Just one summer ago a few readers gathered around the full moon in a thicket of heat and haze, and conjured muses that enlivened us Bay Area writers all year long. Those muses have since returned to their divine retirements, their inspiration is ever so fading, and it is time to conjure new muses.

The Association of Black and Brown Writers, with Vernon’s permission, is taking over the full moon reading and reviving it into something that will not only wake the muses, but possibly Apollo himself; and hopefully a slew of Orishas.

Please join ABBW for its inaugural event on August 29th at 8:30 pm at the Lake Merritt Amphitheater. There will be featured readers, and allotted time for open mic readers (so bring something to read).

The event will begin at 9:00/9:30, but there may be a food truck arriving at 8:30.

The featured readers for the night are:

Rohan DaCosta is a great and miraculous writer that hails from the Windy City. He has always known what was up.

Claudette Moonsong Davis was born in Los Angeles, California raised in Knoxville, Tennessee, Claudette Davis has had a long education in leading a double life. Those years spent in the South imbued her with a deep hunger for the divine feminine. As well as an acute love and awareness of her own singular blackness in the prestigious but often prejudiced private schools she attended. She is an avid student of mythos, symbology, and women’s magic. She graduated from Oberlin College in 2013 with dual degrees in creative writing with a fiction-screenwriting focus and Africana studies with a concentration of fine arts. She is currently working on her first novel and pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Writing from California College of the Arts.

Yume Kim is a recent MFA Creative Writing graduate from SFSU. Her works have been published but she’s too lazy to spell them out right now. In her dreams, she envisions burritos. Please give her a burrito now. She’s hungry.”

Jesse Prado lives in Hayward, California, and blogs at thegreatcratsby.tumblr.com.

Jezebel Delilah X is a queer, lush-bodied, Black, femme performance artist, writer, actress, filmmaker, educator, facilitator, orator and Faerie Queen Mermaid Gangsta for The Revolution. She loves to flirt, laugh, perform, crack corny jokes, and insert Octavia Butler references into every conversation. She is a Co-Managing Editor for Everyday Feminism; co-host of the queer/feminist Open Mic, Culture Fuck; Artistic Director of queer, Black, multi-disciplinary performance troupe, Congregation of Liberation (recently produced play Black Don’t Crack); and one of the founding members of Deviant Type Press. She has performed in a wide variety of Queer and Queer People Of Color theatre projects and cabarets, and has been a featured reader at literary events all over the Bay Area. She uses a combination of memoir, poetry, theatre, and feminist storytelling to advance her politix of radical love, socioeconomic justice, anti-racism, community accountability, critical reflection, love, healing, and liberation. She has an MFA in Creative Writing.

Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a Pushcart nominee and reads often around the San Francisco Bay Area. She has published online and in many print magazines such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, The Bicycle Review, Chiron Review, River Babble, and Up The River. A full-length book of poetry, Wet Reckless was released to good review from Manic D Press May 2014. A new book of poems Bad Sandy was released spring 2015, and a book of short memoir is due in the fall on Punk Hostage Press.