Pretend youre dead. Queer author Julin Delgado Lopera will carry you

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The purse had two heads, both bald.It wore two different eye shadows in shades of fluorescent blue and green; circles of neon pink blush on each face; silver dangly earrings on all four ears and both mouths occupied with cigarettes.I’d say this was the centerpiece of the outfit, but no; not even.

Julián Delgado Lopera appeared onstage, pulled his brand new novel, “Pretend You’re Dead and I Carry You,” out of the purse with two heads and read a sticky-noted passage aloud to the crowd.It was the Thursday stop of his book tour at the Lab in San Francisco, not far from where Delgado Lopera once lived for more than 15 years; and on this night, it was also his 38th birthday.He celebrated the affair wearing a spectacular getup largely sourced from Colombian fashion designer Adriana Kanal of KNL Style: padded, black-and-white wings over a latex vest, a fishnetted top and sky-high platform boots.“I think the thing with writing is that sometimes there’s a perception, as if we don’t have a body, and so this thing is coming out of a mind and it’s separate,” Delgado Lopera later says on a video call from his hotel, sipping on a green smoothie.

“But we have a body, and I like to very much embody my own storytelling.”Onstage, the author was joined in conversation by Honey Mahogany, which followed readings by Ingrid Rojas Contreras and Maryam Rostami.Archival footage from the GLBT Historical Society played, plus Grace Towers and Kochina Rude gave drag performances.

In short, it was a ki — and a riveting prelude to his reading on Wednesday at Skylight Books in Los Angeles, with queer author Michelle Tea, a fellow alumnus of the Sister Spit spoken word series.Based in Brooklyn, Delgado Lopera says he’s just finished teaching for the year as an assistant professor of creative writing and contemporary Latine literature at the City University of New York.Writing is just o...