Charlie Vázquez

Charlie Vázquez
Born Carlos Luis Vázquez
(1971-05-14) May 14, 1971
Bronx, New York
Occupation Artist, writer, musician, publisher
Nationality American
Notable works Buzz and Israel
Website
www.firekingpress.com

Carlos Luis "Charlie" Vázquez (born May 14, 1971) is a self-identified queer American artist, writer, and musician of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent.[1] He is also the editor of Fireking Press, where he has published a novel and a book of short stories. His fiction, erotica and essays have appeared in a number of anthologies, magazines, and websites. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his partner, poet John Williams.

Early years

Vázquez was born at Fordham Hospital in the Bronx, New York, on May 14, 1971, to a Cuban-Puerto Rican mother and Puerto Rican father. His earliest years were spent in the turbulent, disinvested East Tremont neighborhood of the Bronx, where his parents befriended several members of the Reapers, a notorious South Bronx street gang. His family then moved north, to the Fordham neighborhood, where he became fascinated by a small white house in a nearby park. That old cottage would turn out to be Edgar Allan Poe’s final home. Before divorcing in 1981, his parents moved the family east, to Allerton Avenue and White Plains Road, where Vázquez attended the Richard Rodgers School (PS 96), Whalen Junior High School and Christopher Columbus High School, where he served as a key trumpet player in orchestras and jazz bands.

Writing

Vázquez’s first novel, Buzz and Israel (Fireking Press, 2004),[2] details the complicated relationship between Israel, a closeted Puerto Rican actor, and Buzz, a junkie and jewelry store thief. Inspired by the writings of Jean Genet and William S. Burroughs, the novel follows their passionate and dysfunctional relationship from Portland, Oregon, where they meet, to New York City, where the story ends, by way of Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Mojave Desert and Phoenix, Arizona. The author claims that this “intoxicated work of transient fiction” was inspired by his youthful years on the West Coast, where he experimented with drugs, sexuality, recorded experimental music and traveled throughout the Western United States and Vancouver, British Columbia. Buzz and Israel explores the twilight worlds of transsexual shamans, heroin addicts, Santería priestesses and queer criminals. Its third-person voice examines the unique experiences of a New York Latino (Israel) immersed in a mostly white American subculture.

Buzz and Israel was followed by Business as Unusual in 2007, also published by Fireking Press. Business as Unusual is a fiction collection composed of two novellas and three short stories that were written in Southern California, Baja California, Oregon, and New York City. This collection of fiction explores themes of transsexuality, fortune-telling, reincarnation, mesmerism and fetishism, as told through the first-person narratives of strange and revealing narrators.

His second novel, Contraband, was published in 2010 by Rebel Satori Press. It superimposes a 1959 Cuban Revolution-styled technological overhaul of government onto the United States of the near future, where intellectuals, queers and artists are sought and executed by a faceless dictatorship.

Vázquez's fiction, erotica and essays have been published in a number of anthologies, including Best Gay Love Stories: New York City (2006), Best Gay Erotica 2008 and Queer and Catholic (2008).[3][4][5] His short stories, articles and interviews have also appeared in print and online publications such as Advocate.com, NYpress.com, Tanglefoot, Dreck Magazine, BigFib.com, and Mensbook Journal.[6][7] He is also a former contributor to the Village Voice blog Naked City.

Vázquez hosts a monthly reading series called PANIC! at Nowhere in the East Village, Manhattan, where he first witnessed punk rock, Gothic rock and queer culture in the 1980s. The series features both published and unpublished queer, female and transsexual writers of erotica, horror and unusual fiction and poetry. Vázquez cites Edgar Allan Poe, James Baldwin, Serge Gainsbourg, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Celia Cruz, Arsenio Rodríguez, Celina y Reutilio, Diamanda Galás and Joy Division as cultural influences.

External links

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Author Profile: Charlie Vázquez". BigFib.com, retrieved 13 February 2009.
  2. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. Buzz and Israel. New York: Fireking Press, 2004. ISBN 0-9764582-0-9
  3. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. "Interiors." In Brad Nichols, ed., Best Gay Love Stories: New York City, 221-228. New York, Alyson, 2006. ISBN 1-55583-973-8
  4. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. "Rushing Tide of Sanity." In Richard Labonté, ed., Best Gay Erotica 2008, 164-175. San Francisco: Cleis Press, 2008. ISBN 1-57344-301-8
  5. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. "Presión Bajo Gracia." In Amie E. Evans and Trebor Healey, eds., Queer and Catholic, 105-116. New York: Routledge, 2008. ISBN 1-56023-713-9
  6. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. "City of the Dead." Archived November 20, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. BigFib.com Issue # 3, retrieved 13 February 2009.
  7. ↑ Vázquez, Charlie. "Art's Forgotten Widow." Archived March 30, 2009, at the Wayback Machine. (Interview with Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, author of Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Extravaganza: Hard Tails.) Advocate.com (posted 16 January 2009), retrieved 13 February 2009.
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