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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210217T160000
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SUMMARY:Jenara Nerenberg - Divergent Mind (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:A paradigm-shifting study of neurodivergent women—those with ADHD\, autism\, synesthesia\, high sensitivity\, and sensory processing disorder—exploring why these traits are overlooked in women and how society benefits from allowing their unique strengths to flourish. \nAs a successful Harvard and Berkeley-educated writer\, entrepreneur\, and devoted mother\, Jenara Nerenberg was shocked to discover that her “symptoms”—only ever labeled as anxiety—were considered autistic and ADHD. Being a journalist\, she dove into the research and uncovered neurodiversity—a framework that moves away from pathologizing “abnormal” versus “normal” brains and instead recognizes the vast diversity of our mental makeups. \nWhen it comes to women\, sensory processing differences are often overlooked\, masked\, or mistaken for something else entirely. Between a flawed system that focuses on diagnosing younger\, male populations\, and the fact that girls are conditioned from a young age to blend in and conform to gender expectations\, women often don’t learn about their neurological differences until they are adults\, if at all. As a result\, potentially millions live with undiagnosed or misdiagnosed neurodivergences\, and the misidentification leads to depression\, anxiety\, low self-esteem\, and shame. Meanwhile\, we all miss out on the gifts their neurodivergent minds have to offer. \nDivergent Mind is a long-overdue\, much-needed answer for women who have a deep sense that they are “different.” Sharing real stories from women with high sensitivity\, ADHD\, autism\, misophonia\, dyslexia\, SPD\, and more\, Nerenberg explores how these brain variances present differently in women and dispels widely-held misconceptions (for example\, it’s not that autistic people lack sensitivity and empathy\, they have an overwhelming excess of it). \nNerenberg also offers us a path forward\, describing practical changes in how we communicate\, how we design our surroundings\, and how we can better support divergent minds. When we allow our wide variety of brain makeups to flourish\, we create a better tomorrow for us all. \n \nJenara Nerenberg lectures widely on neuroscience\, innovation\, sensitivity\, leadership\, and diversity. Selected as a “brave new idea” presenter by the Aspen Institute for her work on re-framing mental differences\, Jenara is also the founder and host of The Neurodiversity Project. She holds degrees from the Harvard School of Public Health and UC Berkeley. Her work has been published in Fast Company\, New York magazine\, Susan Cain’s Quiet Revolution\, Garrison Institute\, Elaine Aron’s HSP\, Healthline\, KQED\, and elsewhere. In addition to her work as a journalist\, Jenara is a frequent workshop facilitator\, speaker\, and event host for institutions including the Stanford Graduate School of Business and elsewhere in the San Francisco Bay Area. \nLulu Miller is the cohost of Radiolab\, cofounder of NPR’s Invisibilia\, and a Peabody Award–winning science journalist. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker\, VQR\, Orion\, Electric Literature\, Catapult\, and beyond. Her favorite spot on earth is Humpback Rocks. She is the author of Why Fish Don’t Exist. \nJenara Nerenberg photo courtesy of author
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jenara-nerenberg-divergent-mind-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/jenara.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210217T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210217T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210105T190949Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210105T190949Z
UID:61406-1613584800-1613592000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Brontez Purnell in conversation with Melissa Broder
DESCRIPTION:celebrating the launch of Brontez Purnell’s new book \n100 Boyfriends \npublished by MCD x FSG Originals \n———- \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \n———- \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(Click Here) to register. (link to be posted soon) \n———– \n(Click Here) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon) \n———– \nAn irrerverent\, sensitive\, and inimitable look at gay dysfunction through the eyes of a cult hero \n“It’s like that saying\, ‘Where god closes a door\, he opens a window\,’ but in this particular case the window was on the fifth floor and the house was on fire.” \nTransgressive\, foulmouthed\, and devastatingly funny\, Brontez Purnell’s 100 Boyfriends is a revelatory spiral into the imperfect lives of queer men desperately fighting—and often losing—the urge to self-sabotage. His characters solicit sex on their lunch breaks\, expose themselves to racist neighbors\, sleep with their coworker’s husbands\, rub Preparation H on their hungover eyes\, and\, in an uproarious epilogue\, take a punk band on a disastrous tour of Europe. They also travel to claim inheritances\, push past personal trauma\, and cultivate community while living on the margins of a white supremacist\, heteronormative society. \nArmed with a deadpan wit that finds humor in even the lowest of nadirs\, Brontez Purnell—a widely acclaimed underground writer\, filmmaker\, musician\, and performance artist—writes with the peerless zeal\, insight\, and horniness of a gay punk messiah. From dirty warehouses and gentrified bars in Oakland to desolate farm towns in Alabama\, Purnell indexes desire\, desperation\, race\, and loneliness with a startling blend of levity and vulnerability. Together\, the slice-of-life tales that writhe within 100 Boyfriends are a singular and uncompromising vision of an unexposed queer underbelly. Holding them together is the vision of an iconoclastic storyteller\, as fearless as he is human. \nBrontez Purnell is a writer\, musician\, dancer\, filmmaker\, and performance artist. He is the author of a graphic novel\, a novella\, a children’s book\, and the novel Since I Laid My Burden Down. The recipient of a 2018 Whiting Writers’ Award for Fiction\, he was named one of the thirty-two Black Male Writers of Our Time by T: The New York Times Style Magazine in 2018. Purnell is also the frontman for the band the Younger Lovers\, a cofounder of the experimental dance group the Brontez Purnell Dance Company\, the creator of the renowned cult zine Fag School\, and the director of several short films\, music videos\, and the documentary Unstoppable Feat: The Dances of Ed Mock. Born in Triana\, Alabama\, he’s lived in Oakland\, California\, for more than a decade. \nMelissa Broder is the author of the novels MILK FED (Feb 2\, 2021) and THE PISCES\, the essay collection SO SAD TODAY\, and five poetry collections\, including SUPERDOOM: Selected Poems (Summer 2021) and LAST SEXT. Broder has written for The New York Times\, Elle.com\, VICE\, Vogue Italia\, and New York Magazine‘s The Cut. Her poems appear in POETRY\, The Iowa Review\, Guernica\, Fence\,  et al. She is the winner of a Pushcart Prize for poetry. \nPraise for 100 Boyfriends: \n\n\n  \n\n\n“This stunning collection of vignettes from artist\, punk rocker\, and Whiting Award winner Purnell forms a delightfully crass\, kaleidoscopic worldview. Each story introduces new heartbreaks and reminders that moments of intimacy often end in loneliness . . . Purnell brilliantly immerses the reader in Black\, queer desire with humor\, self-awareness\, and just the right amount of vulgarity.” —Publishers Weekly \n“Each story in 100 Boyfriends is a minor eclipse: stunning in scope\, technically blinding\, and entirely miraculous. I laughed and I cried and I laughed until I cried—Brontez Purnell is a marvel.“ –Bryan Washington\, author of Memorial and Lot \n“In the vast history of the universe there is only one Brontez Purnell\, and thank god we get him. From cruising to crushes\, cumming to closure\, 100 Boyfriends is a mandatory read for the funny-sexy lit freaks among us—a candy box of Euro boys and Daddies\, blue pills and satanic exes—all told in an addictively-delicious voice by a writer who is somehow both wildly cool and deprecatingly humble at the same time.” —Melissa Broder\, author of The Pisces and So Sad Today \n“Brontez Purnell has such seemingly casual genius that at times you forget you’re reading a book and are transported to some couch/bus/basement where the drugs are really good and your friend is really funny\, maybe your weird closeted cousin is on HarlemHookups in the corner\, and all of a sudden your friend says some fucking Sappho ass\, weird ass\, brilliant ass bullshit. I love this slut of a book\, it’s a slut ass maker. 100 Boyfriends or no new boyfriends at all\, Purnell’s autofiction/memoir/whatever the hell this marvelously sad and intoxicating book is shook me up good with its honesty and blunt-to-face endings\, the jokes and stories I didn’t know we were allowed to tell outside of circles of faggots and misfits. But this book is in those circles\, makes you tea and steals for you\, it invites us in\, but would we mind shutting the hell up cause it’s a little hungover? The light is coming through the windows so clear.” —Danez Smith\, author of Homie \n“No one writes like Brontez Purnell. It’s not just that he is hilariously irreverent\, which he is\, but that he reserves reverence for that which is deserving. 100 Boyfriends is like a good lover\, at turns vulgar and vulnerable\, dirty and desperate\, and always grinding toward magic.” —Justin Torres\, author of We the Animals \n“Scathingly lucid\, filthily pure\, this is the most astute\, witty\, acid-tongued and emotionally generous book about relationships—from one night stands to internet no-no’s to ill-conceived crushes to long-term loves\, requited and otherwise—I’ve read. Painfully knowing yet never jaded\, 100 Boyfriends dissects\, explodes\, lambasts\, and revels in the ugly beauty of imperfect intimacies with prose that consistently puts its finger on the bleeding pulse of contemporary desire. An unforgettable ode to the heart that beats inside every longing body.”–Maryse Meijer\, author of The Seventh Mansion \n“The stories in 100 Boyfriends took me on a journey: They made me laugh. They made me gasp. They made me feel. Brontez Purnell is a vibrant literary voice you won’t soon forget. I love this book.” —De’Shawn Charles Winslow\, author of In West Mills
URL:https://litseen.com/event/brontez-purnell-in-conversation-with-melissa-broder/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/100-boyfriends.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210217T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210217T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T192002Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T192002Z
UID:61857-1613584800-1613592000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Virtual Event: Kink: On & Off the Page
DESCRIPTION:JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY\, FEBRUARY 17 AT 6PM PT WHEN WE CELEBRATE THE NEW SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY\, KINK\, WITH AN EVENING OF READINGS\, LIVE DEMONSTRATIONS\, AND CONVERSATIONS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH KINK.COM! \nPLEASE NOTE THIS IS A TICKETED EVENT\nAbout the Event \nKink.com and Green Apple Books are partnering for an exclusive launch party for a new short fiction anthology\, KINK. Edited by R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell\, KINK brings together 15 acclaimed writers and their stories of power\, pain\, fetish and desire. \nThis groundbreaking event goes one step further\, tying readings by celebrated authors to live demonstrations and conversations with some of the BDSM community’s most respected voices. \nJoin us as authors and kinksters converge to explore the fact and the fiction in this powerful collection. Featured authors include Vanessa Clark\, Garth Greenwell\, and R.O. Kwon\nAbout KINK \nKINK is a dynamic anthology of literary fiction that opens an imaginative door into the world of desire. The stories within this collection portray love\, desire\, BDSM\, and sexual kinks in all their glory with a bold new vision. They explore bondage\, power-play\, and submissive-dominant relationships; we are taken to private estates\, therapists’ offices\, underground sex clubs\, and even a sex theater in early-20th century Paris. While there are whips and chains\, sure\, the true power of these stories lies in their beautiful\, moving dispatches from across the sexual spectrum of interest and desires\, as portrayed by some of today’s most exciting writers\, including: Callum Angus\, Alexander Chee\, Vanessa Clark\, Melissa Febos\, Kim Fu\, Roxane Gay\, Cara Hoffman\, Zeyn Joukhadar\, Chris Kraus\, Carmen Maria Machado\, Peter Mountford\, Larissa Pham\, and Brandon Taylor\, with Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon as editors.\nAbout the Authors \nVanessa Clark is an intersex trans fem author that has been featured in Harper’s Bazaar\, POPSUGAR\, Vice\, and Them\, and has written articles for Vox. Pronouns: she/they. Even though she lives in New Jersey\, she is more likely spending her free time at some of the best indie bookstores\, parks\, museums\, and record shops in New York City. On social media\, you can find her on Facebook (@vcerotica) and Twitter (@FoxxyGlamKitty). \nGarth Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You\, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year\, was longlisted for the National Book Award\, and was a finalist for several other awards. His second book of fiction\, Cleanness\, was a New York Times Notable Book of 2020. He coedited the anthology Kink\, out in 2021. A recent Guggenheim Fellow\, he lives in Iowa City. \nR.O. Kwon’s nationally bestselling first novel\, The Incendiaries\, was named a best book of the year by over forty publications and is being translated into seven languages. She coedited the anthology Kink\, out in 2021. Kwon is a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow\, and her writing is published in the New York Times\, The Guardian\, The Paris Review\, NPR\, and elsewhere.\nA Note About This Event \n– THIS IS AN ONLINE EVENT. Please join from your personal computer\, laptop\, tablet or smartphone. \n– You must be 18+ \n– Please log in on time. \n– All sales are final. \n– A link to join the Zoom meeting will be sent via the email you registered with. \n– Please download Zoom immediately to your computer\, smartphone or tablet once you receive the link. This will save you time and also ensure that you will be able to join the event on time.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-kink-on-off-the-page/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/kink.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T190000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T174956Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T174956Z
UID:61814-1613667600-1613674800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Adam O. Davis & Emma Hine - Index of Haunted Houses & Stay Safe
DESCRIPTION:Join Book Passage in welcoming Adam O. Davis (author of Index of Haunted Houses) and Emma Hine (author of Stay Safe) for a reading and discussion celebrating their debut poetry collections\, both of which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and were recently published by Sarabande Books. \n \nIndex of Haunted Houses is a book of ghost stories\, and for the most part\, ghosts are jealous monsters\, intent upon our destruction. They never appear overtly here\, yet we gradually become aware of the spirits in haunted houses in the way they tread over creaky floors\, slam doors\, and issue sudden gusts of wind. These poems are Koan-like—the fewer the words\, the more charged they are. The engine driving the sense of haunting and loss is money\, which Davis describes as “federal bone” boiling around us. Bison in Nebraska are reduced to bones\, “seven/standing men/tall” fodder for the fertilizer used by farmers in the 1800s. There is\, too\, an equality to the hauntings—every instance has its moment\, and persists\, despite being in the past\, present\, or future. Index of Haunted Houses is spooky and sad—a stunning debut\, one that will surprise\, convince\, and most of all\, delight. \n“From ‘the body of New Jersey’ to ‘the desert/like a house of belief\,’ the poems of Index of Haunted Houses traverse the entirety of time and space that we call American. In this book\, Adam O. Davis means for language as precise as ‘ledgers lavish with loss\,’ to lead us to the place within us where history meets landscape. This is a brilliant debut.”\n—Jericho Brown \n \nAt the center of Emma Hine’s stellar collection are three sisters and their imaginative fear of grief. Their great-uncle was bitten by a shark\, their mother has a brain tumor\, their neighbor hangs himself from a tree—and to cope with these very real terrors\, the oldest sister creates an intimate fantasy world. We hear stories of a mountain lion that slaughters a deer\, a transparent body washed up on a beach\, a selkie who ventures to shore and becomes their mother: “On land her pelt was heavy / like stewed velvet\, so she taught herself / to take it off.” The sisters’ environment of ocean and sand\, forests and farmhouses\, forms a lush backdrop to many of these poems. But later\, as the speaker ages\, we find ourselves in the mountains\, in an art museum\, in a spacecraft where a recorded voice “has the soft accent of someone only a generation or two removed from Earth.” The voice in these poems is the perfect mix of grief and imagination\, quiet and explosion. Stay Safe is delicate and extraordinary\, a powerful debut. \n“Simply said: this is the renewable energy we’ve been waiting for. So attuned are these poems to their introspective nature and terrors of the self\, their wild narratives\, and linguistic spells\, this book begins to feel like its own solar farm: each page\, a panel of skyshine and wonderments.”\n—Major Jackson \n  \nAdam O. Davis is the author of Index of Haunted Houses\, winner of the Kathryn A. Morton poetry prize\, which was published by Sarabande Books in September 2020. The recipient of the 2016 George Bogin Memorial award from the Poetry Society of America\, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Believer\, The Best American Poetry 2021\, The Paris Review\, and ZYZZYVA. He lives in San Diego\, California\, where he teaches English literature at The Bishop’s School. \nEmma Hine is the author of Stay Safe\, which received the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry and was published by Sarabande Books in January. Her poems have appeared in Copper Nickel\, Gulf Coast\, The Offing\, The Paris Review\, and The Southern Review\, among others\, and she currently works at the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses. \n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/adam-o-davis-emma-hine-index-of-haunted-houses-stay-safe/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/stay-safe.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210212T042031Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210212T042031Z
UID:62162-1613671200-1613678400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Virtual Event: Zak Salih and Lydia Kiesling
DESCRIPTION:JOIN US ON THURSDAY\, FEBRUARY 18 AT 6PM PT WHEN ZAK SALIH DISCUSSES HIS DEBUT NOVEL\, LET’S GET BACK TO THE PARTY\, WITH LYDIA KIESLING ON ZOOM!\nZoom Login Info\nPlease click the link below to join the webinar:\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/81593291711\nOr iPhone one-tap :\nUS: +16699009128\,\,81593291711#  or +13462487799\,\,81593291711#\nInternational numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kihUOUm66 \nPraise for Let’s Get Back to the Party \n“With an artist’s eye for beauty and an art historian’s for detail\, Zak Salih excavates the lives of his characters and leaves no stone unturned to ask questions about what it means to be a queer individual\, to be a queer community\, to be queer alone and with others. Let’s Get Back to the Party is a book for those of us who simultaneously adore and abhor the pains and ecstasies of social closeness—which is to say it’s a book for us now\, us all.””—Matt Ortile\, author of The Groom Will Keep His Name \n“[A] stirring ode to the many faces of queerness. … What unfolds is an intimate saga that brims with necessary conversations about cultural identity.”—O\, The Oprah Magazine: “32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021” \n“Let’s Get Back to the Party is a gorgeous\, raw\, tender\, trenchant novel about men figuring out how to live. At once gimlet-eyed and generous to his wonderfully drawn characters–fallible\, lovable\, and endlessly real–Salih paints a vivid portrait of the paradoxes of queer life in contemporary America\, his characters navigating love and friendship in communities shaped both by freedom and fear\, and by trauma that is both collective and individual. This is a stellar debut from a huge talent.”—Lydia Kiesling\, author of The Golden State \nAbout Let’s Get Back to the Party \nA Most-Anticipated Book of 2021: BuzzFeed * The Millions * Cosmopolitan * Electric Literature * LGBTQ Reads * Paperback Paris\nOne of Advocate‘s “22 LGBTQ+ Books You Absolutely Need to Read This Year” \nIt is 2015\, weeks after the Supreme Court marriage equality ruling\, and all Sebastian Mote wants is to settle down. A high school art history teacher\, newly single and desperately lonely\, he envies his queer students their freedom to live openly the youth he lost to fear and shame. \nWhen he runs into his childhood friend Oscar Burnham at a wedding in Washington\, D.C.\, he can’t help but see it as a second chance. Now thirty-five\, the men haven’t seen each other in more than a decade. But Oscar has no interest in their shared history\, nor in the sense of be­longing Sebastian craves. Instead\, he’s outraged by what he sees as the death of gay culture: bars overrun with bachelorette parties\, friends cou­pling off and having babies. For Oscar\, confor­mity isn’t peace\, it’s surrender. \nWhile Oscar and Sebastian struggle to find their place in a rapidly changing world\, each is drawn into a cross-generational friendship that treads the line between envy and obsession: Se­bastian with one of his students\, Oscar with an older icon of the AIDS era. And as they collide again and again\, both men must reckon not just with one another but with themselves. \nProvocative\, moving\, and rich with sharply drawn characters\, Let’s Get Back to the Party in­troduces an exciting and contemporary new talent.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-zak-salih-and-lydia-kiesling/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Alter-1.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210218T210000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T174342Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T174342Z
UID:61808-1613674800-1613682000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Author Daniel Nayeri Discusses Everything Sad Is Untrue (a true story)
DESCRIPTION:Please join us on Thursday\, February 18\, 2021 at 7 PM PST as we welcome author Daniel Nayeri to discuss his new novel\, EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (a true story). \nThis book is a favorite of GGP’s staff. Donna describes it as “magical\, haunting\, uplifting\, funny\, and sad all at once.” \nThe Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89898033801.https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89898033801 \nYou can order a print copy at http://bit.ly/ggpEverythingSadIsUntrue or in audiobook from Libro.fm\, GGP’s audiobook partner\, at http://bit.ly/EverythingSadAB. \nStaff Reviews\n\n  \nA true refugee story told in a Scheherazade-like format. It’s the most engrossing book I’ve read this year: it’s magical\, haunting\, uplifting\, funny\, and sad all at once. I love this boy and I loved learning about his Iranian childhood and one-of-a-kind immigrant experience in Oklahoma. A MUST READ! \n— Donna \n  \n  \nOne of my Top 3 Books of 2020: a rich history of a young Iranian refugee making a life in Oklahoma\, his relationship with his parents\, and finding an identity. \n— Amy \n  \n  \nOne of my Top 3 Books of 2020: This beautiful book made me laugh and cry. I listened to the audiobook\, and the narrator’s voice is everything. He uses humor and myths to tell the tale of his Iranian family settling in Oklahoma and though it was written for kids\, it is great for all ages. \n— Sarah \n  \nDescription\n\nAt the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma\, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls “Daniel”) stands\, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned\, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much. \nBut Khosrou’s stories\, stretching back years\, and decades\, and centuries\, are beautiful\, and terrifying\, from the moment his family fled Iran in the middle of the night with the secret police moments behind them\, back to the sad\, cement refugee camps of Italy.and further back to the fields near the river Aras\, where rain-soaked flowers bled red like the yolk of sunset burst over everything\, and further back still to the Jasmine-scented city of Isfahan. \nWe bounce between a school bus of kids armed with paper clip missiles and spitballs to the heroines and heroes of Khosrou’s family’s past\, who ate pastries that made people weep and cry “Akh\, Tamar!” and touched carpets woven with precious gems. \nLike Scheherazade in a hostile classroom\, Daniel weaves a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. And it is (a true story). \nIt is Daniel’s. \nAbout the Author\n\nDaniel Nayeri was born in Iran and spent a couple of years as a refugee before immigrating to Oklahoma at age eight with his family. He is the publisher of Odd Dot\, an imprint of Macmillan\, making him one of the youngest publishers in the industry. He has served on the CBC diversity committee and the CBC panel committee.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/author-daniel-nayeri-discusses-everything-sad-is-untrue-a-true-story/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/everything-sad.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210220T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210220T120000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210204T182006Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210204T182006Z
UID:62004-1613818800-1613822400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Zetta Elliott on Instagram IGTV
DESCRIPTION:reading A Place Inside of Me: A Poem to Heal the Heart\, a powerful\, affirming poem in which a Black child explores his shifting emotions throughout the year. \n“A resonant exultation of community and the importance of self-reflection.”–Publishers Weekly \nJoin us on Instagram IGTV. Follow along @MRSDALLOWAYS. Videos disappear after 24 hours so be sure to watch! \n\n\n\n\n\nSaturday\, February 20\, 2021 – 11:00am\n\n\n\n\n\nThere is a place inside of me\na space deep down inside of me\nwhere all my feelings hide.  \nSummertime is filled with joy—skateboarding and playing basketball —until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring\, fear grows into anger\, then pride and peace. \nIn her stunning debut\, illustrator Noa Denmon articulates the depth and nuances of a child’s experiences following a police shooting–through grief and protests\, healing and community–with washes of color as vibrant as his words. \nHere is a groundbreaking narrative that can help all readers–children and adults alike–talk about the feelings hiding deep inside each of us. \nZetta Elliott is an award-winning Black feminist writer of poetry\, plays\, essays\, novels\, and stories for children. Her poetry has been published in We Rise\, We Resist\, We Raise Our Voices\, and her picture book\, Bird\, won the Honor Award in Lee & Low Books’ New Voices Contest and the Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers. She lives in West Philadelphia.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/zetta-elliott-on-instagram-igtv/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/a-place-inside-of-me.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210220T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210221T150000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T020444Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T020444Z
UID:61746-1613822400-1613919600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Prepping to Publish: a workshop for writers of color
DESCRIPTION:Geared toward marginalized writers who may lack access to MFA programs\, workshops\, and conferences\, Prepping to Publish is a six-hour\, two-session intensive. Sonora will select 8 to 12 students based on the quality of their submissions\, and students will leave the course with a formatted manuscript\, a critiqued query letter\, and a tailored list of editors\, journals\, and publishing houses that might be a good home for their work. \n  \nInstructor: \nSONORA JHA\, Ph.D.\, is an essayist\, novelist\, and professor of journalism at Seattle University. She is the author of the novel Foreign (Random House India\, 2013) and the forthcoming How to Raise a Feminist Son: Motherhood\, Masculinity\, and the Making of my Family (Sasquatch Books\, 2021). She teaches fiction and essay writing for the Richard Hugo House and Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat\, and her writing has garnered many awards and residencies. \n  \nThis workshop is part of a three-event collaborative project between Aunt Lute Books and POC United in support of writers of color. The events are made possible by funds from the California Arts Council. \n  \nFor the other events\, please visit the links below: \n  \nPanel: Creating Our Own Table\, Wednesday\, April 7th\, 2021: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aunt-lute-x-poc-united-presents-the-panel-creating-our-own-table-tickets-133253297199 \n  \nReading: Isolation\, Thursday\, May 13th\, 2021: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/aunt-lute-x-poc-united-presents-a-reading-isolation-tickets-133266558865 \n  \n  \nABOUT POC UNITED: \nPOC United is a literary safe space of creative play far removed from the white gaze\, a place where writers of color can focus on one another in solidarity. To showcase multi-genre works by writers of color\, POC United created GRAFFITI\, a bestselling anthology\, which is a Silver Winner of the 22nd annual Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award for Anthologies. For more on POC United\, please visit pocunited.com. \n  \nFree \n  \nhttps://www.auntlute.com/ marketing@auntlute.com 415-826-1300
URL:https://litseen.com/event/prepping-to-publish-a-workshop-for-writers-of-color/
LOCATION:Virtual
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210220T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210220T160000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210105T183330Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210105T183330Z
UID:61371-1613829600-1613836800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Children's Book Reading: The Unexpected Friend
DESCRIPTION:Join Eastwind Books of Berkeley online for children’s story time featuring a live read-aloud of The Unexpected Friend: A Rohingya Children’s Story with author Raya Rahman. \nThe story centers around Faisal\, a young Rohingya boy in a Bangladeshi refugee camp\, who finds a bird with a broken wing and decides to take care of it with his sisters. Life in the camp is not always easy\, so the children are thrilled to have a pet to look after. But as the bird’s wing slowly heals\, they are faced with a difficult choice. Can they let go of something they dearly love? \nRSVP FOR ACCESS TO ZOOM EVENT\nhttps://unexpectedfriend.eventbrite.com \nCopies of The Unexpected Friend: A Rohingya Children’s Story are available for order at www.asiabookcenter.com. Choose to ship your orders to your home or select in-store pick up at Eastwind Books of Berkeley\, 2066 University Ave.\, Berkeley\, CA 94704. \nAbout the Book\nIn the midst of a sprawling refugee camp in Bangladesh\, Faisal\, a young Rohingya boy\, finds an injured bird and decides to take care of it with his sisters. Life in the camp is not always easy and the children are thrilled to have a pet to look after. But as the bird’s wing slowly heals\, they face the dilemma of holding on to or losing something they dearly love. \nThoughtfully illustrated with detailed imagery\, The Unexpected Friend is a fictional story based on the real lives of Rohingya children living in the refugee camps of Cox’s Bazar\, Bangladesh. Their individual stories were compiled through the dedicated work of aid agencies Save the Children\, Plan International and World Vision and transformed into a storybook in partnership with Guba Publishing\, for the purpose of gifting it to the children in the camps. \nThe Rohingya are a Muslim minority of 1.3 million\, formerly living in the Rakhine State within Myanmar. Risking death by sea or on foot\, nearly 700\,000 have fled the destruction of their homes and persecution in the northern Rakhine province of Myanmar (Burma) for neighboring Bangladesh since August 2017. Bangladesh now houses 1.1 million Rohingya refugees in the world’s largest refugee camp. \nThemed around universal childhood joys that are relatable by all children\, the story helps young children to empathize with situations that are different than their own. With artwork that authentically depicts life in a crowded refugee camp\, ‘The Unexpected Friend – A Rohingya Children’s Story’ is a fitting book to introduce children to social justice\, specifically the worldwide refugee humanitarian crisis. Profits from the sale of this book will be donated to Save the Children’s Rohingya Relief Fund. \nAbout the Author\nRaya Rahman is the founder of Guba Publishing. After a decade of working in the corporate world\, she now partners with other authors\, illustrators and non-profit organizations to publish diverse and multicultural children’s stories and learning resources. Raya lives in Oakland\, California with her husband and their two spirited daughters\, who were her main inspiration for starting a children’s publishing house. \nAbout the Illustrator\nInshra Russell is the founder of a boutique creative services agency called Studio Inku\, that works in partnership with Guba Publishing to create high quality picture books for children. Inshra is a multi-platform content creator with a portfolio of projects that includes short films\, photography\, illustrations\, graphic design and video production. She lives in London\, U.K. with her husband and their son\, Ruben. Find her on www.studioinku.com. \nEastwind Books Multicultural Services (EBMS) is a 501(3)c non-profit dedicated to the promotion and accessibility of Asian American and Ethnic Multicultural Literature. Our events are for educational purposes and we appreciate your tax deductible donations. EBMS is the community education arm of Eastwind Books of Berkeley which is comprised of a dedicated staff of booksellers\, artists\, poets and community workers.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/childrens-book-reading-the-unexpected-friend/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/unexpected-friend.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Eastwind Books":MAILTO:eastwindbooks@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210222T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210222T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20201218T222045Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210112T221547Z
UID:61194-1614016800-1614024000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Bill Zarchy - Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:Equal parts time travel tale\, thriller\, and baseball saga\, Bill Zarchy’s debut novel Finding George Washington: A Time Travel Tale is a gripping\, humorous\, and entertaining look at what happens when past and present collide in the 9th inning\, with the bases loaded and no one warming up in the bullpen. \nOn a freezing night in 1778\, General George Washington vanishes. Walking away from the Valley Forge encampment\, he takes a fall and is knocked unconscious\, only to reappear at a park near San Francisco—during the summer of 2014. Washington befriends two Berkeley twenty-somethings who help him cope with the astonishing—and often comical—surprises of the twenty-first century. \nWashington’s absence from Valley Forge\, however\, is not without serious consequences. As the world rapidly devolves around them—and their beloved Giants fight to salvage a disappointing season—George\, Tim\, and Matt are catapulted on a race across America to find a way to get George back to 1778. \n“I grew up fascinated by the presidents—and Washington in particular\,” recalls author Bill Zarchy. “George became my touchstone for trying to understand the alluring technology of my mid-century boyhood—aviation\, photography\, trains\, cars\, rockets\, satellites\, television\, movies: How would I explain this to George Washington\, if he were to come back to life right now?” Zarchy continues\, “I originally thought of this as a comic\, fish-out-of-water story\, but as I learned more about my subject\, so much emerged about George: A charismatic leader\, but a soft-spoken\, uninspiring orator. A courageous man\, who endured the burden of dental pain throughout his life. A powerful\, ambitious man\, but a kind\, gentle husband and stepfather. A 6’ 2” giant\, at a time when most men were much shorter. A skillful horseman\, a graceful dancer\, a man’s man who enjoyed the company of women. Perhaps most significantly\, like most of the Founding Fathers\, he was a slave owner\, though history establishes that Washington\, privately\, had at least a dawning awareness that slavery was evil and immoral.” \nBill Zarchy filmed projects on six continents during his 40 years as a cinematographer\, captured in his first book\, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil. Now he writes novels\, takes photos\, and talks of many things. His career includes filming three former presidents for the Emmy-winning West Wing Documentary Special\, the Grammy-winning Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em\, feature films Conceiving Ada and Read You Like A Book\, PBS science series Closer to Truth\, musical performances as diverse as the Grateful Dead\, Weird Al Yankovic\, and Wagner’s Ring Cycle\, and countless high-end projects for technology and medical companies. His tales from the road\, personal essays\, and technical articles have appeared in Travelers’ Tales and Chicken Soup for the Soul anthologies\, the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers\, and American Cinematographer\, Emmy\, and other trade magazines. Bill has a BA in Government from Dartmouth and an MA in Film from Stanford. He taught Advanced Cinematography at San Francisco State for twelve years. He is a resident of the San Francisco Bay Area and a graduate of the EPIC Storytelling Program at Stagebridge in Oakland. This is his first novel.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/bill-zarchy-finding-george-washington-a-time-travel-tale-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/zarchyBill_cover.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210222T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210222T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210113T053119Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210113T053119Z
UID:61548-1614016800-1614024000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Virtual Event: Lauren Oyler and Anna Wiener
DESCRIPTION:JOIN US ON MONDAY\, FEBRUARY 22 AT 6PM PT WHEN LAUREN OYLER IS JOINED BY ANNA WIENER TO DISCUSS HER DEBUT NOVEL\, FAKE ACCOUNTS\, ON ZOOM!\nZoom Login Info\nPlease click the link below to join the webinar:\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/82633184310\nOr iPhone one-tap :\nUS: +16699009128\,\,82633184310#  or +12532158782\,\,82633184310#\nInternational numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kd9BjI5wzd \nPraise for Fake Accounts \n“This novel made me want to retire from contemporary reality. I loved it.” —Zadie Smith \n“Oyler has written a startlingly lucid account of what it does to a person to live a life filled with lies\, why it’s so painful to be unable to trust anything or anyone\, including yourself…I laughed a lot while reading this\, even when—especially when—I very much saw myself as the joke. What Fake Accounts is ultimately asking\, then\, is a question we could all do well to pose to ourselves with some frequency: Who do you think you’re fooling?” ––Kristin Iversen\, Refinery29\, One of the Best New Books of the Year \n“Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts is such an ensorcelling blend of insight\, comedy and suspense\, you almost don’t notice yourself being filleted alive in these pages. A note to fellow readers of the twenty-first century: Anyone familiar with the allure of social media will adore this coolly observed novel. A note to fellow writers of the twenty-first century: Oh crap\, she did it.” —Sloane Crosley\, author of Look Alive Out There and I Was Told There’d Be Cake \nAbout Fake Accounts \nA woman in a tailspin discovers that her boyfriend is an anonymous online conspiracy theorist in this “incisive” and “funny” debut novel that “brilliantly captures the claustrophobia of lives led online and personae tested in the real world” (Publishers Weekly\, starred review). \nOn the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration\, a young woman snoops through her boyfriend’s phone and makes a startling discovery: he’s an anonymous internet conspiracy theorist\, and a popular one at that. Already fluent in internet fakery\, irony\, and outrage\, she’s not exactly shocked by the revelation. Actually\, she’s relieved—he was always a little distant—and she plots to end their floundering relationship while on a trip to the Women’s March in DC. But this is only the first in a series of bizarre twists that expose a world whose truths are shaped by online lies. \nSuddenly left with no reason to stay in New York and increasingly alienated from her friends and colleagues\, our unnamed narrator flees to Berlin\, embarking on her own cycles of manipulation in the deceptive spaces of her daily life\, from dating apps to expat meetups\, open-plan offices to bureaucratic waiting rooms. She begins to think she can’t trust anyone—shouldn’t the feeling be mutual? \nNarrated with seductive confidence and subversive wit\, Fake Accounts challenges the way current conversations about the self and community\, delusions and gaslighting\, and fiction and reality play out in the internet age.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-lauren-oyler-and-anna-wiener/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/fake-accounts.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210112T234444Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210112T234444Z
UID:61507-1614103200-1614110400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Tanya Selvaratnam - Assume Nothing (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:In Assume Nothing\, award-winning filmmaker Tanya Selvaratnam bravely recounts the intimate abuse she suffered from former New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman\, using her story as a prism to examine the domestic violence crisis plaguing America. \nWhen Tanya Selvaratnam met then New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman at the Democratic National Convention in July 2016\, they seemed like the perfect match. Both were Harvard alumni; both studied Chinese; both were interested in spirituality and meditation\, both were well-connected rising stars in their professions—Selvaratnam in entertainment and the art world; Schneiderman in law and politics. \nBehind closed doors\, however\, Tanya’s life was anything but ideal. Schneiderman became controlling\, mean\, and manipulative. He drank heavily and used sedatives. Sex turned violent\, and he called Tanya—who was born in Sri Lanka and grew up in Southern California—his “brown slave.” He isolated and manipulated her\, even threatening to kill her if she tried to leave. \nTwenty-five percent of women in America are victims of domestic abuse. Tanya never thought she would be a part of this statistic. Growing up\, she witnessed her father physically and emotionally abuse her mother. Tanya knew the patterns and signs of domestic violence\, and did not see herself as remotely vulnerable. Yet what seemed impossible was suddenly a terrifying reality: she was trapped in a violent relationship with one of the most powerful men in New York. \nSensitive and nuanced\, written with the gripping power of a dark psychological thriller\, Assume Nothing details how Tanya’s relationship devolved into abuse\, how she found the strength to leave—risking her career\, reputation\, and life—and how she reclaimed her freedom and her voice. In sharing her story\, Tanya analyzes the insidious way women from all walks of life learn to accept abuse\, and redefines what it means to be a victim of intimate violence. \nTanya Selvaratnam is the author of The Big Lie: Motherhood\, Feminism\, and the Reality of the Biological Clock. Her essays have been published in the New York Times\, Vogue\, The Art Newspaper\, SheKnows\, Glamour\, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency\, and on CNN\, and she has been a fellow at Yaddo and Blue Mountain Center. She is an Emmy-nominated and Webby-winning Filmmaker\, and she has been a producer for Aubin Pictures\, For Freedoms\, Glamour Women of the Year\, the Meteor\, Planned Parenthood\, and the Vision & Justice Project. \nTiffany Shlain is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker\, founder of the Webby Awards\, and author of the national bestselling book 24/6: Giving up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time\, Creativity\, and Connection\, winner of the Marshall McLuhan Outstanding Book Award. Her spoken cinema performance Dear Human premiered at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Find more at tiffanyshlain.com.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/tanya-selvaratnam-assume-nothing-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/assume-nothing.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T175935Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T175935Z
UID:61827-1614103200-1614110400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL: Berkeley Arts & Letters presents the launch for Dr. Euan Angus Ashley / The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith and Berkeley Arts & Letters are very pleased to host a virtual event with Dr. Euan Angus Ashley for his new book The Genome Odyssey: Medical Mysteries and the Incredible Quest to Solve Them. \nFree and all ages\, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers. \nYou can order The Genome Odyssey here. We’re offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. \nAbout the book\nSince the Human Genome Project was completed in 2003\, the price of genome sequencing has dropped at a staggering rate. It’s as if the price of a Ferrari went from $350\,000 to a mere forty cents. Through breakthroughs made by Dr. Ashley’s team at Stanford and other dedicated groups around the world\, analyzing the human genome has decreased from a heroic multibillion dollar effort to a single clinical test costing less than $1\,000. \nFor the first time we have within our grasp the ability to predict our genetic future\, to diagnose and prevent disease before it begins\, and to decode what it really means to be human. \nIn The Genome Odyssey\, Dr. Ashley details the medicine behind genome sequencing with clarity and accessibility. More than that\, with passion for his subject and compassion for his patients\, he introduces readers to the dynamic group of researchers and doctor detectives who hunt for answers\, and to the pioneering patients who open up their lives to the medical community during their search for diagnoses and cures. \nHe describes how he led the team that was the first to analyze and interpret a complete human genome\, how they broke genome speed records to diagnose and treat a newborn baby girl whose heart stopped five times on the first day of her life\, and how they found a boy with tumors growing inside his heart and traced the cause to a missing piece of his genome. \nThese patients inspire Dr. Ashley and his team as they work to expand the boundaries of our medical capabilities and to envision a future where genome sequencing is available for all\, where medicine can be tailored to treat specific diseases and to decode pathogens like viruses at the genomic level\, and where our medical system as we know it has been completely revolutionized. \nAbout the author\nEuan Ashley is a Professor of Medicine and Genetics at Stanford University. He was born in Scotland and graduated from the University of Glasgow. He attended Oxford University\, completing a PhD there before moving to Stanford University where he trained in Cardiology. He joined the Stanford faculty\, where he led the team that carried out the first medical interpretation of a human genome. Ashley has received awards from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association. He was recognized by the Obama White House and received the Medal of Honor from the American Heart Association. \nHis articles have appeared in the many journals\, including Lancet\, the New England Journal of Medicine\, the Journal of the American Medical Association\, Nature and Cell. He appears regularly on local and national radio and TV. He is the founder of three companies and advisor to several Silicon Valley companies. With three young children\, he spends his spare time trying to understand American football\, play the saxophone\, and conduct research on the health benefits of single malt Scotch whisky. \nThis event is free and all ages\, but RSVP is required.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-berkeley-arts-letters-presents-the-launch-for-dr-euan-angus-ashley-the-genome-odyssey-medical-mysteries-and-the-incredible-quest-to-solve-them/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/genome-oddysey-scaled.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210223T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210204T182138Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210204T182138Z
UID:62007-1614106800-1614110400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Book Launch Pajama Party with Mitali Perkins
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a special pajama party with local author Mitali Perkins and her dog to celebrate the launch of Mitali’s new picture book\, Home is in Between!  Bring your pet or favorite stuffy and cozy up for a virtual bedtime story. See you there! Book is recommended for ages 3-7. Pre-register to save a spot! \nThis event will take place live on Crowdcast. Pre-registration required. Click here to save your spot. \nPre-order signed copies of Home Is In Between below. \n\n\n\n\n\nTuesday\, February 23\, 2021 – 7:00pm\n\n\n\n\n\nShanti misses the warm monsoon rains in India. Now in America\, she watches fall leaves fly past her feet. \nStill\, her family’s apartment feels like a village: Mama cooking luchi\, funny stories in Bangla\, and Baba’s big laugh. But outside\, everything is different – trick-or-treating\, ballet class\, and English books. \nBack and forth\, Shanti trudges between her two worlds. She remembers her village and learns her new town. She watches Bollywood movies at home and Hollywood movies with her friends. She is Indian. She is also American. How should she define home? \nMitali Perkins has written several books for young readers\, including Between Us and Abuela\, Forward Me Back to You\, You Bring the Distant Near (a National Book Award Nominee\, a Walter Honor Book\, a South Asia Book Award Winner\, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year\, and a Shelf Awareness 2017 Best Book of the Year)\, Rickshaw Girl (a NYPL Top 100 Book)\, and Bamboo People (an ALA Top 10 YA novel). Mitali was born in India and currently resides in Northern California.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/book-launch-pajama-party-with-mitali-perkins/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/home-is-in-between.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T180000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210204T191100Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210204T191100Z
UID:62031-1614182400-1614189600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL EVENT: Heather McGhee\, The Sum of Us
DESCRIPTION:VIRTUAL EVENT: Bookshop Santa Cruz\, in partnership with The Humanities Institute at UC Santa Cruz\, Marcus Books\, and the NAACP Santa Cruz County Branch\, present author Heather McGhee in conversation with Alicia Garza\, Principal at Black Futures Lab and co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter. McGhee’s new book\, The Sum of Us\, is a powerful exploration about the self-destructive bargain of white supremacy and its rising cost to all of us—including white people—from one of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers. \nRegister for this free online event by clicking here! \nThe Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here: divided and self-destructing\, still the richest country in the world\, but spiritually starved and vastly unequal. At the heart of the book are the humble stories of Americans yearning to be a part of a better America\, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people themselves. With startling empathy\, this heartfelt message from a Black woman to a multiracial America leaves us with a vision for the future of our country—one whose population has ties to every place on the globe—where we finally realize that life can be so much more than zero-sum. \n“Racism is not merely destructive to people of color. It is self-destructive to many white people. Racism is anti-American and anti-human as Heather McGhee expertly and judiciously proves in The Sum of Us. This is the book I’ve been waiting for. The Sum of Us can help us come together to build a nation for us all\, with policies that benefit us all.” —Ibram X. Kendi\, bestselling author of How to Be an Antiracist \nHeather McGhee is an expert in economic and social policy. The former president of the inequality-focused think tank Demos\, McGhee has drafted legislation\, testified before Congress and contributed regularly to news shows including NBC’s Meet the Press. She now chairs the board of Color of Change\, the nation’s largest online racial justice organization. McGhee holds a BA in American studies from Yale University and a JD from the University of California at Berkeley School of Law. \nAlicia Garza believes that Black communities deserve what all communities deserve — to be powerful in every aspect of their lives. An author\, political strategist\, organizer\, and cheeseburger enthusiast\, Alicia founded the Black Futures Lab to make Black communities powerful in politics. She is the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network\, serves as the Strategy & Partnerships Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance\, and is a co-founder of Supermajority\, a new home for women’s activism. Alicia has become a powerful voice in the media and frequently contributes thoughtful opinion pieces and expert commentary on politics\, race and more to outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times. She has received numerous accolades and recognitions\, including being on the cover of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the World issue and being named to Bloomberg’s 50 and Politico’s 50 lists. She is the author of the critically acclaimed book\, The Purpose of Power: How We Come Together When We Fall Apart (One World Penguin Random House)\, and she warns you — hashtags don’t start movements. People do.     
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-heather-mcghee-the-sum-of-us/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/sum-of-us.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210105T191142Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210105T191142Z
UID:61409-1614189600-1614196800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Daphne A. Brooks
DESCRIPTION:discussing her new book \nLiner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound \npublished by Belknap Press / Harvard University Press \n———- \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \n———- \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(Click Here) to register. (link to be posted soon) \n———– \n(Click Here) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon) \n———– \n\nAn award-winning Black feminist music critic takes us on an epic journey through radical sound from Bessie Smith to Beyoncé. \nDaphne A. Brooks explores more than a century of music archives to examine the critics\, collectors\, and listeners who have determined perceptions of Black women on stage and in the recording studio. How is it possible\, she asks\, that iconic artists such as Aretha Franklin and Beyoncé exist simultaneously at the center and on the fringe of the culture industry? \nLiner Notes for the Revolution offers a startling new perspective on these acclaimed figures—a perspective informed by the overlooked contributions of other Black women concerned with the work of their musical peers. Zora Neale Hurston appears as a sound archivist and a performer\, Lorraine Hansberry as a queer Black feminist critic of modern culture\, and Pauline Hopkins as America’s first Black female cultural commentator. Brooks tackles the complicated racial politics of blues music recording\, song collecting\, and rock and roll criticism. She makes lyrical forays into the blues pioneers Bessie Smith and Mamie Smith\, as well as fans who became critics\, like the record-label entrepreneur and writer Rosetta Reitz. In the twenty-first century\, pop superstar Janelle Monae’s liner notes are recognized for their innovations\, while celebrated singers Cécile McLorin Salvant\, Rhiannon Giddens\, and Valerie June take their place as cultural historians. \nWith an innovative perspective on the story of Black women in popular music—and who should rightly tell it—Liner Notes for the Revolution pioneers a long overdue recognition and celebration of Black woman musicians as radical intellectuals. \nDaphne A. Brooks is author of Jeff Buckley’s Grace and Bodies in Dissent\, winner of the Errol Hill Award for outstanding scholarship in African American performance studies. A professor at Yale University\, she has written liner notes to accompany the recordings of Aretha Franklin\, Tammi Terrell\, and Prince\, as well as stories for the New York Times\, The Guardian\, The Nation\, and Pitchfork. \n  \nPraise for Liner Notes for the Revolution : \n\n\n“A spirited study of how Black women musicians and writers have informed each other despite gatekeepers’ neglect and dismissals… A sui generis and essential work on Black music culture destined to launch future investigations.“—Kirkus Reviews (starred review) \n“Enlightening…a fresh perspective on more than a century’s worth of Black female musicians… Brooks combines an impressive archive of musical works and the artists’ own words to convincingly reveal how they each impacted popular culture. Music aficionados should take note.“—Publishers Weekly \n“Daphne Brooks has written a gloriously polyphonic book. Moving through the tumult of the twentieth century and the millennium\, she scores\, archives\, and curates the history of Black woman musicians and their radical modernities\, all created in a culture that presumed they had no voices or minds. What did they do to be so Black\, brilliant\, and blue? Listen. And read on.”—Margo Jefferson\, author of the National Book Critics Circle Award–winning Negroland \n“Effortlessly poetic\, deeply historical\, and insistently imaginative\, Liner Notes for the Revolution doesn’t merely give voice to unheeded and crucial innovators; it offers a new method for approaching music history itself.”—Ann Powers\, author of Good Booty \n“Daphne Brooks’s brilliant evocation of what gets lost when women of color don’t speak\, let alone sing\, is one of the most moving testaments to the power of silence\, and what breaking that silence means\, that I have ever read. Vivid\, joyful\, and heartbreaking in its passionate understanding of soul in all its manifestations\, Liner Notes for the Revolution is itself a new kind of music: propulsive\, witty\, wise\, and true.”—Hilton Als\, author of White Girls \n“For Daphne Brooks\, black feminist sound is sensuous thought. In Liner Notes for the Revolution\, she feels and shows and says this with such devotion\, such critical and emotional intelligence\, such archival commitment and dexterity\, and such urgent social aspiration that listening itself is new again.”—Fred Moten\, author of All That Beauty \n“Liner Notes for the Revolution is a groundbreaking and breathtaking volume from one of our leading cultural historians that will forever change the way we write and think about American culture. Daphne Brooks insists upon the genius of black women music-makers\, listeners\, and critics. This transformative work of intellectual generosity is sure to join the ranks of classic works such as Amiri Baraka’s Blues People and Greil Marcus’s Lipstick Traces.”—Farah Jasmine Griffin\, author of Harlem Nocturne
URL:https://litseen.com/event/daphne-a-brooks/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T025801Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T025801Z
UID:61943-1614189600-1614196800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Anne Corley Baum - Small Mistakes\, Big Consequences
DESCRIPTION:Small Mistakes\, Big Consequences for Interviews is a lighthearted look at the top 20 interviewing mistakes that people make without realizing the potential consequences. Learn how to identify these common character mistakes that can make or break your interview—and hiring prospects. Avoid making these mistakes yourself and learn how to interview and manage these personality types. It also offers advice to the interviewer. \nSmall Mistakes\, Big Consequences: Develop Your Soft Skills to Help You Succeed is a lighthearted look at the top 16 business mistakes that people make without realizing the potential consequences.  Readers will learn how to identify these common mistakes that can make or break your relationships as well as learn how to avoid making these mistakes themselves\, and learn how to work with and manage people who exhibit these personality types. The book is filled with simple\, actionable business tips to help readers succeed. It’s a guide to navigating the speed bumps on the road to the corner office. \nAnne Corley Baum is the Lehigh Valley Market President for Capital BlueCross.  She has run leadership training programs through her own company Vision Accomplished\, that focuses on leadership development.  She has spent years serving in leadership roles and teaching leadership to high potential employees on their way to the C -Suite. She is a certified protocol and etiquette consultant and has run programs on perfecting your professional image\, leadership\, and executive coaching\, how to succeed in the international arena\, and dining at the corporate table. She has also led programs for young adults including interviewing and job skills and etiquette and dining programs for children and teens. She has been interviewing candidates for over 30 years for various positions.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/anne-corley-baum-small-mistakes-big-consequences/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/small-mistakes.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210224T210000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210113T052936Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210113T052936Z
UID:61545-1614193200-1614200400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Lydia Millet Discussing her novel\, A Children's Bible
DESCRIPTION:Lydia Millet joins us for a virtual event to celebrate the paperback release of A Children’s Bible (W.W. Norton)\, one of the New York Times “Top Ten Books of 2020”. \nThis event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel. \nRegistration info coming soon. \nAbout A Children’s Bible\nLonglisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction \nPulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet’s sublime new novel—her first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven—follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion. \nContemptuous of their parents\, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor\, drugs\, and sex\, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate\, the group’s ringleaders—including Eve\, who narrates the story—decide to run away\, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside. \nAs the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother\, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm. \nA Children’s Bible is a prophetic\, heartbreaking story of generational divide—and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation. \nAbout Lydia Millet\nLydia Millet has won awards from PEN Center USA and the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her books have been shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award and longlisted for the National Book Award. She lives outside Tucson\, Arizona.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/lydia-millet-discussing-her-novel-a-childrens-bible/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/a-childrens-bible.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T172000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T185500
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20201230T195342Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201230T195342Z
UID:61324-1614273600-1614279300@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL EVENT: LIVING WRITERS SERIES\, Tess Taylor & Danusha Laméris
DESCRIPTION:The UCSC Literature Department and Creative Writing Program Present: LIVING WRITERS SERIES WINTER 2021 “Shelter and Place\,” a theme about world building when the world seems to be falling apart\, about writing about place\, about seeking and finding and not finding shelter in stormy times\, and of course\, what it means to be a writer and a person writing while sheltering in place. \nFEBRUARY 25TH FEATURED WRITERS: TESS TAYLOR & DANUSHA LAMÈRIS \nTess Taylor is the author of five collections of poetry\, including The Misremembered World\, selected by Eavan Boland for the Poetry Society of America’s inaugural chapbook fellowship\, and The Forage House\, called “stunning” by The San Francisco Chronicle. Work & Days was named one of The New York Times best books of poetry of 2016.  In spring 2020 she published two books of poems: Last West\, commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art as a part of the Dorothea Lange: Words & Pictures exhibition\, and Rift Zone\, from Red Hen Press\,  hailed as “brilliant” in the LA Times. \nDanusha Laméris’ first book\, The Moons of August (Autumn House\, 2014)\, was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press poetry prize. Some of her poems have been published in The Best American Poetry\, The New York Times\, The American Poetry Review\, The Gettysburg Review\, Ploughshares\, and Tin House. She’s the author of Bonfire Opera\, (University of Pittsburgh Press\, Pitt Poetry Series\, 2020)\, and the recipient of the 2020 Lucille Clifton Legacy Award. Danusha teaches poetry independently and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County\, California. \nRegister for this FREE event series here. \nThe Living Writers Series runs on select Thursdays from 5:20-6:55p.m. Authors’ books available for pick up or delivery via Bookshop Santa Cruz. Find them here.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-living-writers-series-tess-taylor-danusha-lameris/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/gif:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/danusha.gif
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T044202Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T044202Z
UID:61967-1614276000-1614283200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL: Berkeley Arts & Letters presents Ed Frauenheim / Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith and Berkeley Arts & Letters are very pleased to host a virtual event with Ed Frauenheim for his new book Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection\, co-authored with Edward M. Adams. \nFree and all ages\, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers. \nYou can order Reinventing Masculinity here. We’re offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. \nAbout the book\nIn a recent FiveThirtyEight poll\, 60 percent of men surveyed said society puts pressure on men to behave in a way that is unhealthy or bad. Men account for 80 percent of suicides in the United States\, and three in ten American men have suffered from depression. Ed Adams and Ed Frauenheim say a big part of the problem is a model of masculinity that’s become outmoded and even dangerous\, to both men and women. \nThe conventional notion of what it means to be a man–what Adams and Frauenheim call “Confined Masculinity”–traps men in an emotional straitjacket; steers them toward selfishness\, misogyny\, and violence; and severely limits their possibilities. As an antidote\, they propose a new paradigm: Liberating Masculinity. It builds on traditional masculine roles like the protector and provider\, expanding men’s options to include caring\, collaboration\, emotional expressivity\, an inclusive spirit\, and environmental stewardship. \nThrough hopeful stories of men who have freed themselves from the strictures of Confined Masculinity\, interviews with both leaders and everyday men\, and practical exercises\, this book shows the power of a masculinity defined by what the authors call the five Cs: curiosity\, courage\, compassion\, connection\, and commitment. Men will discover a way of being that fosters healthy\, harmonious relationships at home\, at work\, and in the world. \nAbout the author\nEd Frauenheim is co-author of several books\, including A Great Place to Work For All\, Organized Innovation\, and Reinventing Masculinity: The Liberating Power of Compassion and Connection. \nThis event is free and all ages\, but RSVP is required.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-berkeley-arts-letters-presents-ed-frauenheim-reinventing-masculinity-the-liberating-power-of-compassion-and-connection/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/masculinity.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210225T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T050844Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T051003Z
UID:61970-1614276000-1614283200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Lidia Yuknavich in conversation with Lance Olsen
DESCRIPTION:reading from their work and talking about literature \nLidia Yuknavich celebrates the paperback release of \nVerge: stories \npublished by Riverhead Books \nNamed one of the Best Books of the Year by Bustle and Lit Hub \nA fiercely empathetic group portrait of the marginalized and outcast in moments of crisis\, from one of the most galvanizing voices in American fiction \n——— \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \n———- \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(Click Here) to register. \n———– \nLidia Yuknavitch is a writer of rare insight into the jagged boundaries between pain and survival. Her characters are scarred by the unchecked hungers of others and themselves\, yet determined to find salvation within lives that can feel beyond their control. In novels such as The Small Backs of Children and The Book of Joan\, she has captivated readers with stories of visceral power. Now\, in Verge\, she offers a shard-sharp mosaic portrait of human resilience on the margins.The landscape of Verge is peopled with characters who are innocent and imperfect\, wise and endangered: an eight-year-old black-market medical courier\, a restless lover haunted by memories of his mother\, a teenage girl gazing out her attic window at a nearby prison\, all of them wounded but grasping toward transcendence. Clear-eyed yet inspiring\, Verge challenges us with moments of uncomfortable truth\, even as it urges us to place our faith not in the flimsy guardrails of society but in the memories held—and told—by our own individual bodies. \n\nLance Olsen will also be reading from his recently released novel \nMy Red Heavenpublished by Dzanc Books \nSet on a single day in 1927\, My Red Heaven imagines a host of characters―some historic\, some invented―crossing paths on the streets of Berlin. \nThe subjects include Robert Musil\, Otto Dix\, Werner Heisenberg\, Anita Berber\, Vladimir Nabokov\, Käthe Kollwitz\, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe\, and Rosa Luxemburg―as well as others history has forgotten: a sommelier\, a murderer\, a prostitute\, a pickpocket\, and several ghosts. \nDrawing inspiration from Otto Freundlich’s painting by the same name\, My Red Heaven explores a complex moment in history: the rise of deadly populism at a time when everything seemed possible and the future unimaginable. A terrific read for fans of Richard Powers’ The Overstory and Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. \nLidia Yuknavitch is the nationally bestselling author of the novels The Book of Joan\, The Small Backs of Children\, and Dora: A Headcase\, and of the memoir The Chronology of Water. She is the recipient of two Oregon Book Awards and has been a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize and the PEN Center USA Creative Nonfiction Award. She lives in Portland\, Oregon. \nLance Olsen is author of more than 25 books of and about innovative writing\, including\, most recently\, the novel Dreamlives of Debris. His short stories\, essays\, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies\, such as Conjunctions\, Black Warrior Review\, Fiction International\, BOMB\, McSweeney’s\, and Best American Non-Required Reading. A Guggenheim\, Berlin Prize\, D.A.A.D. Artist-in-Berlin Residency\, N.E.A. Fellowship\, and Pushcart Prize recipient\, as well as a Fulbright Scholar\, he teaches experimental narrative theory and practice at the University of Utah\, where he directs the creative writing program. \n\nPraise for VERGE:\n\nPraise for Verge: \n“At several points while reading Verge\, I found myself curled into a ball\, my fingers gripping the pages so tightly they almost tore the paper. It was as if the words had crawled off the page and under my skin.”  —Cornelia Channing\, The Paris Review \n“Full of suspense . . . Young or old\, male or female\, the characters in Verge will shock and impress themselves onto the reader.” —LitHub \n“This book is a gem. . . . A brilliant collection of twenty stories that contain as much compassion as suffering . . . In Yuknavitch’s hands\, words are both swords and feathers. . . . She writes with a sensibility that is both blunt and empathic\, as if to open the reader’s heart and make it bleed.” —Ms. Magazine \n“Diverse and impactful\, unlike some collections\, where only a few stories shine . . . Verge boldly asks some pressing yet unspoken questions\, such as: How is it that Americans can say anything with a straight face? Does it hurt more to keep the secrets or tell them? It also forces us to acknowledge—and even embrace—the unsettling answers.” —San Francisco Chronicle \n“Dynamite. . . . I don’t know of any other writer who can render the brutality of life with such honesty and dazzle. . . . That Lidia Yuknavitch can create such beauty out of the tragedy of contemporary life is testament to her skill as an artist. Verge is volatile and vital\, and it hits where it hurts\, in the most oddly pleasurable way.” —Lambda Literary \n“Lidia Yuknavitch displays the same gift for exploring the borderland between art\, sex\, and trauma that readers have come to expect . . . . [turning] her powers toward life on the margins.” —The Millions  \n“Yuknavitch writes with rare empathy about the repercussions of grief\, loss and dislocation.” —Jane Ciabattari\, BBC Culture \n“Disturbing and delightful all at once.” —BookRiot \n“With the publication of Verge\, Yuknavitch’s writing flies into hyperspace. . . . [Verge is] an act of courage and urgency. The book is historically specific\, yet ultimately timeless.” —The Brooklyn Rail \n“Brilliant. . . . Consistently incisive\, with sharp sentences and a barreling pace. . . . This riveting collection invites readers to see women whose points of view are typically ignored.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review) \n“Insistently visceral . . . These howls from the throats of women\, queer characters\, the impoverished\, and the addicted remind us of the beauty and pain of our shared humanity. Gutsy stories from one of our most fearless writers.” —Kirkus Reviews \n“A vertiginous and revelatory book whose characters—sometimes in desperate situations\, and sometimes\, finally\, in a place of safety—have much to say about the world that we live in now. Lidia Yuknavitch is astonishing.”\n —Kelly Link  \n“Verge is a wonderful\, challenging book. I know these people. I know their dilemmas\, and where I don’t recognize them\, I believe them. The passion Lidia Yuknavitch brings to the page is astounding. I am caught up\, shaken up\, and now and then simply delighted. ‘Listen to this\,’ I call out to friends\, and then\, minutes later: ‘No\, wait\, listen to this!’”\n—Dorothy Allison        \nPraise for My Red Heaven \n\n“The combined effect of the different styles on display here is virtuosic\, but Olsen never loses sight of the bigger scope of history―or the tragedies the future will hold for most of these characters. This novel manages the impressive task of being both experimental and accessible―and thoroughly moving to boot.”\n―Kirkus Reviews“Inspired by German artist Otto Freundlich’s painting of the same title\, this meditation on the effects of a specific moment in history and the human condition reaches past cultural barriers and time to create a narrative that pushes boundaries and reflects on what is means to dwell in the here and now.”\n―Publishers Weekly \n“Olsen employs a full suite of experimental techniques to tell the story\, including newsreel headlines\, screenplay excerpts\, poetic verses\, and ekphrastic reflections on unsettling scenes of bombed-out and abandoned buildings. But the real draw is Olsen’s supple\, exacting prose\, which captures the energy of cutting-edge art movements amid impending political uncertainty. There’s an eerie familiarity to the air of technological and social breakthroughs\, with fallout or resolution just around the corner.”\n―Booklist \n“Olsen is a fine\, clear stylist. … My Red Heaven captures the eeriness of a city on the brink of an epochal descent into barbarism.”\n―Wall Street Journal \n“Lance Olsen is as innovative as he is prolific and an irreplaceable figure in avant-garde fiction. … Told in vignettes that are formally daring\, yet always musical and accessible\, this is a powerful book in every respect and an important one for readers here in this country in 2020.”\n―Robert Lopez for The Believer \n\n“The fleeting encounters of the famous and not-so-famous dead\, in their own voices\, sketch out a vanishing moment in a Berlin on the brink. Lance Olsen’s My Red Heaven is a work of necromantic dazzlement.”\n―Shelley Jackson\, author of Riddance\, Half Life\, and The Melancholy of Anatomy“Lance Olsen locates his porous\, alluring\, heartbreaking\, and haunted narrative in Berlin on a day in 1927. Poised at a moment of such hope and doom\, it is a ravishing meditation on history\, on time\, and on what is it to be alive.”\n―Carole Maso\, author of Ava and The Art Lover \n“In this twenty-four-hour novel\, Olsen explores new subjectivities and new histories both after and before the moments directly written about. It’s fascinating and wonderfully readable. Kafka\, Nabokov\, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe all make their appearances…and strange lists of newsworthy events cascade down before us now and again. It’s a fitting follow-up to Calendar of Regrets and beautifully written.\n―Samuel R. Delany\, author of Dhalgrenand Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders \n“The moment in which you awaken is on fire. You are alive or the other thing\, falling to scorched earth or ascending to the rooftops of Berlin\, a radiantly red heaven. You feel yourself besieged\, swirling inside one startling sensibility and then another\, deliriums of joy pierced by devastations of loss and sorrow. Sparked by the exuberant energy of his own multivalent perception\, ignited by the brilliance of his wildly playful imagination and unfathomably expansive compassion\, Lance Olsen has translated My Red Heaven\, Otto Freundlich’s abstract cubist painting\, into a novel full of dissonant shocks and thrilling confusions\, a library of loss revealing the perilous ecstasies of life in Berlin between the wars. Layer by layer\, he unpeels a palimpsest of paint\, turning his fiercely attentive\, unbounded love to every being in every moment\, exposing infinite unknown dimensions\, delivering us to exhilaration and terror as we watch the future and the past irradiate our present moment.”\n―Melanie Rae Thon\, author of The Voice of the River\, Silence & Song “Where to stand in this original novel as History that unspeakably painfully hurts while montaging all our astonishing\, poignant\, and gross ironies. Between lives\, even our own\, that are less here than nearby or elsewhere; between Dietrich and Heisenberg; between\, on one hand (literally)\, Arendt and Heidegger showering and thinking about thinking\, and deaths there perhaps are no words for; between what is actually\, terribly being evoked and\, dissolve after dissolve\, an exquisite narrative prose risking again and again an incorrigible lightness. At random\, I thought of Wittgenstein in Duffy’s The World as I Found It; dictatorship in Spufford’s Red Plenty; the sculptural work of Joseph Beuys; and\, where fact seems all the more fact in a context of fictive documentation\, the great Sebald.”\n―Joseph McElroy\, author of Women and Men and Cannonball
URL:https://litseen.com/event/lidia-yuknavich-in-conversation-with-lance-olsen/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Verge.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210226T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210226T193000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T021038Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T021038Z
UID:61912-1614362400-1614367800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:HIGH DAWN 6: LAWRENCE / LEUNG / LOU / BASU
DESCRIPTION:Small Press Traffic and UC Berkeley Poetry Colloquium present the sixth installment of HIGH DAWN\, a reading series featuring poets and musicians from the Bay Area and beyond.\nReadings by Stephon Lawrence & Muriel Leung\nIntroduced by Angie Sijun Lou\nMusic by Beast Nest\nArtist bios below \nRSVP for Zoom link: spt-feb.eventbrite.com\nUpcoming Small Press Traffic events: https://www.smallpresstraffic.org/upcomingevents \n  \n  \nArtist Bios: \n\n\nStephon Lawrence is a Brooklyn born & based writer\, and artist. She is a graduate of the MFA in Writing at Pratt Institute and is co-founder and an editor of The Felt\, a journal of otherworldly poetics interested in the creation and cultivation of emancipatory poetic spaces for felt sentiments that have been marginalized\, displaced\, or estranged from the dominant culture. Her first book u know how much i hate being alone in social situations// is forthcoming from Futurepoem Books. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue\, Horseless Press\, Queen Mob’s Teahouse\, GlitterMOB\, Fanzine & other places. Her micro-chap //GERMZ is available from Ghost City Press. And her chapbook //EVIL TWIN is available from Resolving Host. She is a recipient of a Summer Workshop Scholarship at The Fine Arts Work Center. Stephon spends her free time watching anime and kdramas\, training muay thai\, yelling about white supremacy\, and being cute for the ‘gram. Her work aims to encapsulate all of this. She is almost always online. You can find her on twitter @nnohpetss and instagram @alphaheaux. \n\n\n\n\nMuriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us\, The Swarm\, forthcoming from Nightboat Books and Bone Confetti\, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer\, her writing can be found in The Baffler\, Cream City Review\, Gulf Coast\, The Collagist\, Fairy Tale Review\, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman\, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Gold Line Press and Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She also co-hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. She is a member of Miresa Collective\, a feminist speakers bureau. Currently\, she is a Dornsife fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She is from Queens\, NY. \n\n\n\n\nAngie Sijun Lou is a writer from Seattle. Her work has appeared\, or is forthcoming\, in the American Poetry Review\, FENCE\, Black Warrior Review\, the Adroit Journal\, the Asian American Literary Review\, Hyphen\, the Margins\, and others. She is a Kundiman Fellow\, a PhD candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at UC Santa Cruz\, and a calculus instructor at San Quentin State Prison. \n\n\n\n\nSharmi Basu (they/them/she/her) is an Oakland born and based South Asian woman of color creating experimental music as a means of decolonizing musical language. They attempt to catalyze a political\, yet ethereal aesthetic by combining their anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics with a commitment to spirituality within the arts. Beast Nest\, Sharmi’s primary performing project\, utilizes multi-dimensional soundscapes to transmute trauma and suffering into moments of deep presence. They are an MFA graduate from the Center for Contemporary Music at Mills College in Electronic Music and Recording Media and have worked with Fred Frith\, Roscoe Mitchell\, John Bischoff\, Pauline Oliveros\, Chris Brown\, Maggi Payne\, and more. Their workshops on “Decolonizing Sound” have been featured at the International Society for Improvised Music\, the Empowering Women of Color Conference\, and have reached international audiences. They perform almost 100 times a year and has toured through the US and Canada as well as internationally in Europe. She specializes in new media controllers\, improvisation in electronic music\, and intersectionality within music and social justice. They also founded and hosted an all people-of-color improvisation and performance group called the MARA Performance Collective in Oakland\, CA and was a founder of the Universe is Lit: A Bay Area Black and Brown Punk Fest. They are on the board of directors for Safer DIY Spaces and Soundwave SF. She is also a certified mediator and much of her multimedia work centers on familial healing\, transformative justice\, accountability\, and the investigation of interpersonal harm.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/high-dawn-6-lawrence-leung-lou-basu/
LOCATION:Zoom
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/High-Dawn-6-Feb-26.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210226T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210226T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20201205T003213Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T031741Z
UID:61086-1614362400-1614369600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:*Postponed* VIRTUAL: Wall + Response: Karla Brundage\, Jennifer Hasegawa\, Tureeda Mikell & Kim Shuck
DESCRIPTION:*** PLEASE NOTE: due to the new lockdown orders\, we are postponing this event until we can faithfully – and safely – record all authors in front of their corresponding murals. We will announce a new date ASAP. Thank you for understanding\, and apologies for any inconvenience. *** \nBooksmith and The Bindery are proud to host a four-event series presented by Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) called Wall + Response\, featuring sixteen Bay Area poets responding to the social/ political/ racial/ justice narratives of four murals on Clarion Alley. \nCurated by CAMP artist and organizer Megan Wilson (wall) and poet Maw Shein Win (response)\, the second event in the series features Karla Brundage\, Jennifer Hasegawa\, Tureeda Mikell and Kim Shuck responding to the mural We Want Respect\, Freedom\, Land\, Housing\, Justice\, Peace\, Bread by Emory Douglas/Black Panther Party / Remix by CUBA\, D8\, MACE. \nWe Want Respect\, Freedom\, Land\, Housing\, Justice\, Peace\, Bread (2011) by Emory Douglas/Black Panther Party / remix by CUBA D8\, MACE reflects the legacy of the Black Panthers and their core work towards social\, political\, racial\, economic\, and food justice. The mural\, based on a design by Emory Douglas with elements from the Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program is a remix painted by graffiti artists CUBA (Clarence Robbs)\, D8 (David Petrelli)\, and MACE (Alex Douhovnikoff). The artists ensure the work is maintained and periodically add messaging based on critical needs of the moment. These gestures of care and thoughtfulness reflect the intent of the original work and support the ongoing movement to secure the demands stated in What We Want Now!. \nThis virtual event is free and all ages\, but RSVP is required. \n– ABOUT THE PROJECT – \nWall + Response was originally conceived to culminate in four quarterly public events to be presented on Clarion Alley. However\, due to the pandemic the poets will instead be filmed by videographer Mahima Kotian reading their work in front of the murals on Clarion Alley. Kotian will be creating videos for each series that will be presented as part of live online events (of which this is the first). All the events are free and open to the public. \nThe poets are creating new poems in response to the murals\, and will be reading those and other selected works at the events. The specific dates for each event will be announced in the month prior to the event. \nWall + Response is made possible by the generous support of the San Francisco Art Commission and the Zellerbach Family Foundation. \n– ABOUT THE AUTHORS – \nKarla Brundage is a Bay Area based poet\, activist\, and educator with a passion for social justice. She believes that in order to restore balance and to reclaim our humanity as Black people\, this issue of racism and the racist structures that uphold this belief\, must be dismantled. Her writing is primarily for Black women and people disenfranchised by poverty\, abuse\, neglect or violence. She is the founder of West Oakland to West Africa Poetry Exchange and her work can be found at http://westoaklandtowestafrica.com/ as well as on https://www.karlabrundage.com/ . \nJennifer Hasegawa is a Pushcart Prize-nominated poet who has sold funeral insurance door-to-door. She was born and raised in Hilo\, Hawaiʻi and lives in San Francisco. The manuscript for her first book of poetry\, La Chica’s Field Guide to Banzai Living\, won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal\, Bamboo Ridge\, Tule Review\, and Vallum and is forthcoming in Bennington Review and jubilat. \nTureeda Mikell\, Ture Ade\, Story Medicine Woman\, an ‘activist for holism\, called a ‘word magician\,’ an award winning poet\, published nationally and internationally. Qigong Healer\, workshop leader\, storyteller\, lyricist\, performance artist\, BMI and ASCAP member. Published 72 student anthologies with CA Poets in the Schools since 1989. Performed in schools\, libraries and universities\, Google\, Genentech\, Aspire\, Lawrence Hall\, Golden Gate Academy of Sciences\, Randall\, Oakland\, and De Young Museums. 2020\, was featured spoken word artist at SOAN [Soul of a Nation] Exhibit\, the American Academy of Poets\, Fire Thieves\, at the De Young\, and MoAD’s Lit-Quake Afrofuturism. Featured storyteller for the 50 Year Anniversary of the Black Panther Party\, National Association of Black Storytellers\, featured poet storyteller celebrating Octavia Butler’s 70th birthday\, and Eth-Noh-Tec Nu Wa Delegate storyteller in Beijing\, China in collaboration with the University of Beijing\, 2018. Latest publication\, Synchronicity\, The Oracle of Sun Medicine\, released 2/2020\, by Nomadic Press. \nKim Shuck is the solo author of seven collections of poetry. Fog gazer\, collector of odd ends and dreamer\, Shuck was born in the 60s in San Francisco. Kim is the seventh poet laureate of that city. In 2019 Shuck was awarded a National Laureate Fellowship by the Academy of American Poets and a Censorship Award from PEN Oakland. In 2020 Kim was awarded a Golden Poppy Award from the California Independent Booksellers Association and a Groundbreaker Award from the Northern California Book Awards. Kim’s latest published work is a single poem chapbook Whose Water from Mammoth Publications. Shuck is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. \n \n– OTHER PARTICIPATING AUTHORS + EVENTS –  \nMarch 26\, 2021: Celeste Chan\, MK Chavez\, Paul Corman-Roberts and Tim Xonnelly responding to the mural Affordable Housing/Vivienda Asequible by the SF Print Collective working with the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) \nJune 25\, 2021: Youssef Alaoui\, Jason Bayani\, Genny Lim\, and Michael Warr responding to the mural The Will To Live by Art Forces\, Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC)\, and Arab Youth Organizing (AYO) \n– ABOUT THE CURATORS –  \nMegan Wilson is a visual artist\, writer\, and activist based in San Francisco. Wilson has been a core organizer of Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) since 2001. In 2018 she co-directed and co-organized (with Christopher Statton and Nano Warsono) CAMP’s second international exchange and residency project\, Bangkit /Arise between artists from Yogyakarta\, Indonesia and San Francisco/Bay Area in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. The second phase of the project will take place 2021-22. \nMaw Shein Win is a poet\, editor\, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito\, California (2016 – 2018)\, and her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in October 2020. \nYou can read more about CAMP and Wall + Response here. \n— \nThis virtual event is free and open to all ages\, but RSVP is required. \n  \n\n\n\nPolicies\n\nRefund Policy:\nNo refunds or returns. Contact events@booksmith.com with any questions. \nCancellation Policy:\nIf we have to cancel an event\, you will be refunded within 4 business days of the event date.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-wall-response-karla-brundage-jennifer-hasegawa-tureeda-mikell-kim-shuck/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Wall-and-Response-2.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T120000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210217T024056Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210217T024056Z
UID:62250-1614423600-1614427200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Jamilah Thompkins-Bigelow on Instagram IGTV
DESCRIPTION:reading Your Name is a Song.  \n“This lovely celebration of African American culture\, featuring a Muslim family\, offers a fresh way to look at the tradition of creating new names…delightful.”–Kirkus Reviews\, starred review \nJoin us on Instagram IGTV. Follow along @MRSDALLOWAYS. Videos disappear after 24 hours so be sure to watch! \n\n\n\n\n\nSaturday\, February 27\, 2021 – 11:00am\n\n\n\n\n\nFrustrated by a day full of teachers and classmates mispronouncing her beautiful name\, a little girl tells her mother she never wants to come back to school. In response\, the girl’s mother teaches her about the musicality of African\, Asian\, Black-American\, Latinx\, and Middle Eastern names on their lyrical walk home through the city. Empowered by this newfound understanding\, the young girl is ready to return the next day to share her knowledge with her class. Your Name is a Song is a celebration to remind all of us about the beauty\, history\, and magic behind names. \nYour Name is a Song includes back matter perfect for parents\, educators\, caregivers\, and young readers who want to learn more about the names featured in the story. The “Glossary of Names” lists each name’s meaning\, origin\, and pronunciation. Additionally\, readers can use a listed link to access an online video of the author pronouncing all the names in the book. \nJamilah Thompkins-Bigelow is an educator and writer who centers Black and Muslim children in her work. She is also the author of Mommy’s Khimar. She provides free and fun community writing programs for local youth in Philadelphia where she lives with her family.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jamilah-thompkins-bigelow-on-instagram-igtv/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/you-name-is-a-song.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T160000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210203T051220Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210203T051220Z
UID:61974-1614434400-1614441600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Eastwind Book Club: The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata
DESCRIPTION:Join Eastwind Book Club this February as we read Gina Apostol’s novel\, The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. \nAbout this Event\nEastwind Book Club is a community of readers connected by Asian and Asian American literature. Members gather once a month through a virtual meeting to discuss the month’s book selection. February’s book club pick is The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata by Gina Apostol. \nThe book club meeting will take place via Zoom on Saturday\, February 27 at 2pm PST. Register to receive the meeting link. \nBook Club members can use coupon code EWBOOKCLUB21 for a 10% discount. \nCopies of The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata are available for order at www.asiabookcenter.com. Choose to ship your orders to your home or select in-store pick up at Eastwind Books of Berkeley\, 2066 University Ave.\, Berkeley\, CA 94704. \nJoin our Book Club Facebook* group to engage in conversation throughout the month: www.tinyurl.com/ewclub \nSAVE THE DATE:\nConversation with author Gina Apostol\nSaturday\, March 20 at 1pm PST \nABOUT THE BOOK\nGina Apostol’s riotous second novel takes the form of a memoir by one Raymundo Mata\, a half-blind bookworm and revolutionary\, tracing his childhood\, his education in Manila\, his love affairs\, and his discovery of writer and fellow revolutionary\, Jose Rizal. Mata’s 19th-century story is complicated by present-day foreword(s)\, afterword(s)\, and footnotes from three fiercely quarrelsome and comic voices: a nationalist editor\, a neo-Freudian psychoanalyst critic\, and a translator\, Mimi C. Magsalin. \nIn telling the contested and fragmentary story of Mata\, Apostol finds new ways to depict the violence of the Spanish colonial era\, and to reimagine the nation’s great writer\, Jose Rizal\, who was executed by the Spanish for his revolutionary activities\, and is considered by many to be the father of Philippine independence. \nThe Revolution According to Raymundo Mata offers an intoxicating blend of fact and fiction\, uncovering lost histories while building dazzling\, anarchic modes of narrative. \nABOUT THE AUTHOR\nGina Apostol is the PEN Open Book Award-winning author of Gun Dealers’ Daughter\, as well as a two-time winner of the National Book Award in the Philippines for her novelsBibliolepsy and The Revolution According to Raymundo Mata. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies and journals including The Gettysburg Review and the Penguin anthology of Asian American fiction\, Charlie Chan Is Dead\, Volume 2. \nEastwind Book Club is co-sponsored by OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates Bay Area Chapters\, Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD) and AsAmNews (www.asamnews.com).
URL:https://litseen.com/event/eastwind-book-club-the-revolution-according-to-raymundo-mata/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/revolution.jpeg
ORGANIZER;CN="Eastwind Books":MAILTO:eastwindbooks@gmail.com
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210227T200000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T185336Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T185336Z
UID:61839-1614448800-1614456000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Sesshu Foster with Arturo Ernesto Romo
DESCRIPTION:celebrating the book launch of \nELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines \npublished by City Lights Books \n———- \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \n———- \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(Click Here) to register. \n———– \n(Click Here) to purchase book. \n———– \nA breathtaking free fall into the long-buried (and fictional) history of a utopian era in American lighter-than-air travel\, as told by its death-defying\, aero-acrobatic heroes. \n“Foster and Romo’s ‘real fake dream’ of the future-past history of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a superb and loving phantasmagoria that gobbles up real histories for breakfast and spits out the seeds. It has everything you could wish for\, academic satire\, crazy sculpture in the desert\, sex\, violence\, falafel\, graffiti\, and zeppelin chase scenes.” – Jonathan Lethem\, author of Motherless Brooklyn \nIn the early years of the twentieth-century\, the use of airships known as dirigibles—some as large as one thousand feet long—was being promulgated in Southern California by a semi-clandestine lighter-than-air movement. Groups like the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club were hard at work to revolutionize travel\, with an aim to literally lift oppressed people out of racism and poverty. \nELADATL tells the story of this little-known period of American air travel in a series of overlapping narratives told by key figures\, accompanied by a number of historic photographs and recently discovered artifacts\, with appendices provided to fill in the missing links. The story of the rise and fall of this ill-fated airship movement investigates its long-buried history\, replete with heroes\, villains\, and moments of astonishing derring-do and terrifying disaster. \nWritten and presented as an “actual history of a fictional company\,” this surrealist\, experimental novel is a tour de force of politicized fantastic fiction\, a work of hybrid art-making distilled into a truly original literary form. Developed over a ten-year period of collaborations\, community interventions\, and staged performances\, ELADATL is a hilarious send-up of academic histories\, mainstream narratives\, and any traditional notions of the time-space continuum. \n\nSesshu Foster taught composition and literature in East L.A. for over 20 years\, and at the University of Iowa\, the California Institute for the Arts\, and the University of California\, Santa Cruz. His work is published in The Oxford Anthology of Modern American Poetry\, Language for a New Century: Poetry from the Middle East\, Asia and Beyond\, and State of the Union: 50 Political Poems. His most recent books are City of the Future\, poetry; World Ball Notebook\, poetry; and Atomik Aztex\, a novel. \nA celebrated writer\, his literary awards are numerous: Sesshu was awarded the American Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award in Poetry for World Ball Notebook; the Believer Book Award for Atomik Aztex; an American Book Award for Invocation LA: Urban Multicultural Poetry; and finalist for the PEN Center West Poetry Prize\, as well as the Paterson Poetry Prize\, for City Terrace Field Manual.  Sesshu is based in Alhambra\, CA. \n\natomikaztex.wordpress.com\nArturo Ernesto Romo was born in Los Angeles\, California in 1980. His artwork\, mostly collaborative mixed media works but also drawing\, has been circulated internationally. Fluency\, agency and folly are central themes in his practice; he sees his artwork as a companion multiplier\, folding folds\, netting nets. His art-making is pushed through explorations on the streets of East and North East Los Angeles\, which feed into an ongoing series of collaborations with writer Sesshu Foster. He is based in Alhambra\, CA. \nPraise for ELADATL \n“ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is one of the wildest\, most creative and deeply-cutting novels I’ve read in years\, a genuine piece of newness in both content and form. Sesshu Foster and Arturo Romo have managed\, from the mind-bending perch of alternate time and space\, to construct a perfect lookout from which to view the deranged spectacle of late-capitalism America. To wade through this surreal narrative archeology—composed of everything from oral histories to inspirational posters to lunch menus—is to experience\, in the finest sense\, literature as fever dream.”—Omar El Akkad\, author of American War: A Novel \n“Visionary\, hilarious\, anarchic\, this assemblage of breakneck dialog\, blisteringly brilliant film criticism\, bureaucratic documents\, revolutionary chatter\, mass transit\, and fake dreams of the secret police\, is the counterfactual novel to beat all counterfactual novels . . . Sesshu Foster and Arturo Romo float high above the the landlubbing bulk of American fiction.”—Mark Doten\, author of Trump Sky Alpha \n“Forget the zombie apocalypse\, forget priapic gun-crazy Hollywood dystopias—all these troubled times require is an economy ticket on the East L.A. Dirigible Air Transport Lines. Enter the isotherm with Foster and Romo and cruise high over the trashed and blasted landscapes of imperial decay. ELADATL is more than a novel—it’s the secret history of the secret history\, the map they always kept hidden\, a dream inside a dream of a dream. Hilarious and prophetic and profound\, truer than truth\, and realer than all realities currently available for purchase\, ELADATL is strong medicine against the erasures of history\, a mega-vitamin for struggles yet to come. This book combats despair.”—Ben Ehrenreich\, author of Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time \n“Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernesto Romo’s ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is a portfolio in prose and pictures that’s 100% made up but that I nonetheless believe to be 100% true. It reads like a cross between Yamashita’s I Hotel and Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49\, although saying so does ELADATL a disservice—it stands proudly on its own\, a smile on its face and middle finger raised. If I don’t see a young bookseller sporting an ELADATL tattoo within the next couple years\, I’ll be shocked.”—James Crossley\, Madison Books\, Seattle\, WA \n“Hold this infra-surreal\, no-surreal\, under-realm account (in gyroscopic fashion and thru various sightings re-dacted and questionable dialogues\, voice pepperings) of our fast approaching Kaliyuga. Multiple reincarnated figures appear (Lee Harvey Oswald\, Tina Lerma\, and Elmer Fudd\, CIA Agent). Not to mention truish photos of things. Live things! Be mindful of the encyclopedic plethoras aimed at your pineal glands. Woe are those that are not privy to the East LA Dirigible Air Transport Lines (buzzing over you at this very critical moment in our wild lives)—here is the evidence in your febrile hands. Power\, Culture\, Text\, Bhaktin\, are in a clash Hip-Hop—in a Marvin Gaye ‘What’s going on?’ As stated in these investigations: ‘The Poet of the Universe will stand on her or his balcony as night falls and consider her or his options.’ Mind-crushing consciousness blasting artefactos of our dissolving propellers. Viva Sesshu Foster! I bow to you!”—Juan Felipe Herrera\, Poet Laureate of the USA\, 2015-2017 \n“Plunge upward into ELADATL’s phantasmagoric skies\, where Los Angeles outsiders fly pirate dirigibles to legendary cities built of trash. This hip\, avant\, alternate history wriggles into and out of all ordinariness\, transforming oppression into adventure and you\, oh fortunate reader\, into a witness of the glorious exploits of Swirling Alhambra and his rebel cohort. Get ready to leave the status quo behind and soar beyond the probable to the possible\, your brain buoyed by this book’s heady mix of fear and joy and outraged delight.”—Nisi Shawl\, author of Everfair: A Novel \n“Sesshu Foster’s second novel ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines is not some preciously honed theoretical tale scripted as an abstracted warriors’ syllabus\, but instead\, it gives a powerful account of a curious quotidian revolt that accompanied the East LA Balloon Club and the Bessie Coleman Aero Club rife with the contradiction that singed their arcane thriving. This novel not only explores the actual quest for physical elevation\, but\, more significantly\, with the complication of inner elevation\, attempting to rise above a circumstance studded with racism and looming financial debacle. Mr. Foster’s novel magically inscribes the trenchant character of an opaque and transitional zeitgeist.”—Will Alexander\, author of Kaleidoscope Omniscience \n“Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernesto Romo co-pilot the ELADATL phantasmagoric journey across historic/imagined skies with magnificent views of a post-industrial East Los Angeles wasteland that is dotted with cinematic/cultural phantoms: Raquel Welch\, Oscar Zeta Acosta\, Anthony Quinn\, and Brown Berets who invoke the mantra\, ‘Don’t believe the fake dreams of the secret police.’ Human skin\, dirigible skin\, chorizo skins\, are simultaneously celebrated as art while being attacked by Zeppelin gunships. ELADATL lifts the reader into a free intellectual airspace where airships of new thinking reign.”—Harry Gamboa Jr.\, author of Urban Exile: Collected Writings of Harry Gamboa Jr. \n“‘The strange future of war over Los Angeles\, zeppelins versus dirigibles . . . ‘ Sesshu Foster and Arturo Ernesto Romo capture the uncapturable. ‘Experience levitation and death\,’ ‘attune your cellular vibrations to the frequency of Star Beings\,’ ‘the merciless winds of the human heart\,’ ‘the Atmospheric Trash Vortex.’ Who is the I here? ‘The welcoming hosts at the front door\, you want to look inside?’ The nightmare does not erase the comedy. ‘The CIA behind the million faces\, hair and fingernails still growing.’ ‘Sign your sorrow over . . . they’re taking everything; let’s give it to them\, the sober whisky of Love.’ Unforgetable read. ‘Isn’t someone in charge?'”—Sharon Doubiago\, author of My Beard: Memoir Stories \n“A fierce\, bittersweet\, and hilarious antidote to our increasingly deracinated personhoods and neighborhoods\, ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines inspires us to hold our ground in a here and now that includes futures and pasts we both know and can barely imagine. Set against the absence of Hollywood—that perfect hierarchical structure that occludes most of the actual labor that goes into making the finished product—Sesshu Foster and Arturo Romo take us through the hood and under the hood while celebrating and mourning the intimacy of social life in all its vicissitudes. Along the way\, our fearless guides introduce us to the living politics of a particular place whose accumulated experience reverberates throughout the cosmos.”—Ammiel Alcalay\, Founder and General Editor of Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative
URL:https://litseen.com/event/sesshu-foster-with-arturo-ernesto-romo/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/eladatl.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210228T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210228T170000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210301T055444Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210301T055444Z
UID:62543-1614499200-1614531600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Nomadic Press' Virtual Open Mic #57
DESCRIPTION:90 minutes\n30 readers\n3 minutes each\nOn Zoom!\nFREE AND ALL WELCOME!\n\nSign up to read here:\nhttps://forms.gle/4nYSi5fLNyo229Lj9\n\nIf you enjoy spaces like this and can swing it in these tight times\, please consider supporting us via:\n\n1) the Cash App to $NomadicPress OR https://cash.app/$NomadicPress;\n2) donating via the “ticket” option here:\nhttps://www.eventbrite.com/…/nomadic-press-weekly…; OR\n3) donating through the website at www.nomadicpress.org/donate\n\nWe have a short goal for the evening of $150.\n\nPandemic times continue in 2021 and we continue to gather our community virtually across state and country lines. Join us to read\, join us to listen. All are welcome.\n\nHosted by Nazelah Jamison (with Tula Biederman on tech). It’s a continuing experiment\, and we hope you can join us!\n\nOur safe space process still applies to our collective virtual space\, so please read this by visiting https://www.nomadicpress.org/safespaceprocess.\n\nZoom Joining Info\nTopic: Nomadic Press’ Weekly Virtual Open Mic\nTime: Jan 1\, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)\nEvery week on Fri\, until Dec 10\, 2021\, 50 occurrence(s)\nPlease download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.\nWeekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZcudeqoqjIiE9fnl7dxuB…/ics…\nJoin Zoom Meeting\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/j/83323049893\nMeeting ID: 833 2304 9893\nOne tap mobile\n+16699006833\,\,83323049893# US (San Jose)\n+13462487799\,\,83323049893# US (Houston)\nDial by your location\n+1 669 900 6833 US (San Jose)\n+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)\n+1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma)\n+1 929 205 6099 US (New York)\n+1 301 715 8592 US (Washington D.C)\n+1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago)\nMeeting ID: 833 2304 9893\nFind your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kvor64nsu
URL:https://litseen.com/event/nomadic-press-virtual-open-mic-57/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:East Bay,Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Virtual-Open-Mic-57.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210228T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210228T170000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210301T063358Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210301T063358Z
UID:62558-1614499200-1614531600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:High Dawn 7: Ahsan / Montes / Low / Dennis
DESCRIPTION:Presented in partnership with UC Berkeley Poetry Colloquium \nRSVP for Zoom link: spt-march.eventbrite.com \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBahaar Ahsan is a poet in the Bay Area. Bahaar’s work is both speculative and deeply embedded in lineage(s). Recent work can be found in Berkeley Poetry Review\, We Want It All: An Anthology of Radical Trans Poetics(forthcoming from Nightboat Books)\, and elsewhere. \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\nPhoto credit: Venn Daniel \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLara Mimosa Montes is the author of THRESHOLES (Coffee House Press\, 2020). Her work has appeared in Fence\, BOMB\, Jacket2\, and elsewhere. She is a CantoMundo fellow and has been awarded residencies from Storm King: Shandaken\, Marble House Project\, and Headlands Center for the Arts. In 2018\, Lara was awarded a McKnight Fellowship in Poetry. Currently\, she is a senior editor of Triple Canopy. She lives in Minnesota. \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\nPhoto credit: Kari Orvik \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTrisha Low is the author of The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions 2013) and Socialist Realism (Emily Books\, 2019). She lives in the East Bay. \n\n\n\n\n\n \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nRyanaustin Dennis is an Oakland based art work and cultural strategist. Their practice is concerned with how 20th and 21st century experimental performance\, film\, and writing histories are shaped by the metaphysics of blackness. They have done curatorial work for Kadist\, SFMOMA Open Space\, Eastside Arts Alliance\, and Soundwave Biennial. They currently co-curate the Black Life series at the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive and Pro Arts Gallery & Commons.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/high-dawn-7-ahsan-montes-low-dennis/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/https___cdn.evbuc_.com_images_110881639_133764875210_1_original.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210301T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210301T170000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210301T182416Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210301T182416Z
UID:62618-1614585600-1614618000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Ismail Muhammad & Marie Mutsuki Mockett
DESCRIPTION:Wednesday\, May 5\, 2021\, 2:00pm via Zoom \nIsmail Muhammad is the reviews editor for The Believer\, a staff writer at the Millions\, a contributing editor at ZYZZYVA\, and a board member at the National Books Critics Circle. He’s been a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Emerging Critics Fellowship\, and a Simpson Family Literary Fellow. His work\, which focuses on literature\, art\, identity\, and black popular and visual culture\, has appeared in publications like The New York Times\, Slate\, New Republic\, the Los Angeles Review of Books\, Real Life\, and Catapult. \nIn Spring 2021\, Muhammad is teaching English 361: Contemporary Nonfiction \n\nMarie Mutsuki Mockett’s memoir\, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye\, was a finalist for the 2017 PEN Open Book Award\, the Indies Choice for Nonfiction and the Northern California Book Award for Creative Nonfiction. She received a Fellowship from the US/Japan Creative Artist Fellowship\, funded by the NEA. Her novel\, Picking Bones from Ash\, published by Graywolf\, was a finalist for the Saroyan Prize and the Paterson Prize. Her new book\, American Harvest: God\, Country and Farming in the Heartland\, published by Graywolf in April 2020\, was a finalist for the Lukas Prize. \nIn 2020-2021 Mockett is teaching English 372: Craft Seminar in Creative Nonfiction\, English 332: Fiction Workshop\, and English 342: Fiction Tutorial
URL:https://litseen.com/event/ismail-muhammad-marie-mutsuki-mockett/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:East Bay,Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/M-and-M.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Saint Mary's MFA in Creative Writing":MAILTO:writers@stmarys-ca.edu
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210302T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20210302T190000
DTSTAMP:20260405T155935
CREATED:20210127T191559Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20210127T191559Z
UID:61851-1614704400-1614711600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Virtual Event: Megan Wagner Lloyd and Michelle Mee Nutter with Raina Telgemeier
DESCRIPTION:JOIN US ON TUESDAY\, MARCH 2 AT 5PM PT FOR THE LAUNCH OF MEGAN WAGNER LLOYD AND MICHELLE MEE NUTTER’S BOOK\, ALLERGIC\, WITH RAINA TELGEMEIER ON ZOOM!\nZoom Login Info \nPlease click the link below to join the webinar:\nhttps://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_J-UKISA_R8OgXu7bA1T8aQ\n \nAbout Allergic \nA coming-of-age story featuring a girl with severe allergies who just wants to find the perfect pet! \nAt home\, Maggie is the odd one out. Her parents are preoccupied with the new baby they’re expecting\, and her younger brothers are twins and always in their own world. Maggie thinks a new puppy is the answer\, but when she goes to select one on her birthday\, she breaks out in hives and rashes. She’s severely allergic to anything with fur! \nCan Maggie outsmart her allergies and find the perfect pet? With illustrations by Michelle Mee Nutter\, Megan Wagner Lloyd draws on her own experiences with allergies to tell a heartfelt story of family\, friendship\, and finding a place to belong.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-event-megan-wagner-lloyd-and-michelle-mee-nutter-with-raina-telgemeier/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/allergic.png
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