Litseen

Enduring Struggle, Enduring Spirits
2019-12-01 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
ENDURING STRUGGLE, ENDURING SPIRITS: Remembering Steve Abbott and Karl Tierney on World AIDS Day
Location: Latino/Hispanic meeting room, Lower Level, San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco, CA 94102
Steve Abbott and Karl Tierney were two gifted Bay Area writers connected in life by gay literary circles and connected in death by the scorched earth of AIDS. Now two posthumous books celebrate their enduring spirits. Beautiful Aliens: A Steve Abbott Reader brings together a cross-section of artistic work spanning three decades of poetry, fiction, collage, comics, essays, and autobiography. Have You Seen This Man? The Castro Poems of Karl Tierney is a time capsule of San Francisco in the ’80s and ’90s that morphs from observation to humor to hunger to fear, each poem carrying a razor-sharp wit. Join the editors of both books, Jamie Townsend and Jim Cory, along with special guest Alysia Abbott, at a special World AIDS Day event made possible by the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center, Nightboat Books, Sibling Rivalry Press, and, with his trademark kindness, the late Kevin Killian, who organized this event in one of his last acts of generosity. Find more information about the writers and editors below:
STEVE ABBOTT was a poet, critic, editor, novelist, and artist based in San Francisco. Abbott edited the Bay Area periodical Poetry Flash and the influential SOUP Magazine. Abbott was a frequent contributor to The Advocate, The Sentinel, and The Bay Area Reporter. With Bruce Boone, he organized the historic Left/Write conference in 1981. He was also a single father and many of his poems reflect on his relationship with his daughter, Alysia, who in 2013 published the acclaimed memoir, Fairyland. Abbott died of AIDS in 1992.
KARL TIERNEY was born in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1956 and grew up in Connecticut and Louisiana. He received a Bachelor’s Degree in English from Emory University in 1980 and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arkansas in 1983. That same year, he moved to San Francisco where he dedicated himself to poetry. He was twice a finalist for the Walt Whitman Award, a finalist for the National Poetry Series, and a 1992 fellow at Yaddo. Though unpublished in book form during his lifetime, his poems appeared in many of the best literary magazines of the period. He published more than 50 poems in magazines and anthologies before his death. In December of 1994 he became sick with AIDS and took his own life in October of 1995.
JAMIE TOWNSEND is a genderqueer poet, publisher, and editor living in Oakland, California. They are half responsible for Elderly, a publishing experiment and persistent hub of ebullience and disgust. They are the author of several chapbooks including, most recently, Pyramid Song (above/ground press; 2018) as well as the full-length collection SHADE (Elis Press; 2015). An essay on the history of the New Narrative magazine SOUP was published in The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books; 2017).
JIM CORY’S most recent publications are Wipers Float In The Neck Of The Reservoir (The Moron Channel, 2018) and 25 Short Poems (Moonstone Press, 2016). He has edited poetry selections by contemporary American poets including James Broughton (Packing Up for Paradise, Black Sparrow Press, 1998) and Jonathan Williams (Jubilant Thicket, Copper Canyon Press, 2005). He lives in Philadelphia.
ALYSIA ABBOTT is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and an ALA Stonewall Award winner and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the only child of gay poet and writer, Steve Abbott. As a journalist and critic, she’s written for The New York Times, Real Simple, Vogue, Marie Claire, OUT, Slate, Salon, TheAtlantic.com, TriQuarterly and Psychology Today, among other publications. She holds an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from New School University and was a contributing producer at WNYC Radio.
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EVENT COVER PHOTO: March 8, 1988—Activists in support of the ARC/AIDS Vigil block the entrance to the old Federal Building in San Francisco’s Civic Center before their arrest. The AIDS/ARC Vigils of 1985-1995 remain the longest running act of civil disobedience in San Francisco. Credit: Rick Gerharter

Scarlett Sabet
2019-12-01 17:00 - 18:30 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
reading from her new collection of poetry
Camille
Scarlett Sabet is a London based poet and performer. Her poetry has been featured in GQ, Tatler, Constellation Magazine, The Violet Book and Dazed and Confused. Her poetry readings have been broadcast on the BBC, London Live, and London’s Soho Radio. She wrote, directed and starred in her poetic short film “Burning” which was produced by BAFTA winning producer Charlie Hanson in 2012. Her first collection “Rocking Underground” was launched with a reading at the Chelsea Arts Club in November 2014. Her second collection “The Lock And The Key” was launched with a reading at Shakespeare and Company in Paris in July 2016. In October 2016 GQ online released a video of Scarlett performing her poem Feathers at Leighton House to celebrate National Poetry Day. In January 2017 Scarlett was interviewed and gave a reading for the radio program “Van Morrison And Me” hosted by journalist John McCarthy for the BBC World Service, also featuring Sir Van Morrison, Brian Keenan and novelist Ian Rankin. In December 2017 Scarlett’s poems were exhibited alongside acclaimed photographer Jim Marshall’s work for the Peace and Light exhibition at The Troubadour in London. Scarlett has read at KGB, Bowery Poetry Club, Berl’s bookshop in New York, Aspects Literary Festival, No Alibi’s bookshop in Belfast, The Troubadour in London, the William Morris Gallery, the World’s End Bookshop, Burberry, The Groucho Club, and Atlantis Bookshop. Van Morrison commenting on Scarlett’s poetry says: “”What strikes me about Scarlett’s work it that it’s very cutting edge and it’s making poetry interesting again. I love both the intensity and the spiritual aspect she conveys.”
An interview with Scarlet on HUNGER TV
Interview with Paul Gorman at Leighton House Museum, London
Scarlett reading at The Troubador

Bazaar Writers Salon
2019-12-01 18:00 - 20:00 | Bazaar Cafe, 5927 California St, San Francisco, CA, 94121, United States
Readings by Daniel Ari, Colby Cotton, Caroline Goodwin, and Ari Moskowitz
Hosted by Peter Kline
Daniel Ari serves as poet laureate of Richmond, California and produced the city’s first anthology of poetry. His own book One Way to Ask (Norfolk Press, 2016) combines poems in a new 17-line form called queron with illustrations created and curated in collaboration with 67 artists including Roz Chast, R. Crumb, Henrik Drescher and Wayne White. The book won the Eric Hoffer da Vinci Eye Award for design. His writings have appeared in Poet’s Market, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney’s, Defenestration, the Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest, The Wayfarer, and many other venues over the last 30 years. He is currently transitioning into a new life as a guide.
Colby Cotton is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. A graduate of the MFA Writing Program at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the recipient of a Tennessee Williams Scholarship from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, his work appears or is forthcoming in The Missouri Review, Cincinnati Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Prairie Schooner, and Colorado Review, among others. He lives in Oakland, CA.
Caroline Goodwin moved to the Bay Area in 1999 from Sitka, Alaska to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry. Her books are Trapline (2013), Peregrine (2015), The Paper Tree (2017) and Custody of the Eyes (2019). She teaches at California College of the Arts and Stanford Continuing Studies; from 2014 – 2016 she served as the first Poet Laureate of San Mateo County.
In 2018, Ari Moskowitz worked the graveyard shift full-time at Hotel Zeppelin in Union Square. He spent his nights talking to sex workers, tech workers, addicts, poets, the homeless, film producers, the police, EMTs, Katie Couric, André 3000, Jeff Gutt, and Chris Taylor. He earned $17.53/hour after a raise. He’s working on a novel. Ari holds a B.A. in English from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he was the Editor of Fourteen Hills. His writing has recently appeared in American Literary Review, The Pinch, and Red Light Lit. He’s been supported by a fellowship to Virginia Center for the Creative Arts as well as a grant from the Creative Capacity Fund.

Beasts of Bourbon II
2019-12-01 18:30 - 21:30 | The Legionnaire Saloon, 2272 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Beasts of Bourbon returns with a stellar lineup of kick ass writers poets and musicians to close out the New Year with it’s second edition featuring Kim Shuck, James Cagney, Cassandra Dallett, Juba Kalamka, Alexandra Naughton and Red O’ Hare with musical guests Oddly Even (featuring Ashley Macachor and Calvin Sturges.)

The Racket #37: Holiday
2019-12-02 19:00 - 21:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
The holidays are a tinsel covered monster, roughly entangled in twinkling lights, half-choked on a nutcracker doll. The kind of slavering nog-soaked beast that comes around once a year just to lift a leg on your “More Like Holi-Daze” door mat before knocking down the door and eating your children.
To stave off this beast with a literary pole, we’re gathering some of our very favorite writers to address the subject of HOLIDAY (we leave off the ‘s’ in case anyone just wants to talk about vacationing on a sun-soaked isle) in it’s tattered, gift-wrapped glory.
There will be beer. There might be nog. Hell, we might go all out and get some cookies.
Be there.
The Readers (so far):
Joe Wadlington
Micheal Foulk
Vernon Keeve III
Joel Tomfohr
Serena Chan
Julia Halprin Johnson

Book Release for STENCILS and Celebration of the Life and Art of David King
2019-12-02 19:00 - 21:00 | 3rd Floor McRoskey Mattress Loft, 1687 Market Street, San Francisco, 94103
This event had been planned for some time as a launch party for David King’s long-overdue monograph featuring his iconic stencil-only designs. Sadly, David passed away recently but friends, family and colleagues decided to continue on with the launch event but to also make it a celebration of the life and work of David King.

The new book STENCILS starts with his legendary logo for the UK band Crass and continues to the present day. Both the artist’s process and finished output are on display in this revealing collection, from the covered-in-layers-of-paint stencils themselves to the drawings and designs outlining the thought process and ultimately the final art. Many of these works used multiple stencils and colors to create one-off finished pieces that you’re likely to find only within the pages of this book.

David King grew up in post-war London and attended art school there between 1964 and 1967. He worked as an art director for a decade thereafter, but left the commercial art world as he became more involved in creating music and confrontational graphics. He moved to New York and was commissioned to do graphics for clubs like Danceteria, Peppermint Lounge and also for The Museum of Modern Art. He joined the band Arsenal around this time. Eventually the band relocated to San Francisco, touring the west coast extensively, changing its name to Sleeping Dogs and then finally Brain Rust. In the early 1990s, King attended the San Francisco Art Institute. Since that time, David has made short films, continued with his logo design for bands and record labels and has published a number of photo books. He still was making stencils until the time of his death.

The Bushwick Book Club Oakland - - There, There
2019-12-03 18:30 - 20:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS is excited to welcome The Bushwick Book Club Oakland on Sunday, November 3rd, from 6:30-8 pm (doors at 6).
**Please Note** This event will take place after the store’s regular Sunday hours (10 am-6 pm). Attendees of the event are welcome to shop before or after but we will not be open to regular browsing in order to minimize disruption to the performances.

The Bushwick Book Club was started in 2009 by Brooklyn based singer-songwriter, Susan Hwang. At every Bushwick Book Club performance, a book is selected, and a collection of local musicians read the book and write songs inspired by them. Over the past decade, branches of the book club have sprouted all over the world, in cities such as Portland, LA, Seattle, Malmo, Sweden, Santa Barbara, New Orleans, Greenville, SC and Toronto, Canada.
​Now, Oakland, CA has its very own Bushwick Book Club! BBC Oakland specifically selects literature written by authors of color and members of LGBTQ communities. Each season a book is chosen and group of select singer-songwriters and composers read the book, write a song inspired by it, and perform their pieces for an audience of enthusiastic book people. Bushwick Book Club Oakland selects books that take up issues of race, gender, class, and mental health giving a place for artists of these communities to share their voices to an audience of similar representation and allies. Audience members are welcomed to read the book ahead of time for added fun.
For more information click here.

ABOUT THE BOOK
There There lives and breathes its setting — the streets and neighborhoods of Oakland — and is a full-throated voicing of the urban Native American experience(s). A brutal history has made for a painful present that is as complex as the people living it. The characters in There There are angry, funny, heartbroken, and their stories are woven together by having been silenced — their tongues and heads removed in past lives unseen in the present. What of their futures?
— Brad

Event date:

Sunday, November 3, 2019 – 6:30pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Second Stutter Annual Release Party
2019-12-03 19:00 - 20:30 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Hosted by Solomon Rino
with readings by George Albon, Laura Moriarty, Joseph Lease, and Norma Cole
Second Stutter is a San Francisco based literary journal that publishes annually. It’s focus is on contemporary English language poetry and translation. The editions are produced with letterpress printed covers and handmade endpapers. The covers for volume one and two were printed at Jack W. Stauffacher’s Greenwood Press at 300 Broadway, and volume three at the San Francisco Center for the Book. The editions are limited and largely distributed through readings, university lectures, and other poets. Second Stutter has published Will Alexander, Gillian Conoley, Nathaniel Mackey, Laura Moriarty, G.C. Waldrep, Rosmarie Waldrop, Joseph Lease, Tongo Eisen-Martin, Eleni Sikelianos, Donna de la Perriere, Manuel Vazquez Montalban (trans., me), Mario Santiago Papasquiaro (trans., Arturo Mantecon), Victoria Xardel (trans., Norma Cole), Jean Daive (trans., me), and Paul Celan (trans., Ian Fairley)

Mimi Lok: Last of Her Name
2019-12-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Mimi Lok discusses her new book, Last Of Her Name, with Rachel Khong.
Praise for Last Of Her Name
“Last of Her Name is a mesmerizing and deeply felt debut that affirms all that is great about short fiction. Lok’s collection brings startling intimacy to her characters, all of them struggling with dislocation and belonging. “Woman in the Closet,” has to be considered a new classic. I can’t think of a collection that better speaks to this moment of global movement and collective rupture from homes and history, and the struggle to find meaning despite it all.”— DAVE EGGERS, author of The Parade
“What a basket of jewels! Each of these stories is elegant, poignant and multi-faceted. A true pleasure.”— GISH JEN, author of The Girl at the Baggage Claim
“A truly beautiful and wide ranging collection. There is love, longing, grief, displacement, endurance. And from the gut punch of the opening story to the wonderful novella that anchors the book, not a word is wasted. So many lines spoke directly in my ear: “Night after night they sleep, but rarely at the same time. Without knowing it they take turns watching each other.” A book to stay up with, a book that will make you not want to sleep..”— PETER ORNER, author of Maggie Brown & Others
About Last Of Her Name
LAST OF HER NAME is an eye-opening story collection about the intimate, interconnected lives of diasporic women and the histories they are born into. Set in a wide range of time periods and locales, including 80s UK suburbia, WWII Hong Kong and urban California, LAST OF HER NAME features an eclectic cast of outsiders: among them, an elderly housebreaker, wounded lovers, and kung-fu fighting teenage girls.
In the novella “The Woman In The Closet,” a homeless woman finds refuge in the unlikeliest of places, while in “Motet”, a teenage girl navigates art and emotional allegiances with her ex-opera singer stepmother. In “The Wrong Dave,” a soon-to-be-married architect takes up a covert correspondence with a grief-stricken woman who may or may not be writing to the right person. “Wedding Night” centers on an unconventional romance threatened by societal mores. The title story follows the parallel, interweaving journeys of a mother and daughter as they grapple with their respective foes, taking us from the suburbs of England to a Chinese village on the eve of World War II, and exploring the hidden lives and secret histories within an immigrant family. Collectively, LAST OF HER NAME offers a unique exploration of love, longing, and endurance.

Dave Eggers / The Captain and the Glory
2019-12-04 18:00 - 19:30 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
When the decorated Captain of a great ship descends the gangplank for the final time, a new leader vows to step forward. Though he has no experience, no knowledge of nautical navigation or maritime law, and though he has often remarked he doesn’t much like boats, he solemnly swears to shake things up. Until one day a famous pirate appears on the horizon.

Dave Eggers is the author of twelve books, including The Parade; The Monk of Mokha; The Circle; Heroes of the Frontier; A Hologram for the King, a finalist for the National Book Award; and What Is the What, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of France’s Prix Médicis Étranger and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. His nonfiction and journalism have appeared in The Guardian, the New Yorker, The Best American Travel Writing, and the Best American Essays. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, an independent publishing company, and cofounder of Voice of Witness, a book series that uses oral history to illuminate human rights crises around the world. He is the cofounder of 826 National, a network of youth writing and tutoring centers with locations around the country, and of ScholarMarch, which connects donors with students to make college accessible. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has been translated into forty-two languages. He lives in Northern California with his family.

My Life, My Stories / Intergenerational Holiday Party
2019-12-04 18:00 - 21:30 | Red Victorian, 1665 Haight Street, San Francisco, CA, 94117, United States
When was the last time you went to a party with someone older than 70 who was not your grandma? Let’s celebrate 2019 together!
Please join us for the evening and meet people of all generations. If you’ve been to one of our intergenerational events or have never heard of us, it doesn’t matter, because ALL are welcome! The event is FREE, but younger adults, please consider BYOB/F to share with others. Invite your friends, co-workers, neighbors, and partners!
Come hear about what MLMS does in your community and learn about ways to get involved next year. We offer a memoir making program where every volunteer is matched with an older adult and they work together over the course of 3-4 months to create a memoir for the senior author.
RSVP here.

Charlton D. McIlwain in conversation with E. David Ellington
2019-12-04 19:00 - 20:30 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Charlton D. McIlwain in conversation with E. David Ellington
discussing Charlton D. McIlwain’s new book
Black Software: The Internet, Racial Justice, from the AfroNet to Black Lives Matter
published by Oxford University Press

Activists, pundits, politicians, and the press frequently proclaim today’s digitally mediated racial justice activism the new civil rights movement. As Charlton D. McIlwain shows in this book, the story of racial justice movement organizing online is much longer and varied than most people know. In fact, it spans nearly five decades and involves a varied group of engineers, entrepreneurs, hobbyists, journalists, and activists. But this is a history that is virtually unknown even in our current age of Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Black Lives Matter.
Beginning with the simultaneous rise of civil rights and computer revolutions in the 1960s, McIlwain, for the first time, chronicles the long relationship between African Americans, computing technology, and the Internet. In turn, he argues that the forgotten figures who worked to make black politics central to the Internet’s birth and evolution paved the way for today’s explosion of racial justice activism. From the 1960s to present, the book examines how computing technology has been used to neutralize the threat that black people pose to the existing racial order, but also how black people seized these new computing tools to build community, wealth, and wage a war for racial justice.Through archival sources and the voices of many of those who lived and made this history, Black Software centralizes African Americans’ role in the Internet’s creation and evolution, illuminating both the limits and possibilities for using digital technology to push for racial justice in the United States and across the globe.
Charlton D. McIlwain is Vice Provost of Faculty Engagement & Development at New York University, and Professor of Media, Culture, and Communication at NYU’s Steinhardt School. He is also the Founder of the Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies, and the co-author of Race Appeal: How Candidates Invoke Race in U.S. Political Campaigns, winner of the 2012 APSA Ralph Bunche Award.
E. David Ellington is Founder & Executive Chairman of the Silicon Valley Blockchain Society (SVBS). SVBS is a global, invite-only, private, member-driven ecosystem supporting blockchain and cryptocurrency related projects across industries and for social impact. SVBS members are active investors primarily in technology. They collectively represent more than $1.5 Trillion in investment capital. The SVBS mission is three words: “Fund the Revolution.”

Michael Frank: What is Missing
2019-12-04 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Michael Frank discusses his new novel What Is Missing with Lindsey Crittenden.
Praise for What Is Missing
“Michael Frank’s masterful and psychologically acute first novel—which leads us with equal confidence through the light-saturated streets of Florence and the hushed and polished halls of Upper East Side New York—asks the most urgent questions about biology and nurture, about filial and parental love, and about what we’re willing to suffer to find out who we are. This is a wise and necessary book, one I’ve been recommending ardently to everyone I know. ” —Julie Orringer, author of The Flight Portfolio
“This sophisticated erotic triangle of a novel is by turns sensuous and harrowing, driven by a point of view roulette masterfully played. For a reader unfamiliar with the experience of assisted reproduction, Michael Frank’s novel is an eye-opener. The ethics-testing extremes here left me thinking about the dire need to balance power between women and men long after I sped to the last page.” —Rachel Howard, author of The Risk of Us
“The novel is filled with trenchant moments of sweetness and betrayal, as well as a stunning reveal of the harrowing gauntlet infertile women go through to conceive. This is an intricate and dynamic examination of familial ties: both what strengthens them and what can tear them apart.” — Publisher’s Weekly
About What Is Missing
Costanza Ansaldo, a half-Italian and half-American translator, is convinced that she has made peace with her childlessness. A year after the death of her husband, an eminent writer, she returns to the pensione in Florence where she spent many happy times in her youth, and there she meets, first, Andrew Weissman, an acutely sensitive seventeen-year-old, and, soon afterward, his father, Henry Weissman, a charismatic New York physician who specializes in—as it happens—reproductive medicine.
With three lives each marked by heartbreak and absence—of a child, a parent, a partner, or a clear sense of identity—What is Missing offers Costanza, Andrew, and Henry the opportunity to make themselves whole when the triangle resumes three months later in New York, where the relationships among them turn and tighten with combustive effects that cut to the core of what it means to be a father, a son, and—for Costanza—a potential mother.

Lunch Poems: Margaret Ross
2019-12-05 12:10 - 12:50 | Morrison Library, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Margaret Ross is the author of A Timeshare. Her poems and translations appear in The New Republic, The Paris Review, and POETRY. Her honors include a Fulbright arts grant, a VSC/Luce Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowship, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship. She currently teaches at Stanford University where she is a Jones Lecturer.

Teen Poetry Night
2019-12-05 19:00 - 20:30 | Mill Valley Public Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley , CA, 94941, United States
A night for teens recite their original work. Teens from local high schools will perform: “A mic for your poem, your breath, and your soul. A space for your comrades, your thoughts to unroll. Bring paper or not, or perform on the spot, we’re all here to listen to the words that you brought.”
Contact Maxine Flasher-Duzgunes (mflasherduz@gmail.com) or Erin Rodoni (erin_rodoni@hotmail.com) to sign up to perform an original work of poetry.

Peter Kline and Susan Steinberg
2019-12-05 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Peter Kline discusses his new poetry collection Mirrorforms with Susan Steinberg.
Praise for Mirrorforms
In Mirrorforms, Peter Kline has invented and perfected a new poetic form; in and through its strict and tricky confines, he takes the reader on remarkably diverse journeys. From a sexy Godhunger out of Donne (“Is there a place for me / deep in a secret pocket / of your black leather jacket / to pass eternity?”) to wordplay worthy of Stevens (“Whatever // ––whiffles your whirligig / ––pips you ––pops your Bud/ ––puts pepper in your pud…”). From dramatic Monologues (Shapeshifter, Narcissist, Catcaller) through various Studies, to a beautiful and moving series of elegiac Votives, these mirrors reflect — and reflect upon— loneliness and estrangement; vulnerability and kink: a wide spectrum of the shadings of our emotions. One of the speakers tells us, “I’ve been a courtesan / to an immense Amen.” Amen to that, and to seeing, someday soon, Kline’s funhousing “Mirrorform” take its rightful place in the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry & Poetics. -Moira Egan
With laser focus and a fixed stare, Peter Kline’s Mirrorforms shows us how brevity can reflect an expansive emotional spectrum, marrying wit and pathos in the most unexpected ways. Risky and formally inventive, playful yet rigorous, these poems work like mirrors facing one another; they give a sense of the infinite—the endless joys, losses, and mysteries that make our world.-Bruce Snider
About Mirrorforms
Peter Kline’s Mirrorforms is a daring, experimental collection of poems in which language reaches its most pressurized state. Kline has invented a new poetic form, the mirrorform, which he uses with musical verve to essentialize thought and intensify feeling. The result is that these poems achieve jewel-like precision: each darkly glinting facet reveals the nuances and ambiguities of longing, transgression, and faith. These poems are sharply ironic, darkly funny, and ferocious, and mark out a unique place in contemporary American poetry.

Wherever There's a Fight: 10th Anniversary Reading
2019-12-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St Ste 290, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Come celebrate the 10th Anniversary Edition of Wherever There’s a Fight, Elaine Elinson and Stan Yogi’s sweeping story of the social movements and activists who have changed California and made ripples beyond.
Elaine Elinson was the communications director of the ACLU of Northern California and editor of the ACLU News for more than two decades. She is a coauthor of Development Debacle: The World Bank in the Philippines, which was banned by the Marcos regime.
Stan Yogi is the coauthor, with with Laura Atkins, of the children’s book Fred Korematsu Speaks Up. He managed development programs for the ACLU of Northern California for fourteen years and is the coeditor of two books, Highway 99: A Literary Journey through California’s Great Central Valley and Asian American Literature: An Annotated Bibliography.
Presented by Eastwind Books and the Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Event is wheelchair accessible. Free and open to the public.

After Hours: Jose Antonio Vargas
2019-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Main Reading Room, Mill Valley Public Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley , CA, 94941, United States
Friday, December 6th | 7:00pm
Wine reception at 6:30pm for registered guests.

Pultizer Prize-winning journalist and author of Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, Jose Antonio Vargas is one of the most well-known undocumented immigrants in the U.S. He will address migration versus immigration and examine what it means to be American.
Registration recommended. Registration opens November 18th.
Adults and high school students only.
Add to my:iCal/Outlook
When:Friday, December 6, 2019
Time:7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where:Mill Valley Public Library – Main Reading Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, California, 94941
Event Type:Library, Adult
Contact:(415) 389-4292

A World Without Wars - Part 2
2019-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
IN CELEBRATION OF THE PUBLICATION OF THE 6TH OVERTHROWING CAPITALISM ANTHOLOGY

NINA SERRANO
ARNOLDO GARCIA
JULIE ROGERS
DIEGO DE LEO
JEANNE POWELL
CAROL DENNEY
NILOUFAR TALEBI
HILTON OBENZINGER
AGNETA FALK
LAPO GUZZINI
SARAH MENEFEE
MAURO FORTISSIMO
MARIA CRISTINA GUTIERREZ
GENNY LIM
MARTIN HICKEL
LISBIT BAILEY
ADRIAN ARIAS
PAULINE CRAIG
KAREN MELANDER MAGOON
JACK HIRSCHMAN

Soul Food for Thought Open Mic Night
2019-12-06 19:30 - 21:30 | Manny’s, 3092 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, San Francisco, 94108, United States
Come to Manny’s for our monthly open mic nights. Poets, readers, performers – all are welcome here!
December 6th, the one and only Randy James will be organizing our monthly open-mic night for the community. Anyone with something to read in welcome to our strange. Be BRAVE and be BEAUTIFUL.
Sign-up at 7PM.
See you there!
****event will be taking place at the front.

East Bay Alternative Book & Zine Fest
2019-12-07 11:00 - 17:00 | Omni Commons, 4799 Shattuck Ave, Oakland, CA, 94609, United States
2019 marks the 10th year of EBABZ! This year, we’re “Renewing Our Vows” with a gaudy, affectionate, wedding-themed fest. Whether you’re tabling, volunteering or browsing, we hope you can make it out to enjoy a fun, festive day of zines!

Bay Area Poets Coalition Open Poetry Reading
2019-12-07 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
STRAWBERRY CREEK LODGE
1320 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)

Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)

All Ages Welcome

Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂

After the reading, join us for dinner if you’d like at a nearby restaurant

Eastwind's End of Year Celebration!
2019-12-07 16:00 - 19:00 | Eastwind Books of Berkeley, 2066 University Ave., Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Celebrate the end of the year with friends at Eastwind Books of Berkeley! We would like to thank our dedicated volunteers, customers, and community members for all of the support they have given Eastwind throughout the year. Come for the fun, raffle prizes, food and entertainment. Stock up on holiday gifts and books tor the winter break.
Happy Holidays and New Year from Eastwind Staff!

Babylon Salon: Jamel Brinkley and Chia-Chia Lin: Winter 2019
2019-12-07 18:00 - 20:00 | The Armory Club, 1799 Mission St, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
presents our Winter Reading
Saturday, Dec 7, 2019, 6.00 pm
at The Armory Club
1799 Mission Street
(downstairs performance space)

featuring

Jamel Brinkley
(A Lucky Man)
Finalist for the 2018 National Book Award in Fiction
“A Lucky Man is just one of those collections that takes your breath away: the voices we hear, the people we meet, they scratch and pull and ache and rage, revealing secrets we usually keep hidden. Every line is pitch perfect. Jamel Brinkley is a writer of extraordinary talent.” —Daniel Alarcón, author of The King is Always Above the People

Chia-Chia Lin
(The Unpassing)
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice
“A singularly vast and captivating novel . . . What makes Lin’s novel such an important book is the extent to which it probes America’s mythmaking about itself.” –Brian Haman, The New York Times Book Review

and many more

I Think About Your Hands - Belgium-based Poet Marina Kazakova
2019-12-07 19:00 - 21:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
As the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death is commemorated this year, a Belgium-based poet Marina Kazakova prepared a poetry programme inspired by and devoted to the great artist and his gorgeous country. The hands drawn by da Vinci in his portrait paintings as well as his famous study of arms and hands probably represent the most exquisite visualisation of hands in the history of art.
Marina will perform a selection of poems inspired by da Vinci’s works, Italy and Russia. The selected poems reflect the scope of human emotion, as well as relevant issues facing present-day world of Europe: hate crimes, migrants, discrimination, body commodification.
***
Marina Kazakova (b. Gorky, Russia, 1983) is a Belgium-based writer, poet and audio-visual artist. Published internationally in magazines and journals (Three Rooms Press “Maintenant”, “AntiNarrative Journal”, “Crannog”, “Duck Lake Books”, “Writing in a Woman’s Voice”), Marina is a frequent performer, she has been shortlisted at different poetry/ film-poetry competitions and was awarded various prizes.
She is author of verse novel “Tishe…Piano”, the film adaptation of which was shortlisted for International Short Film Festival Leuven 2013, Miami Indie Wise Festival 2018, XpoNorth Festival 2018, and got ’The Best Narrative Short’ Award at the International Film Festival behalf Savva Morozov in Moscow in 2015.
Her literature works deal to a large degree with confrontation with the past and explore the challenges posed both by memory and grief.
Marina holds a Master in Public Relations and in Transmedia. Currently, she is PR Officer at ‘Victim Support Europe’ (Brussels) and working on her practice-based PhD in Arts “Lyric Poem. A research on how the unique characteristics of lyric poetry can be expressed in audio-visual medium” at Luca School of Arts (KULeuven).

Ugly Beauty
2019-12-07 20:00 - 22:00 | The Beat Dance Studio, 2560 9th St., Berkeley, CA, 94710, United States
Poetry & Performance Art Open Mic

Howard Zinn Book Fair: Strike! Discovering Our Power
2019-12-08 10:00 - 18:00 | San Francisco City College, 1125 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA, 94110
Howard Zinn Book Fair 2019
Sunday December 8th
10am to 6pm
City College of San Francisco, Mission Campus
1125 Valencia Street
We are pleased to announce that the 6th Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair will take place on December 8, 2019 at CCSF Mission Campus. The theme of this year’s book fair is “Strike! Discovering Our Power.” We selected this theme to celebrate the ways in which everyday people discover their ability to work together. Inspired by the wave of strikes across the United States in the past year, the massive General Strikes in India, and the recent uprisings in Algeria and Sudan, we expand the idea of the strike to include all of the ways people can take collective action to preserve their homes, protect life on earth, respect indigeneity, shut down the machinery that produces racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and inequality, and build movements that are strong enough to last. The Strike! is not only about withdrawing our labor, but about redirecting it to create a better world.
The Howard Zinn Book Fair will host dozens of 90 min session slots for workshops, readings, panels and performances.

Small Press Book Bazaar!
2019-12-08 11:00 - 16:30 | SF MoMa, 151 Third St., San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Free and open to the public; museum admission is free on this day

Meet us at SFMOMA and around the Bay for Local Affairs, a series dedicated to local arts communities. Join us as we celebrate Bay Area culture and artists of all disciplines, and share ideas, good will, food, and drink.
This holiday season, join us for a festive book sale on opening day of the new exhibition Printed Publics: Contemporary Art and Design Publishing in the Bay Area. In collaboration with The Black Aesthetic, Cantíl, Colpa Press, The Poetry Center, and Small Press Distribution, we’ve invited a number of small local presses to present their diverse wares. Get a jump on holiday gift buying — or shop for yourself!

Vendors
2727 California Street
Atelos
Aunt Lute Books
Commune Editions
Fiction Advocate
Floss Editions
illetante collective
Kelsey Street Press
KRUPSKAYA
LAND AND SEA
Most Ancient
NIAD Art Center
Night Diver Press
Nomadic Press
Project Kalahati
RE/Search
RITE Editions
Sming Sming Books
Stripe SF
TBW Books
Transgress Press
Undertone Collective
Visible Publications
Wolfman Books

DA do SF 7
2019-12-08 18:00 - 20:00 | Specs Bar, 12 William Saroyan Place, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
Come to SPECS Bar on Sunday, December 8 at 6pm as 3RP Co-directors Peter Carlaftes & Kat Georges present their annual Dada Journal MAINTENANT reading with Bay Area contributors –SF Poets & Legends Carol Dorf, Lorene Zouzounis, Robert Duncan, Jack Hirschman, Maw Shein Win, Allison Davis, Tom Stolmar, Marc Olmsted, Suzy Kaplan Olmsted, Richard Stone, Neeli Cherkovski, Mahnaz Badihian, Gerald Nicosia, Mara Patricia Hernandez, Santiago Amaya, Julian Mithra, and all the way from Brussels –Marina Kazakova!!!
We will have copies of our internationally renowned MAINTENANT 13: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art on hand for purchase and signing.
And stay for a special musical performance by Fitz and Webber –Wendy Fitz on Piano and Steve Webber on Bass. 8-10pm.
Spec’s Bar is in North Beach, right across the street from City Lights Bookstore at 12 William Saroyan Place. Admission its free. Showtime is 6-8, but to get the full Spec’s experience, come early and stay late!!

San José Poetry Slam
2019-12-08 19:00 - 21:00 | Caravan Lounge, 98 S Almaden Ave, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
feature: tba
Hosted by Santa Clara Couty Poet Laureate Mighty Mike McGee
doors and sign up list opens at 6:00pm
sign up list closes at 6:55pm
Show starts at 7pm
cash prizes for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place
Follow the Slam on Facebook!
Caravan Lounge
98 S Almaden Ave
in downtown San José at the corner of San Fernando St. and Almaden Ave.
Admission Free
21 and over, cash bar (they do have an atm)
