Perfectly Queer East Bay Short Fiction Reading

Four East Bay short-fiction authors appear at Perfectly Queer East Bay Wednesday, October 25, 7pm to 8:30pm, at Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Avenue in Uptown Oakland. Kwan Booth, Helen Klonaris, Achy Obejas, and Kamala Puligandla read from their work. Delicious refreshments & thematic door prizes for the prompt! A discussion of writing short fiction follows the readings. Books by the authors will be available.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Kwan Booth is an award-winning writer and strategist focused on the intersection of media, culture, and technology. He’s the editor of “Black Futurists Speak: New Black Writing” and has had journalism and creative writing published in The Guardian, Fusion, “CHORUS: a literary mixtape”, and “Beyond the Frontier: African American Poets for the 21st Century.” His awards include a Sigma Delta Chi Award from The Society of Professional Journalists and a Pushcart Prize nomination for fiction. Kwan posts occasional updates, publications, and mediocre cell phone photos at Boothism.org.

Helen Klonaris is a Greek Bahamian writer, educator, and energy medicine practitioner. Her short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Let’s Tell This Story Properly, Haunted Tropics: Caribbean Ghost Stories, Our Caribbean: A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writings from the Antilles, and The Racial Imaginary: Writers and the Life of the Mind, among others. In 2014, she was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Helen is co-editor of the anthology Writing the Walls Down: A Convergence of LGBTQ Voices, published by Trans-Genre Press, and the author of If I Had the Wings, a collection of short stories published by Peepal Tree Press.

Achy Obejas is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Ruins, Days of Awe, and three other books of fiction. She edited and translated (into English) the anthology Havana Noir and has since translated Junot Díaz, Rita Indiana, Wendy Guerra, and many other authors. In 2014, she was awarded a USA Ford Fellowship for her writing and translation. She currently serves as the Director of the MFA in Translation program at Mills College in Oakland, California.

Kamala Puligandla is the writer of many short autobiographical and biographical fictions, some of which were definitely shared with her in confidence. She’s not really sorry. Her work has been featured in The Tusk, The Establishment, and in Loose Lips, the anthology of the show Shipwreck SF. She also has a novel manuscript called Zigzags that she would love to give to someone else to care for. Kamala is well-known for being easily bribed by cheese and Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, use that info as you will. And find her work at thatkamala.com.