Curated by Heather Bourbeau, three musician-poet pairs each perform a set—one new poem inspired by an original song, one new song inspired by an original poem, and one piece of pure collaboration—on Sunday, October 28, 2018 at the Red Poppy Art House:
Nick Johnson was born and raised near the brackish Chesapeake Bay but now calls the Bay Area waters home. He received his MFA from the California College of the Arts. Johnson’s work has been featured on KPFA’s Rude Awakening and has appeared in The Cincinnati Review, Black Renaissance Noire, Eleven Eleven, Metazen, and other fine journals. His book, music for mussolini, was released by Nomadic Press in 2016 and was a finalist for the 2017 CLMP Firecracker Award.
Arula has been singing and composing songs since childhood. She views sound and movement as sacred expressions of a universal language—a language that connects, empowers, and unites people from all backgrounds. Music and dance have been central themes in her life; of all her gurus, they are the most revered teachers. With haunting vocals amid sensual beats, Arula creates a cohesive yet dynamic spectrum of sound. Her music is a rich interplay of her many influences; her sultry vocals and downtempo melodies take and hold shape as they blend with global music rhythms and become ancestral and grounded while dancing over trap and hip-hop beats.
Maw Shein Win‘s writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies, including MARY: A Journal of New Writing, Cimarron Review, and Poetry International. Win’s most recent poetry chapbook is Score and Bone (Nomadic Press), and her new full-length collection Invisible Gifts: Poems (Manic D Press) was a City Lights Books bestselling paperback. She is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito.
Evan Karp is the creator and executive director of Quiet Lightning, founding editor of Litseen, and half of Turk & Divis—a musical collaboration with his brother Miles. He developed the interdisciplinary performance series Under the Influence and Call and Response, as well as the interview profile series The Write Stuff.
SF/Bay Area writer Chia-Chia Lin--a graduate Harvard and the Iowa Writers' Workshop--reads from her debut novel, "The Unpassing," in which a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggles to build a life on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. When their daughter dies of meningitis, family members deal with the loss differently, and distance grows between them […]
Finalists for the 31st Annual Lambda Literary Awards, which identify and celebrate the best lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender books of the year, read from their work. Authors include Nona Caspers ("The Fifth Woman"), Isaac R. Fellman ("The Breath of the Sun"), Bud Gundy ("Somewhere Over Lorain Road"), Sara Mithra ("If the Color is Fugitive"), […]
Spanish priest and Zen disciple Pablo d'Ors, author of more than half a dozen books of fiction and nonfiction, reads from his first English translation, "Biography of Silence." The book chronicles d'Or's experience as a Catholic priest whose life is changed by Zen meditation, and embodies, with rare honesty and clarity of language, the great […]
Famed activist and educator Angela Davis, author of many books ("Women, Culture & Politics" and "Freedom Is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement") joins Marcus Shelby's all-star quintet for an evening of spoken word and music illuminating the legacies of "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday.
Editors of the new Voice of Witness boo, "Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America" Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman join Lauren Markham to discuss the collection of oral histories, told in the words of 15 young refugees: why they left home, what happened, how they crossed the borders and what it's […]
Aysegül Savas, who grew up in Turkey and Denmark, received an MFA from the University of San Francisco. She now lives in Paris and teaches at the Sorbonne. Here, she reads from her debut novel, “Walking on the Ceiling,” about the love affair between a young Turkish woman coming to terms with her past and […]
The bestselling author of "The Flamethrowers" and "Telex from Cuba," both finalists for the National Book Award, visits The Bindery for an intimate reading from her latest novel, "The Mars Room," a finalist for both the Man Booker Prize and National Book Critics Circle. The book follows Romy Hall as she begins consecutive life sentences […]
The Bay Area Book Festival returns for its 5th year, with two full days of free, and affordable, programming for all ages. It features writers from Anand Giridharadas, Robert Reich and Shane Bauer to Morgan Parker, Ann Beattie, Jose Antonio Vargas and Carmen Maria Machado, and panels that range in topic from race and immigration […]
Jason Bayani--Artistic Director of Kearny Street Workshop and author of the poetry collection "Amulet"--launches his second book, "Locus," which explores the experience of identity that haunts Pilipinx-Americans since the 1965 Hart-Celler Immigration Act. With Mae Summer and Javi Semejo.
The Canadian author of six previous bestselling novels--including "A Complicated Kindness" and "All My Puny Sorrows"--Miriam Toews visits Green Apple to read from her latest, "Women Talking." The novel is about a group of Mennonite women who learn they aren't being punished in the night by demons for their sins, but drugged and raped by […]
