9th Ave: Jason Yamas and Miah Jeffra

Tuesday, March 28, 2023 - 7:00pm

Cover of Jason Yamas' memoir Tweakerworld. The cover is purple, with photos of a hot pink mustachioed man, multiplied with eyes in different directions. The title is broken up at the top and bottom in bright blue letters.
Join us on Tuesday, March 28 at 7pm PT when Jason Yamas joins us to celebrate his memoir, Tweakerworld, with Miah Jeffra at 9th Ave!

Masks Encouraged for In-Person Attendance
Or watch online at the link below
https://youtube.com/live/FtVLr8ItBKA?feature=share

Praise for Tweakerworld
“A vibrant, compelling memoir about gay culture and addiction. Brutally honest and thrillingly told, Tweakerworld shines a light on the dark places shame can lead us and demands we do not turn away. It is only through looking at them that we find a way out.” —JACK PARLETT, Author of Fire Island and The Poetics of Cruising 

“Jason is an incredibly talented author who is able to do the masterful: take a story so lived in in its specificities and somehow engineer it so that it feels universal. His is a story both painfully unique, yet one that is dripping with humanity.” —EVAN ROSS KATZ, Writer 

Tweakerworld is many things: a raw confession, a solemn reflection, and a beautifully written page-turner. This intensely candid memoir shines a light on an underrepresented queer community in crisis. With humor, tenderness, and pathos, Yamas explores the connective tissue between addiction, sexuality, trauma, family, and identity.” —EMMA KOENIG, Author of F*ck I’m in My Twenties and Moan: Anonymous Essays on Female Orgasm 

About Tweakerworld
Meet Jason: a college educated documentary film producer, cat parent of two, and one of San Francisco’s top drug dealers. 

After Jason’s world falls apart in LA, he moves to Berkeley for a fresh start with his kid brother. Just one problem: his long-closeted Adderall addiction has exploded into an out-of-control crystal meth binge. Within weeks, Jason plunges into the sprawling ParTy n’ ’Play subculture of the Bay Area’s gay community. It is a wildly decadent scene of drugs, group sex, and criminals, and yet it is also filled with surprising characters, people who are continually subverting Jason’s own presumptions of the stereotypical tweaker. 

Soon Jason becomes a dealer on the pretense of researching this tweaker world for a project that will carry him, like a life raft, back to the shores of a normal life. But his friendly entrepreneurial spirit and trusting disposition disarm clients and rival dealers alike. The money begins to roll in as demand increases to frightening levels. Suddenly, Jason is in control of the entire crystal meth market for San Francisco’s gay community, even as he finds himself nodding off behind the wheel of his car, or walking down the sidewalk. As friends and family work frantically to steer him towards recovery, Jason resists, chasing something else: a sleepless nirvana fueled by sex, drugs, and the Tweakerworld. 

With painful honesty, Jason Yamas has crafted a landmark narrative that is not just a personal account of addiction, but a portrait of a vulnerable, largely undocumented community of people who, for many reasons, have been marginalized to the point of invisibility.

About Jason Yamas
Jason Yamas is a queer fiction and nonfiction writer making his prose debut as author of Tweakerworld: A Memoir (Unnamed Press, 2023). Prior to his foray into literature, he produced documentary and narrative films such as Jonathan Caouette's Walk Away Renee (SundanceNow) and Stephen Winter's Jason & Shirley (Criterion). He produced charity arts and music projects in Detroit with the late great songwriter Allee Willis ("September", The Friends Theme, The Color Purple.) His self-directed and produced feature Not Me, Murphy premiered at the MIX NYC Film Festival. He's currently writing his first novel and pursuing acting training at the Sanford Meisner Center. He holds a BFA from NYU, Tisch School of the Arts in Drama and has performed in and directed in the experimental downtown New York theatre scene. With the publication of Tweakerworld, he intends to shine a bright light on the worsening epidemic of crystal meth in the LGBTQ+ community.

About Miah Jeffra
Miah Jeffra
 is author of four books, including The Violence Almanac and, most recently, American Gospel. Miah's work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, Barrelhouse, DIAGRAM, jubilat and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing and decolonial studies at Santa Clara University and Sonoma State University.

Tweakerworld: A Memoir By Jason Yamas Cover Image
$28.00
ISBN: 9781951213701
Availability: Click the TITLE to view store availability
Published: Unnamed Press - March 7th, 2023

Meet Jason: a college educated documentary film producer, cat parent of two, and one of San Francisco's top drug dealers.


American Gospel By Miah Jeffra Cover Image
$25.95
ISBN: 9781625570437
Availability: NOT on our shelves now. Usually ships from warehouse in several days.
Published: Black Lawrence Press - March 24th, 2023

A low-income Baltimore neighborhood is targeted for a controversial urban renewal project--an amusement park in the theme of Baltimore itself--that forces its residents to reckon with racism, displacement, and their futures. Peter Cryer is a queer teenager who fantasizes about leaving Baltimore and the instability of his home life while also seeking a place to belong.


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