Literary Speakeasy’s toast to 2020

It’s time for the first Literary Speakeasy of 2020! We are celebrating with five amazing writers – Heather Bourbeau, Vincent Chu, Kevin Dublin, Lauren Ito, and Sarah Kobrinsky. It’s going to be an amazing night of poetry and prose. Come raise a glass to Bay Area authors!

Literary Speakeasy is always FREE and there is NO drink minimum. Arrive early for a FREE raffle ticket for your chance to win the evening’s secret Speakeasy prize.

Performer bios:
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, Cleaver, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Chalkboard, The Stockholm Review of Literature, and the anthologies Nothing Short Of 100: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story and America, We Call Your Name: Poems of Resistance and Resilience (Sixteen Rivers Press). She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia.

Vincent Chu is a Bay Area writer and author of the debut story collection Like a Champion. His fiction has appeared in STILL Magazine, Fjords Review, Pithead Chapel, PANK Magazine, East Bay Review, The Collapsar, Stockholm Review and elsewhere. He is a 2019 Hambidge Center Fellow and member of The Writers Grotto. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from UCLA. Vincent lives in San Francisco and can be found online at @herrchu. He is working on his first novel.

Kevin Dublin is editor of Etched Press and author of the chapbook How to Fall in Love in San Diego. He has been the recipient of fellowships and awards from the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing, North Carolina Poetry Society, and more. His words have appeared in North Carolina Literary Review, Menacing Hedge, Poetry International, The Rumpus, and more. He holds an MFA from San Diego State University and enjoys developing web apps for writers. Kevin also leads workshops as a part of Litquake’s Elder Writing Project, at Syzygy Academy SF, and all over the Bay Area. Follow him on Twitter @PartEverything.

Lauren Ito is a Seattle-born Gosei (fifth generation Japanese American) poet, designer, and community craftswoman committed to advancing equity through art and design. As a poet, Lauren delves into the tensions inherited within diasporic experiences, including explorations of American concentration camps, identity, and home. Lauren’s art been featured by The Seattle Times, Japanese American National Museum, Nomadic Press, The City is Already Speaking Anthology, and various performance venues, such as the Mission Arts Performance Project, Lit Crawl San Francisco, and Gears Turning. She is a 2019 Grotto Rooted & Written Fellow, 2019 Novalia Collective Fellow, and Asian American Women Arts Association Emerging Curators Fellow. She is currently working on her first manuscript. Lauren lives in San Francisco and can almost always be found by the sea.

Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, CA. Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything (New Rivers Press) is her first collection of poetry. Her poems and stories have appeared in Magma Poetry, Eleven Eleven, Monkeybicycle, *82 Review, 100 Word Story, Fjords Review, among many others. She was long-listed for the 2019 University of Canberra Vice Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. She was born in Canada, raised in North Dakota, seasoned in England, and tempered in California. Sarah and her husband have a handmade dinnerware company called Jered’s Pottery.