Bent’s unique Mentor Showcase has become a fall tradition in Seattle. Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, a queer Sri Lankan writer, teacher and performer joins a fabulous line up of Bent writers for this year’s annual Showcase. Piepzna-Samarasinha’s work explores the interconnection of systems of colonialism, abuse and violence. Bent is America's only writing institution for queers.

Tara Hardy has once again assembled the comic, the tragic, the downright magical and wildly diverse Bent writers who join Piepzna-Samarasinha on the Museum of History and Industry stage November 13th and 14th. The annual Showcase production is a wonderful opportunity to experience great writing before it hits national tours. Each of the Bent writers brings a unique voice, history and insight to the stage. Now in our 8th year, the showcase has grown from a class in Hardy's living room to become a highly anticipated and life-changing community event.

Bent & Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Museum of History and Industry, 2700 24th Ave. E, Seattle, WA
Friday November 13 & Saturday November 14
Doors 7:00pm / Curtain 7:30pm

Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha Mentor Writing Workshop
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, 1002 E Seneca, Seattle, WA
Saturday, November 14
11am-1pm

Tickets: Brown Paper Tickets

LEAH LAKSHMI PIEPZNA-SAMARASINHA:: Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a queer Sri Lankan writer, performer and teacher. She is the 2009-10 Artist in Residence at UC Berkeley’s June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program, a 2009 Sins Invalid performer and the co-founder and co-artistic director of Mangos With Chili. Her one woman show, Grown Woman Show, has toured nationally, including performances at the National Queer Arts Festival, Swarthmore College, Yale University, Reed College and McGill University. The author of Consensual Genocide, her writing has appeared in Yes Means Yes, Visible: A Femmethology, Homelands, Colonize This, We Don’t Need Another Wave, Bitchfest, Without a Net, Dangerous Families, Brazen Femme, Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws, Femme and A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World. She has performed her work nationally, in venues as diverse as the National Queer Arts Festival, La Pena, the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Bowery Poetry Club and Asian American Writers Workshop to immigrant rights protests, queer youth center benefits and strike lines. She is finishing her second book of poetry and her first memoir, and is happy about the forthcoming publication of The Revolution Starts At Home: Transforming Partner Abuse Through Community Accountability, which she co-edited with Ching-In Chen and Jai Dulani, by South End Press in 2010.

BENT: Bent Arts, a non-profit organization, is the only queer writing institute in the nation. The mission of Bent is to promote and encourage written and spoken word among LGBTIQ people and in our communities. The concept and work of Bent began August 2000, in the living room of Tara Hardy, Seattle-based writer, performer, and Slam Champ. Since, Bent has grown to a full institute, having served over 200 students, offering a variety of weekly classes and local and regional performances.

MENTOR SHOWCASES: These annual spoken word showcases are a chance to see Bent students, whose works are generating much attention both locally and nationally, perform alongside a writer whose work they look up to and have chosen to honor. Moreover, they are a chance to bring underrepresented voices to our greater communities. The showcases are Bent's largest annual fundraiser. There have been six other sold-out showcases and workshops since June 2003, with standing-room-only crowds and growing student rolls. The last showcase was housed at Piggot Hall at Seattle University, met with two packed nights and critical acclaim. In these prior showcases, Bent has honored queer writers and mentors: Kate Bornstein, D. Blair, Dorothy Allison, Buddy Wakefield, Juba Kalamka, Justin Chin, Michelle Tea, Ivan Coyote, and Sini Anderson.

Bent would like to thank the following for supporting the 2009 Bent Showcase:
Poets & Writers
Seattle Counselors Center
GLAmazon

GSBA
Delicious Planet Inc.

At Sunset House Collective
915 16th Avenue
One block south of Union Street
In Seattle's Central District

Bent provides sliding scale poetry classes to queers here in Seattle... Just knowing this resource exists helps make so many of our ways a little easier. Every time I go to a Bent show, I leave with a deeper commitment to living my own truth, to living a BOLD existence. This show is a great excuse to marinate in some truth AND support the continuation of Bent.

Bent is the only queer writing institute in the nation. The mission is to promote and encourage written and spoken word among LGBTIQ people and in our communities.

Bent will celebrate on the Hugo House cabaret stage on the evening of Tuesday, January 20, 2009. None other than Inauguration Day! Why? Because we want to ring in the new administration by putting some of our own visions into the world. Please join us as over thirty Bent writers, whose works are generating much attention both locally and nationally, bring underrepresented voices to our greater communities.

BENT: Bent, a non-profit organization, is the only queer writing institute in the nation. The mission of Bent is to promote and encourage written and spoken word among LGBTIQTS people and in our communities. The concept and work of Bent began August 2000, in the living room of Tara Hardy, Seattle-based writer, performer, and Slam Champ. Since, Bent has grown to a full institute, having served over 500 students, offering a variety of weekly classes and local and regional performances.

Burien Trophy, City Catering, Cupcake Ryoyale, Eleventh Hour Productions, GLAmazon, LifeLong Aids Alliance, MOHAI Events Services, Poets and Writers, Inc., Richmond Beech Coffee Company, Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and Tough Pickle Studio

Most importantly, we would like to offer our heartfelt thanks to Kate Bornstein for being an inspiration to us all!

Bent Writing Institute & Kate Bornstein
Museum of History and Industry, 2700 24th Ave. E, Seattle, WA
Friday November 14 & Saturday November 15
Doors 7:00pm / Curtain 7:30pm

Kate Bornstein Mentor Writing Workshop
Lifelong AIDS Alliance, 1002 E Seneca, Seattle, WA
Saturday, November 15
1pm-3:30pm

Tickets: brownpapertickets.com

Bent is one of the best parts of autumn in Seattle. Kate Bornstein, author, playwright and performance artist extraordinaire joins a fabulous line up of Bent writers for the annual Showcase. Bent Writing Institute is America’s only writing institution for queers.

Tara Hardy has once again assembled the comic, the tragic, the downright magical and life-changing Bent writers who join Bornstein on the Museum of History and Science stage November 14 and 15th.

Bornstein is well worth the price of admission with her witticism and insights told from the perspective of a grand performance artist. Bornstein, author of “Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks and Other Outlaws” is also a well-received American playwright. Her play with co-author Caitlin Sullivan entitled “The Opposite Sex is Neither” has toured nation wide. She has just launched a new solo performance piece titled “Kate Bornstein Is A Queer and Pleasant Danger,” that plays in over 120 colleges and universities around the globe.

Bornstein, born in Fargo, North Dakota, lives and writes in New York City. Her creative work is inspirational with critical insights peppered about life, queerness and teen suicide.

The annual Showcase production is a wonderful opportunity to experience great writing before it hits national tours. Each of the Bent writers brings a unique voice, history and insight to the stage. For the uninitiated, this is the 7th annual showcase and the little gem of a performance that grew from Tara Hardy’s living room to main stage spotlights is always a winner.

“More and more people who come on the first night, come back on the second,” Hardy explains. Tara Hardy, former Seattle poet populist and finalist on Seattle’s Slam Team delivers her own brand of gutsy vocal passion from the mic.

KATE BORNSTEIN:: Kate Bornstein is an author, playwright and performance artist. Her latest book, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws, hits the bookshelves in July, 2006. Kate's published works include the books Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us; My Gender Workbook; and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate's plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, and y2kate: gender virus 2000.

Kate's books are taught in over 120 colleges and universities around the world; and ze has performed hir work live on college campuses and in theaters and performance spaces across the USA, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria. She is currently touring colleges, youth conferences and high schools, speaking and leading workshops on the subjects of sex, gender, and alternatives to teen suicide.

Kate has two new projects ready to launch in the spring of 2007: a memoir and new solo performance piece, both with the same title: Kate Bornstein Is A Queer And Pleasant Danger.

Kate was born outside of Fargo, North Dakota in a log cabin ze helped hir parents build. Hir father was a Lutheran minister, and hir mother was Miss Betty Crocker, 1939. Kate has lived in the queer ghettos of Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Seattle. Ze currently lives with hir partner--sex pioneer, writer and performance artist Barbara Carrellas--in New York City, along with their two pugs, two cats, two turtles, and a thriving well-populated ant farm.

More information on Kate at www.katebornstein.com

BENT: Bent, a non-profit organization, is the only queer writing institute in the nation. The mission of Bent is to promote and encourage written and spoken word among LGBTIQTS people and in our communities. The concept and work of Bent began August 2000, in the living room of Tara Hardy, Seattle-based writer, performer, and Slam Champ. Since, Bent has grown to a full institute, having served over 200 students, offering a variety of weekly classes and local and regional performances.

MENTOR SHOWCASES: These annual spoken word showcases are a chance to see Bent students, whose works are generating much attention both locally and nationally, perform alongside a writer whose work they look up to and have chosen to honor. Moreover, they are a chance to bring underrepresented voices to our greater communities. The showcases are Bent’s largest annual fundraiser. There have been six other sold-out showcases and workshops since June 2003, with standing-room-only crowds and growing student rolls. The last showcase was housed at Piggot Hall at Seattle University, met with two packed nights and critical acclaim. In these prior showcases, Bent has honored queer writers and mentors: D. Blair, Dorothy Allison, Buddy Wakefield, Juba Kalamka, Justin Chin, Michelle Tea, Ivan Coyote, and Sini Anderson.

Gracing the stage with a showcase of Bent performers, Andrea joins us after placing first at the Women of the World Poetry Slam, just the latest in a string of victories on the international Slam scene. Reviewers call Andrea's work "jaw-dropping" and add that "it could change your life."

Don't miss your chance to see Bent and Andrea Gibson, a perfect mixture of fabulous and fierce, for this one-night-only spectacular performance.

Only $10 -- Pay at the door!
Wednesday, May 13, 7:30 door, 8:00 p.m. show

Rebar
1114 Howell St.
Seattle, WA

Andrea Gibson is a queer poet/activist whose work deconstructs the foundations of the current political machine, highlighting issues such as patriarchy, gender norms, white-supremacy, and capitalist culture. Listen to her work and learn more at www.andreagibson.org.

As you may know, the LGBT Center has moved from its location on Pike Street—since Bent was a sublettor of the Center, we were displaced. We are very grateful for the nurturing home base the Center provided, and wish the organization the best of luck in their new situation.

Bent is proud to share its new space with CCEJ. The organization fights for environmental and economic justice in low income communities and communities of color. Bent students, staff, and board are pleased to have this opportunity to share ideas with a valued social justice organization.