Gather Around for Heartwarming, Funny, Bloody, and Disgusting Stories from the Jersey Shore
A young trans woman finds herself searching for flour tortillas in 1987 Manasquan, while farther north, a roving band of teenage mullets battles Nintendo-style at an ill-fated amusement park. A quartet of siblings retakes the post-divorce shores of Avalon with the help of a chain-smoking aunt, while in 1916, locals insist that sharks don’t kill people – until they do. These stories and more are gathered in the debut issue of Beach Badge, the new storytelling zine dedicated to life at the New Jersey Shore!
Please join us on Saturday, August 13, 2022, at Asbury Book Cooperative for readings from the debut issue, Q&As, and audience discussion in this rambunctious homage to the deep-fried, sand-clogged magic of coastal Jersey, led by contributors Rahne Alexander, Davida G. Breier, Garnet Whitby, Nemetz, and editor William Patrick Tandy.
And be sure to bring your best/worst shore-related souvenir, t-shirt, tattoo, scar, etc., and share the stories behind them for “Jersey Shore Show-n-Tell”!
RAHNE ALEXANDER is an intermedia artist and writer from Baltimore, Maryland. She is a 2021 graduate of the Intermedia+Digital Arts MFA at UMBC, and a 2021 Baker Artist Prize Awardee. Her works in video, performance, music, and painting have been exhibited across the U.S. and around the world, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, and MIX NYC. She performs music as 50 Foot Woman and as the front woman of the rock band Santa Librada. She is a contributor to BmoreArt, and her writing has been anthologized in OnCurating #42, Love, You (Urban Ivy, 2020), and the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology Take Me There: Trans and Genderqueer Erotica (Cleis, 2011). Her OutWrite-award-winning chapbook of collected essays Heretic to Housewife was published by Neon Hemlock in 2019.
DAVIDA BREIER’s debut novel, Sinkhole, has been lauded by Publishers Weekly, The New York Times, and Foreword Magazine. She’s spent the last two decades in various roles within the book industry and currently works for Johns Hopkins University Press. Davida lives in Maryland with her family, a pack of wee rescue dogs, a rescue tortoise, and two companion chickens.
GARNET WHITBY loves his dad’s ex-wife like family.
NEMETZ has spent a lifetime surrounded by unsolicited weirdness and unusual events. To be fair, some are solicited, as he is no innocent, but in many cases his sphere of influences is quite odd.
WILLIAM PATRICK TANDY grew up in various locations along the Jersey Shore, including Manahawkin, Long Beach Island, Marmora, Ocean City, and Cape May. In addition to Beach Badge, he has published the award-winning Smile, Hon, You’re in Baltimore! series as well as the storytelling zine Fire Pit under his own imprint, Eight-Stone Press. Learn more at EightStonePress.com