Memoirist Michelle Tea to appear at Greenlight Bookstore on May 24

Brooklyn BookBeat

April 19, 2018 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Michelle Tea. Images courtesy of Feminist Press

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Michelle Tea, a queer countercultural icon, opens up about all things artistic, romantic and neurotic in her new book “Against Memoir.” Tea will present her book at Greenlight Bookstore on May 24 with fellow author Melissa Febos.

The razor-sharp but damaged Valerie Solanas, a doomed lesbian gang, recovering alcoholics and teenagers barely surviving at an ice creamery: these are some of the larger-than-life, yet all-too-human, figures populating America’s fringes. Rife with never-ending fights and failures, theirs are the stories we often try to forget. In the process of excavating and documenting these lives, Tea also reveals herself in unexpected and heartbreaking ways in “Against Memoir.”

Delivered with her signature honesty and dark humor, Tea blurs the line between telling other people’s stories and her own. She turns an investigative eye to the genre that’s nurtured her entire career — memoir — and considers the extent to which art preys on life.

Tea is the author of five memoirs: “The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate

Corruption of One Girl in America,” “Valencia” (now a film), “The Chelsea Whistle,”

“Rent Girl” (illustrated), and “How to Grow Up,” currently in development with Amazon Studios. Her novels include “Black Wave,” “Mermaid in Chelsea Creek,” “Girl at the Bottom of the Sea,” and “Rose of No Man’s Land.”

Tea is the curator of the Amethyst Editions imprint at the Feminist Press. She founded the literary nonprofit RADAR Productions and the international Sister Spit performance tours, and is the former editor of Sister Spit Books, an imprint of City Lights. She created Mutha Magazine, an online publication about real-life parenting. Her writing has appeared in Harper’s, Cosmopolitan, The Believer, Marie Claire, n+1, xoJane, California Sunday Magazine, Buzzfeed and many other print and web publications.