Poetry for the Apocalypse (In Person & Live Streaming)

Join us on July 18th (6pm) for Poetry for the Apocalypse—a celebration of art making in the face of destruction to commemorate the publication of C. Russell Price’s “oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems” (Northwestern University Press). From the New York Times: “This debut by an ‘Appalachian genderqueer punk writer’ is as playful and provocative as you might guess: One poem is titled ‘My Sexual Identity Is a Toaster in a Bathtub.’” Price will be joined by NYC darlings of the literary scene Omotara James, Joseph Osmundson, Anthony Thomas Lombardi, and Robert Wood Lynn. A $10 suggested donation to the Bureau is greatly appreciated and punk af.

This event will take place in person at the Bureau of General Services—Queer Division, on the second floor (room 210) of The LGBT Community Center, 208 W. 13th St., NYC, 10011.

Registration is not required. Seating is first come, first served.

Also live-streaming on the Bureau’s YouTube channel:

youtube.com/@bgsqd

Suggested donation to benefit the Bureau: $10.

All are welcome to attend, with or without a 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

C. Russell Price is originally from Glade Spring, Virginia, but now lives in Chicago. They are a Lambda Fellow in Poetry, a Ragdale Fellow, a Windy City Times 30 Under 30 honoree, an essayist, and a poet. They are the author of a chapbook, Tonight, We Fuck the Trailer Park Out of Each Other. Their work has appeared in the Boston Review, Court Green, DIAGRAM, Iron Horse Literary Review, Lambda Literary, Nimrod International, PANK, and elsewhere. Their debut collection oh, you thought this was a date?!: Apocalypse Poems was published by Northwestern University Press. They are a poet in residence with the Chicago Poetry Center and work with the Ragdale Foundation, Story Studio Chicago, and The Anarchist Review of Books. Their current project Bisquick: Seance Poems is about a ghost cowboy and his ghost, blue horse.

Omotara James is a writer, editor and visual artist. She is the author of the chapbook Daughter Tongue, selected by African Poetry Book Fund, in collaboration with Akashic Books, for the 2018 New Generation African Poets Box Set. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, she is a recipient of the 2019 92Y Discovery Poetry Prize. She earned her BA from Hofstra University and received her MFA from New York University. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, The Paris Review, The Academy of American Poets, and elsewhere. She is a fellow of Lambda Literary and Cave Canem Foundation. Born in Britain, she is the daughter of Nigerian and Trinidadian immigrants and currently lives in New York City.

Joseph Osmundson is a scientist and writer based in New York City.  He has a PhD from The Rockefeller University in Molecular Biophysics. His book of essays, VIROLOGY, is forthcoming in 2022 from W.W. Norton.  His research has been supported by the American Cancer Society, published in leading biological journals including Cell and PNAS, and he’s currently a Clinical Assistant Professor of Biology at NYU.  His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, TIME Magazine, The Village Voice, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Gawker, The Kenyon Review, The Rumpus, The Lambda Literary Review, and The Feminist Wire, and elsewhere, too. 

Anthony Thomas Lombardi is a Pushcart-nominated poet, editor, organizer, activist, and educator. He is the founder and director of Word is Bond, a community-centered reading series partnered with the Asian American Writers’ Workshop that raises funds for transnational relief efforts, bail funds, and mutual aid organizations, and currently serves as a poetry editor for Sundog Lit. A recipient of the Poetry Project’s Emerge-Surface-Be Fellowship, his work has appeared or will soon in the Poetry Foundation’s Ours Poetica, Guernica, Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, Denver Quarterly, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Brooklyn with his cat, Dilla.

Robert Wood Lynn is a writer from Virginia. His debut poetry collection Mothman Apologia (Yale University Press) was named a Best Book of 2022 by the New York Times and the New York Public Library. His chapbook How to Maintain Eye Contact was published by Button Poetry in 2023. Winner of the Yale Younger Poets Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, his writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, New Ohio Review and other journals, as well as been included in the Southern Poetry Anthology: Virginia. A 2023 NEA Creative Writing Fellow, he splits his time between in Rockbridge County, Virginia and New York City, where he co-hosts the DGN Reading Series. He teaches creative writing at Juilliard and at Brooklyn Poets.