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Dodie Bellamy: “Hoarding as Écriture”
Graduate Lecture Series] Dodie Bellamy: "Hoarding as Écriture" Throughout her career, Dodie Bellamy has undermined the fantasy of the autonomous subject. Her work compulsively explores the permeable boundaries between self and other, the conflicting desires to merge with the outside and to protect oneself from invasion. Bellamy will discuss her use of appropriation to trouble the ever-wavering relation between self and culture. For her, cut-ups, collage, citations, and rewritings are more than literary techniques; they betray a libidinal urge to…
Find out more »Full Color: A Staged Reading
Full Color: A Staged Reading Afro Urban Society and Studio Grand present 'Full Color', a short story written by Itoro Udofia that has been adapted for the stage in a dynamic literary reading. The story follows Inem, a first generation Nigerian woman returning home after five years of estrangement from her family. We follow her as she grapples with the fractured memories and loss she experiences when attempting to piece her life together amidst family tragedy. Ultimately, the story is about finding reconciliation…
Find out more »Muni Diaries Live 10th Anniversary Show
Muni Diaries is celebrating 10 years of documenting life in our fair city, as viewed through the eyes of everyday commuters like you. For the last decade, more than 4,000 San Franciscans submitted stories about the hilarity, and the humanity, that happens on our journeys between Point A and Point B. There were so many slices of life that needed to be told, we expanded to include stories that happen all over the 7x7: on Muni and off. We couldn't…
Find out more »You’re Going to Die presents Death is Real with Mount Eerie
You're Going to Die Presents... Death is Real with Mount Eerie + special appearances by Scott Ferreter & words from Dr. Michael Fratkin @ The Swedish American Hall Doors at 7pm Show at 8pm Tickets here: http://bit.ly/2tO3zBB As a part of Reimagine End of Life . April 16-22, You're Going to Die offers another curated entertainment experience proudly presenting great artists as they deserve to be presented: in the concert context of acknowledging their brilliant beaming mortal magic. YG2D Presents curated shows steeped in the context of mortality,…
Find out more »Luis Alberto Urrea: The House of Broken Angels
Luis Alberto Urrea reads from and signs his new novel, The House of Broken Angels.
Find out more »Rebecca Kauffman
Rebecca Kauffman discusses her new novel, The Gunners. Praise for The Gunners "I recommend you read every single thing Rebecca Kauffman writes―start with this beautiful novel, and start now." ―Julie Buntin, author of Marlena "Kauffman’s prose is restrained in a way that causes it to actually vibrate in places, and her details are so richly observed they feel like gems, impossible things mined from deep under the earth. Funny, raw, and deeply elegant, The Gunners is ultimately a meditation on friendship, that least examined,…
Find out more »Copper Canyon Press Reading
Featuring four wonderful poets with new collections from Copper Canyon Press.
Find out more »Beth Pickens with Brontez Purnell
Beth Pickens with Brontez Purnell discussing Your Art Will Save Your Life A candid guidebook about art-making in the midst of oppression from Feminist Press As a teenager visiting the Andy Warhol Museum, Beth Pickens realized the importance of making art. As an adult, she has dedicated her life to empowering working artists. Intimate yet practical, Your Art Will Save Your Life helps artists build a sustainable practice while navigating the world of MFAs, residencies, and institutional funding. Beth Pickens is a Los…
Find out more »Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson is one of America's most renowned and daring creative pioneers. Her work, encompassing music, visual art, poetry, film and photography, has challenged and delighted audiences around the world for 40 years. Join Anderson at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco for a special performance of her new work, "All the Things I Lost in the Flood", which includes visual images and performances, along with commentary on some of her iconic work with voice, electronics, codes, narrative styles…
Find out more »Brynn Saito
Originally from Fresno, CA, Saito is the Distinguished Visiting Writer in Poetry at Saint Mary’s College.
Find out more »This is Now with Angie Coiro presents: Sally Kohn
Sally Kohn is currently a CNN political commentator and a columnist for The Daily Beast. Kohn was previously a Fox News contributor, and she has been a frequent guest on MSNBC. She writes regularly for media outlets including the Washington Post, the New York Times, New York Magazine, Refinery29, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan, Yahoo, Salon, Time and many more. She also works as a communications consultant and was previously a campaign strategist for the Center for Community Change, a fellow at the Ford Foundation, and a strategic…
Find out more »Dana Levin and Dean Rader
Dana Levin and Dean Rader read from their latest poetry collections, Banana Palace and Self-Portrait as Wikipedia Entry. About Dana Levin Dana Levin's fourth book is Banana Palace (Copper Canyon Press, 2016). Previous collections include In the Surgical Theatre and Sky Burial, which The New Yorker called “utterly her own and utterly riveting.” Recent poetry and essays have appeared in Best American Poetry 2015, Poem-a-day, Boston Review, and Poetry. Levin is a grateful recipient of honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, PEN, the Witter Bynner Foundation and the Library of…
Find out more »The Others: A Dramatic Reading by Matthew Rohrer & Special Guests
The Bindery hosts a performance of Matthew Rohrer’s novel in verse, The Others, featuring guest readers including Daniel Handler and Arisa White. Please join us! A gripping, eerie, and hilarious novel-in-verse from poet Matthew Rohrer. In a Russian-doll of fictional episodes, we follow an entry-level publishing assistant over the course of a day as he encounters ghost stories, science fiction adventures, Victorian hashish eating, and robot bigfoots. Rohrer mesmerizes with wildly imaginative tales and resonant verse in this compelling love letter to storytelling. -- Matthew Rohrer is…
Find out more »Book Talk: Figuring Korean Futures
Book Talk: Figuring Korean Futures: Children’s Literature in Modern Korea April 26 | 4-5:30 p.m. | 180 Doe Library Speaker: Dafna Zur, Stanford University Moderator: Steven Lee, UC Berkeley Figuring Korean Futures is the story of the emergence and development of writing for children in modern Korea. Starting in the 1920s, a narrator-adult voice began to speak directly to a child-reader. This child audience was perceived as unique because of a new concept: the child-heart, the perception that the child's…
Find out more »The Black Aesthetic, in performance and in conversation
"Our intention is to offer constructive speculation; our earnest hope to take up the love labor of the Black canons that laid these foundations in the past and provide guidance for the future." — Zoé Samudzi, Introduction to The Black Aesthetic Season II Join us for an evening of readings, performances, and conversations with The Black Aesthetic. This group of writers and artists started their work together around a series of film screenings, in the space at E. M. Wolfman General Interest Small…
Find out more »Dalachinsky, Otomo, Lazzara + Swindell at Alley Cat
Readings by: Steve Dalachinsky Yuko Otomo Marina Lazzara Tate Swindell
Find out more »Anna Yen
Anna Yen has worked at a wide range of tech companies. She spearheaded investor relations for industry leaders such as Tesla Motors, Market Watch, and Pixar Animations Studios, and reported directly to some of Silicon Valley's most respected leaders (including Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, and Larry Kramer.) She has co-founded several tech start-ups and is currently Managing Director at Ellipsis, an investor relations firm. She lives in San Francisco. Kepler's Literary Foundation is proud to introduce the Bay Area literary world's…
Find out more »Yang Huang
Yang Huang reads from her short story collection, My Old Faithful, winner of the 2017 Juniper Prize. Showing both the drama of familial intimacy and the ups and downs of the everyday, My Old Faithful introduces readers to a close-knit Chinese family. These ten interconnected short stories, which take place in China and the United States over a thirty-year period, merge to paint a nuanced portrait of family life, full of pain, surprises, and subtle acts of courage. Richly textured narratives from…
Find out more »Richard Power
Richard Powers discusses his new novel, The Overstory. Praise for Richard Powers “This book is beyond special. Richard Powers manages to turn trees into vivid and engaging characters, something that indigenous people have done for eons but that modern literature has rarely if ever even attempted. It's not just a completely absorbing, even overwhelming book; it's a kind of breakthrough in the ways we think about and understand the world around us, at a moment when that is desperately needed.” —…
Find out more »Kai Carlson-Wee / Rail
The Bindery hosts a launch for Kai Carlson-Wee's first full-length poetry collection, Rail. More info to come soon -- save the date, and join us! Set against a landscape of rail yards and skate parks, Kai Carlson-Wee's debut collection captures a spiritual journey of wanderlust, depression, brotherhood, and survival. These poems--a "verse novella" in documentary form--build momentum as they travel across the stark landscapes of the American West: hopping trains through dusty prairie towns, swapping stories with mystics and outlaws, skirting the edges of…
Find out more »Richard Powers
Richard Powers Reads from "The Overstory."
Find out more »4th Annual Bay Area Book Festival
Tens of thousands of book lovers meet hundreds of acclaimed authors over an exciting weekend in downtown Berkeley, California. Whether you’re a fan of science fiction or history, of fiction or memoir, of poetry or food writing, of children’s literature or science, come experience one of the best book festivals on the planet! The Bay Area is teeming with readers, writers, creators, and thinkers. We have harnessed the power of this community to create a premier literary experience. The Festival…
Find out more »Playing Hamlet Roulette: EXIT Press spotlight and Mark Jackson book release party
Join EXIT Theatre’s publishing arm EXIT Press to celebrate our eighth year, and the recent publication of our 24th book, Mark Jackson’s Playing Hamlet Roulette: Failure, Expectation, Possibility & Democracy! Just over two years ago, Shotgun Players company member and EXIT Theatre alumnus, Mark Jackson, undertook one of the biggest challenges of his career: staging a production of Hamlet, at the Shotgun Players’ Ashby Stage, in which every performer drew their role from Yorick’s skull five minutes before showtime, their…
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Featured
- Geoffrey G. OBrien, Jane Gregory, and Wendy TreviAn evening with three poets: Wendy Trevino, author of "#YourHarveyWeinstein" and "Cruel Fictions" (forthcoming from Commune Editions); Jane Gregory, author of "My Enemies" and "Yeah No"; and Geoffrey G. O'Brien, author of many books, including "People on Sunday" and-with John Ashbery and Timothy Donnelly- "Three Poets," whose next, "Experience in Groups," is forthcoming from Wave […]
- Rachel KushnerRachel Kushner reads from and discusses her new novel, "The Mars Room," which is set in a California women's correctional facility. It follows Romy Hall at the beginning of two consecutive life sentences. Kushner is author of the novels "Telex from Cuba" and "The Flamethrowers," both of which were finalists for the National Book Award.
- Dorianne Laux and Joshua MenschThe Marin Poetry Center presents a reading by Dorianne Laux and Joshua Mensch. Laux's recent collections are "The Book of Men," which won the Paterson Poetry Prize, and "Facts about the Moon," which won the Oregon Book Award. Her "Only As The Day Is Long" is forthcoming from W.W. Norton, which is also publishing Prague-based […]
- Michelle TeaSister Spit and Radar Productions creator Michelle Tea returns to San Francisco to read from her new book "Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms" (Feminist Press). Author of many works-including "Valencia," "How to Grow Up" and "Black Wave"-Tea blends honesty with dark humor as she moves deftly between telling other people's stories and her own.
- Carmen Giménez SmithCarmen Giménez Smith ("Milk & Filth") gives a reading to launch her latest collection of poetry, "Cruel Futures," which is No. 17 in City Lights' Spotlight Series. A Latina feminist State of the Union address that offers an intimate, high-energy analysis of pop culture, the book examines social roles for women and mental illness. Barbara […]
- Writers With DrinksThe Bay Area's longest-running literary variety show this month features readings by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich ("The Fact of a Body"), Allegra Huston ("Say My Name"), Cyrus Farivar ("Habeas Data"), Maw Shein Win ("Invisible Gifts: New and Selected Poems"), C.B. Lee ("Not Your Villain") and Irene Tu ("Man Haters" comedy show). Hosted by Charlie Jane Anders ("All […]
- Brenda Hillman and giovanni singletonBrenda Hillman and giovanni singleton read new work and discuss the role poets can play as activists. The author of nine poetry collections, Hillman was awarded the international Griffin Poetry Prize in 2014 for "Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire"; her most recent is "Extra Hidden Life, Among the Days." singleton is the author of […]
- Clemantine WamariyaClemantine Wamariya's debut, "The Girl Who Smiled Beads," tells the real-life story of her and her sister's escape, at the ages of six and fifteen, from the Rwandan genocide, and their journey, over the subsequent six years and through seven countries, to safety. After being granted refugee status in the U.S., their lives diverge. Clemantine […]
- Melissa BroderThe Bindery hosts "So Sad Today" author Melissa Broder reading from her new novel "The Pisces," which she discusses with "The Millions'" Lydia Kiesling. The book follows a woman, Lucy, who after a dramatic breakup moves from Phoenix to Los Angeles and falls in love with a merman: half man, half fantasy. Her obsession and […]
- Jamel BrinkleyBooksmith hosts the Bay Area launch for Jamel Brinkley's first book, the collection of stories "A Lucky Man" (Graywolf), which Garth Greenwell has called "the rare debut that introduces not a promising talent but a major writer, fully formed." A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Brinkley recently moved to the Bay […]