Thursday, May 21st at 7:30 PM
Omni Commons
4799 Shattuck Ave. Oakland 94609

$pread Book Party with Brown Sugar,
hosted by Juba Kalamka with music by Vixen Noir

$pread (The Anthology) Book Release + Literary Event for San Francisco Bay Area Sex Worker Film and Art Fest (www.sexworkerfest.com) + 'A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography' Signing with Mireille Miller-Young + music by Vixen Noir, Hosted by Juba Kalamka

Readings by Mack Friedman, Catherine Plato, Fabulous, Kym Cutter, Xtascene, Carol Leigh, and Mireille Miller-Young, who will be doing a reading and signing of 'A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography' and closing with music by Vixen Noir (http://www.vixennoir.com/home) Plus new work from Victoria Schneider.

'$pread: The Best of the Magazine that Illuminated the Sex Industry and Started a Media Revolution.' -Edited by Audacia Ray, Eliyanna Kaiser & Rachel Aimee and published by Feminist Press.

$pread, an Utne award–winning magazine by and for sex workers, was independently published from 2005 to 2011. This collection features the enduring essays about sex work around the world, first-person stories that range from deeply traumatic to totally hilarious, analysis of media and culture, and fantastic original illustrations and photographs produced just for the magazine. The book also features the previously untold story of $pread and how it has built a wider audience in its posthumous years. What started as a community tool and trade magazine for the sex industry quickly emerged as the essential guide for people curious about sex work, for independent magazine enthusiasts, and for labor and civil rights activists.

More about host, Juba Kalamka:

Bisexual artist/activist Juba Kalamka is most recognized for his work with performance troupes Sins Invalid and Mangos With Chili, as co-founder of the queer hip hop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC) and as an emcee in the group Rainbow Flava (RBF) . Kalamka's personal work centers on intersectional dialogues on race, identity, gender, disability, sexuality and class in popular media. He received a 2005 Creating Change Award from the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF) for his activist work in queer music community.

His career in porn began as a featured performer in Good Vibrations/Sexpositive Productions G Marks The Spot (2003) has continued with Radio Dildo Libre ( Blissful Itch, 2004) Orgasm! The Faces Of Ecstasy, NoFauxxx.com (2006), solo films with Shine Louise Houston and more. He has been a openly sex-worker identified advocate in numerous forums. Kalamka toured internationally and performed on a 28 city tour of the United States with the Sex Workers Art Show.

Kalamka wrote features, book reviews and the music review column Race Records for Colorlines Magazine. His essays and creative writing on sexuality, hip hop and popular culture appear in numerous journals and anthologies. Emceeing since 1988, Kalamka performed on and executive produced six D/DC album projects, all of which were released through his imprint, sugartruck recordings. He has released three solo vocal hip hop projects through sugartruck, and the experimental sound collage album Codeswitchings.

Kalamka holds a BA in Art/Secondary Education from Chicago State University (1993) and an MFA in Poetics from New College of California (2007). He is a member of the boards of the National Queer Arts Festival (NQAF), The Big Red A, California Prostitutes Education Project (Cal-PEP) , the international sex worker advocacy organization Desiree Alliance and the advisory committee of the Center For Sex and Culture (CSC) . He lives in Oakland, California with his primary partner of 12 years, their daughter, an excitable basengi/terrier and a neurotic standard poodle. He practices polyamory both locally and globally. http://jubakalamka.bandcamp.com

 

More About a Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography

Mireille Miller-Young is an Associate Professor in the Department of Feminist Studies at University of California, Santa Barbara. She researches and teaches about race, gender, and sexuality in US history, popular culture, and the sex industries. Her book recently released book, A Taste for Brown Sugar: Black Women in Pornography, examines the rich history behind African American women’s participation in pornography. Dr. Miller-Young has published in essays numerous anthologies, academic journals, and newspapers, including Feminist Theory, The New York Times, Colorlines, Ms., and $pread, a sex worker-produced magazine, has been a featured guest on NPR, HuffPost Live, Sex Out Loud Radio, and Canada’s SexTV. With Constance Penley, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, and Tristan Taormino, she is an editor of The Feminist Porn Book: The Politics of Producing Pleasure, which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award for Best LGBT Anthology (2014). She is also in the $pread anthology.

More about Featured Readers:

Mack Friedman’s research into North American male sex work, Strapped for Cash: A History of American Hustler Culture, received international critical acclaim and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies. He has contributed to several sex-worker-based publications including HOOK and $pread, and contributed to the recent book Male Sex Work and Society. He has been involved in HIV prevention and research with male and transgender sex workers since the late 1990s, and is currently working on a community-based research study of transgender sex workers in Ho Chi Minh City. His work appears in the new $pread anthology.

Catherine Plato is the former editor of Curve magazine and $pread magazine, and a co-founder of sex work blog TitsandSass.com. Her work appears in the new $pread anthology.

Kymberly Cutter is a sex worker, mother, writer, activist for sex worker rights, herbalist and nutritionist. She lives in Tucson in a co parenting community of 3 co parents, 4 kids, 1 cat, and 5 hermit crabs.

Xtascene is an SF Bay Area native; although currently rolling in the city of San Francisco, she misses Oakland and the East Bay desperately and is moving back as soon as she puts her chihuahua through college. Xtascene writes like she is giving birth - painfully, over the course of hours or sometimes days. Xtascene is an afropunk, a cis that doesn't believe in the gender binary, an ally looking for allies. Xtascene constantly burns with equal parts fear and wonder, and her narcissism is exceeded only by her compassion.

Fabulous is an old queer punk faery and pen name for the director of the fest. She is also an SF local, and a cis, femme, sex worker, jew/witch with dreams of a 24/7 whore's bath queer land project close enough to the city to be able to still go to the movies. She appears in that $pread anthology, too.

Scarlot Harlot, unrepentant whore, activist, and artist, is a brazen, brainy hooker. Since the late 1970s, Harlot (AKA Carol Leigh) has written, performed and produced work in a variety of genres on women's issues and her experiences in the sex industry.

More about musician and performer, Vixen Noir:

Vixen Noir is a rising SupaStar singer, songwriter, recording artist and performance artist who’s been wowing audiences worldwide with her in-your-face, kickass, sexy-as-hell brand of entertainment. In 2013, she burst onto the music scene with her debut single, Dangerous, to rave reviews! She released her follow up single, Lusty Lady, in May 2014. Her much-anticipated debut EP, DANGEROUS dropped January 19, 2015!

Vixen describes her music as “alternative dance pop soul.” Her musical influences include Nina Simone, Grace Jones, Ella Fitzgerald, Queen, Police, Billie Holiday, Madonna, Eurythmics; more current influences include Amy Winehouse, Pink, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Jessie J. Another influence for Vixen is Deep House music, from Chicago House to New York House to Detroit House! No stranger to working the dance floor, Vixen says, “Dancing to House music is like my church! I get completely lost in the music and reemerge revitalized! I want people to be moved deep down by my music, the way House music moves me.”

In addition to being a music and performance artist, Vixen is also a talented burlesque/striptease artist, dancer, spoken word artist/poetess, teacher, and director and producer of live theatre and sexy cabaret. Her performances are bold and unapologetic and inspire others to revel in their own power. Vixen integrates her extensive dance and theatre background to create performances that range from sublime to raucous, raunchy to sensual, provocative to humble, and that are artistically compelling and visually stimulating. She is dedicated to using her artistry to build bridges across racial, social and economic divides and to inspire others to celebrate the diversity of gender and sexual expression.

From 1997 – 2006, Vixen was the founder and Artistic Director of liquidFIRE Productions, a San Francisco-based non-profit organization dedicated to the authentic representation of lesbian and queer women of color on stage. She was the mastermind behind the organization’s theatre company, The liquidFIRE Project, whose original productions focused on erotic power; and the always sold-out queer erotic cabaret, WET, which featured strip, burlesque, poetry, performance art, spoken word, comedy and musical acts. As Artistic Director of Luna Sea Women’s Performance Project in San Francisco from 1995 to 1998, Vixen produced and directed several festivals and theatre productions including Women of Color Month which featured Juke Joint, Sistahs Singin’ and the first incarnations of The Liquid Fire Project; Disputed Territory, featuring performances that addressed gender identity and the sex work industry; and the play Skin: the Black and White of It in which African American and White lesbians explored racism.

In 2007, Vixen created Unleash Your Fire Performance Project for Women, a theatrical workshop program designed to empower women to awaken, reclaim and celebrate their “erotic power” while simultaneously developing performance skills. She has facilitated workshops throughout the USA and Australia.

Vixen successfully toured her one-woman show, “Sweet Deliverance” in San Francisco and Australia in 2009 and has been featured in the Australian Magazines: Slit, Scavenger, Dirty Queer Magazine, BNews and on the cover of Cherry Magazine. In the U.S., she has been featured in Curve and Girlfriends Magazines, and on Q TV. Vixen Noir ©2012-2015. All rights reserved.