12:30pm PDT
5:00pm PDT
Aural Intercourse: Performances by Men's A Capella Group CHORUM and Marin Poet Laureate Rebecca Foust
Authors
Tom Bailey (Tenor) has performed with the San Francisco Bach Choir and was invited by San Francisco State to participate in their production of Mozart’s “The Magic Flute” in 2005.
Rebecca Foust’s book of poetry Paradise Drive won the Press 53 Award and was reviewed in the Times Literary Supplement. She is the Poetry Editor for Women’s Voices for Change.
Christophe Hery (Tenor) began singing in an a cappella group at age 8 as a soprano soloist for Les Petits Chanteurs de Sainte Jeanne d’Arc, a prestigious french choir that dates from 1954.
Nic Meredith ((Tenor) Nic was Head Quirister for the Winchester College Chapel choir and also sang at Winchester Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, and on BBC TV.
Richard Perlstein co-founded M.I.T.’s original co-ed a cappella group the Chorallaries and has sung with Off at Five in Boston, the Men’s Octet at U.C. Berkeley, the Baytones and Just Voices, and Musaic in Marin.
Chris Pilcher (Bass) began singing with the Harvard Krokodiloes and earned pocket change as a medical student singing doo–wop in bars with Burlington VT favorites the Spinouts.
Tim Silva (tenor) direct Chorum and works with Volti, Gaude, and the Throckmorton Theatre Chorus and as a guest artist with the California Bach Society
5:00pm PDT
Bay Area Generations: And The Beat Goes On
Authors
Work by Andrew O. Dugas has appeared in Unlikely Stories, 100WordStory, LITnIMAGE, and elsewhere. His novel Sleepwalking in Paradise was published in 2014 by Numina Press.
Tongo Eisen-Martin is the author of Someone's Dead Already and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Pocket Poets Series), which won the 2018 California Book Award
Nahid Fattahi is an Afghan-American human rights activist, writer, and published poet. Her day job is as a Marketing Consultant at Kaiser Permanente, and she moonlights as a clinical/counseling psychology graduate student at Santa Clara University.
Genny (Genevieve) Lim is an American
poet, playwright, and performer. She served as the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and as Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps.
[1] She has performed with Max Roach, Herbie Lewis, Francis Wong, Jong Jang in San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, Houston and Chicago...
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“I am a Town Crier, so I engage with the public by making albums, performing indoors and out, teaching guitar, putting my heart down in written form and, lastly — most important — being there to observe when something’s happening!”
5:00pm PDT
BAYS: Sex, Yoga, and Chemo
Authors
Kate Holcombe feels lucky every day for her loving husband and their four wonderful children. She feels doubly lucky to do meaningful work she cares about deeply: empowering individuals in their own health, healing, and personal development through Yoga, regardless of background...
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SF Writers’ Grotto member and writer for: California Magazine, Playboy, Time Magazine/Extra Crispy, SF Weekly, etc. I love walking my adorable rescue dog around the Mission District.
Missy is a Midwestern transplant, a professional friend, and wine enthusiast who loves to travel. She dreams of having a family of 4, composed of a man who can keep up with her quietly quirky cancer kicking badassery and 2 chocolate labs.
5:00pm PDT
Bazaar Writers Salon
Authors
Aamina Ahmad grew up in London. She completed her MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her fiction appears in the Normal School, the Missouri Review, and the anthology And the World Changed. She was a 2015–2017 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Tracey Knapp's first full-length collection of poems, Mouth, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and was published in 2015. Tracey has received awards and scholarships from La Romita School of Art in Terni, Italy, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg...
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Founder, Afrosurrealism
Columnist-In-Residence @SFMOMA @Open_Space, author of The AfroSurreal Manifesto, poet, curator, teacher. Inquiries: DScotMiller@gmail.com
Lila Savage is originally from Minneapolis. Prior to writing fiction, she spent nearly a decade working as a caregiver. Her work has appeared in The Threepenny Review. She is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner fellowship and graduated from the Iowa Writers' Workshop in 2018. Her first...
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Shimon Tanaka has received fellowships from the Asian Cultural Council, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and Stanford University, where he was a Stegner Fellow from 2005-2007. His stories have appeared and/or are forthcoming in Best New American Voices, The Missouri Review...
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5:00pm PDT
Berkeley Poetry Slam
Authors
Zach Goldberg is a slam poet.
Kay Nilsson is a poet performer. He has featured at several events including Queer Rebels Performance Festival, KQED’s Literary Hour with LitCrawl, and ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? Latino Spoken Word and Poetry Festival.
As the descendent of back-porch storytellers, Jenna Robinson is a poet and musician whose writing explores the intersections of intergenerational trauma and identity. She is a competitive member of the national slam community, holding two Hawaii Slam grand slam titles and placing...
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Slammaster, Berkeley Poetry Slam
Jaz Sufi is a Kundiman fellow, a National Poetry Slam finalist, and the slammaster of the Berkeley Slam, the longest running poetry event on the West Coast. She was a featured poet at the 2011 USF Creative Justice Art Show and has featured at venues across the country, from the Scottish...
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5:00pm PDT
Celebrating Twenty Years of VONA/ Voices: Twenty Years of Amplifying Voices of Color
Authors
Tara Dorabji is a writer, mother, and radio journalist at KPFA. Her work is published in Huizache, Good Girls Marry Doctors: South Asian American Daughters on Obedience and Rebellion, and Mutha Magazine, among others.
Duane Horton is an MFA student in prose at Mills College and received his undergraduate degree at Allegheny College in English and Women Studies. He keeps Alice Walker, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison, and Tananarive Due close to his pen as he writes.
Dickson Lam is the author of Paper Sons: A Memoir, winner of the 2017 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. Lam’s work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, Hyphen Magazine, The Normal School, PANK, The Good Men Project, The Rumpus, and Kartika Review. He is...
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English Professor
Jamie Moore is the author of the novella, "Our Small Faces." She is a Kimbilio Fellow, VONA alum, and has recently published in The Nervous Breakdown. She lives in the Central Valley and works as an English Professor
Melissa R. Sipin is a writer from Carson, CA. Her work is in Salon, Slice Magazine, Bitch Media, Prairie Schooner, and Guernica Magazine, among others. She is hard at work on a novel on her grandmother's capture in WWII Philippines
5:00pm PDT
Cocoa Fly: Let Her Tell It
Authors
Writer, Cocoa Fly
Jeneé Darden is an award-winning journalist, public speaker, mental health advocate, and proud Oakland native. She is the author of When a Purple Rose Blooms, a collection of essays and poetry about her experience as a Black woman. Jeneé has reported for NPR, Time, Ebony, the Los...
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Natalie Devora is a writer and Albinism advocate, and author of the memoir Black Girl White Skin: A Life In Stories.
Lyndsey Ellis is a fiction writer, essayist and editor who's passionate about exploring intergenerational struggles and resiliency in the Midwest. She's a 2018 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and 2016 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation's Joseph Henry...
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Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American mental health advocate, writer, and SF Bay Area poet. In summer of 2019, her book with co-editor Liz Green, We’ve Been Too Patient will be released from North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House. We’ve Been Too Patient...
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Yodassa Williams is a Jamaican American author and award-winning performing storyteller. An alumna of the VONA/Voices Travel Writing program and host of the podcast The Black Girl Magic Files, Yodassa (Yoda) launched Writers Emerging, a wilderness writing retreat for women of color...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Noisebridge
5:00pm PDT
Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network (DVAN): She Who Has No Master(s)
Authors
Angie Chau is the author of Quiet As They Come, a book described by Publisher's Weekly in a starred review as "serenely stirring stories" in which, "characters radiate dignity and depth, seek freedom but find crushing loneliness." She has received awards and support from Hedgebrook...
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Đỗ Nguyên Mai is a Vietnamese American poet, scholar, and advocate for Vietnamese America’s future. Mai is the founding executive editor of Rambutan Literary, the Editor-in-Chief of The Santa Clarita Valley Proclaimer, and the Political Fellow for Courage Campaign. She was...
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Writer & Performer, Nasus Media
Susan Lieu is a Vietnamese-American playwright, solo performer and activist whose parents are Vietnamese refugee nail salon workers. “140 LBS” is a one-woman show on Body, Beauty + Death. It is the unfortunate true story of how Susan’s mother went in for plastic surgery and...
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Thao is a solo performer, writer, and producer. They make art about whatever pisses them off — racism, sexual violence, white power, hetero/cis-sexism, and people who don't say "please" and "thank you." thaosolo.com
Anh-Hoa Thi Nguyen is a poet, community artist, activist and educator. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College in Oakland, California where she was awarded the Mary Merrit Henry Prize in Poetry and the Ardella Mills Literary Composition Prize in Creative Non-Ficti...
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Julie Thi Underhill is a Bay Area filmmaker, photographer, poet, essayist, and performer with fine art, documentary, experimental, & historical work.
5:00pm PDT
Dirty Old Women: Erotica By Older Women
Authors
Stella Fosse is a celebrant of ripe sex, with a story in the recently published Dirty Old Women anthology. Next? A how-to book for mature women starting erotic writing groups.
Susan writes erotica under the pen name Lynx Canon. She's the founder and host of the quarterly erotica reading series Dirty Old Women, held at Oakland's Octopus Literary Salon, and editor of the
eponymous anthology. She wrote the science fiction/detective novel
Chimera Catalyst, and her literary and genre stories have appeared in anthologies, journals and zines...
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Rose K. Mark is a sensualist. Her poems and stories share the sensual allure and pleasure of everyday objects and interactions. Her book, Tasting Life, holds a collection of stories and poems about her favorite subject, FOOD. Her poems have been featured in a number of anthologies...
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I am a founding member of the Elderotica writing group in the East Bay. My specialty is short fiction with humor and hotness. I also publish more conventional "around town" pieces from time to time in Oakland Magazine. Back in the 70s I had a blast publishing Plexus newspaper, created...
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Frances Spector, born in the Fifties firmly wrapped in a red diaper, is a healer, dancer, drummer, musician and adventurer . She is spending her retirement spinning tales real and imagined, having great sex, and exploring her own gender.
Cheral Stewart believes that age does not limit joy but allows us time to expand it. In her fifties, she began adventuring into the world of kink and playful sexuality. Dedicated to ongoing sexual/kink exploration, she enjoys writing short stories of sexual encounters, some true...
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5:00pm PDT
Foglifter Press: Queer, Sweet Home
Authors
Indira Allegra has been honored with the Jackson Literary Award, Lambda Literary Fellowship and Windgate Craft Fellowship. Her commissions include works for SFMOMA, de Young Museum, The Wattis Institute, City of Oakland, SFJAZZ Poetry Festival and the National Queer Arts Festival...
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Vianney Casas was born in San Diego but raised in Tijuana. Before moving to San Francisco in 2013, she crossed the border every day for 6 years to go to school. She has been featured in Canto, Cipatli, Bossy, Chevere, Gentromancer, and Yerba Mala. Her work is a surrealist testimony...
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Vernon Keeve III is a high school English and history teacher for the Oakland Unified School District. His book of poetry and rants Conversations with a Southern Migrant was published by Nomadic Press in spring 2016
Stacy Nathaniel Jackson was born in Los Angeles and attended Ramona Convent College Preparatory School for Girls in a former incarnation of his life. He is a Cave Canem fellow and was the recipient of an individual artist's grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission in 2011. Author...
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Dan Lau is a recipient of a Kundiman Fellowship, a William Dickey Fellowship, an Archie D. and Bertha Walker Scholarship from the FAWC in Provincetown, and an Individual Artist Commission from the San Francisco Arts Commission. He holds degrees from Hunter College of The City University...
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5:00pm PDT
Friends of South Asia (FOSA)
Authors
PM, Cloud & Enterprise, Informa
Lapsed poet. Traveler. Southern Expat. Lover of bourbon.
Unrealized humanist. Frequently found contemplating, discussing and selling the humanist agenda through familiar tales of overcoming challenge. In a time of talking over each other without the willingness to understand another voice. I specifically want to gear the conversations...
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Writer and software engineer.
Saturday October 20, 2018 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
18 Reasons
5:00pm PDT
Ghost Tour: Memories From Dolores Park
Authors
Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet...
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Elina Ansary is a visual artist and writer. Her project, "Ghost Tour: San Francisco" is a multimedia attempt to chart the collective memory of San Francisco in the face of gentrification and transformation. "Memories of Dolores Park" is the inaugural piece of this project, the first...
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Maya Castleman is a musician, poet, and proud San Franciscan. You can check out her music at www.mayacastleman.com
PR Guy, foodie, tennis player and part time flaneur whose philosopher king is Popeye the Sailorman
Liliana Silva is a freelance writer from San Francisco, California. When she’s not devouring historical fiction novels, you can find her road-tripping on the California coast and questing for the World’s Greatest Breakfast Burrito. Follow along with her adventures on instagram...
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5:00pm PDT
Jokes Review: Fiction and Poetry Reading for the Street Art Crowd
Authors
Managing Editor, Jokes Review
Author of the novel Politicians Are Superheroes.
Kyle Flak does stuff for the "POETS NOT TALKING ABOUT POETRY" thing at Maudlin House. His newest book is: I AM SORRY FOR EVERYTHING IN THE WHOLE ENTIRE UNIVERSE (Gold Wake Press).
creative writer, promiscuous reader
Eric Orosco is a queer, Sacramento based poet whose writing has appeared in American River Review, Jokes Review, Calliope, and Fearsome Critters. He’s the co-founder/co-editor of Levee Magazine (
leveemag.com). When he’s not stressing about paying back student loans, he can be found watering his peace lilies and eating carbs...
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Jeffrey Zable is a teacher and conga drummer who plays Afro-Cuban folkloric music for dance classes and Rumbas around the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have appeared in hundreds of literary magazines and anthologies. More recent writing in Serving House...
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5:00pm PDT
Joyland Magazine: The West
Authors
Wesley Cohen is a writer and editor living in Davis, California. Her fiction has been featured by Quiet Lightning, Potluck Magazine, Mad Scientist Journal, Here Comes Everyone, and others. She was a 2017 Writing By Writers Newberry Fellow, and serves as prose editor of Foglifter...
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Anita Felicelli is the author of Chimerica (WTAW Press, 2019) and Love Songs for a Lost Continent (Still House Press), winner of the Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. Her essays and criticism have appeared in the SF Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Salon, Slate, Catapult...
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Jasper is a writer and teacher from the Mendocino Coast. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Joyland, Juked, 7×7, Lunch Ticket, Permasummer, Your Impossible Voice, and an anthology of California writing, Golden State 2017. As a poet-teacher, he works with over four hundred...
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Tom Pyun is a writer based in Los Angeles. He was a fellow with Tin House, Vermont Studio Center, Gemini Ink, and VONA/Voices. His work has appeared in The Rumpus, Eleven Eleven, Blue Mesa Review, and Reed magazine, and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the...
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Aaron Sunshine is from San Francisco. His first published story appeared in Joyland in 2018. He also paints and sews.
5:00pm PDT
KALW Presents: Live at The Chapel
Authors
David Boyer is a writer and radio producer. His audio series, THE INTERSECTION, looks at our changing cities through the lens of different street intersections. Boyer's writing has appeared in the New York Times, Might and Salon, and he's published two oral histories Kings & Queens...
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Alicia Kester is an award-winning writer and filmmaker based in the Bay Area. Raised between Los Angeles and Lagos, Nigeria, Kester tells stories that reflect her experiences as a mixed-race, queer, 2nd generation, Woman-of-Color, and reflect the realities of her neighbors, family...
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Liz Mak is a writer and multimedia producer who makes radio stories at the WNYC public radio show and podcast
Snap Judgment. Mak has reported for KQED and KALW in San Francisco, and her pieces have taken her from Beijing to the remote Anambas Islands to the protests at Standi...
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Maria Jose Montijo is a musician whose life changed in 2009, on a beach in her native Puerto Rico, when a friend gave her a used Celtic harp. Since then she has been composing música esotérica tropical inspired by her love for the Caribbean, her traditional medicine practice, our...
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Instrumental trio fusing progressive rock, metal, and jazz.
Don Reed is a multi-hyphenate, comedian, actor, writer, producer, director, solo performer and a comedic molotov-cocktail of storytelling, characters, sound-fx, impersonations and improvisation. Reed has shared a number of hilarious and heartbreaking stories on NPR/WNYC's hit broadcast...
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5:00pm PDT
Kearny Street Workshop
Authors
Nefertiti Asanti is a poet, cultural worker & facilitator from the Bronx. Nefertiti is a fellow of The Watering Hole (2016, 2017) & EMERGENYC Hemispheric Institute (2015) & an alum of Kearny Street Workshop’s Interdisciplinary Writer’s Lab (2017). Currently, Nefertiti is a poetry...
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Jade Cho is a writer, educator, and granddaughter of Toisanese immigrants. She is the author of In the Tongue of Ghosts (First Word Press, 2016), a founding member of Ghostlines Collective, and an organizer of The Root Slam, a bimonthly open mic & slam venue in Oakland.
Adrienne Chung is a nonfiction writer. She lives in the Sunset district of San Francisco with her dog Bjärk.
Steve Fujimura is a poet based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has participated in programs with The Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, the Hweilan International Artists Workshop in Taiwan, and Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture festival. His work can be found in New American...
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Michal "MJ" Jones is a Black, queer, trans writer and activist in Oakland, CA. Focusing on memoir, fiction, and essay, their work has been featured on Everyday Feminism, The Body Is Not An Apology, and Black Girl Dangerous.
5:00pm PDT
KQED: Survival of the Queerest
Authors
Luna Malbroux is a comic, writer, one of KQED's Women to Watch, creator of the award winning play, "How to Be A White Man", and the creator of the
EquiTable, a downloadable app that won Comedy Hackathon at SF SketchFest and made international headlines for satirically solving the wage gap and providing ‘reparations, one meal at a time...
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Luna Merbruja is a Mexican-Athabaskan writer, artist, healer, and community organizer. She’s the author of Trauma Queen and the forthcoming poetry book Heal Your Love. She has written about gender, sexuality, healing, and feminism for
Autostraddle and
Everyday Feminism, and is published in the anthology Nerve Endings: The New Trans Erotic...
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Baruch Porras-Hernandez is the author of two chapbooks from Sibling Rivalry Press. He is a two time winner of Literary Death Match, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, and Playwriting, has been part of the legendary Sister Spit Tour with Radar Productions, and regularly hosts shows...
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Anand Vedawala is the executive director of San Francisco Zine Fest and the author of several zines, including Hair, which was recently nominated for a Broken Pencil Zine Award. His self-published book, 100 Years from Now Our Bones Will Be Different, with co-author and illustrator Lawren...
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Marcus Williams is a stand-up comedian, a semi-finalist in the 2016 Sacramento Comedy Festival and has performed at the San Francisco Punchline, Cobb's Comedy Club, all over New York, Denver and several other locations with a stage and a microphone. He's funny as hell.
5:00pm PDT
LitBulb
Authors
Abe Becker was recently published in Fifth Wednesday Journal, Drunk In A Midnight Choir, After Happy Hour Review, Cog Magazine, and other publications. He is the 2018 Berkeley Grand Slam Champion, a Grand Slam Champion of Cal Slam (at UC Berkeley), a CUPSI finalist as both poet and...
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Missy Church, a Bay Area resident since 1996, writes poetry and and memoir. She has appeared in numerous readings in San Francisco and Oakland. Her memoir/bio/novelish thing is in progress. She prides herself on co-creating a tiny human in the form of a boy and... Naked Bulb, an open...
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Rohan DaCosta is a multi-disciplinary artist from the city of Chicago, working primarily through photography, writing, and song. Often approaching his work with great emotional sensitivity, Rohan explores complex dilemmas, and frequencies found in lovers, in families, in ecosystems...
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G. Macias Gusman lives in Oakland, California writing prose poems to the factories, mountains, and ditches that enslave many a good women/ men and the bars they escape too. He’s had work published in a few tight rags and has performed around the Bay Area. G. Macias is still discovering...
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Kelly Landmine was once a burlesque performer and producer of Macabaret: Grotesque Burlesque for the Sick and Twisted. She had dreams of running away with the circus and becoming a sword swallower but her gag reflex got in the way. She settled in Oakland, Ca and became a hairdresser...
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Andrew J. Thomas is a father, a husband, and a poet. He lives in Vacaville with his wife, a dog, and until recently, two teenage sons. He adamantly supports the use of serial commas. He has no classic training in the art of the written word, other than years of heart break and a love...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Skunkfunk
5:00pm PDT
Literary Stubbornness at Santa Monica Review
Authors
Michael Cadnum is the author of nearly forty books of fiction and poetry. A National Book Award Finalist for The Book of the Lion, his most recent books include Earthquake Murder, a book of short fiction, and the just- released Kingdom, a book of poetry.
Louis B. Jones is the author of five novels – "Ordinary Money," "Particles and Luck," and "California’s Over," all three named as New York Times Notable Books of their respective years; and most recently, "Radiance" and "Innocence." He is an NEA fellow and a fellow of the MacDowell...
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Janice Shapiro is the author of Bummer and Other Stories (Soft Skull Press). Her stories and comics have been published in Catapult, The North American Review, 52 Stories, The Santa Monica Review, Everyday Genius, Real Pants and other places. She lives in Berkeley, California.
Editor, Santa Monica Review
Andrew Tonkovich edits the West Coast literary journal Santa Monica Review and hosts Bibliocracy, a books show on Pacifica Radio KPFK in Southern California. He is author of a novella collection, The Dairy of Anne Frank, and co-edited the first-ever anthology of literary Orange County...
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5:00pm PDT
Mirabel Street Writers: The Annotated Hammock
Authors
Richard Schwarzenberger is author of In Faro’s Garden, with work in The Utne Reader, Agni, and the San Francisco Chronicle.
William Torphy’s poetry, critical reviews and articles have appeared in numerous magazines. Ithuriel’s Spear in San Francisco has published three books. His short stories have appeared in The Fictional Café, ImageOutWrite Volume 5, Chelsea Station, Main Street Rag, Miracle Monocle...
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5:00pm PDT
Moxie Road Productions: Prudes at the Armory
Authors
Producer, Literary Death Match
Board of Directors, Foglifter Press. Founding board member at Lit Camp. Former Litquake Committee member; host of Barely Published Authors 2015 and WRITE ON. Published in sPARKLE & bLINK, SFWIRE and Bang Out.
Principally a memoir and satire writer, Courtenay's book, "Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went From Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things" was released in July from Little, Brown. She also writes a bi-weekly column for the Portland Mercury, teaches humorous...
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Shannon Hughes is a Bay Area native and a resurrected writer and performer, who has recently swapped out the corporate stage for an artistic one. After a decades long career devising recruitment marketing strategies for Fortune 500 clients, she is following her heart and mind toward...
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co-founder, Moxie Road Productions
Janine Kovac is the author of SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home, a memoir about the death of a career but the birth of miracle twins and a 2017 semifinalist for Publisher Weekly's BookLife Prize and the 2019 memoir winner of the National Indie Excellence Awards. A former ballet...
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Justin P. McCarthy lives in Marin with his wife, three children, and two cats. After helping people sue one another for a decade, he retired to be a full-time dad. Now, with the kids a bit older, he's pursuing his true passion of making no money as a writer, which has been a rousing...
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Tarja Parssinen is a writer, performer, and co-founder of Moxie Road Productions. Her written work has appeared in places such as The Washington Post and Salon.com, and anthologized in You Have Lipstick On Your Teeth, Scary Mommy’s Guide To Surviving the Holidays and She's Got This...
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5:00pm PDT
Musical Muses: BARtab's Tenth Lit Crawl Event
Moderators
Jim Provenzano is the author of the novels Now I'm Here, PINS, Monkey Suits, Cyclizen, the 2012 Lambda Literary Award winner Every Time I Think of You, its sequel Message of Love (a Lammy finalist), and the stage adaptation of PINS. His short fiction collection, Forty Wild Crushes...
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Authors
Bud Gundy is a two-time Emmy Award-winning television producer, writer, director, and on-air host at KQED, San Francisco's PBS and NPR affiliate. His most recent novel Somewhere Over Lorain Road was published by Bold Strokes Books in February of 2018. His upcoming science fiction/thriller/mm...
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San Francisco born Trebor Healey is the author of 3 novels, 3 story collections and a book of poetry. His debut novel, Through It Came Bright Colors, won both the Publishing Triangle's Ferro-Grumley Fiction Award and the Violet Quill Award. In 2013, his third novel, A Horse Named...
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Kathleen Knowles grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but has lived in San Francisco for more than thirty years. She finds the city's combination of history, natural beauty, and multicultural diversity inspiring and endlessly fascinating. Her first novel, Awake Unto Me, won the Golden...
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Gar began writing early in life, but thought he wanted to be an astronomer. (He also thought he was straight. Go figure.)At UCLA, he co-created a left-leaning paper called Free Association. He also wrote commentaries for The Daily Bruin and feature articles for the African-American...
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When she’s not writing poems or drumming in an all-girl garage rock band, K.R. Morrison teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to inner city high school students at Galileo in San Francisco, CA. She has featured twice in Bay Area Generations, Saturday Night Special, and...
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Musician, Kitten on the Keys
Bay Area Native- Suzanne Ramsey aka Kitten on the Keys plays piano , accordion, and ukulele at a variety of venues in San Francisco and beyond . Catch her at the Madrone Art Bar, Dandy Drag King Cabaret , the Rite Spot , Flower Piano , and at special events. Tickle her ivories at...
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5:00pm PDT
On The Cusp: Moments That Matter
Authors
James Cagney is a poet and writer from Oakland. A Cave Canem fellow, Cagney has appeared as a featured poet at venues throughout the San Francisco-Bay Area, Sacramento, Vancouver and Mumbai.
Rosa del Duca is a writer, journalist, teacher and musician. She grew up a tomboy in rural Montana, where she joined the Army National Guard when she was seventeen. During her six-year contract, she became not only a conscientious objector, but a feminist and unlikely rebel. That...
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Award-winning author of Zero Avenue, House of Blazes, Triggerfish, The Deadbeat Club and Ride the Lightning – from Vancouver, BC.
Arthur Klepchukov was born between Black Seas, Virginian Beaches, and San Franciscan waves. He adores trains, swing sets, and music that tears him outta time. Read Art’s words in The Common, Necessary Fiction, KYSO Flash, Fiction Southeast, and more at ArsenalOfWords.com
Allison Landa is a Berkeley, CA-based real estate writer and editor.
Saturday October 20, 2018 5:00pm - 6:00pm PDT
Dalva
5:00pm PDT
Poetry Express
Authors
African-Italian performance poet based in Oakland, California. Active on the creative writing & Spoken Word tips since the early 1990s. Author of 3 books (Boneyard, Unwritten Law and Stormwater, all from POOR Press). 15.5 anthology appearances under his figurative belt so far (including...
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Elaine Brown aka Poet E Spoken is the Co host of My Word Open Mic at Cafe Leila in Berkeley. She recently released her 1st CD entitled “Every Knee.” Her work has appeared in Porter Gultch Review in 2016 & Poetry Express Magazine in 2018. Her first book Freckle Tongue from the...
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Britt Peter lives in Richmond, CA. He has been around artists, musicians, painters and political activists most of his adult life and continues to take delight in poetry, movies, nonviolent resistance, good food and impromptu community. He and his son have put fifty poems of his on...
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Gary Turchin is a poet, and visual and performance artist living in Berkeley. He is the author/illustrator of the wondrous, If I Were You (Simon DeWitt 2011). He also authored and illustrated the recently released Ditty-Ditty Doggerel, A Life From Bad To Verse. Gary also has three...
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5:00pm PDT
Reading with the OWLs (Older Writers' Lab)
Authors
Louise Billotte has been writing poetry for 15 years.
Barbara Blong has been writing poetry from a young age but has found joining the Older Writer's Lab (OWL), has spurred her efforts to good effect
Helen Dannenberg is orginally from New York City, has lived in San Francisco for 45 years, and is recently retired.
Robert Emerson is a retired San Francisco teacher. He writes poetry and short prose as part of the OWL Group. He has been a frequent performer in community theater productions.
Bill Lautner, now retired, is a member of the OWLS of Bernal Heights and the Diamond Street Poets. Formerly a farm boy from southern Indiana, he's been a poet since 2001.
Vernard Maxam was born in Hollywood and has never received any awards for his poetry, but he was named to the Los Angeles All City High School Basketball Tournament Team in 1966. He visits the Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge every December to witness the wondrous return of thousands...
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Mimi Mueller is retired, although not from Scottish and English Country Dancing, Dog Agility, amateur calligraphy and - all her life - writing what she tries to shape into poetry.
Maggie Roberts lives in San Francisco. She is a disability rights attorney who has been writing poetry for one year. Her poetry has been published in Forum Literary magazine.
Pauline Crowther Scott studied Fine Art in London, UK, then moved to San Francisco in 1980, teaching art and exhibiting her paintings in the Bay Area. She has been writing poetry since retiring from teaching four years ago.
Words written have helped Ellen Sharbach cope with the grief of loosing her daughter, a young history professor, in 2004. Ellen came to San Francisco in 1982 having been transferred by her employer from Michigan. She retired in 1990 from the telephone company and has a good life--especially...
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Susan Terence, San Francisco Area Coordinator and poet teacher for Calif. Poets in the Schools, is a writer and performer who has been published in: SF Bay Guardian, SF Chronicle, S. Poetry Review, Nebraska Rev., Americas Rev., St. Petersburg Rev., District 11, and has been a winner...
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Born in Shizuoka, Japan, at the foot of Mount Fuji, Toshi Washizu never climbed his native country's highest peak. Instead, in his youth, he crossed the ocean to America. He became a filmmaker and for decades produced award-winning documentary films. His movies include Bone, Flesh...
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5:00pm PDT
Smoking Pens: Stirring the Pot
Authors
Melissa Hung is a writer and journalist. Her writing on culture and immigrant communities has appeared in NPR, Vogue, Catapult, Longreads, and Pacific Standard. Melissa is the founding editor of Hyphen and the former director of WritersCorps. She has received fellowships from VONA...
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Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a writer and Muslim Feminist (she is still working on a definition of Feminist that fits her ideology) who advocates and demands equal rights and space for women in all scopes. Sabina is a writer and editor with work published on BlogHer, Huffington Post, InCulture...
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Content Manager, Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)
Grace Hwang Lynch is a San Francisco Bay Area based freelance writer with a focus on race, culture and family. She currently serves as the content manager for the Center for Asian American Media (CAAM). Her work has appeared on NPR, PRI, NBC Asian America and the San Francisco Chronicle...
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Shikha (Saklani) Malaviya is a poet & writer, born in the U.K. and raised in Minnesota and India. Her book, Geography of Tongues, was launched in December 2013, in India, to acclaim and featured in The Times of India Literary Carnival, Poetry with Prakriti & other festivals. Shikha...
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Jennifer Ng is a writer in San Francisco. She recently published a nonfiction book, Ice Cream Travel Guide, and is working on a novel based on her grandparents' lives in China, Peru, and the United States. Her work has appeared in Arkana, Havik, Cold Creek Review, Shut Up and Write...
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Anna Sterling is an independent reporter and video journalist based in the SF Bay Area. Her published works can be seen in NBC News, VICE, Los Angeles Times, AJ+, HuffPost, Fusion and more. Her interactive mini-doc on abortion access was nominated for an EPPY in the Best Innovation...
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Writer
Michelle Threadgould is a Chicana journalist and poet. Her work has been featured in CNN, KQED, New York Observer and Latino USA. Seven of her essays were in the music bible Women Who Rock, parts of her poetry collection, Broken Borders have appeared in the Chachalaca Review and...
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Culinary Writer & Chef-Instructor, Wandering Spoon
Thy Tran is a culinary writer, chef-instructor, and book artist who loves her letterpress as much as her cast-iron pans. Carried along in streams from the Mekong to the Mississippi, she's inspired by the many ways migration shapes and reshapes our recipes, stories, and traditions...
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5:00pm PDT
Tale Spin
Authors
Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer, teacher. She is drawn to the detailed placement of words, the alchemy of timing and sequence. Her poetry has been published in many literary journals, and her chapbook, “Conversations with Trees” has been recently published by Finishing Line...
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I was born on a pig farm; then the following happened—I went on staff at The University of Iowa as a co-founder of The Iowa Theatre Lab/American Growtowski,--next I became co-founder of The Blake St. Hawkeyes in Berkeley, CA., then I directed TOKENS, a 65 person musical at Theatre...
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Chris Kammler is a writer, director, performance artist, and qigong practitioner. Her work was recently published in Aphrodite’s Pen. She and poet Susan Dambroff perform as Spoken Duets.
Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter and educator who earned an MFA in Writing and Poetics from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. She was also the curator of the seminal San Francisco Café Babar reading series in the 1990s.
5:00pm PDT
Teenquake Writing Awards
Moderators
Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at ZYZZYVA and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel...
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5:00pm PDT
The Writers Studio: Art Speaks To Art
Authors
Eanlai Cronin is a schoolteacher, memoirist, and certified facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. She runs writing groups and retreats in San Francisco’s East Bay for anyone in recovery from addiction, alcoholism, trauma and abuse, and for anyone longing to return...
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Gail Ford is a poet and graduate of Stanford University. She has taught for The Writers Studio since 2012 and will be teaching workshop and intermediate level classes when fall session starts in October 2018. She loves writers, talking about writing, and happily welcomes new and continuing...
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Kathie Jacobson has published stories in Crack the Spine, Driftwood Press, Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, Twisted Vine and other literary journals, and her work has been featured as a Longform Fiction Pick-of-the-Week
Tamara Schuyler’s fiction has appeared in CutBank, Mulberry Fork Review, and Crack the Spine, among others. One of her stories received a special mention in Pushcart Prize XXXIX: Best of the Small Presses, and another was awarded honorary mention in Glimmer Train’s Very Short...
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Before moving to the United States in 2001, Manikya Veena worked as a journalist for Magna Publishing, India’s largest publications company, and freelanced for several National newspapers and magazines. In addition, she authored a short story compilation for children, The Banjara...
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5:00pm PDT
Whoop Whoop That's the Sound of the Police/ Whoop Whoop That's the Sound of the Beast
Moderators
Amalia Alvarez was born in San Diego, Califas. Alvarez holds an MFA in Creative Writing, Poetry from UC Riverside, an MA in English, Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, and a Bachelor's of Arts degree in American Studies from UC Santa Cruz. Alvarez taught English...
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Authors
Tyson combines his experience surviving America as a black man with hip hop prose, and original analysis to shape what is arguably the most revolutionary statement of the 21st century.
Check out my new project “Unsettled in the Mission/Inquietos en la Misión,” a series of literary non-fiction essays based on portraits of the resilient working class and poor residents of the traditionally Latino Mission District of San Francisco. The work is published in English...
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(Ana) Clarissa Rojas Durazo grew up in the border cities Mexicali, Baja California and Calexico, California. She practices transformative mama pedagogies by day while decolonizing chicanx studies pedagogies by trade. She is an internationally published poet who believes the creative...
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Rebeca Flores is a Salvadoreña and Mexican American artist from Fresno, CA. Her literary work can be found in publications like El Tecolote, SOMArts, and in Flies, Cockroaches, and Poets. Her Visual work has shown at Juan R. Fuentes Gallery, Noisebridge SF, Broadway Studios, and...
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Gemimac raps from a unique perpective about life in San Francisco's Mission District.Home grown, earth born, Peace.
5:00pm PDT
Writers Without Borders: Presented By The Stanford Continuing Studies' Online Writing Certificate Program
Authors
Lawrence Amaeshi holds an MBA in marketing. He will read from Five Brown Envelopes, to be released later this year. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria.
Working from Seattle and Milan where she splits the year – and thanks to the Stanford Certificate program – Nancy recently completed her first novel Verdi’s Flame.
Janice Billingsley is a journalist and ghostwriter. She is completing her first novel, I Live In Beaufort, through the Stanford Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing.
Stanford OWC
M.J. Brodie grew up in Ireland but now lives in the Bay Area. She writes about immigration and family and is finishing her first novel.
James Ennen has written one novel, fragments of a second, and multiple short stories. He lives in Crow Wing County and often canoes.
Jane Gilmore is launching a novel writing program for teens with the San Jose Area Writing Project while editing her manuscript, The Weeks List.
6:30pm PDT
826 Valencia
Authors
Lecturer, UC Santa Barbara
Vickie Vértiz is the oldest child of an immigrant Mexican family. Her poetry and essays are featured in the New York Times magazine, Huizache, the Los Angeles Review of Books, KCET Departures, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among many publications. Her second book Auto/Body won...
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6:30pm PDT
Babar in Exile
Authors
Paul Corman-Roberts is an original core-founder of the Beast Crawl Lit Fest. He works extensively with SF Creative Writing Institute, Nomadic Press and his most recent collection of poems is We Shoot Typewriters (Nomadic Press 2015.)
David Gollub was born in 1951, the son of an opera singer and a trial lawyer. He got a BA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He met David Lerner in Palo Alto in 1973. Lerner got him his first poetry publication. He has been on the Bay Area poetry scene since April 7, 1983, when...
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Zeitgeist Press
Bruce Isaacson was an early scheduler at Cafe Babar, a mid-'80s spoken word free-for-all. David Lerner rightly called it Gladiator School for Poets. Since, he was read at Poetry in Motion readings at Hollywood's Helena's and Largo, and was a finalist in the first Nuyorican Poetry...
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Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. His books include Sudden Windows (flash prose), Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book...
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Margery Snyder is a poet, flute-player & accidental photographer who pronounces her first name with a hard ‘g.’ She was born in a small town amid the dry wheatlands in the downwind shadow of the Hanford Atomic Reservation in eastern Washington state, grew up in southern California...
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medical and scientific copy editor, freelance
I am a former pediatrician who stopped practicing medicine because of chronic pain. My poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. My fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist...
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Julia Vinograd was born a native of Taurus w/Pisces rising in the coal and corn bread heart of West Virginia, in 1943. She writes, "I left school to pursue a career of vagrancy, experimental mysticism and small villainies. I've been around the block and tackled; got a million miles...
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Kathleen Wood was born in MO and currently resides in San Francisco. She was a constant habitué of the Cafe Babar reading series though most of its run. She’s had three chapbooks published by Zeitgeist Press, The Wino, the Junkie, and the Lord, Tenderloin Rose, and recently Tenderloin...
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6:30pm PDT
Celebrating Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story
Authors
Jacqueline Doyle’s award-winning flash fiction collection THE MISSING GIRL was recently published by Black Lawrence Press. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as The Gettysburg Review, Southern Humanities Review, The Pinch, Wigleaf, Monkeybicycle, Catamaran Literary...
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Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author of three books of stories and essays and hybrid pieces, and winner of an American Book Award and numerous other honors. He teaches at California State University East Bay.
Cornelia Nixon is the author of four novels, Angels Go Naked, Now You See It, Jarrettsville, and The Use of Fame, as well as a book of literary criticism. She has won two O. Henry Awards (one of them the first prize in 1995), two Pushcart Prizes, a Nelson Algren Prize, a Carl Sandburg...
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Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes Into the Forest (Dzanc 2019) and Show Her A Flower, a Bird, a Shadow, which was the Foreward Indie’s 2017 Book of the Year for Literary Fiction. Peg lives in Northern California and is the founder and director of WTAW Press and of...
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Ethel Rohan is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She won the Nautilus Award for her debut novel The Weight of Him and the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award. She was also shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes, and longlisted...
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6:30pm PDT
Clitquake: Cliterary Salon
Authors
Meg Elison is an author and essayist in the D.C. metro. She's a Locus and Philip K. Dick Award winner, as well as a Hugo, Sturgeon, Nebula, and Otherwise awards finalist. She has published short fiction and essays with Slate, Lightspeed, Catapult, Electric Literature, Fantasy & Science...
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Attendee
Louis Evans is an emerging sci-fi and speculative fiction writer based in NYC. His fiction has appeared in Analog, Interzone, Escape Pod, GigaNotoSaurus, Translunar Travelers Lounge, and more. His nonfiction has appeared in Blood Knife and The Toast. He's a comedic performer who has...
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Lauren Parker is a writer based in Oakland. She is the cohost of GLOW the Distance: a Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling podcast, and a graduate of Hiram College’s Creative Writing program. She has written for the Toast, the Tusk, Ravishly, The Bold Italic, Harlot Magazine, Hoodline...
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Maggie Tokuda-Hall has an MFA in writing from the University of San Francisco and a tendency to spill things. As a longtime children's bookseller she has read her fair share of stories, and she is always hungry for more. Her favorite animal is an octopus, or else an elephant.
6:30pm PDT
Crawling Up From Underground
Authors
Daphne Gottlieb is a
San Francisco-based performance
poet.She is the winner of the Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant-Garde, the Audre Lorde Award for Poetry, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, and a five-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award...
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Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems, winner of the 2016 annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute and Berkeley City College, hosts Saturday Night Special, An East Bay Open Mic and produces...
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Julia Jahn, a lefty from Nebraska, has been keeping an eye on the Mission from the high perch of her apartment for quite some time. Sometimes she writes about what she sees. Sometimes she writes about her outfits. Sometimes she has no idea what to write. She’s excited easily, but...
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Alexandra Kostoulas is the founder of the San Francisco Creative Writing Institute. She has performed her work on stage at Litcrawl, Bay Area Book Festival, Santa Barbara Book & Author festival, Los Angeles Festival of Books, June Jordan’s Poetry for the People in Berkeley, and...
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Nick Mamatas is the author of several novels including The Last Weekend, I Am Providence, and the forthcoming Hexen Sabbath. His short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, and he is also an award-winning anthologist, most recently with Mixed Up, a hybrid cocktail...
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Marguerite Munoz writes on the border of Berkeley and Oakland. She is the founder and producer of Voz Sin Tinta at Alley Cat Books under the sponsorship of Alejandro Murguia. Her work has been featured at Get Lit, Liminal, Poems Under the Dome, Cante Jondo, Literary Speakeasy, Cipacti...
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Maurisa Thompson was born and raised in San Francisco, and is a proud alum of June Jordan's Poetry for the People. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Pedestal Cosmonauts Avenue, Poems for Our Children and En Vuelo: In Celebration of el Tecolote, and The Haight-Ashbury...
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6:30pm PDT
Dirty Laundry: Loads of Prose
Authors
Sunisa Manning. Half American and half Thai, Sunisa holds degrees from Brown University and Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Atlas and Alice and elsewhere. She’s been a writer in residence at Hedgebrook and The Hambidge Center...
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Lizzie Olesker, director, is a writer/director/performer whose plays and performances explore the poetry of the everyday. Recent work includes a solo performance TINY LIGHTS: Infinite Miniature seen at the New Ohio Theater and Brooklyn’s Invisible Dog. She was an Audrey Fellow at...
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Colette Plum writes narrative non-fiction and is currently writing a memoir about raising her daughters as global nomads. She has a PhD in Chinese history from Stanford University and is a Lit Camp 2015 alumna.
Rowena Richie is grateful to have another go-round with West Coast Loads of Prose. Richie’s recent highlights include collaborating with Erika Chong Shuch and Ryan D. Tacata on For You, a series of performance works for audiences of twelve, playing Finist the Falcon in the sold-out...
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Emily Rubin, producer/reader, is a writer living in NYC. Her debut novel, STALINA, Mariner Books 2011, was a winner of the Amazon Debut Novel Award Contest. Her fiction and essays have been published in the Red Rock Review, Confrontations, NY Observer, Poets and Writers, and HAPPY...
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Lynne Sachs, director, makes films, installations, performances and web projects that explore the intricate relationship between personal observations and broader historical experiences by weaving together poetry, collage, painting, politics and layered sound design. Strongly committed...
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6:30pm PDT
Feather Press Presents: Birds of Paradise
Moderators
Poet
Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and artist. She is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Saporoso: Poems of Italian Food & Love (FeatherPress.org). She is known to collaborate with artists and musicians as founder and co-host of the monthly WordParty Poetry...
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Authors
Saeeda Hafiz is the author of the award-winning book, The Healing: One Woman's Journey from Poverty to Inner Riches, which was re-released by Parallax Press on July 17, 2018. She has appeared on various radio and television programs and has been featured in several national and...
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Managing Editor, Feather Press
Ingrid Keir is a poet, literary curator, and publisher. She runs
Feather Press, an independent women’s literary press based in the Bay Area. She is co-founder of the WordParty, a long-running San Francisco poetry and jazz series. Ingrid taught undergraduate Creative Writing at San Francisco State University while simultaneously engaging students with writers...
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Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, CA. Her collection, Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, is forthcoming by New Rivers Press (Autumn 2019). Her poems and stories have appeared in Magma Poetry, Eleven Eleven, Monkeybicycle, 100 Word Story, Fjords...
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Raina J. León, Cave Canem graduate fellow (2006), CantoMundo fellow, Macondo fellow, and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in numerous journals as a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Her first collection of poetry,
Canticle ...
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San Francisco Poet Laureate
Kim Shuck is San Francisco’s Poet Laureate. She embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell and she spent...
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6:30pm PDT
FORUM Magazine
Authors
Born and raised in Sacramento, Matthew Andrews moved to San Francisco almost a decade ago by way of Ann Arbor. He is a student at CCSF where he is pursuing a Creative Writing Certificate.
a native of southern New England, bloodflower has been publishing his singular yet provocative poesy since his teens, leading to publication in The New England Anthology of Poetry. bloodflower is an accomplished composer and multi-instrumentalist and has exhibited his photography...
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Vincent Calvarese was born and raised in the Bay Area and has lived here all of his life. He has worn many hats in the Bay Area—barista, salesperson, journalist, graphic designer, union representative, deputy sheriff, homeless advocate and published writer and poet. After a long...
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Zach Hauptman is a Reference Librarian with the South San Francisco Public Library by day, a CCSF student at night, and a gigantic genderqueer nerd at all times (they/them pronouns, pls!).With their group, Truth Sans Justice, they run panels on popular culture, misogyny and the queer...
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Matt Luedke was the Fiction Editor for CCSF's Forum in Spring 2018. You can often find Matt either hiking through the nature of the Bay Area, biking up a steep SF hill in the easiest gear on his beloved, sticker-covered hybrid, or bundled up at one of SF's cold beaches with a notebook...
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6:30pm PDT
Fourteen Hills presents: GNIDAER A : A READING?
Authors
Neil Ballard is a writer and illustrator based in San Francisco. Since 2014, Ballard has produced illustrated journalism and history comics for the Ingleside-Excelsior Light, a neighborhood newspaper. He is currently working on a graphic novel.
Founder & Teacher, www.matthewclarkdavison.com
Matthew Clark Davison's prose has been recently anthologized in By the Rivers of Babylon: Apostates Remember Believing (forthcoming, Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others...
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Keith Donnell Jr. is a San Francisco Bay Area poet, book editor, and educator. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University and an MA in English from the University of Southern California. He was the 2017-18 Editor-in-Chief of Fourteen Hills: The SFSU...
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Writer, old New Yorker, new Bay Area-er, OG
#TWiBnation-er.
Adjunct Professor, Mills College At Northeastern University
Truong Tran is a Vietnamese American writer born in Saigon, Vietnam. He is the author of 6 previous collections of poetry, The Book of Perceptions, Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, Within The Margins, Four Letter Words, 100 Words (Co-authored with Damon Potter). And most...
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Danielle Truppi is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. .
6:30pm PDT
Hazel Reading Series
Authors
Meilan Carter-Gilkey writes about relationships, identity, health and everything she is trying to understand. Her work has been published in the anthologies “All the Women in My Family Sing” and “Who's Your Mama?: The Voices of Unsung Women and Mothers”, Huffington Post...
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Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia. She spent many years working as a psychiatric nurse which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Natasha has had poetry published in many journals including...
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Yang Huang grew up in China and has lived in the United States since 1990. Her novel MY GOOD SON won the University of New Orleans Publishing Lab Prize. Her linked story collection, MY OLD FAITHFUL, won the Juniper Prize, and her debut novel, LIVING TREASURES, won the Nautilus Book...
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Born and raised in Naples, Italy, Sara Marinelli is a writer and educator based in San Francisco. Her writing appears in Blue Mesa Review, New American Writing, and many Italian publications. She teaches Comparative Literature and Humanities at the USF and SFSU. Every month, she curates...
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Thea Matthews is an American poet of African and Mexican descent. Born and raised in San Francisco, CA, Thea utilizes Spoken Word to address the complexities of humanity, resiliency, and ultimately, the triumph over trauma. She is currently working on her first book (expected out...
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6:30pm PDT
Headlands Center for the Arts
Moderators
Ploi Pirapokin has work featured in
Tor.com, Apogee Journal, the Bellingham Review, Fiction International, Cleaver Magazine and more. She has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Capacity Fund, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, Kundiman and others. She...
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Authors
Kate Folk's stories and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Prairie Schooner, One Story, Granta, and many other publications. She was a 2016-19 Affiliate Artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts, and has been awarded fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the...
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Aimee Phan is a
Vietnamese-American author. She was born and raised in
Orange County, California. She received her BA in English from UCLA and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her first novel, We Should Never Meet, was named a Notable...
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Emily Wolahan is the author of the poetry collection Hinge. Her poems have appeared in Oversound, The Georgia Review, Boston Review, and Gulf Coast, among other places. She is senior editor at Two Lines Press and an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Benny Gold
6:30pm PDT
If I Told Napoleon
Authors
Corin Chellberg came to the San Francisco writing scene and If I Told Napoleon by way of Shipwreck, SF's premier literary erotic fanfiction parody competition, of which he is currently the back-to-back champion. Come watch him try and fail to defend his title in Shipwreck's final...
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Hey, I'm Blair, a principal analyst at
ISG who resides in San Francisco with a pair of delightful air plants. When I'm not busy researching the latest and greatest, you can usually find me with my nose stuck in a book, cooking something in the kitchen, getting caught up on a television show I missed when it aired years ago...
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Ty writes from 7 in the morning to about noonish. He used to write fiction, and now his life is sort've like fiction, so he just writes what's happening, or what he thinks is happening, and calls it "writing". Currently he's working on a long-letter form inspired by Karl Ove, in which...
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Melinda is a poet living in Oakland and a writer at an affordable housing nonprofit in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in sPARKLE & bLINK, Dream Pop Press, Oatmeal Magazine, and Two Lines Press, among others. Once upon a time she helped build Lacuna, “the world’s most public...
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Joel Streicker’s short fiction has appeared in a number of magazines, including Great Lakes Review, Kestrel, and Gravel. His forthcoming story in Blood Orange Review is also the winner of that journal’s inaugural fiction contest and will appear in its December 2019 issue. He has...
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Spencer Tierney is a writer in San Francisco. He once won a Florence + the Machine facebook caption contest with a pun, volunteered as an IRS-certified tax preparer in the Mission, and started the morning of his first SF Marathon by running a half mile the wrong way before finding...
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6:30pm PDT
InsideStorytime SHADOW
Moderators
James Warner's stories have appeared in Best of British Science Fiction 2018, The Best of British Fantasy 2018, Georgia, EPOCH, ZYZZYVA, etc. He is about to cease to be European..
Authors
Cyrus Armajani teaches reading and creative writing to youth who are incarcerated. He is a Jefferson Award recipient for his literacy work in the juvenile justice system and a Pushcart nominee. His poems have appeared in Matter: A Journal of Political Poetry and Commentary, RHINO...
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Simi Singh Juneja was born in India and raised in the American South. She graduated from NYU in Paris with an MFA in Creative Writing. She is the keeper of stories in her family and the resident poet. Her debut short story, "How Doc Met Lady J" was published by the Smithsonian Indian-American...
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Emer Martin is a Dubliner who has lived in Paris, London, the Middle East, and various parts of the U.S. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, won Book of the Year 1996 at the prestigious Listowel Writers’ Week. More Bread Or I’ll Appear, her second novel, was published internationally...
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Anca L. Szilágyi is the author of
Daughters of the Air, which Shelf Awareness calls "a striking debut from a writer to watch." Her writing appears in Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, Lilith Magazine, and elsewhere. She is the recipient of the inaugural Artist Trust / Gar LaSalle Storyteller Award as wells grants and fellowships from V...
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Colin Winnette is the author of Revelation, Animal Collection, Fondly, Coyote, and Haints Stay. His writing has appeared in Playboy, McSweeney's, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
6:30pm PDT
Kundiman
Authors
Cristiana Baik is a poet residing and working in Oakland. Her work is published in Dusie, TYPO, American Letters & Commentary, The Conversant, and Drunken Boat, among other publications. Her short collection of poems, entitled The Stars Went Out and So Did the Moon, was released...
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Michelle Lin is a poet, community arts organizer, and author of A House Made of Water (Sibling Rivalry Press, 2017), a lyrical examination of sisterhood, the inheritance of stories, and survival from trauma. She has performed for Kearny Street Workshop’s APAture, Litquake, and...
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Mia Ayumi Malhotra is a Kundiman Fellow, and her poems have appeared in Greensboro Review, Drunken Boat, Best New Poets, and DISMANTLE: An Anthology of Writing from the VONA/Voices Writing Workshop. She received her MFA from the University of Washington and is a founding editor...
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Danny Thanh Nguyen is a Kundiman Fiction Fellow. His stories and personal essays have appeared in Foglifter, Gulf Coast, Hyphen Magazine, and the anthology The Full Spectrum. He is the editor of AS IS, an anthology of Vietnamese American art and literature.
Writer, artist, educator. It's all for the stories.
6:30pm PDT
Literary Speakeasy
Moderators
Dragonfly Community Arts
James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection "How Ghosts Travel" from Spuyten Duyvil Press, which was a finalist for the Ohioana Library Book Award. He hosts and curates the monthly Literary Speakeasy show at Martuni's, always held on the last Thursday of every month, which...
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Authors
Matt Carney is a Latinx human type residing in San Francisco. He holds an MA and MFA from SFSU. His work has appeared in A cappella Zoo, Inkwell, Red Light Lit, Writing Without Walls, sPARKLE & bLINK, Entropy, and in readings at eclectic or seedy bars. His short story 'On Becoming...
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Jase Peeples is an award-winning journalist, author, and storyteller. He is the former entertainment editor of
The Advocate, the leading LGBT-focused media outlet. He was named
“Journalist of the Year” at the 2014 L.A. Press Club National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Awards where he was praised for his “original angles and points of view” which cast “new light on many beaten tracks of entertainment journalism...
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Postcapitalism are Michael Holmes and Mike Linn. They believe, paraphrasing Dostoevsky, that ballads can save the world. Postcapitalism is excited to be part of Lit Crawl!
I'm a poet and writer who loves the sun, the ocean and dark chocolate with almonds. Nomadic Press published my poetry collection "How it Happens" last month. Feel free to talk with me about space travel, time travel, any portal through which I can escape from the current sociopolitical...
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Lead Writer, Zismonster Music
Emily Zisman is an unapologetic storyteller of the contemporary woman’s experience. She uses unabashed honesty and humor to punctuate the complexity of the entire escapade. Hilarity and devastation continue to ensue, and so in turn does she.
6:30pm PDT
Manic D celebrates Jack Hirschman's new Mallarme's For a Tomb of Anatole + Vote for Literature 2018
Authors
Matt Gonzalez is a poet, artist, activist, lawyer, and former politician. He has served on the SF Board of Supervisors, run for Mayor, and currently serves as Chief Attorney in the SF Public Defender's office.
Jack Hirschman is an American poet and social activist who has written more than fifty volumes of poetry and essays.
Jennifer Joseph is the founding publisher/editor at Manic D Press. She wonders where the time goes.
Jon Longhi has published four books of hilarious fiction with Manic D, all having to do with the absurdities of life in San Francisco.
Larry-Bob Roberts has a goal of being a pointer to queer cultural expressions. He is author of The International Homosexual Conspiracy (Manic D), maintainer of the Queer Things to Do in San Francisco events website, and the co-host of Smack Dab Open Mic at Dog Eared Books Castro...
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6:30pm PDT
Mission: Comics and Art
Authors
Manages Omega Black Comic Book.
Antoine Maillard is 28 and lives between Toulouse and Strasbourg (France). He obtained a master’s degree in Comics Studies from the European School of Image in Angoulême and a degree in illustration from the Decorative Arts School in Strasbourg (HEAR). He currently works as a freelance...
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Harry Nordlinger is an Illustrator, cartoonist, painter and videographer from San Francisco, California, having studied art at the University of Puget Sound and the Academy of Art University.
Writing, editing, building, launching. top of mind rn: AR, AI,apps, social justice, comics, rap & jazz.SF, Califaztlán.
6:30pm PDT
Mojo Down The Mountain
Authors
Dan has been a member of Netivot Shalom since it started! He is also a poet, with poems published in many journals and his first collection "My Little Book of Exiles" forthcoming from Eyewear Press. He makes his living as an IBEW electrician.
Judy Halebsky is the author of the poetry collections Sky=Empty, Tree Line and the chapbook Space/Gap/Interval/Distance. Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center have supported her work. Her passions include the Moth-style storytelling...
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Eliot Schain has run poetry series at the Beat 'N Path Cafe in Hoboken, NJ and Arts Benicia in Benicia, CA. His publications include American Romance and Westering Angels.
MFA Poetry Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran U. MA English Literature SF State U. BS Chemistry CSUEB. Feminist. Poet. Scholar of women poets of the 20th century. Data Privacy Analyst.
6:30pm PDT
Noir At The Bar, with Mystery Writers of America
Authors
Heather is a story teller by nature and loves the written word. In her career, she's written short stories, novels, comedy acts, plays, television treatments, ad copy, commercials, and even ghost-wrote a book on how to be a successful temp. She was unemployed at the time. Murder is...
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Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 27 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories. She is probably the only writer to have both an Edgar and an honorary doctorate in theology.
Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for two sisters, Pamela and Mary O'Shaughnessy.
Together the O'Shaughnessy sisters have written twelve Nina Reilly legal thrillers, a stand-alone thriller, Keeper of The Keys, and one short story collection, Sinister Shorts.
Gigi Pandian is a USA Today bestselling and Agatha Award-winning mystery author, breast cancer survivor, and accidental almost-vegan. She writes the #ownvoices Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mysteries, Accidental Alchemist mysteries, and locked-room mystery short stories.
Kirk Russell is a writer and widow of late award-winning chef-owner of San Francisco’s Zuni Cafe Judy Rodgers.
Terry grew up in Texas, and her Samuel Craddock series, set in the fictitious town of Jarrett Creek, is based on the fascinating people, landscape, and culture of the small town where her grandparents lived.The first book in the series A Killing at Cotton Hill received the Macavity...
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Author
Sheldon Siegel is the New York Times, Amazon, and USA Today best-selling author of ten critically acclaimed legal thrillers featuring San Francisco criminal defense attorneys Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez. Originally published traditionally by Bantam and Putnam, it took Sheldon five...
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Jacqueline’s first novel,
Maisie Dobbs, was a National Bestseller and received an array of accolades, including New York Times Notable Book 2003, a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Mystery 2003, and a BookSense Top Ten selection. In addition, the novel was nominated for 7 awards, including the Edgar® for Best Novel—only...
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6:30pm PDT
Odd Salon: Cemetery Stories
Authors
Loren Rhoads is the author of 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die and Wish You Were Here: Adventures in Cemetery Travel. She blogs about graveyards as travel destinations at CemeteryTravel.com.Loren is also the author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes, a...
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Casey Selden is a Fellow of Odd Salon and a fermentation dabbler. She’s made beer, cider and wine for kicks in her kitchen.
6:30pm PDT
Out of Bounds
Authors
Creative Director/Founder, Conviction 2 Change LLC
Just Duléa is an author, songwriter, educator, and spoken word artist from the East Coast. She is the Founder/CEO/Creative Director of Conviction 2 Change LLC, a publishing company devoted to helping those in under-represented communities be heard. Being an African-American, queer...
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Molly Olis Krost is a Bay Area based playwright currently pursuing her MFA in Playwriting at SFSU. Growing up raised by Filipina mother and Jewish father made her aware of the internal collisions that come with struggling to bridge two different cultures together into one identity...
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6:30pm PDT
Perfectly Queer Reading Series
Authors
Michael Alenyikov's novel, "Ivan and Misha" won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction and was a Finalist for the Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction. He received the 2013 Gina Berriault Award from San Francisco State University. He's a MacDowell Fellow and his stories have...
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Nona Caspers' new book The Fifth Woman, a Novel in Stories (Sarabande Books, 2018), was selected by Stacy D’erasmo for the Mary McCarthy award. The story, "Frontiers" was originally published in Cimarron Review and was selected by Best American Short Stories as a "Distinguished...
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Margo Perin’s book publications include Plexiglass; The Opposite of Hollywood; Only the Dead Can Kill: Stories from Jail; and How I Learned to Cook & Other Writings on Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships. Her poetry has been anthologized in Dissent: Against War and Capitalism...
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6:30pm PDT
Red Light Lit
Authors
Somewhere sandwiched between a novella about a fella, a fleshy bit of flash fiction and a prose poem colliding with a short story lies the work of Peter Bullen. His first book of short fiction, Wallflower , came out a couple of years ago from Nomadic Press.
Vanessa Rochelle Lewis is a queer, lush-bodied, Black, femme performance artist, writer, actress, filmmaker, educator, facilitator, orator and Faerie Princess Mermaid Gangsta for The Revolution. She loves to flirt, laugh, perform, crack corny jokes, and insert Octavia Butler references...
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Sarah Bethe Nelson is a songwriter, musician, and poet living in San Francisco, California. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She is currently recording a new album for a Summer 2019 release and her most recent collection of poetry Illuminate...
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Brontez Purnell is a
zinester, writer, dancer and musician, who now lives in California.Brontez was originally from Triana, Alabama, then moving to Huntsville, Alabama, and then to Chattanooga, Tennessee, where he released
Schlepp Fanzine while still living at home. He then relo...
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Riss is bad with names but still wants to know yours. They write poetry, prose, short stories, and hand-written letters. They have featured at Quiet Lightning, Red Light Lit, Get Lit, You’re Going to Die, and more. You can enjoy some of their published work in sPARKLE & bLINK, Buddy...
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6:30pm PDT
Rolling Writers: Rolling With The Punches
Authors
Clyde Always, for the promotion of bliss, writes and recites his own blend of tall tales and clever verses.
Michael Crabtree is a multi-instrumentalists, a singer-songwriter, and the steady rolling musical soul of Rolling Writers.
Sean Craven is like Richard Corey from the waist up, Bartleby the Scrivener from the waist down.Many people to expect him to burst into stardom at any moment. Suckers.
Jon Sindell, the curator of Rolling Writers, wrote the story collections The Roadkill Collection and Family Happiness (both from Big Table Publishing). His humor has appeared dozens of times in lit mags and before barnyard animals in petting zoos everywhere. Much of his writing...
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Talk to me about speculative fiction, writing for healing, experimental writing, and creative non-fiction! Talk to me about your manuscript if you're looking for an editor; I'm a freelance editor who works with individual writers at any stage of the writing process.
Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Topdrawer
6:30pm PDT
Sanctuary City: Voices In The Dark
Authors
Laurie Ann Doyle is the author of World Gone Missing, winner of the Nautilus Book Award in fiction and praised by bestselling author Peter Orner as "a gorgeous debut." Laurie's stories and essays appear in The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, Jabberwock Review, Under the Sun, and many...
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Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong is a multidisciplinary artist and software developer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has lived in nine states and two continents. Art is a way for her to traverse seen and unseen geographies. Bonnie's poetry has been published in such journals as The California...
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Paul Ocampo is the Development Director at Advancing Justice - Asian Law Caucus. He was born in the Philippines and came to the U.S. at the age of eleven. He earned a B.A. in English at U.C. Berkeley, an M.A. in Asian American Studies at UCLA, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at...
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Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at ZYZZYVA and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel...
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Author, Alfred A. knopf
Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. She wrote “Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure” (Grove/Atlantic) and “The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty” (Gotham/Penguin...
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Maw Shein Win's writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Poetry International, Fanzine, The Fabulist, and others. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. Along with composer and musician, Amanda...
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6:30pm PDT
SF Chronicle: Roast Of The Little Man
Authors
Don Asmussen is an American cartoonist working for the San Francisco Chronicle and Universal Press Syndicate. He was born in Rhode Island. He worked at the Portland Press Herald, The Detroit News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, and Time Magazine before joining the San Francisco Chronicle...
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Peter Hartlaub is The San Francisco Chronicle’s pop culture critic and host of the podcast The Big Event. The Bay Area native has worked at The Chronicle since 2000, and was a Chronicle paperboy from 1982 to 1984. He reviews movies, television and comedy, covers entertainment, creates...
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Lily Janiak joined the San Francisco Chronicle as theater critic in May 2016. Previously, her writing appeared in Theatre Bay Area, American Theatre, SF Weekly, the Village Voice and HowlRound. She holds a BA in theater studies from Yale and an MA in drama from San Francisco Stat...
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Aidin Vaziri covers pop music for the San Francisco Chronicle. Along with his off-the-cuff interviews for the weekly Pop Quiz column, he spends most days shuffling through stacks of new releases and nights at Bay Area concert venues, big and small. He also reports on emerging trends...
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6:30pm PDT
Small Press Distribution: A Spotlight on the Bay
Authors
Liam Curley is a writer from Wallkill, New York and a graduate of Ithaca College. He works at Small Press Distribution and the Oakland Public Library. He is a board member of Aggregate Space Gallery and Make Oakland Better Now and volunteers with 826 Valencia. He was the employee...
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Jacq Greyja is a writer from California. They are a graduate student in the Creative Writing MFA program at San Francisco State University, where they are a William Dickey Poetry Fellow. Jacq's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Hold: A Journal, BAMPFA, Bushel Collective, Bettering...
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Jocelyn Saidenberg is a Bay Area writer, whose books include Mortal City, Cusp, Dusky, Negativity, Shipwreck, and Dead Letter. kith & kin(The Elephants, 2018) is her most recent book. She is one of the editors of KRUPSKAYA Books and teaches at UC Berkeley and San Quentin State Pr...
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giovanni singleton is the author of Ascension, informed by the life and work of Alice Coltrane, which won the California Book Award Gold Medal and AMERICAN LETTERS: works on paper, a collection of visual art and poetry. She is founding editor of nocturnes (re)view of the literary...
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6:30pm PDT
Sound and Fury: The Arts Resistance and Erotic Eclectic Fight Back
Authors
Janina Glasov was a young journalist, fiction writer and burgeoning filmmaker. Glasov wrote for The Bay Guardian and Oakland Magazine and was awarded The Sander Thoenes Journalism Research Award and the Gregory and Toni Prince Research Award for Bad Girls and Their Stories of Glory...
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Victoria (Vicky) is a Mexican Trans Woman. She is a Poet, Visual Artist, & Writer. Graduated from CSU Monterey Bay & she currently lives in the Bay Area trying to settle with post-graduate life & something steady. She writes with passion & elegance in honest & bold poetry that speaks...
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A recent addition to The Erotic Eclectic, Genevieve Marie has had a lifelong love affair with dance and theater. From her childhood she had trained in many forms of dance including ballet, jazz, modern, and tap. In recent years she has turned to belly dance, fire dancing, and burlesque...
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Liz MacDonald holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from San Jose State University. You can read her writing in Lonely Planet's anthology, A Moveable Feast, or listen on NPR's Only a Game. She lives in rural southern Monterey County with her German shepherd, Ringo, and a hive of honeybees...
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Carri Newhouse shifts shapes within bellydance, lyrical, burlesque and flow arts. These and her passion for cultivating community arts take her from quiet Pacific Grove to That Thing In The Desert. She is co-creator of three passionate teenagers and HipNautic Flowers dance tribe...
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Creative Director, Erotic Eclectic
Janice Blaze Rocke is the Creative Director of The Erotic Eclectic, a loosely affiliated group of creatives that produce multimedia, literary based performance art featuring exotic dance performance. Janice has a degree in creative writing and has been involved with theatrical and...
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Simon Rogghe grew up in Belgium and studied philosophy in Netherlands, France, and New York. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. in French Literature at U.C.Berkeleу. He is an author of Green Lions, a collaborative book of poetry.
Zarina Zabrisky is an award-winning American author of five books published internationally, including a novel "We, Monsters" and three short story collections, "Iron," "A Cute Tombstone," "Explosion" and "Green Lions," a book of collaborative poetry co-written with Simon Rogghe...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Noisebridge
6:30pm PDT
Sunday Stories Presents: Brown People Don't Read?
Authors
Senior Editor, Somos en escrito
Lisa reads, writes, and rants about the things that tick her off and amuse her. She follows trends and looks back at how the past affects our present. She lives and writes in the Bay Area. Her writing focuses on intersections of blackness, womanhood, and Americaness. She earned her...
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Jenny Irizary is working on a memoir about growing up along the Russian River. Her work is published in Sick Lit, Squalorly, Snapping Twig, Communion, Atticus Review, and other journals.
Blanca Torres earned a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from Mills College and is a founding member of Sunday Stories. She is finishing a short story collection and a memoir about her mother’s childhood in Mexico.
Norma Liliana Valdez is an alumna of the VONA/Voices Workshop, the Writing Program at UC Berkeley Extension, and a 2014 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence. A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, her poems have appeared in Calyx, As It Ought To Be, Dismantle, and elsewhere. She lives...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Beauty Bar
6:30pm PDT
Surviving Encounters of the Human & Animal Kind: The San Francisco Writers' Grotto
Authors
Chair, Writing & Literature, California College of the Arts
Faith Adiele writes a travel column for Detour/The Miami Herald, and her books include The Nigerian Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems and Meeting Faith, a memoir about becoming Thailand’s first Black Buddhist nun that won the PEN Open Book Award. Her media credits include...
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Ingrid Rojas Contreras is author of the novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, a silver medal winner in First Fiction at the California Book Awards and a New York Times editor's choice. She was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New...
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Kristen Cosby is a freelance writer, editor, and educator. She is currently at work on her first book project thanks to generous support from the Jan Michalski Fondation, the MacDowell Artist's Colony, the Corperation of Yaddo, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her...
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Rachel Levin is a freelance journalist who has written about pastrami and Pt Reyes, speed-dating mothers and crack-addict ex-con ultra-marathoners, and more for such publications as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Outside, Lucky Peach, Sunset, and Eater as its first San Francisco...
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Writer, SF Writers Grotto
Roberto Lovato is an educator, journalist and writer based at The Writers Grotto in San Francisco, California. He is he author of Unforgetting: A Memoir of Family, Migration, Gangs and Revolution in the Americas (Harper Collins). Lovato is also a Co-Founder of #DignidadLiteraria...
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Zoe Young is a fiction writer and journalist. She holds a writing M.F.A. from California College of the Arts and has taught at San Francisco State University. Her short fiction has been published in A Tale of Four Cities Review and The Bensonhurst Review. Her short story “Angel...
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6:30pm PDT
That 80s Show: Love, Like, and Angst in the Awesome Era
Authors
Alex DiSclafani hails from Florida and now calls San Francisco home. In her day job, she works in tech, where she helps prevent real-world harm to children. On her long commutes she writes.She published work in Dying Dahlia Review and The Ginger Collect. Her favorite show is Golden...
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Nada Djordjevich is a writer and consultant. She attended the screenwriting program at UCLA and has degrees from Harvard University and UC Berkeley. Her screenplays and fiction have received recognition from Vermont Studio Center, the Squaw Valley Writers Conference, American Zoetrope...
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Board Member, Harris and Eliza Kempner Fund
Rachel Hamilton is an Improviser, Improv teacher and an Emmy-nominated writer. A former main-stage performer at The Second City in Chicago, she teaches improv workshops around the world, thinks big thoughts and likes you already.
Owner, Allison Muir Design
Allison Muir is a San Franciscan born writer, artist, and interior designer. During her varied career she has designed D.I.Y. projects for ReadyMade magazine, coordinated postproduction for clients such as Industrial Light and Magic, Dreamworks and Pixar, and produced and written...
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Mayra Padilla is a born and raised New Jersey native who lives in San Francisco and might still be recovering from the '80s. A branding and marketing consultant, she is working on a memoir entitled Survival Delia. She is a devotee and lover of words and stories and you can follow...
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Meika Rouda is a writer and producer whose essays have appeared in The Huffington Post, Fresh Yarn, The Next Family and Underwired Magazine as well as the upcoming anthology "She's Got This". Meika is a prior resident filmmaker for the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival and has consulted...
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Pamela Alma Weymouth writes for Truthdig, Justmeans and the HuffingtonPost. She teaches humor writing in San Francisco and tells stories on any stage that will have her. She lives with 1.5 puppies, a flock of hens and 2 boys, which explains why her columns are not as regular as Jack...
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6:30pm PDT
The Coop's Literary Relay Race: The ManMaid's Tale
Authors
Write/ edit/ curate content on travel/ food/ drink/ art/ design for Lonely Planet, Airbnb, BBC, Time Inc mags, sundry others.
Karen Bjorneby is the author of Hurricane Season. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in such places as The Threepenny Review, New Letters, The Sun, North American Review, StoryQuarterly, New Orleans Review, and anthologized online at Poetry Daily. She’s received a Pushcart Special...
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Jeanne Carstensen is a journalist based in San Francisco. Her coverage of the refugee crisis in Europe ran in The Nation, PRI’s The World, Foreign Policy and other publications. She’s working on a book about the deadliest day of the crisis on the Greek island of Lesvos, told...
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Joshua Citrak - author and podcaster, host of Do Better and Hangin’ with Old Lew available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Store.
Andrea Coombes is a staff writer at NerdWallet. Her personal-finance stories have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald and elsewhere. In other news, she's working on a book about unreliable mothers. She walks her dog every day, almost. Sometimes...
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Susie Hara is the author of Finder of Lost Objects, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and winner of a first-place International Latino Book Award. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Stirring up a Storm and Best American Erotica. Her play Lost and Found...
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Scott James is the author of TRIAL BY FIRE, the story of the Station nightclub fire that killed 100 when the rock band Great White ignited fireworks as part of its show. Since 2009 Scott's reporting has appeared in The New York Times, and he is the recipient of three Emmy Awards for...
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Member, Castro Writers Cooperative
Mercilee Jenkins is a playwright/performance artist, published poet and occasional fiction writer. Her poem, Peonies in a Pandemic was recently published in the San Francisco Chronicle. Her solo performance piece, My First Boss, was presented at the Marsh International Solo Performance...
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Gay San Francisco writer and malcontent whose memoir, short fiction and novel excerpts have recently appeared in Chaleur, Tin House, Sixfold and a handful of other discerning litmags.
Co-Founder, Castro Writers Cooperative
Shana Mahaffey is the author of Sounds Like Crazy (NAL/Penguin), a San Francisco Chronicle notable book for Fall 2009. She is a survivor of catechism and cat scratch fever and is a co-founder of the Castro Writers' Cooperative. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including...
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I'm the author of a memoir and two novels--all currently in print. I'm also the founder of the Lit Camp writers conference, as well as Creative Caffeine Daily, an online community for writers.
Susanne Pari's most recent novel, IN THE TIME OF OUR HISTORY, examines the entangled lives of an Iranian American family grappling with generational culture clashes and the rebellion of its women. It was an IndieNext pick, Target Book Club pick, a 2023 Women’s National Book Association...
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Jessica Raya’s latest novel, Please Proceed to the Nearest Exit, was one of iPad Books’ Summer's Most Anticipated in 2017. Before that, The Buenos Aires Broken Hearts Club, published in four languages under a pseudonym, was a Redbook Top 10 Summer Read and a Kirkus Best Books...
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Douglas Robson is an award-winning journalist. He has covered professional tennis since 2002, and written about other sports ranging from cycling and soccer to America’s Cup and the Iditarod. He also has written about business and the business of sports.
Do you remember an embarrassing moment? Let's talk about it. I am a storyteller and a storymonger. There is power in telling stories, event the embarrassing ones, and I strive to harness this power through video, audio, prose and live performance. I teach multimedia storytelling...
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Courage Seeker, The Castro Writers Coop
Writer, editor, journalist, political science professor, environmental non-profit director, global warrior for indigenous peoples and the environment, feminist, anti-racist, musician. What Would Judith Do?
Cameron Tuttle is an
American author. She began her career as a writer for an advertising agency before writing her first book, "The Paranoid's Pocket Guide," which landed her on Oprah. Inspired by the movie Thelma and Louise, Tuttle went on the lam in 1996, doing research for what would become the Bad Girl's...
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Art /Design/ lifestyle Journalist San Francisco Bay Area.
6:30pm PDT
The MFA Writing Program at California College of the Arts Presents: The #1 Bestseller: SF Writing Now
Authors
Tom Barbash is the author of five books, including Dakota Winters. His short story collection Stay Up With Me was nominated for the Folio Prize and picked as a Best Book of the Year by the Independent of London, NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Jose Mercury News. His...
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Jasmin Darznik is the author of the debut novel Song of a Captive Bird, a fictional account of Iran’s trailblazing woman poet, Forugh Farrokhzad, which was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as an “Editor’s Choice.” She is also the author of the New York Times bestseller The...
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CCA
i am a poet from new jersey, by way of bed-stuy & many couches - i promise to have plenty of copies of my little booklets, it means the world to share my poems & ill have oodles of free everything to give & let go - i love writing, i love this opportunity, and i cannot wait to celebrate...
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Professor of Writing, California College of the Arts
Joseph Lease's critically acclaimed books of poetry include The Body Ghost (Coffee House Press, 2018), Testify (Coffee House Press, 2011), and Broken World (Coffee House Press, 2007). Lease’s poems "'Broken World' (For James Assatly)" and "Send My Roots Rain" were anthologized in...
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Gabe Martinez is an ex-farm boy, ex-New Yorker, ex-advertising lawyer, and ex of many men in the Castro. He writes fictional accounts of these experiences and other fun social commentary. He is writing his first novel about self-actualization.
He received his BA and JD from Columbia...
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Professor and Chair, MFA Writing, California College of the Arts
Leslie Carol Roberts is Professor and Chair of MFA Writing at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. She is also faculty with the Architectural Ecologies Lab at CCA, where she founded the ECOPOESIS Movement with Adam Marcus and Chris Falliers, which explores embodied messaging...
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6:30pm PDT
The Writing Salon: A Roar Before Twenty
Authors
Before ever taking a writing class, Junse Kim worked as a concert promoter, Peace Corps volunteer, managerial consultant, scriptwriter, nonprofit fundraiser, and “full-time” temp. He has since received a Pushcart Prize (for his short story “Yangban”), a Faulkner Award, and...
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Nate Klug is a poet, translator, and essayist. He is the author of Rude Woods, a modern translation of Virgil's Eclogues (The Song Cave, 2013), Anyone (Chicago, 2015), and Hosts and Guests (Princeton, 2020). His poems and essays have appeared in The Nation, The New York Review of...
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Kerry Muir‘s creative nonfiction has appeared in Kenyon Review Online, Crazyhorse, Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. Her essay collection, BLUR & Other Essays, was recently named one of three finalists in Bauhan Publishing’s 2017 Monadnock Essay Collection Prize, and her essay...
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Lori Ostlund’s first collection of stories, The Bigness of the World, received the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, the California Book Award for First Fiction, and the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award. It was shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize...
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Brian Tierney is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry at Stanford University. He is a graduate of the Bennington College’s MFA Writing Seminars, and holds a BA in English and Journalism, as well as an MA in Literature, from Duquesne University, where he was a teaching fellow...
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6:30pm PDT
Tuesday Night Social: Prompt With A Vengeance
Moderators
Heather Bourbeau is a Berkeley-based writer. She was a Tupelo Press30/30 poet, a journalist whose work appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, and a former Political Affairs Officer with the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia. Her first collection of...
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Work by Andrew O. Dugas has appeared in Unlikely Stories, 100WordStory, LITnIMAGE, and elsewhere. His novel Sleepwalking in Paradise was published in 2014 by Numina Press.
Authors
Lucy Flood
Lucy Flood is the author of the forthcoming novel The Way Minnows Kiss. Her writing has appeared in InsideClimate News, The Atlantic, and the Jackson Hole News and Guide, in addition to other places. One of her favorite places to write is under her fig tree.
If Matt Leibel were an element on the periodic table, he would likely be called Leibelium. In such a case, it would then be super-weird that he is also a fiction writer, published in places like Wigleaf, Juked, Diagram, Barcelona Review, and Carolina Quarterly. DM him if you’re...
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Anne Trausch's favorite word is lollygag. Anyone who's traveled with her knows why: she has a propensity to linger in wonder, bemusement, or delight. She channels that inspiration into short fiction, screenplays, and her day job as a writer-designer at IDEO.
Rachel Wong works as a researcher, interviewing and observing people for a living. She's also produced radio stories for KALW. When she's not researching, producing, or writing, she's dancing alongside her infant daughter.
Liz Worthy hails from Montana. She has shown her art at Intersection for the Arts, The Roxie, 826 Valencia, Ruby’s Clay Studio, Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, and the Pacific Ocean (where messages in bottles bob towards Japan). Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency...
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Sonya Worthy photographs and interviews people reading books in public places, like laundromats, coffee shops, and parks.
6:30pm PDT
Tuesdays Untitled Presents: Death, Dharma & Drag
Authors
"If I had a magic wand, what would you wish for?" Hospice and Palliative Care physician, mother, wife, sister and daughter, writer, magic wand-bearer and radio host, and lover of all furry things that purr, Dawn is passionate about discovering what matters most and empowering each...
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Writer
Japa is a Stanford graduate turned Astrologer turned rockstar turned Kundalini Yoga teacher. She writes horoscopes for a website and songs for her all-female rock band, "Down in Front." Claims to fame include being pictured in National Geographic playing a sousaphone while riding...
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Director, Kundalini Yoga Center
Awtar practices and teaches Kundalini Yoga and trains teachers internationally. She lives with her husband of 40 years in colorful Haight Ashbury. They have an adult daughter. She strives to promote social justice, access, and equity in her yoga community.
Twenty years ago, Julia Query made the award winning documentary Live Nude Girls UNITE! about the unionization of the iconic Lusty Lady peep show. She has a secret life as a therapist and sometimes publishes essays. She has two sons, one husband and is still a queer, femme, lesbian...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Serendipity
6:30pm PDT
Voices and Writings From Behind Prison Walls
Authors
Alan Black teaches creative writing to inmates at Folsom Women's Facility. He attended the birth of Litquake in a Tenderloin bar in the late-20th century.
Scott Bohlmann is an amateur writer and long-term prison volunteer. He currently teaches African American History, Philosophy and Creative Writing with the Yardtime Literary Program at three different CDCR institutions.
David Corbett is the award-winning author of six novels, including 2018's The Long-Lost Love Letters of Doc Holliday, plus the story collection Thirteen Confessions, and The Art of Character ("A writer's bible"—Elizabeth Brundage).
Kent Zimmerman, Yardtime Literary Program co-founder, is also the co-author of New York Times bestsellers Hell's Angel with Ralph "Sonny" Barger, Operation Family Secrets as well as London Times bestseller Rotten: No Irish No Blacks No Dogs with John "Johnny Rotten" Lydon.
Saturday October 20, 2018 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
HOMEY
6:30pm PDT
Women Who Submit Writing
Authors
Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet and performance artist. She was born and raised in Hilo, Hawaii and lives in San Francisco. Her poetry manuscript, La Chica's Field Guide to Banzai Living, received the San Francisco Foundation's Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award in 2014. She has curated...
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Attendee
L.S. Johnson lives in Northern California, where she feeds her cats by working in a library. She is the author of the Chase & Daniels series of gothic novellas and over 40 short stories. Her first collection, Vacui Magia, won the North Street Book Prize and was a finalist for the...
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Janna Layton lives in Oakland, California with her wonderful cat Eponine. Her poetry and fiction have been published in various literary journals, including The New Yorker, Apex, Mythic Delirium, Zone 3, and Caesura.
Dominica Phetteplace is the founder of the San Francisco branch of Women Who Submit Writing. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, Asimov's and Clarkesworld. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award.
6:30pm PDT
Young Adult Writers of Mills College
Authors
Anna Erice graduated from UC Davis with degrees in English, Philosophy, and Education. She is pursuing an MFA in prose and young adult fiction at Mills College. She lives in Novato with her husband and their two chubby cats. She works as a caretaker for children with developmental...
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John Gregan is a senior at Mills College, where he is majoring in Creative Writing with a minor in Queer Studies. Originally from a former biker town just outside of Los Angeles, John's writing focuses on grief, trans masculinity, family, and ghosts.
Leah O'Sullivan is currently pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing at Mills College. She previously attended University of Puget Sound and graduated with a B.A. in English in 2016. She has had prose and poetry works published in CrossCurrents Literary & Arts Magazine, Wetlands Magazine...
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Kathryn Reiss was born in Massachusetts, grew up in Ohio, and received B.A. degrees in English and German from Duke University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Michigan. After college, she lived in Bonn, Germany as a Fulbright Scholar, and during this time...
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Ariadne Wolf will complete her MFA and enter a Ph.D program in 2019. Her creative nonfiction has been published in ten literary journals, including Rascal and Echo Literary Journal, and two anthologies. She writes at the intersection of mythology and trauma, spirituality and mermaids...
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6:30pm PDT
Zoetic Press
Authors
Taylor Imel is a Chicago based writer. She holds a Bachelors degree in Nonfiction Writing from Columbia College. Her current project centers around women, their bodies and the rosary---talk with her about any or all. Previous publications include Hypertrophic Press (Pushcart Prize...
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David S. Maduli is a father of two, veteran public school teacher, deejay, and author of the chapbook 00:33:33 (thirty-three and a third) (Zoetic Press, 2018). He is a proud alumnus of the VONA, Las Dos Brujas, and Napa Valley Writers' workshops, and he was the 2011 recipient of the...
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Effie Seiberg is a fantasy and science fiction writer. Her stories can be found in the "Women Destroy Science Fiction!" special edition of Lightspeed Magazine (winner of the 2015 British Fantasy Award for Best Anthology), "The Best of Galaxy's Edge 2015-2017 Analog, Fireside Fiction...
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Sean VanSickel is a writer living in Bakersfield, CA, where he works as an English teacher. He's a former staff writer at The Runner (Cal State University Bakersfield's student newspaper) and has been published in The Sigma Tau Delta Rectangle. This is his first publication since...
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8:00pm PDT
An Evening with The Rumpus
Authors
San Francisco native Nato Green is the country’s only semi-functional hybrid of comedian, writer, and union organizer. Nato recently starred in the streaming series Laughter Against the Machine on Means.tv, the first worker-owned post-capitalist streaming platform. He also appears...
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Lizz Huerta is a Mexi-Rican writer from the Borderlands of Southern California. Her work has appeared in The Rumpus, The Cut, The Miami Rail, Portland Review and various anthologies. Her first novel, The Lost Dreamer, a young adult novel set in a fantastical mesoamerican world is...
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R.O. Kwon's first novel, The Incendiaries, was published by Riverhead in July of 2018. She is a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow. Her writing has appeared in The Guardian, Vice, BuzzFeed, Noon, Time, Electric Literature, Playboy, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere...
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Editor, The Rumpus
Christine H. Lee is the author of a memoir (TELL ME EVERYTHING YOU DON’T REMEMBER), which was featured in Self magazine, Time, The New York Times, and NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. Her short fiction and essays have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Guernica, The Rumpus, The New...
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Christine No is a Korean American poet, essayist and producer. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two time Pushcart Prize nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee. You can find her work in: The Rumpus, sPARKLE+bLINK, Columbia Journal, Story Online, Apogee, Atlas and Alice, and various...
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Matthew Siegel is the author of Blood Work, which received the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection from the Forward Arts Foundation in the UK. Siegel’s poems and essays have appeared in the Academy of American Poets...
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8:00pm PDT
Anthony Bourdain
Authors
“my poems emerge from the dark of you meeting i. then there is something more than light. there is life.” Silvi Alcivar received her MFA in Creative Nonfiction writing from The Pennsylvania State University and earned a BA in English and Women’s Studies, with a focus on fine...
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Nicole Hankton, a Bay Area Native, is the youngest of six and a member of a huge extended family. Big families come together around food, and so much happens during those gatherings. Life, family and home-cooked meals make up a recipe of sorts, and she’ll share her observations...
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Leslie Jonath is the author or co-author of many children's books and two cookbooks, including Miette. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sheri Giblin is a San Francisco Bay Area photographer specializing in food. Her work has appeared in numerous cookbooks and magazines.
Owner and Curator, Secession Art & Design
Eden Stein has lived in SF since 1999. Her first experience with writing was in the 2nd grade when she wrote a poem that got published. Throughout her teenage years, she wrote a zine called 7th Street that was sponsored by Maximum Rock & Roll and got global recognition. She traveled...
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Hiya Swanhuyser was born on the ninth floor of UCSF, earned her MFA from USF, and has lived in the city for 14 yearsthis time. Her work has appeared in SF Weekly, San Francisco Magazine, 7x7 Magazine, and her Backstage Heroes column runs on the KQED Arts website.
8:00pm PDT
As-Am Authors Spill the Tea
Authors
Kirstin Chen's novel, Bury What We Cannot Take, was named a best book of 2018 by Entropy, Popsugar and Book Bub, and a top pick of the season by The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper's Bazaar, and In Style. She is also the author of Soy Sauce for Beginners. She has received awards from...
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Chair, English and the Humanities, Cogswell College
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is an East Coast native living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she recently served as a San Francisco Library Laureate. Her third prose chapbook, Don't Give Up on Alan Greenspan, was selected as the winner of CutBank's 2018 contest and will be released...
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Akemi Johnson is the author of Night In The American Village: Women in the Shadows of the U.S. Military Bases on Okinawa, forthcoming from The New Press in 2019. Akemi has contributed to The Nation, NPR’s All Things Considered and Code Switch, Travel + Leisure, Roads & Kingdoms...
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Rachel Khong is the author of Goodbye, Vitamin , pubished by Henry Holt and Co.
Nayomi Munaweera's debut novel, "Island of a Thousand Mirrors," won the Commonwealth Regional Prize for Asia and was a Target Book Club selection. Munaweera's second novel, "What Lies Between Us," won the Godage Prize for Best English Novel.
8:00pm PDT
Authors of The Ruby
Authors
Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the story collection Belly Up, winner of the Believer award. Her writing has been published in Tin House, Conjunctions, BOMB, Vice, NOON, and Guernica.She is an editor at large for McSweeney's.
Jennifer S. Cheng’s work includes poetry, lyric essay, and image-text forms. She is the author of MOON: LETTERS, MAPS, POEMS (2018), selected by Bhanu Kapil for the Tarpaulin Sky Book Award; HOUSE A (2016), selected by Claudia Rankine for the Omnidawn Poetry Book Prize; and INVOCATION...
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Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of the novel, The Border of Paradise, which was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR and one of the 25 Best Novels of 2016 by Electric Literature. She received a 2018 Whiting Award, was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists...
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8:00pm PDT
Beyond Wakanda
Authors
Your friendly neighborhood super villain and ontological machanicist moved to Oakland to write his latest graphic novel series, In Search of the Black Panther Party., and also franchise villainy to the west coast. He is also author of the sci fi soap opera, Babylon, and the founder...
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Attendee, Krypton Radio
Thaddeus Howze is an award-winning writer, editor, podcaster and activist creating speculative fiction, scientific, political and cultural commentary from his office in Hayward, California. Thaddeus works as a writer and editor for two magazines, the Good Men Project, a men's magazine...
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President, Bay Area Generations
Amos White is a haiku poet and author, producer, director and activist. He is author of "The Sound of the Web: Haiku and Poetry on Facebook and Twitter" (CreateSpace, 2013, www.amazon.com/Sound-Web-Poetry-Facebook-Twitter/dp/1456581473/) and is published in several national and international...
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Founder, Ancestral Futures
Audrey T. Williams is a Poet|Writer|Activist. In 2019, she earned her MFA in Writing from California College of the Arts. She writes through a lens of Black, multi-cultural ancestry infused with flights of fantasy. Current projects: Of Chutneys and Chitlins: Stories from a Multi-cultural...
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Attendee, AfroSurreal Writers Workshop
Dera R. Williams is an Oakland writer who writes in the fiction, nonfiction and memoir genres. A child of the Great Migration, she moved to California from Arkansas at two years old. As a family historian, Dera researches and writes about her family and has assisted others in researching...
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8:00pm PDT
Borderlands Cafe
Authors
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of The City in the Middle of the Night (January 2019), and hosts the Writers With Drinks reading series.
Marie Brennan is the World Fantasy and Hugo Award-nominated author of the Memoirs of Lady Trent.
Megan E. O'Keefe writes fantasy and science fiction stories. Her fantasy debut novel, Steal the Sky, is the winner of the Gemmell Morningstar Award.
Nancy Tingley, like the curator protagonist in her Jenna Murphy mystery series (A Death in Bali), is a specialist in Southeast Asian art.
8:00pm PDT
Celebrating Mission At Tenth
Authors
Randall Babtkis is the Founding Editor of Mission at Tenth. He is currently at work on a novel called The Origginals. The second "g" is silent.
Carolyn Cooke is the author of The Bostons, Daughters of the Revolution, and Amor & Psycho. She teaches in the MFA Program at CIIS.
Anne Finger is the author of A Woman, in Bed (just out from Cinco Puntos Press) and Call Me Ahab (winner of the Prairie Schooner Prize and nominee for the Northern California Book Award). She has taught disability studies and creative writing at both the university level and in...
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Paula Junn is a maker of stories, photography, and jewelry. She moved to San Francisco over four years ago to pursue a dream of becoming more of herself, and she continues to follow that path, wherever it takes her.
Julie Levak is the Editor of Mission at Tenth and a nonfiction writer who is sometimes as VanishingSF.
Jenni Olson is a writer, queer media historian, filmmaker, and online pioneer. Her most recent film, The Royal Road, premiered at Sundance in 2015 and is now available worldwide on DVD and digital. Jenni is the proud proprietor of Butch.org — a conceptual worldwide safe space dedicated...
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Tony Robles, "The People's Poet," was born in San Francisco and is the author of two collections of poetry and short stories, Cool Don't Live Here No More--A letter to San Francisco and Fingerprints of a Hunger Strike. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco...
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8:00pm PDT
Cogswell College: Get Gory
Authors
Ron Austin's book Avery Colt Is A Snake, A Thief, A Liar is forthcoming in the fall of 2019. His story "Cauldron" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Nomadic Press, founder
J. K. Fowler is the founder and executive director of Nomadic Press, a community-focused literary and arts non-profit with operations in Oakland, CA, Des Moines, IA, and Brooklyn, NY. He also serves as the Director of Communications for Peace and Partnerships at the Oakland Peace...
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Molly Giles has published four award-winning collections of stories: Rough Translations, which won The Flannery O’Connor Prize, the Boston Globe Award, and The Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Award; Creek Walk, which won The Small Press Best Fiction Award, the California Commonwealth...
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TOMAS MONIZ’s debut novel,
Big Familia, was a finalist for the 2020 PEN/Hemingway, the LAMBDA, and the Foreward Indies Awards. He edited
Rad Dad and
Rad Families. He’s the recipient of the SF Literary Arts Foundation’s 2016 Award and was awarded the 2020 Artist Affiliate for Headlands Center for Arts. He has stuff on the internet but loves penpals: PO Box 3555, Berkeley CA 94703. He promises to write back...
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Keenan Norris's novel Brother and The Dancer won the 2012 James D. Houston Award. His next book, By The Lemon Tree, came out in September 2018. He's also completing a book about Richard Wright and the probkem with "Chi-raq." He holds an M.F.A. from Mills College and a Ph.D. from...
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July Westhale is a poet and essayist living in Oakland, CA. She is the author of Via Negativa (forthcoming from Kore Press), Trailer Trash (winner of the 2016 Kore Press Book Award), The Cavalcade (Finishing Line Press), and Occasionally Accurate Science (Nomadic Press). Her...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Dovre Club
8:00pm PDT
Consider the Crab Collective [Verbs]
Authors
Jade Chan loves words and daylights as a software engineer. She studied English Literature and Computer Science at Tufts University, enjoys typography & algorithms, and spends an extraordinary amount of time on her computer.
Academic Success Manager & TA, Kickstart Coding
Kevin Dublin is author of the chapbook How to Fall in Love in San Diego and editor of Etched Press. He has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Martha's Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, North Carolina Poetry Society, and more. He enjoys making video adaptations...
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Antony Fangary is a Coptic-American working on his MFA in Poetry at San Francisco State University. He was the Honorable Mention recipient of the 2015 Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize, and curates his own reading series called Tenderlovin in the TL, which doubles as a charity event for...
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Lisa Galloway is a queer San Francisco-based poet with an MFA from Pacific University. A 2014 Lambda Literary Fellow, she’s the author of the chapbook Liminal: A Life of Cleavage published by Lost Horse Press. She directs and teaches poetry for Litquake’s Elder Writing Project...
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Poet, Consider the Crab
Nikki Henderson, author of The Tower Diaries, is a skeleton that lives (and occasionally sleeps) in San Francisco. The only true soulmates she believes in are beans and rice, but entertains love affairs with delicious weirdos of all kinds. Anywhere she goes, a bouquet tends to spontaneously...
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8:00pm PDT
Encounters in Faraway Places: Traveling Writers Explore the Wide World
Authors
Co-founder, Hidden Compass
Sivani Babu is the co-founder and Creative Director of exploration-driven media company Hidden Compass. She is an award-winning nature photographer and travel journalist with a sometimes-unhealthy fascination with extreme landscapes and weather. As a writer and photographer, she has...
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Co-Founder and Editorial Director, Hidden Compass
Sabine Bergmann is the co-founder and Editorial Director of Hidden Compass. As an award-winning travel, science and nature writer, she has contributed stories to dozens of publications — including WIRED, Sierra Magazine, and The Best Travel Writing book series — with a collective...
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Matthew Félix is an author and podcast host.Matthew’s debut novel, A Voice Beyond Reason, is the story of a young Spaniard's awakening to his intuition. The 2019 BookLife Prize called A Voice Beyond Reason “(a) highly crafted gem.”Matthew’s With Open Arms: Short Stories of...
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Founder, La Dolce Vita University
Carla’s passion for Italy began early: with her mother’s love of the Renaissance masters and father’s discourses on Italian geniuses of every calling. In the ensuing decades, she’s written about and toured every region of Italy on foot or by bicycle. Carla was a former partner...
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Jeff Greenwald has traveled extensively through five continents, working as a journalist and photographer. In addition he has created exhibits, lectures, and educational programs for San Francisco’s Exploratorium, the University of California, The Body Shop, and the Asian Art Museum...
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Executive Editor, Travelers' Tales
Larry Habegger is a writer and editor who has been covering the world since his international travels began in the 1970s. As a freelance writer for more than three decades, his work has appeared in many major newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Haus Coffee
8:00pm PDT
Endangered Species, Enduring Values
Authors
Sandra Bass, Ph.D. is Associate Dean of Students and Director of the Public Service Center at UC Berkeley where she works with students, communities, and faculty on promoting social justice and transformative social change. Sandra is a Bay Area native and San Francisco resident for...
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After an exciting four decades career as a TV and video director, producer and writer at WCBS New York, WBZ Boston and KGO, KPIX and KQED in San Francisco, she headed her eponymous video production company, counting Fortune 500 companies and branches of state and municipal governments...
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co-founder, POOR Magazine
Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork...
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Managing Editor, Argot Magazine
Dena Rod is a writer, editor, and poet based in the Bay Area. A graduate of San Francisco State University, they have a Master’s Degree in English Literature. They are currently the managing editor at Argot Literary Magazine. Through creative nonfiction essays and poetry, Dena works...
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Shizue Seigel supports San Francisco Bay Area writers and artists of color through Write Now! SF Bays writing workshops, events and anthologies (www.writenowsf.com). Her books include Civil Liberties United, Endangered Species, Enduring Values, Standing Strong! Fillmore & Japantown...
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Born in Havana and raised in San Francisco’s Mission district, Jesus Francisco Sierra writes about Cuba during the first ten years of the Revolution and growing up in the Mission as one of few Cubans there during the seventies. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles...
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8:00pm PDT
Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California
Authors
Susan Cohen is an award-winning journalist and poet, the author of a non-fiction book, two poetry chapbooks, and two full-length collections of poems: Throat Singing (2012, WordTech) and A Different Wakeful Animal (2016, Red Dragonfly Press, David Martinson-Meadowhawk Prize)
Director, Scarlet Tanager Books
Lucille Lang Day, coeditor of Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California, has published ten poetry collections and chapbooks, including Becoming an Ancestor and Dreaming of Sunflowers: Museum Poems. She is also a coeditor of Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California...
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Jack Foley was the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Berkeley Poetry Festival in 2010, and June 5, 2010 was declared Jack Foley Day in Berkeley. Jack Foley is also the recipient of the Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award. Since 1988, Foley has also...
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Owner, Bohemian Hwy Music & Books
After high school, Dave Holt began setting his poems to music. This led to a reenactment of the well-known songwriter fable, moving from his birthplace, Toronto, Canada, to California. He followed the muse of story-telling and poetry into San Francisco State University’s Creative...
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Professor of Creative Writing / Author, College of the Desert
Talk to me about the California deserts! And all that unfolds there. I write poetry and prose about this mythopoetic, storied landscape, my lifelong home. You can also talk to me about my desert-based writing. My works include: "Badwater," a finalist in the 2018 Hilary Gravendyk Poetry...
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8:00pm PDT
Harina, Agua y Corazón: From the Mission to the Bronx
Authors
Farah Amezcua is going through it, but at least she has at least one good friend. She has no cats but she imagines that she wants one. Her veins are filled with marinara sauce and her hair smells like hookah. She currently lives with a spider, a snake, and a piece of trash. Get r...
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Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest, Heaven Below and To the Break of Dawn. He makes his home in Oakland with his wife, poeta Jane Reyes. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Rikers Island Penitentiary...
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Estela de la Cruz was born in El Paso, Texas, but grew up in California. She has lived in San Francisco Mission District for ten years. She published in Konch Magazine, and has a chapbook titled For the Hell of it. She has a B.A. from UC Berkeley, which she obtained as a single mother...
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8:00pm PDT
Keats Literary Soul-Making Competition: Soul-Making From A To Z
Authors
Writer, Self-employed
My first book The Shadow of A Dog I Can't Forget - Poems & Prose was a 2017 Wild Card Runner-Up Winner in the Amsterdam Book Festival. My second book Squinting Over Water - Stories is a 2019 First place Winner in the Florida Book Festival and a 2013 Wild-Card Runner-Up Winner in the...
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Robert Eastwood is widely published both in print and online. He has three poetry chapbooks all published by Small Poetry Press. His first book, “Snare” was published by Broadstone Books in 2016. His latest book, “Romer” was released in August by Etruscan Press. He worked...
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teacher
I'm a later-in-life writer who's found great fulfillment in the richness of the Bay Area writing community. My writing has been recognized as Notable in Best American Essays, I've won two contests, and have won the Naomi Rodden Essay Award. I've been widely published in literary journals...
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Li Miao Lovett is an award-winning writer telling stories of cultural and environmental change. Her debut novel, In the Lap of the Gods, is a tale of the dammed and displaced in China’s Three Gorges.
I am the author of two poetry collections, The Typists Play Monopoly (2018) and Almost the Rowboat (2013). I teach at Skyline College and The Writing Salon and am associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition, a national writing contest based in the Bay Area.
8:00pm PDT
Kinda True Stories
Moderators
Jenny Bitner’s short stories have been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Sun, PANK, The Fabulist, Fence, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Writing That Risks. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Anything That Moves, Utne Reader, Men’s Health and other...
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Authors
Pia Chatterjee was granted the 2011 SF Grotto fellowship for emerging writers. Previously, she won the Ledge fiction competition and was named a finalist for the BreadLoaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation scholarship. She has recently completed a novel Freeschool Street, and her stories have...
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Christopher Cook is an award-winning journalist and author of Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis. He has written for the Los Angeles Times, Harper's, The Atlantic, The Economist , Mother Jones, The Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, Columbia Journalism...
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Rachel Howard's debut novel, The Risk of Us, will be published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt April 2019. A fellow of the MacDowell Colony and member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, she is also the author of a memoir, The Lost Night, and her fiction and nonfiction have appeared...
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Kirin is a writer living in Oakland, California, who callsAlbuquerque, New Mexico, her hometown, and Peshawar, Pakistan,her homeland. Kirin is an alumnus of VONA, Las Dos Brujas, and theTin House Writers Workshop, and she is a 2017 PEN Emerging VoicesFellow, a 2017 SF Writers Grotto...
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freelance writer, SF Writers Grotto
Lisa Lerner is the author of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year JUST LIKE BEAUTY, in development as a feature film with Lars Von Trier's Zentropa Production Company. Her children's book titles forthcoming from Heinemann in 2019 include TRULY DELICIOUS and A PERFECT MESS...
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Olga Zilberbourg is the author of Like Water And Other Stories (WTAW Press, 2019), and of three Russian-language story collections, the most recent published in Moscow in 2016.
8:00pm PDT
LibroMobile: Why We Choose Small Presses
Authors
Founder/Project Director, LibroMobile
Sarah Rafael Garcia is a writer, community educator and traveler. Since publishing Las Niñas (Floricanto Press 2008), she founded Barrio Writers, LibroMobile and Crear Studio. In 2016, Sarah Rafael was awarded for SanTana’s Fairy Tales (Raspa Magazine 2017), which was supported...
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Julayne Lee is an overseas adopted Korean American poet, essayist, artivist, curator and producer. Her debut collection of poems Not My White Savior (2018, Rare Bird) was on BitchReads: 15 Books Feminists Should Read in March. She is a Las Dos Brujas & VONA alum. Co-founder of Adoptee...
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Aurielle Marie is a Black, Atlanta-born, Queer cultural strategist and a community organizer. Through her work as a poet and an activist, she explores the uses of intimacy and ritual in the practice of Black resistance. Aurielle is a 2018 Lambda Literary Writer Retreat fellow, a 2017...
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Poet. muted blood. black radish books, 2018.
Dustin Pearson is a McKnight Doctoral Fellow in Creative Writing at Florida State University. The recipient of fellowships from Cave Canem and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing, Pearson has served as the editor of Hayden’s Ferry Review and a Director of the Clemson...
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Norma Smith was born in Detroit, grew up in Fresno, and has lived in Oakland since the late 1960s. She worked for many years in hospitals and has also worked as a journalist, as a translator/interpreter, community scholar-educator, event and conference organizer, and as an editor...
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8:00pm PDT
Litquake's Writing Contest Winners
Moderators
Authors
Jenny Irizary is working on a memoir about growing up along the Russian River. Her work is published in Sick Lit, Squalorly, Snapping Twig, Communion, Atticus Review, and other journals.
A queer guy who’s made SF home for 24 years, I’ve finally accepted that I’m an artist and I have to own it. I’ve not had any of my poetry published yet.
Djenanway Lennea Siwey Se-Gahon is a Seattle-born writer of Canadian and Ivorian descent. She was selected to speak as a part of the Social Justice and Equity project in King County, "Reflecting on Race and Racism through Poetry, Spoken Word and Conversation." She is currently pursuing...
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8:00pm PDT
Memoir, From the Margins to the Core: Writing Our Truths
Authors
Bay Area born and raised, Britney Hill has spent much time living on both the West and East Coasts, but accredits much of her creativity and flair to the experiences in which she gained living down South in Atlanta, GA. As an out of place city girl in the rural South, she found herself...
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Writer and Photographer
Stacy Johnson was born in Jackson, Mississippi and often relies on her Southern roots for inspiration. She grew up in the Bay Area writing short stories and poetry in the margins of her notebooks and taking pictures of everyday life in Oakland, California. Stacy combines prose, poetry...
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Karina Muñiz-Pagán is a queer Xicana prose writer of mixed-heritage with roots in San Francisco and the El Paso/Juarez border. She has a MFA from Mills College where she was the Community Engagement Fellow and taught creative writing to members of Mujeres Unidas y Activas, a Latina...
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Phyllis Oscar is hard at work on her memoir We Were That Family: Confronting A Murderous Legacy. Phyllis earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Mills College in 2017, where she won the Melody Clarke Teppola Graduate Creative Writing Award in 2016. She challenges herself to...
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8:00pm PDT
Neighborhood Raizes y Latinx Futuras
Authors
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full blooded POCHO spanglish speaking poet from La Area Bahia who learned to write poetry in the kitchen of his Mama's Mexican restaurant. He first began performing his poetry en La Mission in San Pancho at the now infamous Thursday night readings at Cafe...
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Ananda Esteva was born in Chile and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. A student of the late June Jordan, she co-authored the book June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, dedicated to the teaching of poetry and formation of writing communities. Her...
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Flavia Elisa is an immigrant artivist from Mexico, raised in San Francisco. Her writing focuses on her experience as an immigrant chingonx, spiritual old soul, and her role in intersectional feminism, and the healing of systematic oppression in unrepresented communities.
Writer
The child of Nicaraguan immigrants,
Norman Zelaya was born in San Francisco in 1972 and grew up in the Mission District, the setting for his debut book, “Orlando and Other Stories” (
Pochino Press...
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8:00pm PDT
Parnassus Poets and Writers
Authors
Sheyda writes to uncover the magic of things mundane.
I write out of compulsion. As a physician, mother, hyphenated American, friend, wife and more I write to try to understand the unknowable in daily things. I've read before as part of the physician-writers group the Nocturnists and am working on several personal essays, but mostly...
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Terri is a writer who likes to eat, walk her dog, and remember her Angelino roots. She writes to find out what she thinks about things.
Author
My debut poetry collection Focal Point was selected by Dustin Pearson as the winner of the 2020 Steel Toe Books Poetry Award. My essays and poems have been published widely in newspapers and literary journals, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, Tin House, Rattle, ZYZZYVA, and...
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Daniel is a retired child whisperer, living in Bernal Heights. He writes with Poets on Parnassus and Laguna Writers. Writing is primarily a practice for him, much like yoga or meditation might be.
Carer, poet, voyager. I celebrate sparks and wonder amid storms and indifference.
8:00pm PDT
Perspectives from Coeditoria
Authors
Eric Fain is a voracious, omnivorous, and retentive reader of almost all genres of fiction and non-fiction. A retired immigration attorney and tax law specialist, he's now working on memoirs of his childhood on a farm in the Ozarks, his 47 years in San Francisco, and his adventures...
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Sam Gong is an entrepreneur and aspiring writer of speculative fiction. He strives to bridge history and futurism with creative storytelling, and to portray a vision of the future that provokes reaction and discussion. His professional career spans government work in Washington DC, ex...
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Harriet Rohmer is the founder and long-time publisher of Children’s Book Press, the pioneering publisher of bilingual and multicultural picture books (now an imprint of Lee & Low). Her books have won many major awards, including the American Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award...
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Ekaterina “Kate” Rossikina was born and raised as an only child in a top-secret, closed city in the USSR where she decided as a youngster that forbidden berries were more fun to eat than those her parents allowed her to pick.
In her youth, Anna Sears traveled the world as an exotic dancer – from Guam to Alaska, New York City to Switzerland – wearing her Phi Beta Kappa key and keeping a detailed daily journal for 15 years. She is currently adapting skills developed by initiating, facilitating, promoting...
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I am a writer based in the East Bay. I have been featured on Wattpad.com, the world’s largest writing community, and in 2016 won a Watty, one of its annual prizes. I write fiction and non-fiction, and am currently working on a novel titled Memoirs of a Gaysian.
8:00pm PDT
San Francisco Buddhist Center
Authors
Nabil Arnaoot is interested in bittersweet: the sway and shift between resistance and surrender; freedom and loneliness; tecnophiliac play and justice. He lives in San Francisco.
Investor and writer. Author of The Next Perfect Trade: A Magic Sword of Necessity.
Sarah Paris is a Swiss-American poet, writer, and photographer. Her most recent publication is "The Traveler," a queer "shaggy-dog-chasing-ghosts story" penned by her alter ego, Chris Solano.Haiku & photography @SFSwissPoet
Tony Acarasiddhi Press tries to pay attention and sometimes he does. His poetry e-chapbook EQUINOX AND SOLSTICE can be seen at Right Hand Pointing. His short story collection - CROSSING THE LINES - (published by Big Table), is available via some indy bookstores, from that Amazon...
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Poet Laureate, San Mateo County
Poet, once and future consultant, recovering engineer. Author of A DIFFERENT PHYSICS, winner of the 2017 Red Mountain Poetry Prize. Interests include multidisciplinary outreach: science, technology, and poetry.
Queer Arab- and Irish-American Buddhist, writer, media activist, independent radio producer, & nerd. I write across genres about impostors, and the little nooks where we can be naked in our happiness and in each other’s company. I also write about the spaces where our happiness...
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8:00pm PDT
San Francisco Writers Workshop
Moderators
A proud public educator, in 2014 Judy Viertel was named San Francisco Teacher of the Year. She can't seem to stay away from fiction, though. She's been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Gold Dust Magazine, Read Short Fiction, Mad Swirl, and others. One of her stories will appear...
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Authors
Conrad Bishop is a professional actor/playwright, now writing fiction. With his mate Elizabeth Fuller he has written 50+ plays, 2 novels, and a memoir, and shared two writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Their radio series "Hitchhiking off the Map" was broadcast...
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Robin Bullard once drove in a demolition derby and came in fifth. Robin Bullard is trying to write a novel. Robin Bullard hitch-hiked across America four times. Robin Bullard ushers tourists to the best selfie locations. While in Paris, Robin Bullard worked as a laborer. Robin Bullard's...
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Hannah Custis is a writer, teacher, and Ph.D. student. Originally from rural Maryland, she lived in Florida and New York City before moving to the West Coast to study at the California Institute of Integral Studies. Her current research explores mythology and therapeutic storytelling...
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Attendee/Panelist
Cynthia Gómez (she/her) is a writer and researcher. She writes horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland, where she makes her home. She has a particular love for themes of revenge, retribution, and resistance to oppression. She has stories in Fantasy...
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Originally from Kishinev, Moldova, Tatyana Sundeyeva is a Russian-American writer living in San Francisco. She writes short literary fiction and Young Adult novels, with particular interest in transportive travel writing, Young Adult novels with witty female characters, and short...
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Tony's mother was a butterfly trainer, and his father died from a tragic blotting paper accident when Tony was four. He may not have ink in his blood, but Tony has it all over his pants, white shirts, and hands. He has been the recipient of the Lifetime Procrastination in Writing...
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8:00pm PDT
Seventeen Syllables: Things We Don’t Talk About: Secrets and Silences
Authors
Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poetry, Topaz (Four Way Books, 2013) received the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry. His second poetry collection, Seize, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2020. He is the editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s...
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Lillian Howan spent her early childhood in Tahiti and later graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her writings have been published in Asian American Literary Review, Café Irreal, Calyx, NewEngland Review, Vice-Versa, and the anthologies Ms. Aligned...
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Director of Editorial Operations, Wired
Jay Ruben Dayrit’s work has appeared in several magazines, literary journals, and anthologies, including Jellyfish Review, Sycamore Review, Minnesota Review, Santa Clara Review, Nexus, The Yale Quarterly, WIRED Magazine, His 2: brilliant new fiction by gay men (Faber & Faber), What...
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Caroline Kim-Brown graduated with an MFA in Poetry from The University of Michigan where she won a Hopwood Award, and was a Michener Fellow in Fiction at The University of Texas at Austin. She has been published or has work forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Green Mountains...
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Grace Loh Prasad was born in Taiwan and raised in New Jersey and Hong Kong before settling in the SF Bay Area. Grace received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and she is an alumna of the VONA workshop for writers of color along with residencies at Hedgebrook and the...
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8:00pm PDT
Tasty Lit with 7x7
Authors
Aubrie is a food, portrait, lifestyle, travel, and interiors photographer whose work takes her around the world. She has worked on cookbooks with Giada DeLaurentis, Sam Kass, Cedellay Marley, and Guy Fieri, and you can find her photographs in Chrissy Teigen's cookbook Cravings: Recipes...
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Queens-born and Jersey-raised Evan Rich graduated from the Culinary Institute of America and initially worked for David Bouley before rising to Chef de Cuisine at a series of high profile restaurants, including Quince and Coi. In 2012, he and Sarah Rich opened
Rich Table in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley...
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Sarah Rich lived in Louisiana until age 15, moved to east Texas and attended the French Culinary Institute in Manhattan before clocking time at Bouley. She switched to Mas and moved with husband Evan to San Francisco, where she continued her upward trajectory as sous chef of Michael...
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8:00pm PDT
The Beat Within: Voices Behind Bars
Authors
Author, journalist & workshop leader, Ink, Inc.
I'm a former foreign correspondent, freelance journalist, and author and co-author of ten non-fiction books, on subjects ranging from Imelda Marcos to environmental conservation to ADHD. I'm passionate about the power of writing to change minds and hearts.
Founder and Director, The Beat Within
David Inocencio graduated from the social work program at San Francisco State University, he worked in the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office Juvenile Division. David later helped launch the Detention Diversion Advocacy Project, a nationally recognized program of the Center...
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I'm just tryna make sense
I'm a high school student, writer and activist, energized by the pursuit of social justice. I became involved with The Beat over a year ago, and have continued to work with them in many capacities, including working with them to organize and facilitate a poetry night by means of a...
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I'm a journalist and novelist who writes often about children in the foster care and juvenile justice systems. A long-time fan of The Beat Within who has been facilitating workshops in Santa Cruz juvenile hall for more than 20 years.
I'm a writer and educator living in El Cerrito, CA. My debut novel, What We Never Had, was published by Rare Bird Books in 2016. I received an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco and have published work with The Good Men Project, Atticus Review, Curly Red...
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Saturday October 20, 2018 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Noisebridge
8:00pm PDT
The Escapery: H(a)unting the Moon
Authors
Co-founder/Educator, www.TheEscapery.org
NANCY AU is the co-founder of The Escapery, an Oakland-based writing and arts un-school. She teaches creative writing (to biology majors!) at California State University Stanislaus. Her stories and essays are published in many journals including, Redivider, Gulf Coast, Foglifter...
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Haldane King is the founder, curator, emcee, and coordinator of Terra Incognita, a new literary reading series hosted in Oakland's fabulous Octopus Literary Salon, which is partnered with The Escapery. He is an instructor with The Escapery. He earned his Master of the Fine Arts...
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Kathryn Kruse received her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She was an instructor with The Escapery from 2016-2017. She holds a BA in English with a certificate in Creative Writing from University of Wisconsin-Madison. While at UNLV she taught writing...
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Ploi Pirapokin has work featured in
Tor.com, Apogee Journal, the Bellingham Review, Fiction International, Cleaver Magazine and more. She has received grants and fellowships from the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Creative Capacity Fund, the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, Kundiman and others. She...
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Roxanne Villaluz is a queer artist, writer, baker/experienced cook and member-owner at a local bakery and pizzeria. Her first writing experiment was writing Sweet Valley High fan fiction influenced by Beverly Cleary's Ramona series. Roxanne's excitement for learning and growing in...
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8:00pm PDT
The Fabulist Words & Art Presents: Deep Genre Subversion
Authors
Hugo-winning science fiction author, PM Press editor, andhost of SFinSF reading series. Said to be entirely made outof meat.
Heather Bourbeau is a Berkeley-based writer. She was a Tupelo Press30/30 poet, a journalist whose work appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, and a former Political Affairs Officer with the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia. Her first collection of...
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As a fiction writer and Ph.D. in comparative literature, Lael Gold knows how to craft narratives that draw readers in and can magnetically tell the story of a business or a brand. She also interprets dreams and performs standup comedy.
8:00pm PDT
The Legendary Stud Bar and VivvyAnne ForeverMORE!/ OX Present
Authors
Celeste Chan is a queer artist, writer, and organizer, schooled by DIY and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx, NY. She is a Hedgebrook, Lambda, and VONA fellow – and Sister Spit alumna. Her recent work can be found in AWAY, Citron Review, Foglifter, and The Rumpus...
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James Fleming is into shipwrecking alazons. currently a seafaring maison de maitre made of snakes. indiscriminately enthralled, and hot for abject sincerity. art criticism, poetry, performance, queer heterarchies, folkloristics, first and foremost a pasticheur. his most recent collection...
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Juliana Delgado Lopera is an award-winning Colombian writer, historian based in San Francisco. The recipient of the 2014 Jackson Literary award, and a finalist of the Clark- Gross Novel award, she’s the author of ¡Cuéntamelo! an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories...
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Brittany Newell, who often writes and performs under the nom de plume Ratty St. John, is a 2017 graduate from Stanford. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and is the winner of the Norman Mailer Award for Fiction. Oola is her first book.
Silk Worm is an independent artist working in drag, dance, and performance. A 2017 Danceweb Europe Scholar at Impustanz Vienna, Silk is currently at work on a solo called Bottom Bride and a workshop called Bad Acting, With Brittany Newell she leads and organizes Hush-Hush.
Saturday October 20, 2018 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Beauty Bar
8:00pm PDT
The Racket: COLLAPSE
Authors
Claire is an Oakland-based writer and curator at work on her first novel. She is a co-founder of the New American Story Project, a digital storytelling project dedicated to the voices of Central American refugees and the Workshop Coordinator of Las Dos Brujas Writers' Workshops. She...
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Vincent Chu was born in Oakland, California. His fiction has appeared in PANK Magazine, East Bay Review, Pithead Chapel, Fjords Review, Cooper Street, Stockholm Review, Chicago Literati, Forth Magazine, The Collapsar, WhiskeyPaper and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart...
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A gay, Mexican man from Southern California, Harris finds himself at the center of cultures, sexuality, and generations
Elizabeth Gonzalez James is the author of the novels Mona at Sea and The Bullet Swallower as well as the chapbook Five Conversations About Peter Sellers.
Nazelah Jamison is a performance poet, actor, vocalist, and emcee. She is an East Coast transplant, former organizer of the Oakland Poetry Slam and sometimes reluctant superhero. Her first book of poetry, Evolutionary Heart, was released in Fall of 2016 on Nomadic Press. Nazelah gives...
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Elizabeth Stix is the author of the short story collection Things I Want Back from You, which will be released in June 2024. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's, Tin House, Boulevard, The Los Angeles Times Sunday magazine, and elsewhere.
Joe Wadlington has satire and personal essays published in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Racked.com, Sparkle + Blink, and Loose Lips (A SF Shipwreck anthology).
8:00pm PDT
The Salon Reading Series
Authors
Writer and director, Robert Elcock, brings together voice and visuals to defy stereotypes and open minds. "My Sexual Future", his upcoming collection of erotica, is a funny look at queer sex before and after the internet.
Cierra Green, Bobbi Kindred, Jolinda's baby, and Storyteller, because there are multiple energetic beings that exist within Them and each must be honored. Storytelling is how they honor the wounds within themself that still gape, and how they invoke the spirit of their ancestors...
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Aáron B. Heard is a Los Angeles native who calls Oakland home. She majored in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry at University of Southern California. Aáron is actively looking to find the sweet spot between being a middle school teacher by day and an artist by night...
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Writer, poet, educator and activist Audacious IAM was recently named Greater Bay Area Teacher of the Year by Youth Speaks (2016), nominated for an Oakland Innovative Artist Award (2017 - 2015), a 2016 National Queer Arts Festival of San Francisco Grant recipient, named Best Literary...
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San Francisco Public Library
Mason J. Olaya-Smith went from sleeping in the San Francisco Public Library to being the first fellow at the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center on the third floor. In the past, Olaya-Smith, who identifies as a trans, intersex, and genderqueer person, struggled to secure employment and...
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8:00pm PDT
Travel Deeper with AFAR
Authors
Peggy Orenstein is a New York Times bestselling author, award-winning journalist, and internationally recognized speaker on issues affecting girls and women. She is the author of six books, including her latest,
Don’t Call Me Princess....
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Golf, food and travel writer; puzzled father; co-author with Sammy Hagar of Are We Having Fun Yet: the Cooking and Partying Handbook.
Fargo native. Mizzou graduate.
@huckberry editorial assistant. aspiring world traveler.
8:00pm PDT
University of San Francisco Presents: Risks In Writing
Authors
Shannon Andres grew up in Sonoma County, the only child of a single mother. After finishing her undergrad in English at Pacific Union College in Napa Valley, she moved to the Silicon Valley, where she became a wife, mother, and teacher. She is currently a MFA candidate in creative...
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Sara Fan is a MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at the University of San Francisco and has an MFA in poetry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Fiction writer. Grew up in the Delta river system here in CA, I write about outcasts and weirdos, road trips and cats that ride shotgun in stolen cars.
MFA '19, Editor-in-Chief of Switchback, University of San Francisco, Switchback
Sayantika is an MFA in Writing student at the University of San Francisco. She came to the Bay Area from West Bengal, India. She loves reading novels and exploring places, especially historical ruins. She formerly worked as a copy editor with Hindustan Times in India. She is currently...
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Feliz Moreno was born and raised in the Sacramento metropolitan area and comes from a family of Mexican-American farm workers. She earned her undergraduate degree in English at Santa Clara University. Post graduation she worked in the marketing and advertising industries for The Sacramento...
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Jared Stokes was born and raised everywhere in New Hampshire, and spends most of his time trying to re-learn the desire to speak words. He is an MFA candidate in fiction and writes about unforgivable rooms, Space Camp hallucinations and the fallacies of nostalgia and personalitie...
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8:00pm PDT
Women On The Verge (Of A Literary Breakthrough)
Moderators
Wendi Olson is a Storytelling Instructor at the Academy of Art University in SF and the Director of Bonita Playhouse, a living room play reading series in Berkeley. She has an MA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. In her latest play, Jo's Pants, the heroine...
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Authors
Ai is a Japanese-born playwright, poet and translator, who is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. She is a member of the Writers Pool for Berkeley Rep Theatre's PlayGround and a winner of the Austin International Poetry Festival.
Nara Dahlbacka is an Oakland native, currently living in Alameda. A playwright and director, she holds an MFA from SFSU. Her work has been in the GreenHouse Festival, The Exit Theatre, SF Olympians (2018), and (this) SF Lit Crawl. She is also in the SF Playground Writers Pool. She...
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Jacqueline Haudek is a writer and journalist who enjoys community activism and creative exploration. She holds a BA in Journalism from SF State and lives in San Francisco. Jacqueline is a co-creator and writer with Ladybird Collective, an organization developed for creative women...
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Rose Heredia is Dominican-American and from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. She is a VONA/Voices alum, has read at the InsideStoryTime series, The Racket at Adobe Books, Lit Crawl 2016, Lit Crawl 2017, and...
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Creative writer and leadership development professional.
Lily is non-fiction writer and educator based out of Los Angeles. Her dark, humorous memoir, Death-Defying Nina, chronicles her experiences caring for her diva-like, terminally-ill sister. The author is currently working on her second novel, and apropos of nothing, loves dogs!
Cybele Zufolo is a graduate of Columbia University Teachers College with a Masters Degree in English, and a grant recipient of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Cybele's book, Ocean Sounds in New York a collection of poetry and essays is available. Currently, Cybele teaches...
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8:00pm PDT
Write on Mamas: She's Got This: Women As Heroes Of Their Own Stories
Moderators
Laurel is co-founder and former President of Write on Mamas. She is the Founder of The Marin Writers' Nest. She is featured in three anthologies including the upcoming "She's Got This: Essays on Standing Strong and Moving On" (January 2019). Laurel previously was a Producer of Listen...
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Authors
Retired Professor - Life Artist/Soul Coach - Story Weaver/Author.Author of the Book: I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking for Now What?Theater Reviewer @ Theatrius
Christina Julian is a wine and food columnist by day, novelist by night. Her debut novel, a romantic comedy called, The Dating Bender, was a 2017 Best Book Awards finalist. As a journalist, Christina has enjoyed covering the Napa Valley Film Festival where she had the honor of interviewing...
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Writer specializing in travel, arts, culture, health, and lifestyle. I've also penned an essay or two. And then there's that memoir...
Jessica O'Dwyer is the author of the memoir, Mamalita, and an MFA candidate in Fiction at Antioch Los Angeles.
I write music, screenplays, novels, essays, and memoir. I love boots with buckles and hate cooked fruit. Talk to me about 40th Day, lymphoma, and women's issues, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo!
Saturday October 20, 2018 8:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Carousel
8:00pm PDT
ZYZZYVA Fall All-Stars
Moderators
Managing Editor, ZYZZYVA
Oscar Villalon is managing editor of ZYZZYVA. His essays, reviews, and interviews have appeared in VQR, The Believer, the Los Angeles Times, NPR.org, and elsewhere. The former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, he lives with his family in the Mission District.
Authors
Michelle Latiolais is the author of the novels She and A Proper Knowledge and the story collection Widow. She is an English professor and co-director of the Programs in Writing at the University of California at Irvine.
Ismail Muhammad is a staff writer at the Millions, a contributing editor at ZYZZYVA, a board member at the National Books Critics Circle, and a Ph.D. candidate in the English department at U.C. Berkeley. His work has appeared in Slate, New Republic, the Los Angeles Review of Books...
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Kristen Tracy's poems have been published in Poetry, Prairie Schooner, ZYZZYVA, and The Threepenny Review, among other magazines. Her book Half-Hazard is the Winner of the Emily Dickinson First Book Award from the Poetry Foundation and will be published by Graywolf in November.
9:00pm PDT