Cecilia Tan ("Dragon's Daughter" from Best Bi Short Stories) is a writer, editor, and sexuality activist. She is the author of Slow Surrender, The Prince’s Boy, Mind Games, The Hot Streak, White Flames, Edge Plays, Black Feathers, The Velderet, and Telepaths Don’t Need Safewords, as well as the Magic University series of paranormal erotic romances. She has the distinction of being perhaps the only writer to have erotic fiction published in both Penthouse and Ms. magazines, as well as in scores of other magazines and anthologies including Asimov’s, Best American Erotica, and Nerve. She is the founder and editor of Circlet Press, publishers of erotic science fiction and fantasy, the founder and creator of the Fetish Fair Fleamarket ™, and was inducted into the Saints & Sinners Hall of Fame for GLBT writers in 2010.
Manil Suri (The City of Devi) is the author of the novels The Death of Vishnu, The Age of Shiva and The City of Devi. His fiction has won the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize and been shortlisted for the Pen-Faulkner Award, with translations into 27 foreign languages. He was raised in Mumbai and currently resides in Maryland, where he is professor of mathematics at the University of
Mary Anne Mohanraj (The Stars Change) wrote Bodies in Motion (a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, translated into six languages) and nine other titles. Mohanraj founded the Hugo-nominated magazine, Strange Horizons, and was Guest of Honor at WisCon 2010. She has taught at Clarion and is Clinical Assistant Professor of fiction and literature at the Univ. of Illinois. She serves as Executive Director of both the Speculative Literature Foundation and DesiLit. Mohanraj’s newest book is The Stars Change. She is keynote speaker at the BECAUSE Conference in June. She lives in a creaky old Victorian in Oak Park with her partner, Kevin, two small children, and a sweet dog.
Marina Peralta (Barriers to Love: Embracing a Bisexual Identity) was raised in Mexico City. In 1979 She immigrated to the US. She is a well known psychotherapist, based in San Diego, who specializes in the treatment of children, young adults, adults and families dealing with sexual identity issues and abuse. She also owned two successful dance schools in Mexico, where she taught her passion for dancing.
Charles "Zan" Christensen (Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight) has been a fixture on the comics scene for the past dozen years as an activist for LGBT comics creators and a supporter of better representation in comics in general. He founded the nonprofit Prism Comics, which has been providing support for LGBT comics creators since 2003, and started the comics and graphic novel publishing house Northwest Press in 2010. In May, Northwest Press is set to release its 12th full-length project, Jon Macy's Fearful Hunter, as well as its first ongoing monthly series, Leia Weathington's The Legend of Bold Riley. Zan lives and works in Seattle.
Lena H. Chandhok (Comics Made Me Queer from Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight) is a Brooklyn-based comic artist, illustrator, and Center for Cartoon Studies alumna who is up for drawing just about anything. She also makes stickers, charms, and prints. She self- publishes several minicomics, the best-known of which are Abominable, Leftovers Are Good Luck, and Pony Tale. She has also contributed work to several comics publications, including Slate Magazine, and her work has been reviewed on The Comics Journal. Her newest piece is featured in the upcoming anthology, Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond "Gay" and "Straight", which debuted at San Diego Comic-Con in 2013.
Michael-David Gordon has performed all over the place as a singer (Midwood, Brooklyn to Moscow, Russia) with various and sundry ensembles. He is currently lead singer of "The Meetles" (Beatle cover band) as well as The Gordon-Huggins Band (originals & R & B), The Pocket Band (mixed bag) and is open to other gigs. He is also a professional, working actor for 25 plus years and damn happy to be among y'all in Bi-space..(clap ya hands...!)
Bushra Rehman's first novel Corona, a poetic on-the-road adventure about being South-Asian in the U.S. was noted among 2013’s Best Debut Fiction by Poets & Writers, and featured in the LA Review of Books among a new wave of South Asian American Literature and is a Lambda Literary Award finalist for 2014. Rehman also co-edited the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism which was included in Ms. Magazine’s 100 Best Non-Fiction Books of All Time. 
Jean Roberta (The Flight of the Black Swan) has taught English for a quarter-century in a Canadian university where she has recently begun teaching Creative Writing. Her diverse erotic stories have appeared in approximately one hundred print anthologies, an out-of-print novel, three single-author collections and a novella, The Flight of the Black Swan (Lethe Press). Anthologies including her work have won awards from Lambda Literary, EPIC (Electronically Published Internet Connection) and Independent Publishers Association. The opinion pieces she wrote for a monthly column, Sex Is All Metaphors (based on a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas), are available as an e-book from www.eroticanthology.com. She co-edited OutSpoken: Perspectives on Queer Identities (2013), an anthology of articles based on presentations in a queer faculty speakers series. She married her long-term female partner in 2010. More here: www.JeanRoberta.com 
J.R. Yussuf ("Face to Face" from Best Bi Short Stories) is a New York based writer, actor and photographer. He has been published in Instigatorzine, FOCUS Magazine, The CultureLP and the upcoming anthologies, Best Bi Short Stories and Double Consciousness: An Autoethnographic Guide to My Black American Existence. He has written short stories, poetry, monologues, fictional letters, fictional journal entries, answering dear abi letters, journalism, pop culture, sexual health and political-cultural studies pieces. Yussuf graduated from Stony Brook University with his B.A. in Theater Arts.
Sheela Lambert (host) is the founder and director of the Bi Writers Association and its programs, such as the The Bisexual Book Awards and the Bi Lines Reading Series. Best Bi Short Stories, her anthology of bisexual literary fiction, is due out in time for this event. Her national bisexual column on Examiner.com has been informing readers since 2009 and she is also published by LGBTQ America Today Encyclopedia, Huffington Post, Advocate.com, Curve Magazine, Lambda Literary Review, Journal of Bisexuality, Gay & Lesbian Review, AfterEllen, AfterElton, GO Magazine, Bisexual.com, and Hakomi Forum.
Howell Mooney is a multi-instrumentalist and neoclassic singer-songrocker. He has made appearances in a statistically impossible array of locations in the New York music scene. Since his first New York performance at a Planned Parenthood benefit at Galapagos, this solo artist and highly promiscuous collaborator has caressed the drumskins with Ricky Riot of the late, lamented political punk/klezmer act Schmekel; torn up the stage at Otto’s Shrunken Head with his own surf-rock outfit, The Maui Hurricane; toured the cafes of Montreal with The Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a radical marching band; interpreted Gershwin with the poet and drama scholar Bender; and seduced the audience with solo voice and dumbek as a featured performer in MANDONNA, an all-male Madonna tribute. Mooney enjoys candle-lit dinners, long walks on the beach, and subverting the dominant paradigm through full-spectrum aural-emotional transubstantiation.
Program: Our program will include readings, live music, projected art from a bisexual comic anthology, capped off with the Bisexual Book Awards Ceremony and an afterparty.
Directions: Option 1-Take A train to 14 St. Walk west to Washington Street. Turn L on Washington and walk down to Bethune. Make R on Bethune.
Option 2-Take #1 train to Christopher St../Sheridan Sq. Walk west on Christopher to Washington St. Make R on Washington and walk up to Bethune. Turn L on Bethune.
Afterparty Location: Cafe Gitane at the Jane Hotel. Cash bar/food-no entrance fee. We'll walk over together after the event.
Our program will include multiple readings, live music, projected art from a bisexual comic anthology, capped off with the Bisexual Book Awards Ceremony.
This is what we've confirmed for the program so far, with more to come:
Manil Suri, author of novel The City of Devi
Cecilia Tan & J.R. Yussuf, contributors to Best Bi Short Stories
Bushra Rehman, author of semi-autobiographical novel Corona
Marina Peralta, author of memoir Barriers to Love: Embracing a Bisexual Identity
Jean Roberta, author of erotic novel The Flight of the Black Swan
Charles “Zan” Christensen & Lena Chandhok, Presentation of art & reading from Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight
Michael David Gordon: Live music
Bisexual Book Awards Ceremony: Presentation of Awards
Afterparty: TBA
The Bisexual Book Awards and Bi Lines VII, a reading and multi-arts celebration of bisexual writing, will take place on Saturday May 31, so save the date! The festivities will be held in the community room at Westbeth in the West Village, a popular arts venue at 55 Bethune, corner of Washington St., a few blocks from the LGBT Community Center.
Doors will open at 6:30pm for book signings, the program is from 7-9:30pm, with more book signings until 10pm and an after-party nearby, location TBA.
Bi Lines VII will feature readings from Bisexual Book Awards finalists, live music and projected art from Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight edited by Charles “Zan” Christensen. More details will be announced throughout April and May as they become available.
The Bisexual Book Awards and Bi Lines VII, a reading and multi-arts celebration of bisexual writing, will take place on Saturday May 31, so save the date! The festivities will be held in the community room at Westbeth in the West Village, a popular arts venue at 55 Bethune, corner of Washington St., a few blocks from the LGBT Community Center.
Doors will open at 6:30pm for book signings, the program is from 7-9:30pm with more book signings until 10pm and an after-party nearby, location TBA.
Bi Lines VII will feature readings from Bisexual Book Awards finalists, live music and projected art from Anything That Loves: Comics Beyond Gay and Straight edited by Charles “Zan” Christensen. More details will be announced throughout April and May as they become available.
