SEATS FOR THIS EVENT HAVE ALREADY BEEN RESERVED. PLEASE ADD YOUR NAME TO THE WAITLIST BY CLICKING ON “GET TICKETS” ON THE EVENTBRITE LINK BELOW.

AT 7 PM ON THE NIGHT OF THE EVENT, ANY UNCLAIMED SEATS WILL BE OFFERED TO PEOPLE ON THE WAITLIST IN THE ORDER THEY WERE RECEIVED.

In this timely collection of poetry, plays, fiction, and performance texts, Assotto Saint draws upon music and incantation, his Haitian heritage and a politics of liberation, to weave together a tapestry of literature that celebrates life in the face of death. Influential to contemporary writers such as Essex Hemphill, Marlon Riggs, and Melvin Dixon, Sacred Spells is Saint’s crucial legacy–five hundred incandescent pages of painful, lyric writing that exemplifies the visceral, spiritual dimensions of an artistic practice that’s integral to Black and LGBTQ activist movements worldwide, both historic and present.

This event is co-sponsored by Other Countries  Also live-streaming at YouTube.com/@bgsqd. Suggested donation $10 to benefit the Bureau’s work. All are welcome to attend, with or without donation. We will pass a bag for donations at the start of the event, but we can also take credit card donations at the register or on Venmo @bgsqd.

Copies of Assotto Saint’s Sacred Spells: Collected Works, edited by Michele Karlsberg (Nightboat Books, 2023, paperback, $22.95), are available at the Bureau.

To reserve a copy to be purchased at the event, please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com with “reserve a copy of Sacred Spells” in the subject line. Thank you for supporting the Bureau by purchasing books from us!

Yves François Lubin (aka Assotto Saint) was a Haitian-born American writer, performer, publisher, and AIDS activist. He heavily contributed to increasing the visibility of contemporary Black queerness in the cultural arts movement of the ’80s and early ’90s. Saint drew upon his Haitian heritage, music, incantations, and radical politics to weave together a tapestry of literature that celebrates life in the face of death, and embraces politics as a way to change the world. He served as a mentor to an entire generation of up-and-coming gay Black community members. As publisher of Galiens Press, Saint published two volumes of his own poetry, Stations and Wishing For Wings, and edited two seminal anthologies of gay Black writing: the 1991 Lambda Literary Award–winning The Road Before Us: 100 Gay Black Poets and Here To Dare: 10 Gay Black Poets. His chapbook Triple Trouble was published in Tongues Untied (GMP, London). He was also the author of such plays as Risin’ To The Love We Need, New Love Song, Black Fag, and Nuclear Lovers. In 1990, he was awarded both the Fellowship in Poetry from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the James Baldwin Award from the Black Gay Leadership Forum. He lived in New York City with Jan Urban Holmgren, his life partner and co-founder of Metamorphosis Theater and the techno-pop band Xotika. Lubin died June 29, 1994 of AIDS-related complications.