The Edge of Being Book Launch
ft. author James Brandon with Susan Stryker & Adrian Ravarour
Tuesday, October 11, 2022 | 6-7pm
In person at the Tenderloin Museum (398 Eddy St. SF, CA 94102)
& online via the Tenderloin Museum’s YouTube Channel
All Ages Welcome! Free!
The Tenderloin Museum presents a book launch event for The Edge of Being, a new queer Young Adult novel by James Brandon that tenderly explores the multiplicities of grief, deeply held family secrets, and finding new love.
In this heartfelt story, protagonist Isaac Griffin is on a quest to learn about his father whom he never met; his journey leads him to San Francisco and to retracing his dad’s steps through the weeks leading up to the Compton’s Cafeteria Riot, the seminal act of queer resistance that unfolded in SF’s Tenderloin district .
Brandon will read from his book and then be in conversation with Susan Stryker and Adrian Ravarour, two individuals who are deeply acquainted with the history and social milieu that were key inspiration for Brandon’s book. Stryker’s 2005 documentary Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria helped resurface and cement the riot’s legacy as an immensely consequential episode in LGBTQ+ history; Adrian Ravarour founded the San Francisco LGBT youth organization Vanguard in the summer of 1965, and was involved with the young queer communities in the TL that precipitated the now legendary Compton’s Cafeteria Riot.
Join us in-person (or online) on The Edge of Being’s release day (10/11) for this special reading and discussion that celebrates Brandon’s novel and the legacy of queer fortitude and resistance in the TL!
Books will be available for purchase at the event via Books Inc.
About the author & panel participants:
James Brandon produced and played the central role of Joshua in the internationally acclaimed tour of Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi for a decade, and is co-director of the documentary film based on their journey, Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption. He’s the co-founder of the I AM Love Campaign, an arts-based initiative bridging the faith-based and 2SLGBTQ+ communities, and serves on the board of the Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS) in San Francisco. Brandon has been a contributing writer for HuffPost, Believe Out Loud, and Spirituality & Health magazine.
Susan Stryker is Professor Emerita of Gender and Women’s Studies. Since retiring from UofA, she has been Presidential Fellow and Visiting Professor of Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies at Yale University (2019-2020), Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women’s Leadership, Mills College (2020-2022), and Marta Sutton Weeks External Faculty Fellow, Stanford University Humanities Institute, 2022-23. She continues to serve as executive editor of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and as co-editor of the Duke University Press book series ASTERISK: gender, trans-, and all that comes after. She is the author of Transgender History: The Roots of Today’s Revolution (2008, 2017), co-editor of the two-volume Transgender Studies Reader (2006, 2013) and The Transgender Studies Reader Remix (2022), as well as co-director of the Emmy-winning documentary film Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria (2005). She is currently working to complete her book manuscript Changing Gender (under contract to Farrar Straus Giroux) as well as developing a variety of film and television projects.
Adrian Ravarour is an author, poet, visual artist, lyricist, and priest who founded the San Francisco LGBT youth organization Vanguard in the summer of 1965, Ravarour organized and led the first ten months of Vanguard, August 1965-May 1966. At the time, Ravarour was an Aaronic priest and full-time staff member at Intersection Center for Religion and the Arts under Intersection Executive Director former Glide Associate Minister the Reverend Laird Sutton. In the following decades he has served as a priest in the Beloved Disciple Parish; he gained AA, BA, MA degrees, and was mentored by New Age philosopher Jose Arguelles who supervised Ravarour’s PhD studies. For the last two decades he has written LGBT themed librettos for New Age composer Christopher Flores; and he has received numerous awards and recognitions.