punk and working-class.” In 1994, Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson formed Sister Spit, a queer feminist collective. The group hosted weekly open mic nights in San Francisco, which attracted local and underground talent, as well as more established writers such as Mary Gaitskill, Eileen Myles, and Beth Lisick. In 1997, Sister Spit launched Ramblin’ Road Show, a spoken word tour that performed in bars, galleries, bookstores, community centers, and other venues in the United States and Canada. The tour was briefly revitalized in 2007 with Sister Spit: The Next Generation, which featured artists such as Ariel Schrag, Justin Vivian Bond, Blake Nelson, Nicole J. Georges, Cristy Road, Eileen Myles, and Beth Lisick. In 1998, her first book, The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America, was published by Semiotexte/Smart Art Press. The book provided short stories in memoir form, exploring topics such as Tea's childhood in Massachusetts, her teenage interest in the goth subculture, and sex work. Valencia In 2000, the memoir Valencia was published. The book chronicled the life of Michelle, a young lesbian poet, in the Mission district of San Francisco. The plot primarily focused on the love life of the main character, as she dated multiple women over the course of a year. She explained in an interview, "The 'Michelle' in the book is definitely me, though if it makes a reader more comfortable to imagine it’s all a giant work of fiction, that’s fine too." The book launched Tea into local and literary fame, especially after winning the 2001 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. Radar Productions Tea is known for her work as an organizer and advocate for local artists and writers. In 2003, Tea founded Radar Productions, a nonprofit organization that produces events to showcase the work of queer writers and artists. She served as the Creative Director for twelve years before stepping down in 2015, so that she could focus on other pursuits. Juliana Delgado Lopera, a creative writing instructor at San Francisco State University, took her place. In 2015, Radar created Drag Queen Story Hour in San Francisco. The event, at which drag queens read books to kids, now happens in several cities around the United States and in Tokyo, Japan. Recent work Tea has toured with the Sex Workers' Art Show. She is also a contributor to The Believer magazine. In 2012, Tea partnered with City Lights Publishers