Please note: I set up this page reluctantly, because I'm terrified of getting sucked further into the internet. So while I'm thrilled to be added and to add people and all of that stuff, I am not going to check this page frequently. So please don't get offended if it takes me a while to respond or if I miss messages. If you want to contact me, I'm at kirkread@earthlink.net and that's a better way for me to communicate. Thanks!
Influences
Patti Smith, Tennessee Williams, Michael Stipe, Ace Frehley, Sandra Bernhard, Spalding Grey, Jack Smith, Charles Ludlam, Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, William S. Burroughs, Eileen Myles, Michelle Tea, Armistead Maupin, Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, Sarah Schulman, Eric Rofes, John Preston, Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Pete Townsend, Rob Halford.
Sounds Like
Obsessions: Brady Bunch, yoga, mushrooms, cats, Sudoku, thrift shopping, cooking for large groups, Project Runway, Sufjan Stevens, Elliott Smith, Flannery O'Connor, the library, Southern folk art, kirtan, houseplants, hiking and camping, karaoke, sewing, the Yuba river, pagan earth ritual, the Bible, documentaries, old movies, Claude Rains, The Mood Cure (book), kale cooked in coconut milk, tea.
Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap, a memoir about being openly gay in high school in Lexington, Virginia during the Reagan years. For several years, he was the editor of Our Own, Virginia’s gay newspaper. He now lives in San Francisco, where he co-curates the literary series Smack Dab and K’vetsh. As a storyteller, he has toured the United States extensively as a solo artist and with the Sex Workers Art Show, performing in hundreds of places. His upcoming memoir is called This is the Thing and he is working on a novel about a pair of fifteen year-olds who get sent to an evangelical summer camp.
Thanks for adding me! I'm still having lots of fun with your book and it feels like "little" Kirk is a really good friend of mine. I think I'll have to look for some more of your books, seems like you're covering some important personal topics! Greetz, Tanya
Thanks for adding Word Art Salon as a friend! And please feel free to post your poetry/literature announcements at www.wordartsalon.com for others in the SF poetry-lit community.
Best wishes, J. Evert Winburn, site host for W/A/Salon