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Martinis & Writers – Literary Speakeasy!
It’s time to refill those martini glasses — Literary Speakeasy returns to Martuni’s on July 28. Come order up one of the best drinks in town as we bring you some of the best literary talent in the Bay Area. This month’s featured guests include Tusiata Avia, Jason Bayani, Natasha Dennerstein, Bill Dupp, and Soma Mei Sheng Frazier. Your host and curator is James J. Siegel
As always, Literary Speakeasy is a FREE event with NO drink minimum. All attendees will receive a FREE raffle ticket for a chance to win the night’s secret Speakeasy prize. It’s our way of saying “thanks for coming out!”
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Tusiata Avia is a Samoan-New Zealand poet, performer, and writer. She has published three books of poetry: Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, Bloodclot, Fale Aitu/ Spirit House and two
children’s books, Mele and the Massage and The Song. Her one-woman theatre show (also called Wild Dogs Under My Skirt) toured internationally from 2002 to 2008 and shows again in 2016 as a play for six actors. Tusiata has held a number of writers’ residencies and awards, including a Fulbright Pacific Artist Fellowship at the University of Hawai’i and the Janet Frame Literary Trust Award. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand, with her daughter, Sepela and teaches Creative Writing and Performing Arts at Manukau Institute of Technology.
Jason Bayani is the author of Amulet from Write Bloody Press. He’s an MFA graduate from Saint Mary’s College, a Kundiman fellow, and is currently the Program Manager for Kearny Street Workshop.http://jasonbayani.com/
Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia, to a family originating in Belarus. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for 20 years, which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University and has had poetry published in Fourth Floor, Landfall, Snorkel, JAAM, Takahe, Shenandoah, Bloom, Transfer, Red Light Lit, Spoon River Poetry Review, Foglifter and sPARLKE + bLINK. Her collection “Anatomize” was published by Norfolk Press in San Francisco in October 2015 and her new collection “Triptych Caliform” will be launched in September this year.
Bill Dupp lives and works in the heart of The Castro as a VJ at Midnight Sun. A lover of fiction and storytelling he has been writing, producing, and acting in theater and film his entire life. As a graduate of UCSB Film, and having worked at both Discovery and Warner Brothers, he left Los Angeles behind and is now celebrating his sixth year in San Francisco! He can be found performing at Oasis and DJing all over town when not manning the VJ booth.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is an East Coast native living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her two fiction chapbooks, Salve (Nomadic Press) and Collateral Damage: A Triptych (RopeWalk Press), earned praise from Nikki Giovanni, Daniel Handler, Antonya Nelson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Molly Giles, Michelle Tea, and others. You can find her work online at Eclectica Magazine, Carve Magazine, Eleven Eleven, and Kore Press. New work is available in the current issues of Glimmer Train and ZYZZYVA, and forthcoming in Eclectica’s anthology. Soma is at work on a novel and a screenplay.
James J. Siegel is the monthly curator and host of Literary Speakeasy. His first poetry collection, How Ghosts Travel, was published earlier this year by Spuyten Duvyil Press.