The East Side Freedom Library and A Greener Read Bookstore invite you to our third exploration of  Music & Movements: Trans Roots of Punk Rock on Saturday, February 10 @ 4:00PM.

Venus de Mars is the iconic front person and founding member of the long standing Minneapolis glam-punk/trans-band: Venus de Mars & All The Pretty Horses, a band which Venus formed in the early 90’s, and fronted through turbulent dark days when identifying as trans meant being classified as having a mental perversion, living as an outcast, and moving through a world universally accepting of trans-phobic violence and discrimination.

Venus, her wife Lynette Reini-Grandell, and the band are the subjects of the award winning 2006 trans rock-doc Venus of Mars by filmmaker Emily Goldberg.

Venus is in the process of writing a memoir which follows her band, marriage, and defining oneself as an out trans-person during the mid 80’s through the LGBTQ culture wars of the early 90’s through the mid-2000’s. It travels from Duluth to Minneapolis, to New York, to the world. An experimental memoir of art, music, self-doubt, self-discovery, punk-glam, goth-fetish, a tumultuous trans-journey, a precarious marriage, and a lifetime of body-mind deconstruction.

• 4pm @ East Side Freedom Library — Venus de Mars will lead discussion and read selections from her memoir.  (1105 Greenbrier St., St. Paul)
• 5pm @ A Greener Read — Join Venus de Mars for an extended social hour including listening to vinyl selections. This a great chance to get to know an artist-author, a forthcoming book, and our local history, with music at its heart.​  (506 Kenny Rd., St. Paul, corner of Payne Avenue)

Free and Open to All. [email protected]   and   651-230-3294