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.
Eth-Noh-Tec, a kinetic story theater organized by artists Nancy Wang and Robert Kikuchi-Yngojo, presents a night of storytelling from near and far: Karin Amano, from Mt. Airy, GA; Linda Yemoto, from Berkeley, CA; Anne Shimojima, from Lorton Grove, IL; Motoko, from Amherst, CA; Kiran Rana, from Alameda, CA; and Archy Arch J (Archy Jamjun), from […]
Sarah Rose Etter ("Tongue Party") celebrates her anticipated debut novel "The Book of X" with a launch party featuring poets Trisha Low and Tommy Pico. The book follows Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot, from childhood on the family meat farm to a desk job in the […]
In 2015, after Berkeley-based songwriter Kyle Terrizzi immersed himself in the I Ching, which he stumbled on in a used bookstore, he was inspired to abandon his previous work (The Plastic Arts) to launch a new creative life as M. the Heir Apparent. Drawing comparisons to Ed Sheeran and Jeff Buckley, the literary musician is […]
Professor of Physics at USF Brandon R. Brown presents his new book "The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America's First Moon Missions" (Oxford University Press), which follows a handful of engineers of that time as they recount the largely behind-the-scenes work they did to take mankind to the moon. Himself a son of an Apollo engineer, Brown […]
Author of "Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow," Peg Alford Pursell launches her anticipated second book, "A Girl Goes Into the Forest," which explores and illuminates love and loss in 78 hybrid stories and fables. Caille Millner ("The Golden Road: Notes on My Gentrification") joins Peg in conversation, and the event will be […]
Some three weeks after her 91st birthday, famed Beat poet and Mendocino resident ruth weiss visits Far Out Gallery for an afternoon performance of her poetry. Weiss is a firebrand, performing regularly over recent years in a range of environments: with budding experimental musicians in small cafes, with seasoned improv musicians at larger venues, or […]
Creator of some of the most popular podcasts in the world, Aaron Mahnke presents an evening of new stories set in the world of Lore, featuring rare and exclusive tales that won't be found on a podcast. Lore explores the dark side of history; it's been adapted for television by Amazon, and spawned the book […]
A factory worker and union organizer for two decades with the United Farm Workers and other unions, and author of several books about migration, photojournalist David Bacon presents "In the Fields of the North / En los campos del norte," which in 302 images and 10 narratives documents the lives of farmworkers as the harvest […]
Smack Dab, the long-running, free LGBTQIA community event, returns for the second time to its new home at Manny's. In addition to the open mic--anyone can sign up for five-min stories, poems, songs, dances, etc. in person--each event has a feature who is given additional time to perform or share their work. July's feature is […]
Quantum Dragon Theatre presents a stage adaptation of Ray Bradbury's classic dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953), about a man named Guy who works for 10 years as a fireman, burning books for the state, before meeting a woman with strange ideas who shakes him out of his complacency and into a battle against the powers […]
