Why There Are Words: “Ever Since”

Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15

Mathieu Cailler’s poetry and prose have been widely featured in numerous national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times, Epiphany, and The Saturday Evening Post. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, he has been a finalist for the Glimmer Train New Writers Award, the New Rivers Press American Fiction Prize, and the Carve Magazine Raymond Carver Short Story Contest. He is also the recipient of a Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction and a Shakespeare Award for Poetry. He is the author of Clotheslines (Red Bird Press), Shhh (ELJ Publications), and the recently acclaimed collection of short stories, Loss Angeles (Short Story America Press 2016).

Elizabeth Collison is the author of the novel Some Other Town (Harper Perennial, 2015). She has published stories in North American Review, The Barcelona Review, and Monkeybicycle and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She lives in San Jose.

Brennan DeFrisco is an MFA candidate in poetry at Antioch University Los Angeles. He was a National Poetry Slam Finalist in 2015, placing third in the country. He is co-founder of Lucky Bastard Press, where he co-edits with his muse, Allie Marini. He is a teaching artist with California Poets In The Schools and Digital Storytellers, facilitating poetry workshops for students across the Bay Area. He’s the author of A Heart With No Scars by Nomadic Press and co-author of Exquisite Duet by Hermeneutic Chaos Press, a collaboration with Allie Marini. His work can be found or is forthcoming in Words Dance, jmww journal, Gemini and others. He loves movies, poker, whiskey, Firefly, & a particularly beautiful, talented woman. He occupies Oakland, CA with her.

Kate Folk‘s stories have appeared in many journals and are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, the Indianola Review, and Juked. She has received support for her writing from the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Vermont Studio Center, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Originally from Iowa, she’s lived in San Francisco since 2008.

Maureen O’Leary is a writer and educator from Sacramento. She is the author of the novels How to Be Manly, The Arrow, and Coffeetown Press’ summer 2016 release The Ghost Daughter. She is the winner of Heyday Books’ Sacramento Valley Writing Contest for Poetry, and her work will be included in a forthcoming book about the people and environment of the region. Her short stories and poetry appear in the publications of Esopus, Night Train Journal, Brackish Vol. 2, Revolution John, Prick of the Spindle, The Gold Man Review, and in Shade Mountain Press’ anthology The Female Complaint: Tales of Unruly Women.

Shobha Rao is the author of the collection of short stories, An Unrestored Woman, published in March 2016. Kirkus Reviews called An Unrestored Woman “stunning and relentless.” Booklist said of the collection, “Rao’s raw and breathtaking short story collection is set against [an] epic canvas, yet her character studies are intimate.”  She is the winner of the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, awarded by Nimrod International Journal. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and is the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation fellowship. Her story “Kavitha and Mustafa” was chosen by T.C. Boyle for inclusion in the Best American Short Stories 2015. She lives in San Francisco.

Tess Taylor’s chapbook, The Misremembered World, was selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship. The San Francisco Chronicle called her first book, The Forage House, “stunning” and it was a finalist for the Believer Poetry Award. Her second book Work & Days, was hailed by critic Stephen Burt as “our moment’s Georgic.” Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Boston Review, Harvard Review, The Times Literary Supplement, and other places. She chairs the poetry committee of the National Book Critics Circle, is currently the on-air poetry reviewer for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and was most recently visiting professor of English and creative writing at Whittier College. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize and awards and fellowships from MacDowell, The Headlands Center for the Arts, and The International Center for Jefferson Studies.

Kara Vernor’s fiction has appeared in Wigleaf, Necessary Fiction, PANK, The Los Angeles Review, Smokelong Quarterly, and many others. She has been a Best Small Fictions finalist, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and a Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference Estelle Frank Fellow. She is currently an Elizabeth George Foundation scholar at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts, and her first flash fiction chapbook, Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song, will be available from Split Lit Press in June 2016.