Viet Thahn Nguyen: Houston Lecture
2017-10-18 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Hammer Theater Center, 101 Paseo De San Antonio Walk, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
Viet Thanh Nguyen is the winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Sympathizer, a New York Times bestseller. His current short story collection The Refugees has also become a bestseller. Other awards include the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the Edgar Award for Best First Novel from the Mystery Writers of America, and the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction from the American Library Association, among others. He is the Aerol Arnold Chair of English and Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.

‘Huncke & Louis’ Film Screening w/ Laki Vazakas
2017-10-18 19:00 - 21:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Filmmaker Laki Vazakas returns to the Beat Museum for a screening of his film Huncke & Louis, shot in 1993, and offering a tender, candid glimpse into the lives of seminal (if under-acknowledged) Beat Generation writer Herbert Huncke, and his longtime friend and companion Louis Cartwright. Tate Swindell will be joining Laki in a discussion of the film, and Huncke’s life and work.

Jennifer Egan
2017-10-18 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Manhattan Beach opens in Brooklyn during the Great Depression. Anna Kerrigan, nearly twelve years old, accompanies her father to the house of Dexter Styles, a man who, she gleans, is crucial to the survival of her father and her family.
Years later, her father has disappeared and the country is at war. Anna works at the Brooklyn Naval Yard, where women are allowed to hold jobs that had always belonged to men. She becomes the first female diver, the most dangerous and exclusive of occupations, repairing the ships that will help America win the war. She is the sole provider for her mother, a farm girl who had a brief and glamorous career with the Ziegfeld Follies, and her lovely, severely disabled sister. At a nightclub, she chances to meet Dexter Styles again, and she begins to understand the complexity of her father’s life, the reasons he might have vanished.
Mesmerizing, hauntingly beautiful, with the pace and atmosphere of a noir thriller, Egan’s first historical novel is a masterpiece, a deft, startling, intimate exploration of a transformative moment in the lives of women and men, America and the world. Manhattan Beach is a spectacular novel by one of the greatest writers of our time.
Jennifer Egan is the author of five books of fiction, including A Visit from the Goon Squad, which won the Pulitzer Prize and National Books Critics Circle Award; The Keep, a national bestseller; the story collection Emerald City; Look at Me, a National Book Award Finalist; and The Invisible Circus, which was adapted into a major motion picture starring Cameron Diaz. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harpers, Granta, McSweeney’s, The New York Times Magazine and many others. She lives in Brooklyn.

John Kaag
2017-10-19 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Paperback release for John Kaag’s new book, American Philosophy.

Praise for American Philosophy
“Kaag’s accounts are accurate, engaging and scrupulous. They show profound learning. They’re also genuinely entertaining, recapturing lost details of thinkers’ personal lives without sensationalism. The further you go on in the book, and the more of Kaag’s skillful miniatures you take in, the deeper it becomes. You realize he is also making an unconventional argument for who was right, and who was wrong, in the classical tradition of American philosophy from about 1830 to 1930, in Transcendentalism and Pragmatism and Idealism and beyond. It is an argument strikingly suited to our time . . . American Philosophy succeeds, not as a textbook or survey, but a spirited lover’s quarrel with the individualism and solipsism in our national thought.” ―Mark Greif, The New York Times Book Review

“John Kaag hits the sweet spot between intellectual history and personal memoir in this transcendently wonderful love song to philosophy . . . this is the most enthralling book of intellectual history I’ve read since David Edmonds’ and John Eidinow’s Wittgenstein’s Poker . . . With its lucid, winning blend of autobiography, biography, and serious philosophical reflection, American Philosophy provides a magnificently accessible introduction to fundamental ideas about freedom and what makes life significant. It’s an exhilarating read.” ―Heller McAlpin, NPR

“Is life worth living?” This is the age-old but forever timely question at the center of this remarkable and daring memoir. Part history of American philosophy, part personal narrative, American Philosophy: A Love Story, takes us deeply into that ‘epic love affair with wisdom’ that is philosophy, but it does so through the wonderfully intimate lens of the author himself, a young and accomplished philosopher who has summoned the nerve to expose his flaws, his failures, his deepest doubts about it all, a rare act of creative courage and generosity that leads us to where the heart of true philosophy lies: to a deep and abiding sense of wonder. This is an absolutely stellar memoir.” ―Andre Dubus III

About American Philosophy
John Kaag is a dispirited young philosopher at sea in his marriage and his career when he stumbles upon West Wind, a ruin of an estate in the hinterlands of New Hampshire that belonged to the eminent Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking. Hocking was one of the last true giants of American philosophy and a direct intellectual descendent of William James, the father of American philosophy and psychology, with whom Kaag feels a deep kinship. It is James’s question “Is life worth living?” that guides this remarkable book.

Marin Poetry Center: Thomas Centolella + Diana Goetsch
2017-10-19 19:30 - 21:30 | Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave, San Rafael , CA, 94901, United States
Thomas Centolella is the author of four collections of poetry. The most recent, Almost Human, won the Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press, selected by Edward Hirsch. His honors include the American Book Award, the Lannan Literary Award, the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, and publication in the National Poetry Series. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University where he studied poetry with Denise Levertov and fiction with Grace Paley. His work has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac. He has taught creative writing for many years in the Bay Area.
Diana Goetsch is the author of eight collections of poems—most recently Nameless Boy (2015, Orchises) and In America (forthcoming from Rattle)—and the recipient of numerous honors and awards. Her work has appeared in many leading magazines and anthologies including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Gettysburg Review, The Iowa Review, Ploughshares, The Southern Review and Best American Poetry. Known as a generous and innovative teacher, Diana has taught writing in colleges, MFA programs, art centers, jails and living rooms for 30 years. Currently she is the Grace Paley Teaching Fellow in writing at The New School.

MARY: A Journal of New Writing
2017-10-21 08:00 - 2017-11-08 00:00
MARY: A Journal of New Writing is accepting submissions for our Winter 2017 issue. If you have poetry, nonfiction, or fiction you would like to share, please send it our way! Authors of works selected for the Winter 2017 Issue will be offered a small honorarium. Submissions are open until November 8th. We look forward to reading your work! For more information about our submission guidelines, please use the following link: https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/nod e/15842

San Jose Poetry Festival
2017-10-21 09:00 - 2017-10-22 17:00 | History Park San José, 1650 Senter Road, San Jose , CA, 95112, United States
Arlene Biala reading at San José Poetry Festival 2016
Poetry Center San José presents
the Third Annual San José Poetry Festival
The Third Annual San José Poetry Festival will celebrate our community’s diverse ethnic and cultural heritage with a wide range of topics and literary styles reflected in performances and workshops.
a day of readings and performances:
Saturday, October 21, 2017, 9am to 5pm
a day of workshops:
Sunday, October 22, 2017, 9am to 5pm
History Park San José
featuring:
Arlene Biala, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate, Deborah A. Miranda, Persis Karim,
Tshaka Menelik Imhotep Campbell, Yesika Salgado, David Perez, and more!
The diverse voices of local and California poets, along with:
Small Press Fair, Booksignings, Poetry Across Cultures, Spoken Word Performances, Media Poetry Studio Videos, Poetry Workshop Day, and more!
Saturday poetry presentations:
Yukei Teikei Haiku Society: Patricia Machmiller and Patrick Gallagher
VeteransWrite: Jeffrey Leonard (MC), Dale Barnett, Nick Butterfield, Emilio Gallegos, Douglas Nelson, and David Sullivan
Hindi Poetry: Anshu Johri, Pallavi Sharma, and Vinod Narayan
Poets & Writers Coalition of SJSU: Gabrielle LaFrank, Brandon Luu, and Emily Tang
Keynote Address: Arlene Biala
Middle Eastern Poetry: Persis Karim
Ohlone/Costanoan Poetry Tradition: Debora A. Miranda
Media Poetry Studio: David Perez and Erica Goss
Latinx Poetry: Roberto Tinoco Duran and Suzana De Jesus Huerta
Grand Finale: Tshaka Menelik Imhotep Campbell, Kim Johnson, and Yesika Salgado
Saturday small press fair (so far):
Dutch Poet Press
Swan Scythe Press
Tourane Poetry Press
Sunday poetry workshops:
Four workshops to choose from:
Barbara Jane Reyes, 9am-12pm
presenting Kuwentuhan (Talkstory)
David Perez, 9am-12pm
A poetry composition workshop inspired by the medium of video poetry. Participants will view a series of video poems and discuss various techniques at play in each example. The workshop culminates in several focused creative writing activities that encourage participants to apply these techniques in their own work.
Charlotte Muse, 2pm-5pm
A workshop illustrating the many ways poetry inspires, and is inspired by the senses.
Deborah A. Miranda, 2pm-5pm
Description to come.
Join us at the beautiful History Park San José for San José Poetry Festival 2017—two full days of inspiration and exploration!
San José Poetry Festival 2017 is presented by Poetry Center San José and is sponsored in part by: Festival and Cultural Affairs grants from the City of San José; a grant from Silicon Valley Creates, in partnership with the County of Santa Clara and the California Arts Council; Poets & Writers through grants it has received from The James Irvine Foundation and the Hearst Foundations; with support from History/San José; and discounted accomodations from Hotel De Anza.

Bikes to Books 4-year Anniversary
2017-10-21 13:00 - 16:00 | Jack London Street, Jack London Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, United States
Combining San Francisco history, art, literature, cycling, and urban exploration, Bikes to Books began as an homage to the 1988 street-naming project spearheaded by City Lights founder and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in which 12 San Francisco streets were renamed for famous artists and authors who had once made San Francisco their home. The resulting 7.1-mile tour is a diverting and unique way to celebrate both the literary and the adventurous spirit of San Francisco. Learn about the authors and neighborhoods that made San Francisco a known literary hub, from South Park to North Beach, Jack London to Jack Kerouac, all from the comfort of your own bicycle seat!

Bring bikes with gears, snacks, and enthusiasm.
In honor of the authors who inspired our tour, we invite participants to bring small excerpts or quote from their favorites to be read on location throughout the ride.
This is an urban ride of moderate difficulty, recommended for riders 16 years of age and older.

10th Annual Beat Museum Poetry Festival
2017-10-21 13:00 - 2017-10-22 18:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
HOSTED BY TERRY ADAMS, LEAH LUBIN & FRED DODSWORTH
For the 10th year running, we feature the living poets, poets laureate, former Stegner Fellows, local published poets, as well as brilliant old and new-timers, plus musicians and performance artists from all over the Bay Area (including Europe this year). Diverse voices will resonate with the all-embracing spirit of the original San Francisco Beat Movement in the aura of memorabilia downstairs in the Beat Museum.
Dray Zera and Umor Hague, young performers from the UK will join us, along with Clive Matson, Caroline Goodwin, Avotcja, Q.R. Hand, Peter Kline, Jack Foley (with Sangye Land), Gwen O’Gara, William Taylor, Chris Vannoy (from San Diego), Kim Adonizio, Brittany Perham, Sarah Kobrinsky, The Word Music Continuum, and 20 or so others.

Crossing Borders: Remembering Francisco X. Alarcón
2017-10-21 15:00 - 18:00 | San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
The International Center of the San Francisco Public Library, in collaboration with Carayan Press, present Cruzando Fronteras/Crossing Borders poetry series first presented at the Main Library back in 2011. This special edition, We Remember You, features various poets reading their work in either Spanish or English and selections from the poetry of Francisco X. Alarcón (1954-2016) as an homage to the poet.
Guest Poets: Camincha, Avotcja, Betty Sánchez, Edwin Lozada, Christina Lloyd, and others.
For more information visit: fronteras.carayanpress.com
This is a Reading, Writing & Poetry program from SFPL. We love reading/sharing/creating words.

Poetry Festival
2017-10-22 11:00 - 12:30 | Cultural Integration Fellowship 2650 Fulton Street, San Francisco, 2650 Fulton Street, San Francisco, 94118
Come one and all and bring your friends, partner and neighbors to a gathering in which favorite poems will be shared. Or you can come and simply listen and enjoy. The number of poems one can read will depend on the number of people attending who want to share their poetry. You may read one or several. The host Sally Love Saunders has a passion for poetry and gathering people around to write and read. Today we will simply read and listen. Hope to have you there.
Sally Love Saunders is a widely published Poet, Poetry Therapist, Lecturer, Free-Lance Writer and Workshop Leader. Sally’s work has appeared in the New York Times, Times International, The London Times, The Denver Post, and among over three hundred other anthologies, magazines and newspapers. She has received many prizes for her poetry. “A Johnny Appleseed Poet,” Sally travels all over the country running workshops. It is her absolute conviction that “Everyone is a Poet!” Sally has developed fun techniques to help individuals to get in touch with their own unique creativity.

David St. John + Susan Terris
2017-10-22 13:00 - 15:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In The Last Troubadour, David St. John has given us a collection of new and selected poems of astonishing beauty, precise and keenly observed but also touched with sensuality and deep feeling. Nothing is too small to escape notice (in “Guitar” St. John reflects on the beauty of that word) or too large to be explored-the suicide of a friend, the illness of a lover, or the texture of longing and desire. A sharp observer of landscapes within and without, St. John directs his empathetic gaze and vivid, inventive voice to investigating both the darkest and the most inspiring parts of being human, the small moments between friends and lovers as well as the groundswells that alter lives.
At times lyrical, sometimes conversational, occasionally wry and playful, St. John’s poetry reveals an expansive vision animated by “intimacy and subtlety, and by a disturbing force, the work of an urgent sensibility and a true ear.” (W.S. Merwin) The beauty, music, and artistry of David St. John’s widely admired work is fully on display in this masterful collection.
David St. John is the author of eleven collections of poetry (including Study for the World’s Body, nominated for The National Book Award in Poetry) as well as a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us. He is University Professor and Chair of English at The University of Southern California, and lives in Venice Beach, California.
Susan Terris’s Take Two: Film Studies is a series of dazzling poems about pairs who are heading in one way or another for trouble, disaster, or death. Each poem is a kind of filmic scene, which has a few movie terms embedded as parenthetical script directives.
The text spins back and forth in time from the era of Beowulf to that of Jacqueline Kennedy. There are traditional couples like Abélard & Héloïse or Bonnie & Clyde. But many of the pairs are unexpected: Sancho Panza & his donkey Dapple, Mary Shelley & her monster, Picasso & a portrait of Dora Maar, or Lady Macbeth & King Duncan. Expect the unexpected in this volume. No matter what you think you know about a pair, you may be in for a dark surprise.
Susan Terris’s most recent books are Memos and Ghost of Yesterday: New & Selected Poems. She is the author of six books of poetry, sixteen chapbooks, three artist’s books, and one play. Journal publications include The Southern Review,Colorado Review, and Ploughshares. A poem of hers from FIELD appeared in Pushcart Prize XXXI. A poem from Memos, first published in the Denver Quarterly, was selected for Best American Poetry 2015. She is the editor of Spillway Magazine and a poetry editor for Pedestal Magazine.

Words-n-Punks
2017-10-22 17:00 - 19:00 | land and sea, 5428 San Pablo Ave, Oakland, 94608
Join us for a night of punk rock stories & art!
Reading/discussion hosted by Ben Sizemore, with:
Michelle Gonzales, author of “The Spitboy Rule”
Lynn Breedlove, author “Godspeed & “Lynn Breedlove’s One Freak Show”
Shawna Kenney & Rich Dolinger, authors of “Live at the Safari Club: A History of HarDCore in the Nation’s Capital 1988-1998” (showing a slideshow of outtake photos & flyers from the book)
and award-winning journalist A.C. Thompson

Aaron Shurin
2017-10-22 18:00 - 19:30 | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Poet Aaron Shurin will read from his new book Flowers & Sky: Two
Talks which brings together two lectures and a suite of unpublished
poems by one of our ﬁnest lyric poets. These intimate talks use
Shurin’s own work to illustrate the power and practice of image-
making at the deepest level.
Shurin is the author of twelve books of poetry and prose, most
recently The Skin of Meaning: Collected Literary Essays and Talks by
University of Michigan Press (2016) and Citizen by City Light Books
(2012). A master of the prose poem, his career could be considered
a love letter to San Francisco and the gay community there.

CaConrad + Dara Wier
2017-10-22 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
CaConrad and Dara Wier read from their new poetry collections from Wave Books, While Standing in Line for Death and In the Still of the Night.

About While Standing in Line for Death
After his boyfriend Earth’s murder, CAConrad was looking for a (Soma)tic poetry ritual to overcome his depression. This new book of 18 rituals and their resulting poems contains that success, along with other political actions and exercises that testify to poetry’s ability to reconnect us and help put an end to our alienation from the planet.

About In the Still of the Night
“That’s how one human leaves us” ends the first poem of Dara Wier’s startling new collection, a surprisingly raw and fluid exploration of grief. Wier records her thoughts with clarity and immediacy, showing us the unraveling and reconstruction of her world and consciousness after a significant loss.

Melinda Clemmons
2017-10-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
Melinda Clemmons lives in Oakland. Her stories and poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Cimarron Review, Kindred, Daphne Magazine, West Trestle Review, Eclipse, 300 Days of Sun, Cavalier, and The Monthly. She worked for over twenty years in programs serving children and youth in foster care, and is now a freelance writer and editor in the child welfare field. She is a frequent contributor to the online child welfare and juvenile justice news site, The Chronicle of Social Change.

Reza Farazmand
2017-10-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
In the follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Poorly Drawn Lines, beloved webcomic artist Reza Farazmand returns with a new collection of comics that hilariously skewers our modern age. Comics for a Strange World takes readers through time, space, and alternate realities, reuniting fans with favorite characters and presenting even more ridiculous scenarios. A squirrel adapts to human society by purchasing a cell phone—and a gun. And an old man shares memories of the Internet with his granddaughter: “A vast network of millions of idiots. Together, the idiots created endless shitty ideas. It was a true renaissance of shit.” In the world of Poorly Drawn Lines, nothing is too weird or too outlandish for parody.
Featuring 50 percent brand-new content alongside some of the most popular comics of the past year, Comics for a Strange World will be the perfect gift for your most sardonic friend or family member.
Reza Farazmand lives and draws in San Francisco. He started putting his comics on the Internet in college at pdlcomics.tumblr.com, and was soon surprised to learn that this activity could make for an actual career. His work has since been featured in and around such places as television sets, websites, magazines, and now this book. When he’s not writing or drawing, Reza enjoys drinking coffee and looking at things on screens. He is generally a pretty good guy.

Karen Melander Magoon + Nina Serrano
2017-10-24 18:30 - 20:30 | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
Join us every Tuesday evening in the historic literary epicenter of San Francisco to hear poets from near and far read their work!
Tuesdays at North Beach is a highly-respected weekly poetry series celebrating internationally acclaimed poets and showcasing local talent. Past guests have included Jonathan Richman, Diane di Prima, California Poet Laureate Al Young and freshly-discovered poets from our sister program, Poets 11.
The series is presented by Friends and curated by Friends’ Poet-in-Residence, Jack Hirschman.

Barry Gifford
2017-10-24 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of
The Cuban Club: Stories
from Seven Stories Press
A masterpiece of mood and setting, character and remembrance, The Cuban Club is Barry Gifford’s ultimate coming-of-age story told as sixty-four linked tales, a creation myth of the Fall as seen through the eyes of an innocent child on the cusp of becoming an innocent man. Set in Chicago in the 1950s and early 1960s against the backdrop of small-time hoodlums in the Chicago mob and the girls and women attached to them, there is the nearness of heinous crimes, and the price to be paid for them. To Roy and his friends, these twists and tragedies drift by like curious flotsam. The tales themselves are koan-like, often ending in questions, with rarely a conclusion. The story that closes the book is in the form of a letter from Roy to his father four years after his father’s death, but written as if he were still alive. Indeed, throughout The Cuban Club Roy is still in some doubt whether divorce or even death really exists in a world where everything seems so alive and connected. Barry Gifford has been writing his Roy stories on and off for over thirty years, and earlier Roy stories have been published as Wyoming, Memories from a Sinking Ship and The Roy Stories. But it is in The Cuban Club that he brings the form he has created in these stories to its crystallization. Indeed, to find precedents for The Cuban Club, we must look not to other story collections, but to other creation myths–to Gilgamesh, or the Old Testament, or Eduardo Galeano’s Memory of Fire trilogy. Roy’s age in these stories wends back and forth between six and nineteen and back to twelve. He sees with the eyes of a seer who doesn’t seem to age, and knows not to judge the good or the bad in circumstances or people, or even to question why things are as they are, instead filled with the romance of the world teetering on catastrophe always, but abounding in saving graces.
Barry Gifford is the author of more than forty published works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, which have been translated into twenty-eight languages. His most recent prose works are The Up-Down, Writers, Sailor & Lula: The Complete Novels, Sad Stories of the Death of Kings, Imagining Paradise: New and Selected Poems, The Roy Stories, and Landscape with Traveler. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. More at www.barrygifford.com.

Daniel Borzutsky
2017-10-25 17:30 - 19:30 | Mills Hall Living Room, Mills College, 5000 MacArthur Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94613, United States
Daniel Borzutsky’s The Performance of Becoming Human, winner of the 2016 National Book Award, has been described as “one of contemporary poetry’s most cogent documents of humanity and suffering in the 21st century.” His other books include Lake Michigan, In the Murmurs of the Rotten Carcass Economy, Memories of my Overdevelopment, and The Book of Interfering Bodies. His translations from Spanish include Raúl Zurita’s Song for his Disappeared Love.

Weekday Wanderlust
2017-10-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Hotel Rex, 562 Sutter Street, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Happy Fall Wanderlusters. Our next event is on the books and it’s one you won’t want to miss. Why? Well because we haven’t seen you in so long, and we miss you. This will be our LAST event at the Hotel Rex. We’ll fill you in on all the details. AND because we have an amazing line up of writers: Frances Stroh and Laurie King from San Francisco, and David Downie (Bay Area native) who is coming all the way from Paris, France. Kimberley will also give a sneak peek at her new book, too. We have so much to celebrate! Bios will be posted on our FB page. See you WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25 for a night to remember.

Perfectly Queer East Bay Short Fiction Reading
2017-10-25 19:00 - 20:30 | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
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.

Hand To Mouth/WORDS Spoken OUT # 89
2017-10-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Rebound Bookstore, 1611 4th Street, San Rafael, CA, 94901, United States
Our first Hand To Mouth of the Fall season features writer Peg Alford Pursell, along with writer Jacqueline Doyle.
Peg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow (First edition: ELJ Editions, March 2017). Her work has appeared in Permafrost, the Los Angeles Review, Joyland Magazine, and many other journals and anthologies. She is Founder and Director of the national reading series Why There Are Words and of WTAW Press.
Jacqueline Doyle’s flash chapbook The Missing Girl has just been published by Black Lawrence Press. She has recent flash writing in matchbook, Monkeybicycle, Quarter After Eight, and The Pinch, fiction in Phoebe and PANK, and creative nonfiction in The Gettysburg Review, Electric Literature, and Superstition Review. She lives in the East Bay.
Our open mic will follow our featured writers. We will have light refreshments. Also, we have a partnership with neighborhood restaurants, with a discount on the evening of the reading. Come in early and grab a flyer if you want to get a bite before the reading!

Laurie Ann Doyle w/ Alia Volz
2017-10-25 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Celebrating the release of Laurie Ann Doyle’s new book World Gone Missing: Stories. Conversation, readings, and champagne!

MFA Faculty Reading
2017-10-25 19:30 - 21:00 | USF McClaren Complex, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Beth (Bich Minh) Nguyen, the author of the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, winner of the PEN/Jerard Award, the novel Short Girls, winner of an American Book Award, and the novel Pioneer Girl. Coeditor of the anthologies Contemporary Creative Nonfiction: I & Eye and 30/30: Thirty American Stories from the Last Thirty Years. Her work has been featured in numerous university and community reads programs.
Barbara Jane Reyes, the author of Invocation to Daughters, Gravities of Center, Poeta en San Francisco, which received the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets, Diwata, which received the Global Filipino Literary Award for Poetry, and To Love as Aswang.
Nina Schuyler, the author of The Translator, which won the Next Generation Indie Award for General Fiction and was shortlisted for the Saroyan International Writing Award. Her first novel, The Painting, was nominated for the Northern California Book Award and named a Best Book by the San Francisco Chronicle. Her short stories have been published in ZYZZYVA, Your Impossible Voice, Fugue, Santa Clara Review and elsewhere. She writes a monthly column for Fiction Advocate about style.
Bruce Snider, the author of two poetry collections, Paradise, Indiana, winner of the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Prize, and The Year We Studied Women, winner of Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. His poetry and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in American Poetry Review, Poetry, New England Review, VQR, Threepenny Review, Iowa Review and Best American Poetry 2012.

Free and open to the public. Reception to follow.

An evening w/ Tyehimba Jess
2017-10-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Soda Center, Claeys Lounge SMC, 1928 Saint Mary's Road, Moraga, CA, 94575, United States
This event is also made possible by the following cosponsors: the Campus Committee on Inclusive Excellence; the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action; Collegiate Seminar; the Communications Department; the English Department; and the Dean of the School of Liberal Arts
The evening will include an introduction by Matthew Zapruder and a reading and preformance from Tyehimba Jess, followed by a Q/A with Jess and Zapruder. Matthew Zapruder is Associate Professor of English and Poetry Faculty in the MFA in Creative Writing program at Saint Mary’s. He serves as Editor-at-Large for Wave Books, the publisher of Jess’ 2017 Pulitzer Prize poetry collection, Olio.
Tyehimba Jess is the author of leadbelly and the Pulitzer Prize–winning Olio. Jess’s Olio, won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the 2017 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry, and the 2017 Book Award for Poetry from the Society of Midland Authors. It was also a finalist for the 2016 National Books Critics Circle Award, 2017 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the 2017 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. Library Journal called it a “daring collection, which blends forthright, musically acute language with portraiture” and Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, called it “Encyclopedic, ingenious, and abundant” and selected it as one of the five best poetry books of 2016. Jess is the Poetry and Fiction Editor of the African American Review and is an Associate Professor of English at College of Staten Island.

Helen Dimos + William Rowe
2017-10-26 19:00 - 21:00 | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
Greece resident Helen Dimos is co-organizer of the annual Paros Poetry and Translation Symposium, a weeklong annual conversation between languages and persons. She produces a twice-monthly English-language radio show, peopletalk, at Beton7 Arts Center in Athens, where she also co-hosts Poetry Meeting, a monthly experiment performing works in progress (in any language) with others in a “non-ego” space. No Realtor Was Compensated for This Sale (The Elephants, April 2017) is her first book.
William Rowe’s Collected Poems was published by Crater (U.K.) in 2016. INRI, his translation of works by Chilean poet Raúl Zurita, was initially published by Marick Press, 2009, with a new edition, carrying an introduction by Norma Cole, out this year from New York Review of Books. Other recent publications of his poetry include Nation (Klinamen, 2012; enlarged edition, Knives, Forks and Spoons, 2015) and Incisions (Iodine, 2014). Among the recent translated books of poetry from Spanish include: LVB, translation of Raúl Zurita (Veer Books, 2013); A Cruise to the Galapagos Islands, translation of late Peruvian poet Antonio Cisneros (Shearsman, 2013); and Corpses, translation of late Argentine poet Néstor Perlonger (Hong Kong, 2015).

The Return of BOOKSWAP
2017-10-26 19:00 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Join us for the first ever Bookswap in our new space, The Bindery at 1727 Haight.
Bring a counterculture book, or, really, any book you love. We’ll sit you in small groups, get you chatting about the book you brought, switch groups every 20 minutes or so to make sure you get to meet lots of new friends, and then at the end, we’ll have a big, rowdy, white elephant swap. You’ll leave with someone else’s fave, and a reading list to last you months.
We’re thinking of this as a pre-holiday House Warming at The Bindery. Come meet the curators of the counterculture display and the Arcana Project, hear the story of our new bookstore and gallery space, try our premium cocktails, and enjoy our new plush, warm living room annex. (We have couches now!)

Free with required RSVP! This time only.

RSVP at this link. Space is limited, so let us know early if you plan to attend.

Raphael Cohen + Jonathan Moody
2017-10-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Raphael Cohen is a writer-performer committed to poetry for social change. His debut book of poems is Scrutinizing Lines(2007). His new chapbook, Rebel Elegant, is a single long poem on Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, a rising star for the Denver Nuggets basketball team, who was suspended by the NBA when he refused to stand for the national anthem, citing his Muslim conscience and the U.S.’s history of racial and economic oppression. Cohen has performed widely across the U.S. and in Canada, taught, facilitated training at various youth empowerment groups and founded and directed Play at the Margins Press, an independent publishing and event production initiative.
Jonathan Moody’s new book of poems, winner of the 2014 Cave Canem Northwestern University Press Poetry Prize, is Olympic Butter Gold; Pleiades says, “Jonathan Moody’s second full-length collection of poems…overflows with music, image, and pop culture. The speaker is a natural storyteller, fusing lyric and narrative with a voice that walks the line between youth and experience, playfulness and seriousness.” A Cave Canem graduate fellow, he is also author of the collection The Doomy Poems.

Sasaki, Share, Banias, + Zamora
2017-10-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Present Who Reads Poetry: 50 Views from “Poetry” Magazine.
Buy a book to reserve your seat! Call the store 510.704.8222.
Who reads poetry? We know that poets do, but what about the rest of us? When and why do we turn to verse? Seeking the answer, Poetry Magazine since 2005 has published a column called “The View From Here,” which has invited readers “from outside the world of poetry” to describe what has drawn them to poetry. Over the years, the incredibly diverse set of contributors have included philosophers, journalists, musicians, and artists, as well as doctors and soldiers, an iron-worker, an anthropologist, and an economist. This collection brings together fifty compelling pieces, which are in turns surprising, provocative, touching, and funny.
Who Reads Poetry offers a truly unique and broad selection of perspectives and reflections, proving that poetry can be read by everyone. No matter what you’re seeking, you can find it within the lines of a poem.
Fred Sasaki edits Poetry magazine’s prose feature “The View from Here,” from which the essays in this book are gathered. He is the art director of Poetry magazine and a gallery curator at the Poetry Foundation. He authored Real Life Emails, a book of deluded emails, and the zine series FRED SASAKI’S AND FRED SASAKI’S FOUR-PAGER GUIDE TO: HOW TO FIX YOU. In 2004 he founded Chicago Printers Ball, an annual celebration of poetry and printmaking. He is also cofounder of the Homeroom 101 pop and subculture show.
Don Share is the editor of Poetry magazine. Among his twelve books are Wishbone, Union, and Bunting’s Persia; he also edited a critical edition of Basil Bunting’s poems, named a Book of the Year by the Times of London and the New Statesman. Miguel Hernández, his book of translations, was awarded the Times Literary Supplement Translation Prize and Premio Valle Inclán. Other books of his include Seneca in English, Squandermania, and The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of “Poetry” Magazine. Share received a VIDA “VIDO” Award for his contributions to American literature and literary community.
Ari Banias is the author of Anybody, a debut collection of poetry, published by W.W. Norton in 2016. He is the recipient of the 2014 Cecil Hemley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America and the 2012 Campbell Corner Prize. He has been awarded fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing, and Stanford University’s Wallace Stegner program. Banias lives in Berkeley.
Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador in 1990 and immigrated to the United States at the age of nine. His first poetry collection Unaccompanied, was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press. Zamora is a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University and is a 2016 Ruth Lilly/Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow. He holds fellowships from CantoMundo, MacDowell, Macondo, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. In 2016, Barnes and Noble granted him the Writers for Writers Award for his work in the Undocupoets Campaign. He lives in San Rafael.
