Q+A: Sister Spit

Thursday, April 12, 2007 | 7:30 a.m.

Who: Sister Spit: the Next Generation

When: 8 p.m. Saturday

Where: the Freakin' Frog, 4700 S. Maryland Parkway

Admission: free; 597-9702, www.sisterspitnextgen.com.

Ten years ago, a group of feminist poets from the San Francisco Bay Area hit the road in a run-down van to perform in bookstores, bars and coffee shops across the country.

They had no idea what was ahead, how they would be received and where they would sleep. Despite lousy housing and a vehicle breakdown that left them traveling on the floor of a cargo van, the 1997 tour was a smashing success.

A decade later, Sister Spit: the Next Generation is back on the road.

The novelists, poets, zine writers, illustrators and even a Lambda Award-winning writer will be in Las Vegas on Saturday, performing at the Freakin' Frog to read from their works. Expect humorous and heavy tales of love, gender, life and sexuality from the wild and mostly twentysomething poets.

Sister Spit co-founder Michelle Tea and original member Ali Liebegott are part of the group. Joining them are Rhiannon Argo, Tamara Llosa-Sandor, Cristy C. Road, Nicole J. Georges and Robin Akimbo - writers who appear in Tea's new anthology, "Baby Remember My Name: An Anthology of New Queer Girl Writing."

The Feminist Drinking Club, LadyFest Las Vegas and local writer Dayvid Figler will host the show.

In Northern California heading to a reading in San Francisco, Tea took a few minutes to talk to the Sun.

Q: How did the Next Generation tour come about?

I was on tour for my book "Rose of No Man's Land," and during the Q&A periods after the readings people would ask, "Will Sister Spit ever be touring?"

In a 2004 interview when asked whether Sister Spit would tour again, you said, "Probably not." What changed?

I had to reconceive what that would look like. I couldn't conceptualize the tour until I finished the anthology. I wanted to do a tour to promote the book and the writers and realized, "Oh, well, this is Sister Spit. This is the next generation."

How is this tour different?

We're staying in motels and eating food.

Not so much on the first tour?

No. We just have hideous housing story after hideous housing story.

People would say that they have the best housing and you get there and there are eight ferret cages and cat pee everywhere. We could only go up from the '90s.

What were your ambitions then?

I thought it was entirely possible that we'd get in the van, drive out of San Francisco and turn around in four days. But there were all these people at our shows.

Why was it so successful?

At that moment spoken word was really popular. We were a feminist and queer slam group with ties to the male slam community. There are a lot of queers starved for entertainment from their own community. So it's exciting.