Join us on Wednesday, April 8th at 7:00 PM for a conversation with Bay Area author Brontez Purnell and Animal Blood Magazine editor Tess Pollok on Purnell's recent memoir, Ten Bridges I've Burnt, and a discussion of his writing practice and inspirations. A 2022 Lambda Literary Award prize-winner, Purnell cuts a hard-to-pin-down figure in the literary scene, oscillating between fiction, prose, poetry, and memoir to write contemporary stories about sex, trauma, family drama, Blackness, and boyfriends. RSVP is not required, but appreciated. Seats are limited and can be guaranteed with a $3 sliding scale donation to our program.

About the book

One of Electric Literature's Best Nonfiction Books of 2024. One of them.'s Best LGBTQ+ Books of 2024. A finalist for the Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction.

"This book is brutal and brutally honest, but still perversely addictive because Brontez Purnell is a performer in the truest sense. Reading Ten Bridges I've Burnt, I felt tucked-in with him, along for the intimate ride, and paused only once to write down a part I’d been looking for my whole life." —Miranda July, author of All Fours

From the beloved author of 100 Boyfriends, a wrenching, sexy, and exhilaratingly energetic memoir in verse.

In Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, Brontez Purnell—the bard of the underloved and overlooked—turns his gaze inward. A storyteller with a musical eye for the absurdity of his own existence, he is peerless in his ability to find the levity within the stormiest of crises. Here, in his first collection of genre-defying verse, Purnell reflects on his peripatetic life, whose ups and downs have nothing on the turmoil within. “The most high-risk homosexual behavior I engage in,” Purnell writes, “is simply existing.”

The thirty-eight autobiographical pieces pulsing in Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt find Purnell at his no-holds-barred best. He remembers a vicious brawl he participated in at a poetry conference and reckons with packaging his trauma for TV writers’ rooms; wrestles with the curses, and gifts, passed down from generations of family members; and chronicles, with breathless verve, a list of hell-raising misadventures and sexcapades. Through it all, he muses on everything from love and loneliness to capitalism and Blackness to jogging and the ethics of art, always with unpredictable clarity and movement.

With the same balance of wit and wisdom that made 100 Boyfriends a sensation, Purnell unleashes another collection of boundary-pushing writing with Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt, a book as original and thrilling as the author himself.

About the author

Brontez Purnell is the author of seven books, including 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, was long-listed for the 2022 Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award and the 2021 Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize, and was named an Editors’ Choice by The New York Times Book Review. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Tennessee Williams Award for Fiction and the 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Robert Rauschenberg Award for Risk Taking In Art, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018.

Tess Pollok is a writer, critic, and the editor of Animal Blood Magazine. Her fiction has been published in Heavy Traffic Magazine, Expat Press, X-R-A-Y Magazine, and Forever Magazine, among others. Her criticism has appeared in publications for Hauser & Wirth, Jeffrey Deitch, and Almine Rech.

About the bookstore

The Booksmith is an independent bookstore located in the Haight Ashbury neighborhood of San Francisco since 1976.

Please note:

• Check-in for the event will begin at 6:45pm.
• Priced ticket holders (Pay it Forward!+seat) will have seats held until 7pm. Arrivals after 7pm will be allowed admission, but seats are not guaranteed.
• General admission ticket holders will be offered seats at check-in on a first-come, first-served basis.
• Audience QnA and brief signing to follow.
• ADA accessible. Bathrooms on site during event hours.
• Events typically end between 8:30 and 9pm.
• Questions? [email protected]