Fire, Disintegration, and Personal Archive
Facilitated by Alyse Burnside and Nicky Yeager
David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Face in Dirt), 1991. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy The David Wojnarowicz Foundation.
About the reading group
Dates: Sundays, November 2–23, 2025
Time: 6–7:30pm
Format: In person
Capacity: 15 participants
Cost: $100–$300 (Sliding scale $25–$75/session, no one turned away for lack of funds)
Register here.
This four-part reading group attends to the work of artist, author, and activist David Wojnarowicz (1954–1992). Each session focuses on an era of Wojnarowicz's life, working backwards from his last published work, Weight of the Earth, a series of diary entries and tape journals he recorded during his battle with AIDS.
From fleeing a violent childhood in New Jersey and finding respite in bohemian New York City, to his struggle reconciling with newfound notoriety amidst an increasingly capitalist art world, Wojnarowicz's interdisciplinary practice distinctly weaves personal narrative into prolific meditations on love, grief, and activism. His writing spans multiple genres, including memoir, essay, fiction, and epistolary poem. This reading group will honor his unique perspectives on New York City and draw connections to the community of downtown artists and writers he was such a significant member of. In doing so, we will also explore approaches to thinking and writing about our own experience of the place and time in which we live.
Excerpted texts include Close to the Knives (1991), Memories That Smell Like Gasoline (1992), In the Shadow of the American Dream (1998), Brush Fires in the Social Landscape (2015), Weight of the Earth (2018), and Dear Jean Pierre (2023), among others.
About the facilitators
Alyse Burnside is a writer living in Brooklyn. They are working on a collection of essays about queerness, attachment, and working with horses. Their work has appeared in The Paris Review, The Atlantic, The Believer, The Nation, Dirt, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere. They publish a Substack with Nicky Yeager called All My Dead Pitches.
Nicky Yeager is a journalist, poet, and photographer based in Brooklyn, from Austin. They are a contributing writer at The Cleveland Review of Books and a Brooklyn Poets alum. Previously, they covered culture at The Texas Observer. They publish a Substack with Alyse Burnside called All My Dead Pitches.