facebook

MICHAEL V. SMITH discusses his book MY BODY IS YOURS and ROBERT GRAY reads from his collection of stories ENTROPIC

My Body is Yours (Arsenal Pulp Press) Entropic (NeWest Press)

A memoir about breaking out of gender norms and reconciling with a dangerous childhood. Michael V. Smith is a multihyphenate force of nature: a novelist, poet, improv comic, filmmaker, drag queen, performance artist, and occasional clown. In this, his first work of non-fiction, Michael traces his early years as an inadequate male—a fey kid growing up in a small town amid a blue-collar family; a sissy; an insecure teenager desperate to disappear; and an obsessive writer-performer, drawn to compulsions of alcohol, sex, reading, spending, work, and art as a means to cope and heal. Michael V. frankly discusses the blossoming of a queer sex and gender identity, accompanying behavioural addictions, and his difficult relationship with his father (who was also an alcoholic).As an artist whose work focuses on our preconceived notions about the body, Michael questions the very notion of what it means to be human. He also asks: How can we know what a man is? How might understanding gender as metaphor be a tool for a deeper understanding of identity? My Body Is Yours is a raw, unflinching memoir in which Michael V. challenges gender norms, moves beyond stigma to celebrate his outsider status, and reconciles with a dangerous childhood.

Praise for My Body is Yours

"My Body Is Yours is frenetic with experience—the joy and compulsion, purity and loneliness of cruising for sex; the rawness of public vulnerability in performance and writing; the anguish and innocence of searching for a way to inhabit your body when the world tells you it cannot be yours. Michael V. Smith flames and flails, he instigates and interrogates, revealing gender as a “conscious, live response” instead of a societally prescribed formula for shutting off. From choreographing group sex to commanding the stage in drag to helping his father to live (and die), Michael V. Smith shows us the full range of the open heart." —Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, author of The End of San Francisco

"The writing here is intimate, complicated and soulful. There is a lineage of gay men who write about sex without divorcing it from the broad context of their lives. Michael V. Smith is part of that lineage. This book is what you say to a hookup on a vacation in another town, when you aren’t afraid because you’ll never see them again. Smith makes vulnerability look easy. It takes most people three beers to get this honest. He’s got poetry in him." —Kirk Read, author of How I Learned to Snap

"Michael V. Smith has written a searching, scalding memoir for our moment, bringing equal sass and introspection to the topics of barebacking and grieving, addiction and genderfuck. As he whisks us through the spotlights and shadows of Vancouver's parks and trans clubs, seatbelts unfastened and wigs askew, Smith proves to be a brave, erudite and profoundly touching guide -- pilot in one chapter, flight attendant in the next." —John Greyson, video/film artist

Michael V. Smith won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBT Writers from the Writers Trust of Canada for his first novel, Cumberland. He’s also the author of two poetry collections and a second novel, Progress. An improv comic, filmmaker, drag queen, and occasional clown, Smith investigates notions of community and belonging, especially as relating to sexuality, gender, class, and identity. He teaches creative writing in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus in Kelowna, BC.

. . . .

In his second collection of stories, author and filmmaker R.W. Gray (Crisp) once again finds the place where the beautiful, the strange, and the surreal all meet—sometimes meshing harmoniously, sometimes colliding with terrible violence, launching his characters into a redefined reality.
A lovestruck man discovers the secret editing room where his girlfriend erases all her flaws; a massage artist finds that she can alleviate her clients’ pain in more ways than one; a beautiful man invites those who want him to do whatever they wish with his unconscious body; and a gay couple meets what appear to be the younger versions of themselves, and learns that history can indeed repeat itself.

Praise for R.W. Gray

“R.W. Gray writes like nobody else; risky, edgy, erotic, subversive, even macabre short stories, very contemporary, coded with solitude, but reaching for myth, always beautiful and astonishing.” —Douglas Glover, author of Savage Love and Elle

R.W. Gray was raised on the northwest coast of BC. He is the author of two serialized novels in Xtra West magazine (Waterboys and Tide Pool Sketches) and has published poetry and prose in various journals and anthologies, including Arc, Grain, Event, and dANDelion. He has also had ten short screenplays produced, including the award winning shorts alice & huck and Blink. He is a senior editor on the web magazine Numéro Cinq. He teaches film and screenwriting at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Crisp, a collection of short stories, is his first book. His second story collection, Entropic, will be released in Spring 2015.

Event date: 
Sunday, May 24, 2015 - 5:00pm
Event address: 
1818 N Vermont Ave
Los Angeles, CA 90027
My Body Is Yours: A Memoir By Michael V. Smith Cover Image
$17.95
ISBN: 9781551525778
Availability: Not in Stock. Available to Order.
Published: Arsenal Pulp Press - May 5th, 2015

What You Can't Have By Michael V. Smith Cover Image
$12.95
Possibly out of print. Email or call to check availability and price.
ISBN: 9781897109090
Published: Signature Editions - April 1st, 2006