Lynnee Breedlove, best known for being the lead singer of legendary dyke punk band Tribe 8, has found a new outlet for creativity with spoken word. A compilation of these pieces have been collected and just released as One Freak Show, published by San Francisco's own Manic D Press. No stranger to prose, Lynnee's also the author of the novel Godspeed, which came out in 2002. That critically acclaimed novel made certain that critics took Breedlove's multi-faceted talents seriously.

One Freak Show is a slim book you can read in one sitting. Best to draw it out by savoring each morsel, and enjoying the themes it explores. Most noticeably, these include deliberations on transitioning from female to male, Breedlove's favorite small person, "The Biz," the LGBT community, and family, both biological and chosen. The B.A.R.'s Rachel Pepper caught up with Breedlove while the performer was in Berlin.

Rachel Pepper: How big a part of your life is performing these days? Where have you traveled to recently, and where were your favorite places to do your show?

Lynnee Breedlove: For the last four years, I have split my time between SF and Paris, where I have been writing books, screenplays, and shows. I've also been flying here to do one-offs of my first solo show, One Freak Show, and this last year, my second solo show, Confessions of a Poser. When the book first came out, I did an old-fashioned drive around the US and Canada, where Silas Howard from Tribe 8 and Heather Acs joined me to do a trio of back-to-back solo shows.

What else are you up to, aside from your shows?

Performing has taken up about a quarter of my life. The rest is writing. I have been putting together a political memoir with my mom about how I became an American anarchist, including my mom's stories of growing up under Hitler, the war in Europe, escaping from East Germany, and my growing up in the 60s in America. I was about to enter the editing stage when Mom suffered a stroke in Berlin three weeks ago. I'll probably be spending all my time writing and hopefully teaching, and none touring, so I can help her out.

Tell me a bit more about your collaborations with Silas.

Silas and I used to be in Tribe 8 together. Since he and Harry Dodge made their awesome flick By Hook or by Crook, I have been trying to get him to work on another project with me. When we were in Tribe 8 together, we used to be the driving team, him driving, me pouring coffee, and us talking about girls and philosophy all night. I finally convinced him to bring his show on the road with me this year, 10 years since our last tour. It's about his attempt to make a Hollywood film about Billy Tipton. My show starts with an array of rubber dicks, delves into the Del Martin/Phyllis Lyon story, and ends with how my dad taught me to be a man, by killing things and eating them. Our shows work together in that we both talk about how queer history made us the men we are today.

I really enjoyed the book, and one of my favorite pieces was "Confused, Confused, Don't Wanna Be Confused," a kind of Top 10 list about why or why not to transition. I noticed that on one hand you list "femmes" as a reason to not transition, and "queer girls" as a reason to. Can you explain this difference?

Femmes love butches. Queer chicks love transmen. That is my purely subjective definition that I am sure will have changed by the time this article is published. And yes I know, women's identities are so much more than who they love.

A lot of the book is a riff on issues surrounding female-to-male transition. So few authors in the queer community dare tackle this topic in print. What kind of reaction do you get to these pieces?

I'm sure people who hate what I do usually don't walk up to me and tell me. So everyone I have talked to loves it. A transwoman in Leeds who transitioned 20 years ago was talking to me crying, saying that of all the radical queers in the audience there are still transphobes among us. She said it was a much-needed discussion. Also, transmen love it. They're glad to finally hear some comedy on the subject of gender, which is not generally allowed.

I also enjoyed the writing on being the pal of the daughter of an ex of yours, who you call "The Biz." You capture the ability of children to relate to adults without caring about an adult's gender. Has this changed as she's gotten older?

The Biz still sees me as her Lynnee, an endless source of new shoes and gummi anything. She's continued to take my gender in stride, as has her little sister. It's a non-issue for them. Regardless of how their sexuality or gender works out, I'm glad peeing standing up is a probability in their future.

I thought your homage to Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon was great. Any plans to do more pieces on queer history, and who would you include?

I actually do hope to teach "quistory" from my perspective, that of a guy whose transition was briefly interrupted by 30 years of feminism. I'd toss in James Baldwin, Rita Mae Brown, Harry Hay, Sylvester, Robert Mapplethorpe, Audrey Lorde, Freddy Mercury, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Bob Mould, and Janis Ian. Even those who, like Mercury, Mould and Ian, didn't come out til years after their heydays, were clearly queer to queers, and hugely influenced people like me.

What are some topics you're writing about now that didn't make it into the book?

The show is developing a slew of punch lines I hadn't yet thought of when I wrote the book. Hopefully there will be a DVD out of Confessions of a Poser to follow the One Freak Show DVD, so every last laugh can be squeezed out of the project. How I Became an American Anarchist will examine whether Elvis was gay, or whether we are allowed as feminists to enjoy the music of James Brown, even though he beat his wife, and how to develop compassion for those in the rest of the world whose greatest crisis may not be whether their mother loved them or how many calories they consumed at lunch, but will they be able to survive genocide today.

Any other last thoughts on where you are in life?

I'm learning to savor each new moment, kissing it goodbye as it goes, and also study old books like Judy Grahn's Another Mother Tongue: Gay Words, Gay Worlds, which I had meant to use only as a prop onstage, but in fact is quite brilliant.