Greasepaint
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Set against a backdrop of 1950s New York, this experimental novel follows an ensemble cast of all-singing, all-dancing butch dykes and Yiddish anarchists through eternal Friday nights, around the table, and at the bar.
In one of many bars, Frankie Gold sings while Sammy Silver plays piano after a day job at the anarchist newspaper. The Butch Piano Players Union meets in the corner next to the jukebox. Laur smokes on the back steps, sweaty thigh to thigh with Vic. Frankie’s childhood sweetheart, Lily, turns up at yet another bar to see a second Sammy play every Friday night. And before all that, there’s always dinner at Marg’s. Fabulated out of oral histories, anthologies, as well as the fiction of the butch-femme bar scene and Yiddish anarchist tradition, Greasepaint is a rollicking whirlwind of music and politics—the currents of community embodied and held inside the bar.
Hannah Levene lives in Norfolk, UK. Recent poems have been published by -algia, Spam, Blackbox Manifold, amongst others. Her poetry pamphlet Boneless Ribs was published in 2018 with Lost Alphabet. She holds a PhD in Creative Writing from Roehampton University focusing on the composition of new butch literature. Greasepaint is her debut novel.
