Writing on Raving
Book Launch Party
5.14.25
7pm-12am
Book Launch Party
5.14.25
7pm-12am
This one's sold out with no door tickets
If you still want to catch a reading, join us at Earthly Delights on May 21 for a party with readings from Shawn Dickerson, Tim Froehlich, Jesús Hilario-Reyes, Anne-Lesley Selcer, Frankie Wiener, and Simon Wu, DJ sets from Relaxer and MORENXXX, books from Topos Too, and a fundraiser for SafeRaveNYC
https://shotgun.live/en/events/writing-on-ravingYou meet a lot of interesting people at the rave. Not a few, it turns out, are writers. Or if not writers, they have some sliver of experience with the rave that would be worth writing about. Two friends who are writers and ravers, Zoë Beery and Geoffrey Mak, started a series of readings called Writing on Raving in 2022 as a space to share the brilliant ideas that emerge on the dancefloor, a space where we wouldn’t have to shout over the thump and womp, where we'd be a little more clear-headed. McKenzie Wark was in the first lineup and joined the group from then on. We’ve been running Writing on Raving since then, for just over three years, mostly in club spaces. We want to bring writing closer to the party. We want for once to do readings that have good lighting, a real sound system, a fog machine, even.
On May 12, O/R Books will release the Writing on Raving anthology, a collection of 26 essays, poems, and fiction drawn from the first three years of the series, by writers in New York and beyond. It is the first-ever book dedicated entirely to literary writing about raving. While we are hosting several launch events, it felt important to us to do one just for our family, and to host it at the space that feels most like home these days. We'll start with five readings from contributors—hannah baer, Geoffrey Mak, Slant Rhyme, Anne-Lesley Selcer, Linn Tonstad, and McKenzie Wark—and spend of the rest of the night with two DJs whose music has soundtracked many of our local raving hours, WTCHCRFT and DJPT. Books will be available for purchase throughout the night from our favorite queer raver-run bookstore, Hive Mind Books.