Join NYC ABF and writers Cassandra Troyan and Irene Silt for a reading of their work followed by discussion.

Irene Silt writes about power, anti-work feeling, joy, and deviance. She lives in New Orleans. Her pamphletThe Tricking Hour (Tripwire 2020) gathers columns written over the last two for a local alt monthly, The Tricking Hour explores work, sex, criminalization, resistance, joy, solidarity and queer love in the alternative political economies of sex work. A fervently anti-capitalist missive through the intersectional lens of anti-work feminist praxis, where struggles for autonomy and survival are deeply embedded in gendered bodies clandestinely organizing new modes of political identity and rebellion. As Silt asks, “How do we use our bodies, each other, animals, objects in the world, without making claims of possession over them? How do we take our refusal so seriously that we do not return to business as usual—ever?”

Cassandra Troyan is a writer, teacher, and researcher whose work explores the intersections of gendered violence, radical histories of resistance, sex work, and capital. They are the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry, including THRONE OF BLOOD (2013), BLACKEN ME BLACKEN ME, GROWLED (2014), KILL MANUAL (2014), A Theory in Tears (2016), and FREEDOM & PROSTITUTION released this year from The Elephants. They live in southern Sweden and teach creative and critical writing practices as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Design at Linnaeus University. They dream of a world without work, without money, and know that candlelight vigils will never be enough to avenge the dead.