Thrilled to be part of this music and spoken word with Venus DeMars and David Lawton. The following night, Saturday May 20, join great weather for MEDIA at Chicago's Uncharted Books for a selection of boneshaking poetry and performance.

David and Jane will be reading from their extensive poetry collections, while Venus both performs a solo acoustic cameo and shares a short reading from her upcoming memoir.

Venus DeMars is best known as the iconic leader of the long standing Minneapolis dark-glam/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 mentally ill and living as an outcast. She recently toured with Laura Jane Grace and Against Me. She is now touring her first solo-acoustic release; “Flesh and Wire,” and is now in the process of writing a memoir which follows her early 90’s to mid-2000’s underground trans-rock world-path full of music, ambition, destruction, obsession, dream, fetish, and shadow.

David Lawton is the author of Sharp Blue Stream (Three Rooms Press). After moving to New York City to pursue an acting career, for the next ten years he was a background vocalist in the underground band Leisure Class. At the band’s de facto headquarters in the Chelsea Hotel, he befriended Beat godfather Herbert Huncke and San Francisco poet Marty Matz and was inspired by their embodiment of the written word. Currently he serves as an editor for great weather for MEDIA and also collaborates with poet Aimee Herman in the poemusic collective Hydrogen Junkbox.