The Sister Spit show

(Credit: Submitted photo)

Michelle Tea is an iconic San Francisco-based poet, essayist, editor and award-winning author of five novels. She co-founded Sister Spit, an all-female open mic-turned-tour, in 1994, and has been fearlessly ringleading ever since.

Tea describes last year’s stop in Bloomington as “one of the funnest shows” of the tour and is happy to be back with a sparkling new lineup, yet the same sassy sensibility.

Metromix spoke with the literary luminary about touring and her upcoming work, which includes a young adult fantasy novel, “A Mermaid in Chelsea Creek,” and autobiographical fiction called “Black Wave.”

Is it ever a surprise to you that the Sister Spit story continues? How has it evolved?
What’s interesting is that we bring men on the tour now. A lot of the performers we were working with in the ’90s started transitioning to male, so there was this question — our community knew it was not exclusively female anymore — but what were we going to do? I still wanted to support those writers.

Things aren’t being determined along gender lines anymore, which I think is great. You either kind of fit with Sister Spit or you don’t. It’s a queer sensibility and a feminist sensibility, but you don’t need to be queer, per se. There are a lot of straight people with queer sensibilities.

It’s Sister Spit, Mister Spit, Sissy Spit. It’s all of it.

Writing is such a solitary act, yet you manage to nurture community. What do you gain from hosting the nonprofit Radar Reading series and doing things like this tour?
I’m just as compelled to curate performances as I am to write. I get really revved up at the thought of bringing different writers together and putting a show together. I get to throw a big party every time I do it.

Literary communities both locally and nationally need venues for performance to thrive. They’re crucial. I’m happy it benefits everybody. It definitely has benefited me.

What’s the best part of touring with a troupe?
It’s so fun to get to re-experience places with new groups of people. Being in the van, you would think that it’s maddening, and sometimes it is. It’s also a weird bonding chamber. After everyone adjusts to the thought of “this is my environment, and these are my people for the next month,” something magical happens where the van is like your kennel, and you want to get back in the van because the outside world is so weird. Our paths cross later or they don’t, but it’s so special to have this moment where we all came together in a way we never will again.

What advice do you have for young, hopeful writers or those who have yet to publish?
I think you have to put your writing before anything else, especially when you’re starting out. You certainly have to put it before any kind of stupid job you have to pay your rent. I’ve always really believed that if I put my writing first, then my writing will BE first. It worked out for me, luckily.

I think you need to put it before relationships, too. Any good relationship you’re in will want you to put your writing first. I see young writers move to San Francisco all the time and then just fall into the bar scene and become “bar stars,” and it’s like, “I thought you were gonna come here to write. What happened to your writing?”

Just make sure you’re always writing. And if you don’t find the platform to put your writing into the world, build it. Start your own literary event or publish yourself. The publishing industry is imploding, so we definitely need people who have the ability and vision to publish to do it.

Going?
Sister Spit, featuring Michelle Tea, Kirk Read, Mari Naomi, Ali Liebegott, Blake Nelson, Amos Mac and Myriam Gurba, stops by Rachael’s Cafe, 300 E. 3rd St., Bloomington, at 7 p.m. April 12. $10; www.radarproductions.org.