While San Francisco fights for queer spaces in the forms of bars and neighborhoods, some see a heightened need for a different kind of queer space: LGBT Writing. When Bloom folded, California was left without a queer literary journals, so Miah Jeffra and Chad Koch, former editors at SF State's periodical Fourteen Hills, decided to solicit writers for the launch of a new journal. Their offering, Foglifter, debuts on Monday in the Castro with a reading from some of those contributors.

The publication takes its name and inspiration from,"One of the great centers of queer liberation and queer politics," as Jeffra gestures to San Francisco and its famous fog. But it also seeks, more metaphorically, "to lift the fog off of dominant narratives... to disarm, to complicate."

"There's queer interest, queer lifestyle, erotica, but there aren't, as much, queer literary organizations," Jeffra, who teaches at Santa Clara University and The San Francisco Art Institute, tells SFist. "Even within the LGBT community there are so many hegemonic narratives, and we're trying to use the queer space to make those narratives more complex and nuanced and liberating."

Reading on Monday from their work will be Nona Caspers, MK Chavez, Juliana Delgado Lopera, Shideh Etaat, Kevin Killian, Roberto Santiago, and Arisa White. Beyond the tales of coming out that mainstream audiences will be accustomed to, Jeffra classifies theirs as "more transgressive work," interested in a intersectional LGBT perspectives.

If all goes well, Jeffra hopes to expand Foglifter's mandate. The publication will come out twice yearly, and eventually he envisions it as its own press, printing full manuscripts from queer writers.

You can read more about the inaugural event here.

Foglifter Launch Reading — Monday, July 18, Strut, 470 Castro Street, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., free, $15 donation buys you a copy of the first issue