Naked and on stage

By Jessica Lipsky

Bare Book Club started innocuously enough: burlesque performer Michelle L’amour was enjoying a novel au naturel in her Chicago home when her husband walked in. The sight was titillating and uniquely engaging—the couple are both voracious readers and no strangers to nudity—but the scene struck a chord with them both. They were quickly inspired to combine their love of naked arts and the written word as a literary salon.

“We don’t read on Kindles. We want to have that ritual of having a book in your hand, and feeling the pages and having it be like a more sensual, visceral experience,” L’amour says. “We want to keep the book alive.”

And that’s just what they’re doing. In the nude. In public.

Originally established a decade ago in Chicago as the monthly event Naked Girls Reading (before rebranding for inclusivity), Bare Book Club has evolved into a popular literary salon with chapters across the U.S. and as far as Cape Town, South Africa. Following a pandemic hiatus, Bare Book Club will make its on-stage nude return on October 1 at Brooklyn Reliquary in Williamsburg.

Producer Anja Keister (pronounced “on ya keister”) came into the world of Bare Book Club through burlesque—and the majority of readers are burlesque performers—helping NYC chapter founder and veteran burlesque performer Nasty Canasta work the door and stage manage. Keister has since taken over the gig, and experienced first hand the subversive power of reading naked.

Where burlesque performers may distract the audience with costumes, glitter, dance and tassels, “there’s a rawness and a vulnerability to Bare Book Club. The audience only has one thing to look at, and they only have one thing to hear,” Keister says. The result is a deep attention paid to the actual words.

“There’s the whole thing of when someone’s talking to you, you’re imagining them naked. But when that person is actually naked, you get over that distraction, and become really hyper focused on the words and the reading,” says L’amour.

Bare Book Club events revolve around a literary theme or genre—from Greek myths to sci-fi, pulp fiction and Oscar Wilde. L’amour has hosted a yearly reading of “A Christmas Carol” as well as multiple Halloween events, and occasionally provided space for “amateur” readers. A typical event will feature four performers reading multiple selections, usually around 10 minutes each. The theme for Friday’s event is “I Love New York City.”

Readers may choose a book, poetry or, in Keister’s case, Beastie Boys lyrics. Another reader for the Brooklyn event, Juno Stardust, will read from Patti Smith’s memoir.

“When [Juno] moved to New York City, that memoir meant so much to her. It helped her get through the move, and understand the city,” Keister says. The Bare Book club “is letting [readers] choose what speaks to them, whether it’s biography, memoir, fiction, an article, poems, a play, lyrics. It’s the beauty of the written word in all its forms.”

Historically, the club has catered to literarily-inclined crowds who are excited by the edgy addition of nudity. Those who just come for the nudity often leave wanting to pick up the books they heard, or feeling a unique form of mental exhilaration. The event is also political. “When we started, we really didn’t understand the magic of what we were about to embark on,” L’amour says.

“Censorship is going to vary from state to state, city to city, country to country. So just being here and taking up our space, both physically and with our voices, is a political act.”

Reading at Bare Book Club requires a very New York attitude, Keister posits. “We choose this city because of its opportunities, not because of how fancy or pretty it is. We can all see the beauty through what others see as imperfections,” she says. “Standing nude in front of someone is like this is me, this is all my flaws but like there’s beauty to this and I’m worth being listened to.”

Perhaps more than anything, Bare Book Club is empowering. Where many female-identifying people have been taught to be quiet and not take up space, “There’s something really special about being able to use your voice and your body in that way. To hold that attention and to read something that is really close to you,” L’amour says. “If you can do that, getting up in front of people with clothes on is really not a problem.”