Photo: El Payaso, 2010

CHARLIE VÁZQUEZ

 

Press Release bio:

Charlie Vázquez is a radical Bronx-bred writer of Cuban and Puerto Rican descent. His fiction and essays have been published in various anthologies, such as the iconoclastic volumes Queer and Catholic (Taylor & Francis, 2007) and Best Gay Love Stories: NYC (Alyson, 2006). His writing has also appeared in print and online publications such as The Advocate, Chelsea Clinton News, New York Press, and Ganymede Journal. Charlie hosts a monthly reading series called PANIC! (in the East Village), which focuses on unusual and original fiction and poetry. He is a former contributor to the Village Voice’s Naked City blog and a retired experimental musician and photographer. His second novel Contraband, was published by Rebel Satori Press in spring 2010, and his third, Corazón, is wrapping up for future publication. He is also working on a short story collection and co-editing a gay Latino fiction anthology with novelist and cultural producer Charles Rice-González.

All contact: firekingpress@yahoo.com

 

 

Long Bio (a bizarre journey so far):

I was born Carlos Luís Vázquez, on May 14, 1971, at Fordham Hospital, Bronx, New York, to a Cuban-Puerto Rican mother and Puerto-Rican father. I first lived near Southern Boulevard and Bronx Park South, in the impoverished East Tremont neighborhood, where my parents were introduced to Reapers gang members and where my mother was introduced to Santería. My father (a heroin-addict and dealer) later moved us to Fordham Road and Southern Boulevard, where I became aware of an old, white house nearby. I later learned it was Edgar Allan Poe’s last home and his writing would spark my dark imagination years later, in advanced elementary school reading classes. We then moved to Allerton Avenue and White Plains Road in 1976, where I attended PS 96 (The Richard Rodgers School), JHS 135 (Whalen Junior High School) and Christopher Columbus High School. I served as a trumpet player in jazz band and orchestra in all three schools, often fulfilling the role of first chair. My parents split in 1981.

In 1988 I moved to Portland, Oregon, for a break from New York City. By the time I left Portland for Baja Mexico in 2004, I managed to play in a handful of bands, enjoyed the post of nightclub photographer for Portland’s legendary Panorama gay mega-club, appeared in two experimental films (The Harlequin series), attended recording school and began writing in my early 20s. I also experimented with many illicit substances and bisexuality, which were in vogue in the underground clubs I discovered throughout the West Coast (such as Portland’s controversial City Nightclub).

I joined my first band, Euthanasia, in 1989, playing a cheap electric guitar I bought at a hock shop. Included among the four band members was Kaitlyn ni Donovan, whom I would work with again years later. When the band disintegrated, we bought synthesizers, samplers and drum machines and reformed, calling ourselves Factor Red. I contributed vocals, songwriting, keyboards and electric guitar. We supported touring acts Sex Gang Children, Front Line Assembly and Clan of Xymox on their Portland dates and developed a decent local following. We imploded in 1992 after releasing our only 12” single, Prophecy/Atrophy.

I, along with Factor Red members Edgar Esanti Santiago and Don Lang, joined a performance art/noise band super-group called Soulmaggot. I left after just one show, to work with the more complex songwriting of “Baroque Pop” songwriter Kaitlyn ni Donovan, using the name Zumo. Kaitlyn ni Donovan and Zumo played cafes and nightclubs as a duo at first, eventually getting shows at venues like the infamous 1201 bar, where The Dandy Warhols and Pink Martini first attracted local listeners. We also supported acts such as Elliott Smith and Jane Siberry. The duo became a five-piece rock band, which gave me the freedom to experiment with dumbeks, accordions, glockenspiels, and guitars, recording on the Cannibal Spirit and Dinner with Bosch recordings. I also toured with the group, in the Northwest, in 1995. In 1997, I left the group to play with experimental and punk projects that got nowhere. I recorded two solo demos; Hidden Facets in 1997, and Stark Street Business Journal in 1998. I quit music for good in 1998.

In 1999 I was asked to photograph people dancing at Portland’s legendary gay mega-club Panorama, with my 35mm camera, Gigi. I enjoyed this post over the course of about two years, shooting thousands of hallucinogenic and incomprehensible frames, achieved with slow shutter speeds and unpredictable lighting (to trance music no less). The results were intoxicating and mischievous. During this period I also shot lots of Pacific Northwest landscapes and captured various urban locations throughout San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, New York and Vancouver BC. My photography came to a halt after I photographed many of my gay punk friends hiding their genitals with various bottles of alcoholic beverages (1999-2003?)!

While I was photographing hustlers, drug-addicts and drag queens, I was also stitching together, what would become, my first novel, Buzz and Israel. This intoxicated work of transient fiction book grew out of a handful of short stories featuring overlapping queer and shamanistic characters in a variety of cities, composed during the end of my “drug days," in which compulsive road trips were de rigeur. I finished it in 2004 and published it myself, under the name Fireking Press. In 2004 I moved to Rosarito Beach, Baja California Norte, explored Baja and Southern California, and attended the Saints and Sinners literary festival in New Orleans. I returned to an economically-ravaged Portland later in 2004, and returned to my native New York City in early 2006, where I worked as an assistant to the controversial avant-garde musician and performance artist Diamanda Galás, for two-and-a-half years. I published my second book, a fiction collection called Business as Unusual, in 2007.

Contraband, my second novel, was completed in 2008 and is being published by Rebel Satori Press in spring 2010. It is a speculative thriller set in the near-future, where a Cuban Revolution-type overhaul of government in America spawns the brutal persecution and murder of queers, intellectuals, and artists, forcing them underground, into desperate communities where “freedom” continues. I will also finish two short story collections in 2010, one of Latino bizarro stories, the second a ghost story collection. I have great ideas for novel number three. My cultural influences include Edgar Allan Poe, James Baldwin, Serge Gainsbourg, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Celia Cruz, Arsenio Rodríguez, Celina y Reutilio, Diamanda Galás and Joy Division, among many others.

 

ARTICLES, INTERVIEWS, AND REVIEWS

 

Read a four-star review for CONTRABAND as published by Three Dollar Bill Reviews

Read another great review for CONTRABAND as published by Out in Print

Read the interview I did with Charles Rice-González as featured in Homo Neurotic

Read the new interview I did with Lambda Literary

Read my interview with Professor Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé in The Advocate

Read my article on homeless NYC queer youth, as published in New York Press

Read a review of my first novel Buzz and Israel

PURCHASE CONTRABAND

Order the CONTRABAND paperback version from Amazon

Order the CONTRABAND paperback version from publisher Rebel Satori Press

Order the CONTRABAND paperback version from Powell's Books

Purchase the CONTRABAND e-book (e-Pub) from Rebel Satori Press for just 7.99

Purchase the CONTRABAND Kindle e-book via Amazon

VIDEOS