Hell in a Handbag

The debut memoir from the unhinged queer genius known as Dynasty Handbag.

A freak’s freak, iconoclast performance artist Jibz Cameron is best known for her multimedia act Dynasty Handbag, an alter ego lampooning the tragic absurdity of heterosexuality, queerness, the female body, capitalism, depression, art making, and life itself. With her debut memoir Hell in a Handbag, Cameron traces her warped and inspired perspective from a childhood spent with hippie clowns on the broken-down commune scene of Northern California, to making morbid zines as a teen in the East Bay punk scene, to in-your-face experiences of misogyny in New York City’s avant-garde theater scene, to the grisly birth of Dynasty Handbag and her droll evisceration of contemporary life. An engrossing and swiftly paced story as candid as it is wise, Hell in a Handbag is an immersion in unhinged queer genius.

Jibz Cameron is a writer, performer, visual artist, and actor. She is most well known for her multimedia performance work as alter ego Dynasty Handbag, which has spanned over twenty years. Her work has been presented by REDCAT, the Broad, MOCA Los Angeles, the Kitchen, Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as a bajillion other dives. Jibz is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, a 2021 United States Artist Award recipient, and a 2020 Creative Capital Grant awardee. Her film Weirdo Night, directed by Mariah Garnett, was an official 2021 Sundance Film Festival selection, and her comedy record, The Bored Identity, was released by Wacky Wacko Records in November 2023. She lives and loves in Los Angeles but laffs in NYCity.