About
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Not since New Narrative shook up the city and gave voice to a particular San Francisco style has writing been this much fun. Home of the brave and ever so slightly depraved, BentBoyBooks are where language meets pleasure and pleasure becomes an artful purpose all its own.
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BentBoyBooks publishes small books, single poems and other publications designed and produced by the BentBoys of San Francisco and Connecticut. BentBoyBooks bend genre, narrative and form to suit the particular and perfect taste of the BentBoyBooks editor and founder, Drew Cushing. BentBoyBooks are distributed in secret and mysterious ways to a select audience of glitterati, literati and denizens of the night (especially the night club).
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This tiny erratic effort at publishing and shameless self promotion is the child of Drew Cushing, an obscure San Francisco experimental writer whose writing combines his love of Sex, San Francisco, and language.
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BentBoyBooks are built by Drew & Ralph in their Alamo Square apartment and their Norfolk, Connecticut home.
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Press
What others have to say about BentBoyBooks:
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LIT CRAWLING WITH BENTBOYBOOKS
At the lovely, dearest Green Arcade in the “hub” of San Francisco we encountered this store-exclusive Lit Crawling from Bentboybooks, a tiny publisher of whom we are, as usual, the shit-last to learn.
Funny enough this October 2017 zine, besides being exclusive to Green Arcade, is not listed on Bentboybooks’ website. Turns out to be a survey of their recent zines.
The collection of mostly poetry begins with an anthology, complete with CV beginning in 1972, of Jan Johnson Drantell, whose work evidently has been rediscovered and put into the zine. Her poems could be called provocative: her voice earnestly and compassionately pushes against the ideas and word-bunches of her time, beginning in the Vietnam era. I really can’t pick a favorite poem, they are all so precise and on-point.
Then comes Pam Martin, who is quite joycean, and I’m a sucker for anything joycean that pulls it off, so I’m in. She’s apparently a big deal in the local art-organizing scene, and I mean the upper echelons, the museums and so forth.
Drew Cushing closes the collection out, and he seems to be the ringleader of Bentboybooks. His selections have a lot of political allusions that will have to remain over my head until sometime after I finish this zine review.
I’m finally excited to say that the book turned me on (ha ha) to the devotedly naked Ronald Palmer, whose books I will be investigating soon. Apparently he’s complex, capable and raunchy, so I’m looking forward to it. His story Manikin is very San Francisco-completist, lots of locations named, five-Os bleaching sidewalks. He’s always naked in his promotional photos, so it’s got to be good.
Check out Bentboybooks every time you spot one!
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From John Sakkis- BothBothSeries
32. Ghosts- Stephen Boyer
Don’t remember if Stephen sent me this book. Or if Bent Boy Books sent me this book. Or if Stephen handed it off to me in person. I think Bent Boy Books sent me this book. I love this chapbook, especially the Craigslist bars/clubs reviews. Cause it’s Stephen, and he actually posted these amazing reviews (nod to Killian) on Craigslist. Stephen invited me to read with him and Jennifer Blowdryer at Dog Eared Books for the release reading. I’ve never written about that reading and what took place afterward…but let me just say…there were beautiful girls, there were boys, there was a band playing in the Mission, there was an art opening, there was El Rio and The Makeout Room, there was an “appropriated” car on Market St, there was hot tubs, there was a lot of nudity, there was rooftops, there was missing pants, there was blackouts, there was making out and whiskey and a wet cab ride home with two of my best homies at 5 in the morning…and then a lot of hilarious text messages the next day/afternoon…pretty much the epic’ist after party to a poetry reading I’ve ever experienced in my entire life. There is a line in Stephen’s book that goes something like “I want to read poetry with Lindsey Lohan in the Hollywood Hills…”…it was like that. You should read Ghosts.
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From Chuck Forester in Lambda Literary Review
The next book, NTOUCH, is a small one of twenty-five pages. It’s stapled together, the kind of book that can be made at home or Kinkos. It comes from BentBoyBooks. I received three of their books. Each is interspersed with photographs from early physique magazines, historical shots of San Francisco and early Twentieth Century pornography. NTOUCH, a bar story tells a tale of a boy’s search for the perfect Asian bartender he meets at the R&G Lounge. It’s short enough for a ride on Muni.
The cute go-go boys and newly arriving boys provide pleasant distraction. He likes watching the boys strut down along the bar and spill out onto the dance floor full of energy and excitement. The regulars always come in just before eleven. Right on schedule the old queen in the classic seventies drag strolls in head turned defiantly up, quickly followed by “the “hobbit,” a small grinning bouncing boy who appears suddenly, tears off his shirt and dances…
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Past Events
This Might End Well After All
by Jan Johnson Drantell
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CUBE TONE
by Pam Martin
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First copies distributed late April 2017 at the party in Minnette’s Garden. Look for more events to come soon!
BentBoyBooks Release Party Sunday April 26th with Reading for:
NOTES FOR DREW by DAVID CHRISTENSEN &
LAGO DE LAS DOLORES by ALVIN ORLOFF.
SUNDAY, APRIL 26TH 2015 3:00PM – 6:00PM
At Minnette Lehmann’s House
Open at 3pm. Reading at 4pm. Light refreshments.
Reading will be in Minnette’s garden. RSVP for exact address.
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David Christensen lives in San Francisco and has been famous for 16 minutes.
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Alvin Orloff is the author of three novels, I Married and Earthling, Gutter Boys and Why Aren’t You Smiling? His writing has been described ad “quirky,” “adorable,” and “hilarious” by reviewers, a few of whom didn’t even owe him favors. He lives in San Francisco’s über-trendy Mission District and is working on a memoir of the plague years that he promises will not be depressing.
BentBoyBooks and Drew Cushing at Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theatre
Join us Friday January 23rd at 7:00pm at the Omni Commons in Oakland for Small Press Traffic’s Poet’s Theatre including Drew Cushing’s The Vitrines featuring Minnette Lehmann, Anne McGuire and Pam Martin.
The Vitrines! An Art Performance
Written & Directed by Drew Cushing
Performed by the members of Minnette’s Feast. Minnette Lehman. Pam Martin. Ann McGuire. Drew Cushing.
In the world of prompts as art objects, where the impulse of, trigger for, is the thing itself, an end that means, the Vitrine is the device of it all. In the Vitrine any object is ART. The Curator and three Artists host an art event revealing for the first time their work for their installation exploring the limits of liminality, language and the act of Curation.
Advance tickets are $15 general/$25 generous and are available at brownpapertickets.com. Tickets at the door are $20.
Vassar Boy: Palladium – Available Now!
Bent Boy Books is proud to announce the release of the first in a series of chapbooks in the Vassar Boy series from Drew Cushing, Palladium.
Palladium takes us on 1980s night club adventure which includes a hot bouncer, drag queens, drugs, sex and more in the infamous nightclub of the same name. Packed with images around and about the story, this is one chapbook you don’t want to miss seeing in person. Be sure to contact us to get your copy of this limited release.
Vassar Boy is a fictional account of life at Vassar College in the 1980s. Specifically the academic year of 1985/1986. Introduced by the author in the first person, the story is then told in the third person. In good New Narrative tradition, the novel features a character, Drew, and includes uses other actual names fictionally. The other characters names have no resemblance to any people actually at Vassar College during this time and are entirely fictional in nature (as is Drew and the entire book). To learn about this project visit the Vassar Boy website here.
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Wednesday March 20th 7pm. BentBoyBooks and Blowdryer Media Present:
A Book Release Party celebrating the release of Ron Palmer’s Prick Queasy Chapter 7 out from BentBoyBooks and Jennifer Blowdryer’s Blowsy with special guest, Ted Rees returning to SF from his whirlwind New York tour. Party and reading at Alley Cat Books.
Wednesday March 20th
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
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