Semiotext(e) x Dopamine: Conversation & Readings
Dopamine — a new and innovative publishing collaboration with Semiotext(e) — elevates queer writing and writers through a nurture and promotion of work outside of mainstream LGBTQI+ storytelling. It is experimental and distinguishes itself with writers who resist assimilation with work that stretches the boundaries of what defines “queer.” The press affirms a freedom to present texts that are raw and often by self-taught writers with intersecting identities. Dopamine honors the outlaw heritage of queer artists and writers who are not complacent, complicit, nor gentrified with voices that challenge the status quo through their existence.
We welcome Medaya Ocher, Editor in Chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, to explore this endeavor in conversation with Hedi El Kholti of Semiotext(e) and co-founders of Dopamine Michelle Tea and Brooke Palmieri. Writers Clement Goldberg, Brooke Palmieri, and Chris E. Vargas will enhance the evening with readings.
Conversation with Hedi El Kholti, Michelle Tea, and Brooke Palmieri; moderated by Medaya Ocher.
Readings by Clement Golberg, Brooke Palmieri, and Chris Vargas.
DOPAMINE is a queer literary organization that aims to elevate LGBTQI+ writing and writers through publishing, reading series, literary tours, and workshops. We look to nurture and promote queer work that falls outside the mainstream of even LGBTQI+ storytelling: work that is experimental, by writers resisting assimilation; work that stretches the boundaries of what defines ‘queer’ by writers with intersecting identities; work that is raw, by writers who are self-taught. DOPAMINE honors the outlaw heritage of queer artists and looks to writers who are not complacent, complicit, or gentrified, and whose work challenges the status quo through voice, content, or existence.
Born in Rabat, Morocco in 1967, Hedi El Kholti is a writer, artist and editor. Moving to LA from Paris in 1992 he worked in the film industry before attending ArtCenter College of Design. Since 2004 he has been a co-editor and Managing Editor of Semiotext(e), expanding the scope of the press, creating the magazine Animal Shelter, an occasional journal of art, sex and literature and the Intervention Series.
Michelle Tea is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of DOPAMINE Books. She is the author or editor of over 20 books, most recently the novel Little F and the DOPAMINE anthology CLOWNS. Her next book Free Love: Adventures in Marriage and Polyamory will be published November 2026. She is the recipient of awards from Lambda Literary, Rona Jaffe, PEN/America and the Guggenheim Foundation.
Brooke Palmieri is a writer and artist working at the intersection of memory, history, and transsexual alternate realities. His writing spans hundreds of years of queer and trans history; the magic, mystery and deep emotion of working in archives; and the past as a supernatural encounter. Brooke has trained as a historian at the University of Pennsylvania and Oxford, and in 2017 completed a PhD in radical 17th century printing history at University College London. In 2018, Brooke founded CAMP BOOKS to promote access to queer and trans history through rare archival materials, cheap zines, and sculptural installations.
Brooke’s first book, Bargain Witch: Essays in Self-Initiation was published by DOPAMINE; not long after writing it, he drew from his experience making zines and fansites on the internet in 2002 to come on board as DOPAMINE’s designer.
Medaya Ocher is the editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Chris E. Vargas is a video maker & interdisciplinary artist currently based in Bellingham, WA whose work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical & institutional memory and popular culture. He earned his MFA in the department of Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2011 and his BA in the Film & Digital Media department from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2006. He is a recipient of a 2016 Creative Capital award and a 2020 John S. Guggenheim fellowship. From 2008-2013, he made, in collaboration with Greg Youmans, the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love…with Chris and Greg. Episodes of the series have screened at numerous film festivals and art venues, including MIX NYC, SF Camerawork, and the Tate Modern. With Eric Stanley, Vargas co-directed the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-lengt ...
Clement Goldberg is an award-winning Artist, Writer, Director and Animator. They work across multiple disciplines to create satirical yet hopeful projects that center collective grief rooted in climate crisis, cultural erasure and extinction. Clement’s film Let Me Let You Go received a 2022 Creative Capital Award, and their debut novel New Mistakes is out on DOPAMINE Books / Semiotext(e). clemgoldberg.com
