There are a lot of ways to describe Michelle Tea – published author, poet, spoken-word performance artist, former sex worker, dyke. But the term she shies away from is “radical”.

“It feels weird to label yourself radical,” said the San Francisco-based Tea in a recent phone interview. “I guess a lot of things I’ve written about would fall under that category – whether it’s criticizing America or talking about having worked as a prostitute, being in favor of decriminalization of prostitution and being part of the sort of ‘out’ sex workers art movement.”

But whether she assumes the title of radical poet or not, it’s likely the reason she was invited to participate in “The Science of Blowing Up”, a series of spoken-word shows created by a group of San Diego poets known collectively as the Anarchist Think Tank, among them Jimmy Jazz, Cecil Hayduke and Michael Klam.

For the series, which takes place at the Voz Alta Project downtown, the group has gathered a host of seasoned performers and award-winning authors. Sharing the stage with Tea at the upcoming July 23 program are San Francisco poet outlaw Bucky Sinister and UCSD creative writing teacher Anna Joy Springer. The final show of the series, on Aug. 27, features Derrick Brown, Barry Graham and Jervey Tervalon.

“Through her work you can see a transformation – you can see how she really explored and found herself through her writing,” says Think Tanker Hayduke of Tea’s work. “You know how she arrived at this kind of theology of a radical-lesbian-feminist way of looking at things.”

“She’s telling people things that they haven’t necessarily heard before; she’s celebrating some very dark aspects of life, yet they’re real,” he adds.

Tea gained notoriety in San Francisco during the mid-’90s for her intense spoken word performances. In 1994 she founded Sister Spit, the all-girl open mic event that earned a San Francisco Bay Guardian Best of the Bay Award.

She burst onto the literary scene in 1998 with The Passionate Mistakes and Intricate Corruption of One Girl in America. Drawn from her own life experiences, the novel follows a young woman’s chaotic adventures from Boston’s teenage goth scene to whoring in Tucson to arriving in San Francisco’s queer underground.

Subsequent novels, Valencia and The Chelsea Whistle – a gritty, confessional memoir about growing up in working-class Chelsea, Massachusetts – garnered more honors for Tea, including a Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction and a San Francisco Bay Guardian “Goldie Award” for Literature.

For “The Science of Blowing Up,” Tea will read from her recently published graphic novel Rent Girl, accompanied by slides of artist Laurenn McCubbin’s illustrations. Again taking a page from experience, the book explores the sex industry as both exciting illicit occupation and traumatic existential nightmare.

“It’s about working in the sex industry as a dyke in the ’90s,” said Tea. “It’s all about kind of screwed up young queer girl relationships and the sex industry.”

Tea has toured the nation extensively with Sister Spit, in the form of the Ramblin’ Roadshow. The touring lineup has included trangressive literary luminaries Eileen Myles, Marci Blackman, Sini Anderson, Lynn Breedlove, Beth Lisick and others. Tea has also participated in events such as the Femme Conference at Evergreen State University in Olympia, the Saints and Sinners Festival, the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival in New Orleans and The Readers and Writers Queer Lit Conference in San Francisco.

And Tea is no stranger to the local poetry scene, having performed previously at The Flame and the University of California San Diego.

“I always have a good time in San Diego,” she said. “I’m really excited to read with Bucky Sinister and Anna Joy Springer because they’re great – so I’ll be really entertained.”

Think Tank members agree that Tea’s work fits right into that agenda. Their shows are a mixture of poetry, politics and – true to the title – low-grade explosives.

During the first installation in June, the Anarchist Think Tank staged a game show titled “Imminent Jeopardy.” In the category “Bush or Stalin,” contestants were challenged to determine whether a given statement described our current President or the brutal despot of Russia. For incorrectly identifying Bush, one contestant (ringer, fellow anarchist and performance artist Junk Boy) was handed a couple of sticks of dynamite and unceremoniously blown up.

But the group isn’t just about “blowing shit up,” says the Think Tank’s Klam. There’s a science, he says, to creating a performance that will move an audience to think and react. They use stunts like “Imminent Jeopardy” to make a point.

“We’re trying to talk to people and help them think about what’s going on in the world. You put Bush up next to Stalin and they look like the same person in a different time and history,” he explained. “We’re trying to hit people with how we view the world and how we see the world politically.”

While San Diego may not have the extensive spoken word scene or political liberalism of San Francisco, Tea says she’s looking forward to performing here. She’s not concerned, she says, with the city’s conservative tenor.

“I find actually that more insulated towns that are conservative – it’s cool because all the people who don’t think like that, they all come together and you get a really mixed kind of resistance scene,” she explained. “In a larger city like San Francisco, it’s so not conservative that the scenes don’t necessarily overlap. If you go to a queer show, it’s pretty much all queer people. If you go to a punk show, it’s all punk people. There’s a little bit of overlap, but I find that in smaller places that are more conservative, all the freaks, of all different stripes, are all banded together. So if there’s anything that’s alternative going on, everyone goes to it. And I like that a lot.”

Shows begin at 9:00 p.m. and admission is $7. For more information, call Voz Alta at (619) 230 -1869; located at 1544 Broadway, in downtown San Diego.