Litseen

Andres Barba + Yiyun Li
2017-04-25 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Andres Barba discusses his new novel, Such Small Hands, with Yiyun Li, followed by a party sponsored by Transit Books.

Praise for Andres Barba

Every once in a while a novel does not record reality but creates a whole new reality, one that casts a light on our darkest feelings. Kafka did that. Bruno Schulz did that. Now the Spanish writer Andrés Barba has done it with the terrifying Such Small Hands.—Edmund White

Barba explores what the dynamics of an orphanage reveal about any insular community and the trials of its inevitable outcast.—Idra Novey, author of Ways to Disappear

Andrés Barba needs no advice. He has already created a world that is perfectly realized and has a craft that is inappropriate for a writer of his age.—Mario Vargas Llosa

About Such Small Hands

Shirley Jackson meets The Virgin Suicides, set at an all-girls orphanage. It was once a happy city; we were once happy girls. . . . Life changes at the orphanage the day Marina shows up. As she tries to find her place, she creates a game whose rules are dictated by a haunting violence. In hypnotic, lyrical prose, Andrés Barba evokes the pain of loss and the hunger for acceptance—a masterwork from the Spanish writer at the peak of his powers.

Anselm Berrigan + Hoa Nguyen
2017-04-25 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith is delighted to host local literary nonprofit Small Press Traffic as they present two superb visiting poets, Anselm Berrigan and Hoa Nguyen. Please join us!
Small Press Traffic hosts poets Anselm Berrigan and Hoa Nguyen as part of its longtime reading series. Since 1974 Small Press Traffic (SPT) has been at the heart of the San Francisco Bay Area innovative writing scene, bringing together authors, readers, educators, small presses, and community members through talks, readings, workshops, and performances. Its mission is to provide a local and national platform for experimental writing, foregrounding underserved writers and those who identify as women, people of color, and/or from the LGBTQI community.
Hoa Nguyen is the author of eight poetry books and chapbooks. She lives in Toronto, Ontario where she teaches poetics at Ryerson University and curates a reading series.
Anselm Berrigan‘s recent books of poetry include Come In Alone (Wave, 2016) and Primitive State (Edge, 2015). A chapbook, Degrets, is forthcoming from Couch Press. He is the poetry editor for The Brooklyn Rail, and also editor of the just-about-released What Is Poetry? (Just kidding, I know you know): Selected Interviews from the Poetry Project Newsletter, 1983-2009.
RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event, but would like to request a signed copy of any of our featured authors’ works, please order below and put your request in the comments field.

Jacqueline Winspear
2017-04-25 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Jacqueline Winspear reads from her latest Maisie Dobbs adventure, In This Grave Hour.

“A female investigator every bit as brainy and battle-hardened as Lisbeth Salander.”–Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

Tuesday, April 25, 2017 – 7:30pm

Sunday September 3rd 1939. At the moment Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain broadcasts to the nation Britain’s declaration of war with Germany, a senior Secret Service agent breaks into Maisie Dobbs’ flat to await her return. Dr. Francesca Thomas has an urgent assignment for Maisie: to find the killer of a man who escaped occupied Belgium as a boy, some twenty-three years earlier during the Great War.
In a London shadowed by barrage balloons, bomb shelters and the threat of invasion, within days another former Belgian refugee is found murdered. And as Maisie delves deeper into the killings of the dispossessed from the “last war,” a new kind of refugee — an evacuee from London — appears in Maisie’s life. The little girl billeted at Maisie’s home in Kent does not, or cannot, speak, and the authorities do not know who the child belongs to or who might have put her on the “Operation Pied Piper” evacuee train. They know only that her name is Anna.
As Maisie’s search for the killer escalates, the country braces for what is to come. Britain is approaching its gravest hour — and Maisie could be nearing a crossroads of her own.
Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the bestselling Maisie Dobbs series, which includes Journey to Munich, A Dangerous Place, Leaving Everything Most Loved, Elegy for Eddie, and eight other novels. Her standalone novel, The Care and Management of Lies, was also a bestseller and a Dayton Literary Peace Prize finalist. Originally from the United Kingdom, she now lives in California.

Matthew Isaac Sobin
2017-04-26 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
In The Last Machine in the Solar System, life on Earth ended billions of years ago, but the last machine carries on.
Nearly three billion years into the future, the solar system is a very different place. Earth is long gone, and the sun is a gray, shrunken dwarf. All that remains of humanity and conscious thought is Jonathan—the last machine.
Created to survive Earth’s destruction by our ever-expanding sun, Jonathan witnessed the end of life on Earth. This is his story and that of his creator, Nikolai. It is also the story of the human race, which failed to disentangle its destiny from the star that gave rise to all life-forms on Earth.
Matthew Isaac Sobin grew up in Huntington, New York, and graduated from Tufts University with a bachelor’s degree in history, with studies in astronomy and geology. He currently lives in Hayward, California, with his partner, sculptor Patricia Gonzalez, and works with the Peter Beren Literary Agency. This is his first published work.

Red Light Lit: Happy Hour
2017-04-26 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Denver) | PianoFight, 144 Taylor St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
In honor of national poetry month, Red Light Lit is having a FREE Happy Hour show at PianoFight.
Featured readers include: Peter Thomas Bullen, Allyson Darling, Fred Dodsworth, Nick Jaina, Ari Moskowitz, Xan Roberti and more.
Red Light Lit is a collective of writers, musicians and artists who explore love relationships and sexuality through poetry, prose, art and song.

Andrés Barba
2017-04-26 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | DIESEL, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Andrés Barba to the store to discuss and sign, Such Small Hands, on Wednesday, April 26th at 7:00 pm. This is Transit Books inaugural book and we are so pleased to be a part of it!
Life changes at the orphanage the day seven-year-old Marina shows up. She is different from the other girls: at once an outcast and object of fascination. As Marina struggles to find her place, she invents a game whose rules are dictated by a haunting violence. Written in hypnotic, lyrical prose, alternating between Marina’s perspective and the choral we of the other girls, Such Small Hands evokes the pain of loss and the hunger for acceptance.
Andrés Barba is the one the most lauded contemporary Spanish writers. He is the author of twelve books, including August, October and Rain Over Madrid. In addition to literary fiction, he has written essays, poems, books of photography, and translations of De Quincey and Melville. His books have been translated into ten languages.
Transit Books is a nonprofit publisher of international and American literature, based in Oakland, California. Founded in 2015, Transit Books is committed to the discovery and promotion of enduring works that carry readers across borders and communities.

Event date:

Wednesday, April 26, 2017 – 7:00pm to 8:00pm

Event address:

DIESEL, A Bookstore
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

John Waters
2017-04-26 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
John Waters reads from his new book, Make Trouble, and delivers advice for artists, graduates and anyone trying to make a living as a creative person.

Note: This event will be ticketed. Tickets include a copy of Make Trouble and a beverage. Tickets available here

About Make Trouble

When John Waters delivered his gleefully subversive advice to the graduates of the Rhode Island School of Design, the speech went viral, in part because it was so brilliantly on point about making a living as a creative person. Now we all can enjoy his sly wisdom in a manifesto that reminds us, no matter what eld we choose, to embrace chaos, be nosy, and outrage outdated critics.
Waters notes with irony that he is eminently qualified to be a commencement speaker because he was suspended from high school, then kicked out of college—yet he is a success doing what he loves best. Anyone embarking on a creative path, he tells us, would do well to realize that pragmatism and discipline are as important as talent, and that rejection is nothing to fear. Waters advises young people to eavesdrop, listen to their enemies, and horrify us with new ideas. In other words, make trouble.

Shanthi Sekaran
2017-04-26 20:00 - 22:00 UTC | A2 Cafe, 5212 Broadway St, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
Shanthi Sekaran’s has written two novels: the first is The Prayer Room (MacAdam/Cage, 2009); and the second is Lucky Boy (Penguin Random House, 2017). Her short prose has appeared in the New York Times, Canteen magazine, Mutha magazine, and New California Writing.

She’s a member of the SF Writers’ Grotto and the Portuguese Artists Colony.

She earned her BA from UC Berkeley, her MFA in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a Creative Writing PhD from the University of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (UK).
Sekaran joined CCA’s Writing faculty in fall 2010.

Cory Doctorow + John Scalzi
2017-04-27 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Borderlands Books, 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
CORY DOCTOROW:
Fascinating, moving, and darkly humorous, Walkaway is a multi-generation SF thriller about the wrenching changes of the next hundred years…and the very human people who will live their consequences. From New York Times bestselling author Cory Doctorow, an epic tale of revolution, love, post-scarcity, and the end of death.
“Walkaway is now the best contemporary example I know of, its utopia glimpsed after fascinatingly-extrapolated revolutionary struggle.” ―William Gibson
JOHN SCALZI:
Our universe is ruled by physics. Faster than light travel is impossible―until the discovery of The Flow, an extradimensional field available at certain points in space-time, which can take us to other planets around other stars. Riding The Flow, humanity spreads to innumerable other worlds. Earth is forgotten. A new empire arises, the Interdependency, based on the doctrine that no one human outpost can survive without the others. It’s a hedge against interstellar war―and, for the empire’s rulers, a system of control.
“John Scalzi is the most entertaining, accessible writer working in SF today.” ―Joe Hill, author of The Fireman

The Impossible Fairy Tale: Korean Author Han Yujoo in Conversati
2017-04-27 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | The Lab, 2948 16th Street, San Francisco , CA, 94103, United States
Long known as a vital, innovative author in her native Korea (as well as the publisher of Oulipopress), Han Yujoo here presents her first full-length book to be translated into English, The Impossible Fairy Tale (tr. Janet Hong). Called a “stunning debut” by Kirkus in a starred review, and praised as “a new kind of literary horror, as intellectual as it is transfixing” by Sarah Gerard, The Impossible Fairy Tale is a remarkable book. Come meet this exciting Korean author as she is introduced to the United States in conversation with Two Lines Press Senior Editor Scott Esposito.
It all takes place at The Lab, long known as a home for excellent cultural events in San Francisco. Snacks and alcoholic beverages will be served.
Copies of The Impossible Fairy Tale will be sold, and Han will sign books after the event.
More information: https://www.catranslation.org/event/the-impossible-fairy-tale-korean-author-han-yujoo-in-conversation-with-scott-esposito/

David Shapiro
2017-04-27 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of his new poetry collection
In Memory of an Angel
from City Lights Books
Named after Alban Berg’s famed violin concerto, In Memory of an Angel is the first full-length collection in fifteen years from New York School maestro David Shapiro. Packed with erudition, pursuing themes of art history, architecture, literature, and Jewish identity, the poems of In Memory of an Angel achieve a rare combination of lyrical abstraction and postmodern self-referentiality, rendered with Shapiro’s understated virtuosity. Yet there’s a strong current of love poetry flowing through these avant-garde ruminations, as well as reminiscences of childhood and reflections on fatherhood. A surrealistic violation of the boundary between the real and the dream pervades In Memory of an Angel. Shapiro’s poems take a bewildering variety of forms, many of his own invention, even as he is equally at home in the quotidian and anecdotal. Andy Warhol, Allen Ginsberg, Jasper Johns, Frank O’Hara—these are only some of the characters peopling Shapiro’s New York, a landscape both sophisticated and haunted by memory.
The author of 10 previous books of poems, as well as monographs on John Ashbery, Jim Dine, Jasper Johns, and Mondrian, David Shapiro is a member of the second generation of New York School poets. A child prodigy on the violin, he went on to become a literary and art critic and teaches at Patterson College and Cooper Union. He holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University and has received awards from the Merrill Foundation, the NEA, the NEH, and the Graham Foundation. He lives in Riverdale, the Bronx, NYC.
Praise for David Shapiro:
“An erudite and relentlessly modernizing mind . . . [Shapiro’s] aleatory, portent-free sophistication seems confident enough to accommodate primitive, endearing, and frankly tender tropes and situations . . . The effect is of unforeseen intimacy at the heart of abstraction.”—The New Yorker
“David Shapiro has an incredible mastery of the language and an ear sensitive to every nuance of idiom and rhythm.”—Poetry
Praise for In Memory of an Angel:
“A Taoist, a Kabbalist, and a Dadaist walk into a bar. They discover that the bar is really David Shapiro’s new book of poems, where they can drink ‘tears from sleeping birds’ and relax ‘in/ the soft hands/ of the gods.’ In Memory of an Angel literally drenches the reader in moments of wonder. Shapiro’s gift is unique. He possesses a childlike, not innocence, but sophistication. His playful erudition draws in everyone from Andy Warhol, to Kenneth Koch, to John Dewey – and it welcomes you as well, in its democratic embrace.”––Elaine Equi
“David Shapiro published his first book, January: A Book of Poems, while still a teenager. Since then, now for over fifty years, he has remained one of our very finest American poets. His mind is illuminated and his poems luminous. In Memory of an Angel is a strikingly beautiful and invaluable selection of his work!”––Jim Jarmusch
“It’s always a deep pleasure when David Shapiro has a new book, he never ceases to astonish, he has built a singular, hyper-lyrical, always brilliant poetry. In Memory of an Angel is filled with spells and charms and spinning language, elegy, and wild proclamations; as he writes: “I invented the new movement / without photographs like / the affair of the whole being / as it was said ferocious and / intimate and I invent it / to last.” And so it will.”––Peter Gizzi
“In Memory of an Angel mesmerizes with virtuosic greatness; a deft masterwork by a poet’s poet whose sui generis genius has for five decades defied and invigorated the New York School label. Shapiro upends language not for less meaning, but more—and for a multilayered storytelling sufficiently unfettered to get at life’s labyrinthine mix of ‘cardboard and gold’ promise and peril. Pervaded by wide erudition and a skilled violinist’s musical acuity, these wise, many-angled poems reward rumination, with their dream-drenched mystery, verbal excitement and open-ended, sometimes near-mystical profundity; always with Shapiro’s pluralistic heart on his metaphysical sleeve.”––Kate Farrell

Ericka Huggins
2017-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Grand Lake Theatre, 3200 Grand Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94610, United States
Please join us on Thursday, April 27 for one evening with activist, former political prisoner, and poet Ericka Huggins as she reaches into her own history, reading the words of sheroes and heroes that span the last 50 years of her life. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, she made a commitment to the Human Rights Movement and is a witness to movements across formations today.
Ericka is introduced by writers Chinaka Hodge and Zoé Samudzi, both sharing their thoughts and works in criticism of the moment. The entire evening features open dialogue with audience members.
Grand Lake Theatre
Thursday, April 27 • 7PM
http://matatu.eventbrite.com/
co-presented by the Oakland Book Festival
__________
ERICKA HUGGINS is a human rights activist, poet, educator, Black Panther leader and former political prisoner. Her extraordinary life experiences have enabled her to speak to audiences around the world on issues relating to the physical and emotional well-being of women, children and youth, whole being education, over-incarceration, and the role of the spiritual practice in sustaining activism and promoting change.
As a result of her 14-year tenure as a leader of the Black Panther Party (the longest of any woman in leadership), Ericka brings a unique, complete and honest perspective to the challenges and successes of the Black Panther Party and its significance today.
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CHINAKA HODGE is a poet, educator playwright and screenwriter. Originally from Oakland, California, she​ ​graduated from NYU’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study in May of 2006, and was honored to be the​ ​student speaker at the 174th Commencement exercise. Chinaka was a 2012 Artist in Residence at The​ ​Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, CA. In early 2013, Hodge was a Sundance Feature Film lab​ ​Fellow for her script, 700th& Int’l. Since its early days, Chinaka has served in various capacities at Youth​ ​Speaks/The Living Word Project, the nation’s leading literary arts nonprofit. During her tenure there,​ ​Hodge served as Program Director, Associate Artistic Director, and worked directly with Youth Speaks’​ ​core population as a teaching artist and poet mentor. Her poems, editorials, interviews and prose have​ ​been featured in Newsweek, San Francisco Magazine, Believer Magazine, PBS, NPR, CNN, CSpan,​ ​and in two seasons of HBO’s Def Poetry.
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ZOÉ SAMUDZI is a queer black woman whose work is dedicated to reclaiming and reframing narratives both within the academy and outside of it. Wielding black feminist & womanist epistemologies, she interrogates structural whiteness and theorizes on decolonizing ways of knowing and truth-telling.
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The Kenyan matatu, the Thai tuk-tuk, and the Brooklyn dollar van are means of public transport used by people around the world. MATATU replicates these vehicles as a mode of collective and publicly accessible transportation, rooted in local community and global diasporas, that shuttles audiences from one arthouse experience to the next.
MATATU is a fiscally sponsored project of Intersection for the Arts, and supported by KQED, East Bay Express, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Learn more about us at www.matatufestival.org/weare
The OAKLAND BOOK FESTIVAL is an annual celebration of ideas, debate, and the arts that will take place this year at Oakland City Hall on Sunday, May 21st. The 2017 festival revolves around the theme of “Equality” and will feature over one hundred artists, activists, academics, and other public intellectuals that are aiming to achieve it in their own way. All events at the OBF are free and open to the public.

Orlando White + Patrick James Dunagan
2017-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
Orlando White receives the Poetry Center Book Award for LETTERRS (Nightboat Books) and reads with award judge Patrick James Dunagan. This event is free and open to the public.
‘San Francisco poet Robert Duncan remarked: “There is no end to the task of bringing the sounds into our conscious art.” (“Notes on the Structure of Rime”) As a critical reader I am always looking out for those poets whose work answers Duncan’s oracular call for unabashed attention to how the language of the poem is presented so as to be thereby sounded; a poet who sets the poems upon the page as though the realization of a musical score, readied for the eye to hear as the ear sees. Over in New Mexico, native born Diné (Navajo) poet Orlando White churns out just such work, attuned to “a lilt of sound: curve murmurs” (“EMIT”). White’s LETTERRS presents forward-learning contemplative action towards what constitutes an avant-garde poetics of today: a bracing engagement of/with advancing a spatial “open space,” page-as-field, poem-writing. White describes how “The white space is just as important as the text in a poem, whether it’s the counter that shapes an O or S, a line break after a word or a caesura within a line.” (“Functional White: Crafting Space & Silence”) His use of caesura and spacing within the individual line of the poem designates breath, measure, and the fragility of even individual letters. While with a quick glance through LETTERRS “the blank” white space of the page may be deemed deceptively sparse in appearance, upon sustained reading White’s employment of the practice proves to be truly nothing less than masterfully accomplished.
‘White sees “white space as a place of liberation, dissolving boundaries between what is authoritative and what is not.” (LETTERRS interview, Taos Journal) In this same conversation, he also speaks of “the page” as a “type of energy,” stating that “as an Indigenous person too, I see it as a type of resistance against English colonialism.” Without necessarily overt expression of a political stance, White nevertheless remains committed against colonialist tendencies latent in his experience using English as a poet. “One can argue language is always connected to race and vice versa; this may be why my poems ultimately reflect an intersection of Diné thought and English fluency. But I find my sensibilities are attuned to how a poet builds her or his poems rather than focusing on content, which may overwhelm a poem.” (“To Find the Subject by Leaving the Subject: Expectations of Race & Content”) For my own needs, LETTERRS reignites the exciting potentiality for working with the open space of the page, ever aware of the specific attentive care that’s required. White serves up his own colossal ambitions and tops them with admirable verve. I’m thrilled by the promise of his work and am very much interested in seeing what’s next; the as yet unwritten exploration towards which White is undoubtedly headed. “Write, means to / place life / into book.” (“n”) It’s nothing other than a pleasure to recognize White’s substantial contribution to the larger ongoing endeavor of Poetics which is achieved here. May many future readers realize in this work the necessary life-sustaining freshness which the Imagination requires to carry the work of “the poems” forward: “Letter hypnotizes to stay / alive after meaning fades.” (“O”)-
—judge’s statement, Patrick James Dunagan
Poet Orlando White is from Tółikan, Arizona. He is Diné of the Naaneesht’ézhi Tábaahí and born for the Naakai Diné’e. White earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA from Brown University. He is the author of LETTERRS (Nightboat Books, 2015) and Bone Light (Red Hen Press, 2009), a collection of poems Kazim Ali described as a “careful excavation on language and letters and the physical body.” White’s work has appeared in such journals as Ploughshares, the Kenyon Review, Salt Hill, and elsewhere. The recipient of a residency from the Lannan Foundation, White teaches at Diné College in Tsaile, Arizona.
Patrick James Dunagan lives in San Francisco and works at Gleeson Library for the University of San Francisco. He is a graduate of the Poetics program from the now-defunct New College of California, where he studied under Tom Clark, Adam Cornford, Gloria Frym, Joanne Kyger, George Mattingly, and David Meltzer. Alongside poets Marina Lazzara and Nicholas Whittington, he’s currently at work editing together an anthology of critical writings by Poetics program alumni and faculty. His critical reviews and other writings have appeared in a number of online and print publications. His books include: GUSTONBOOK (Post Apollo, 2011), Das Gedichtete (Ugly Duckling, 2013), Book of Kings (Bird and Beckett Books, 2015), Drops of Rain / Drops of Wine (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016), and THE DUNCAN ERA: One Reader’s Cosmology (Spuyten Duyvil, 2016).

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center

Jackie Townsend
2017-04-27 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Books Inc. in The Marina, 2251 Chestnut St, San Francisco , CA, 94123, United States
Jackie Townsend shares her compelling new novel, The Absence of Evelyn. Newly divorced Rhonda, haunted by her sister Evelyn’s ghost, travels to an old palazzo in Rome to confront Marco, the man who stole her sister’s heart–only to find out he’s vanished in the wake of Evelyn’s death. Meanwhile, Rhonda’s nineteen-year-old daughter Olivia, adopted by Rhonda at birth, travels to the mysterious and lush waters of northern Vietnam, where she’s been summoned by the missing Marco–a man she only knows from her parents’ whispers, a man she has never met or seen. Soon, truths are exposed and lives unraveled, and the real journey begins. Four lives in all, spanning three continents, are now bound together in an unfathomable way–and they tell a powerful story about love in all its incarnations, filial and amorous, healing and destructive.

Trane to Africa
2017-04-28 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Celebrating National Poetry Month featuring Charles Curtis Blackwell Jazz Poet Extraordinaire,Victor Mavedzenge Spoken Word Artist from Zimbabwe, Greer Rockett on Trumpet and special guests. More details coming soon…

Shanghai Faithful: Jennifer Lin
2017-04-29 10:30 - 12:00 UTC | Chinatown Meeting Room, 1135 Powell Street, San Francisco, CA, 94108, United States
Former China correspondent Jennifer Lin dramatizes 150 years of her family history in her new book, Shanghai Faithful: Betrayal and Forgiveness in a Chinese Christian Family, (Rowman & Littlefield, March 2017). A reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer for 31 years, Lin used her skills as a reporter to weave oral history and archival resources into a narrative spanning five generations. Shanghai Faithful presents a poignant portrait of a family as well as a vivid history of Christianity in China, stretching from the 19-century mission outposts of South China to the cathedrals of war-torn Shanghai and today’s thriving house churches at the heart of China’s unprecedented religious revival. The program will be conducted in English.

Call & Response: Readings by 100 Days Action Poets
2017-04-29 14:00 - 15:30 UTC | Clarion Alley, Clarion Alley, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Action by: 100 Days Action
Date/Time
Date(s) – 04/29/2017
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm
Location
Clarion Alley
Clarion Alley, San Francisco, CA, 94110

ACTION: ON THE 99TH DAY THERE WAS POETRY
100 Days Action comes to Clarion Alley

In these turbulent months, its the poets who have carried our thoughts. 100 Days Action has published poems by more than a dozen poets since the Inauguration. For our closing, we bring these unique voices to the historic Clarion Alley reading series for an afternoon of solidarity, joy, grim resilience, and a way forward. In addition to the poetry, CAMP’s community partner, The San Francisco Poster Syndicate, will be live silk screening posters of resistance.
Featured Poets:
Heather Bourbeau
Josh Wilson
Andy Sano
Mk Chavez
Yvonne Campbell
Cyrus Armajani
Maw Shein Win
Jason Wyman
Raina J. León
Amos White
Caitlin Myer
Christine No
Bonnie Kwong
“Call & Response” is curated by Maw Shein Win and Ingrid Rojas Contreras. More information about can be found on our Facebook page, or by contacting Maw Shein Win at maw@redbridgepress.com.

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Poetry Workshop: Writing Home
2017-04-29 14:00 - 17:00 UTC | Presidio Branch Library, 3150 Sacramento St, San Francisco , CA, 94115, United States
RAWI is excited to launch it’s second In Solidarity: RAWI Creative Writing Workshops in San Francisco!
Please join us for a poetry workshop, “Writing Home” led by Deema K Shehabi at the Presidio Branch Library Community Room.
Workshop: Writing Home
Having lost our way home through dystopia, exile, and creeping environmental degradation, how is it possible to reconstruct and/or recreate the idea of home through writing? By reading and studying a mix of contemporary poets who write about this theme, this workshop will seek to place participants in a space where they can negotiate their identities through language and explore the relationship between the cultures, histories, and geographical locations of their original national and ethnic group.
The workshop includes a discussion and featured readings by Nathalie Khankan, Lena Khalif Tuffah, and Priscilla Wathington.
Register for free here.
(Note: this program is not sponsored by San Francisco Public Library)

Michael Chabon
2017-04-29 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Michael Chabon joins us on Independent Bookstore Day to read from his new novel, Moonglow. The classic arcade game Moon Patrol will also be available to play!

Praise for Moonglow

“Elegiac and deeply poignant … Chabon weaves these knotted-together tales together into a tapestry that’s as complicated, beautiful and flawed as an antique carpet…. Chabon is one of contemporary literature’s most gifted prose stylists…. In Moonglow, he writes with both lovely lyricism and highly caffeinated fervor.” — Michiko Kakutani

“Mix[es] in generous dollops of meaning, a sprinkling of fancy metaphors and an abundance of beautiful sentences so that it becomes a rich and exotic confection. Too strict a recipe would have spoiled the charm of this layer cake of nested memories and family legends.… This book is beautiful.” — A.O. Scott

A flamboyantly imaganitive work of fiction dressed in the sheep’s clothing of autobiography….His most confident and complex performance….Moonglow is a movingly bittersweet novel that balances wonder with lamentation.” — Sam Sacks, The Wall Street Journal

About Moonglow

Moonglow unfolds as the deathbed confession of a man the narrator refers to only as “my grandfather.” It is a tale of madness, of war and adventure, of sex and marriage and desire, of existential doubt and model rocketry, of the shining aspirations and demonic underpinnings of American technological accomplishment at midcentury, and, above all, of the destructive impact—and the creative power—of keeping secrets and telling lies. It is a portrait of the difficult but passionate love between the narrator’s grandfather and his grandmother, an enigmatic woman broken by her experience growing up in war-torn France. It is also a tour de force of speculative autobiography in which Chabon devises and reveals a secret history of his own imagination.
From the Jewish slums of prewar South Philadelphia to the invasion of Germany, from a Florida retirement village to the penal utopia of New York’s Wallkill prison, from the heyday of the space program to the twilight of the “American Century,” the novel revisits an entire era through a single life and collapses a lifetime into a single week. A lie that tells the truth, a work of fictional nonfiction, an autobiography wrapped in a novel disguised as a memoir, Moonglow is Chabon at his most moving and inventive.

Saturday Night Special: An "Elevator Pitch" Open Mic
2017-04-29 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Nick’s Lounge, 3218 Adeline St., Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
We’re locked in an elevator together. For the next three minutes (or less) I am your captive audience. What will you try to sell me? Give me your best elevator pitch.
As always, we’d love to hear your (three-minute) poems, stories, comedic sketches, songs, dances, or sales pitches on our optional theme (or any topic).
Our April features are: K.R. Morrison & Robert Andrew Andres Perez Jr
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First come first served. Sign-up starts at 7pm and closes when it fills up or when the reading starts, so get there early if you want to read! (Note: Sometimes the list is full by 7:03pm)
Each reader will have 3 minutes maximum. For prose writers this is about one and a half double-spaced pages.
PLEASE NOTE: We are strict about the 3 minute max. When you reach your time limit at SNS, we turn on the disco lights! So, please plan ahead. Practice your piece out loud. Time yourself!
After the reading, stick around for karaoke starting at 10pm
Saturday, April 29th, 2017
7 – 9:30 pm
Nick’s Lounge (21+)
3218 Adeline Street, Berkeley, CA
1 block south of Ashby BART
Between Fairview St & Martin Luther King Jr Way
FREE!
But bring CASH if you want to buy drinks (which you sort of have to, because there’s a 1-drink minimum!)
Hosted by Hollie Hardy
Please help out by liking our FB page, where you can also find more details and photos from past events:
https://www.facebook.com/Saturday-Night-Special-an-East-Bay-open-mic-112174188880786/
BIOS
When she’s not writing poems or drumming in an all-girl garage rock band, K.R. MORRISON teaches English Literature and Creative Writing to inner city high school students at Galileo in San Francisco, CA. Writing for many years, she finally reads at open mics around the Bay Area, including many Saturday Night Specials. K.R. Morrison has been featured twice in Bay Area Generations, and her first publication “When in Mexico” appeared in Switchback Magazine in July, 2016. She’s currently working on a poetry collection entitled, “From Her Wrist,” and hopes to have it published by someone awesome once it’s done.
Born in Manila & raised in the sprawling outer edges of Los Angeles County, ROBERT ANDREW PEREZ moved to the Bay Area to earn his BA from Berkeley & MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California, where he occasionally teaches. He is an alum of the Lambda Literary fellowship & a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for poetry. His first poetry collection, “The Field,” was released in fall 2016 from Omnidawn. His work has also appeared or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, The Awl, Eleven Eleven, The Laurel Review, The Cortland Review, and Fourteen Hills. His poetry was also featured in Public Pool and Vinyl Poetry. He’s a 2017 guest editor for the online journal The Elephants. Currently, he’s in the throes of finishing a feature-length comedy about a divorce and wine tasting called “Stone Fruit.” More at robertandrewperez.com.

Lone Glen Welcomes BACS
2017-04-29 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Lone Glen, 3132 Harrison Street, Oakland, CA, 94611, United States
Lone Glen welcomes BACS, April 29th!
April 10, 2017

Lone Glen presents The Bay Area Correspondence School Variety Show and Art Extravaganza!
On Saturday evening, April 29th at 7:30 pm, come help us celebrate the sixth anniversary of the Bay Area Correspondence School with an evening of poetry, music, dance, and art. We’ll have interactive mail-art activities, copies of our new chapbook, tasty refreshments, and an epistolary-themed variety show. The evening will feature performances and art by Ramsay Bell Breslin, Joe Cha, MK Chavez, Pat Dienstfrey, Amber DiPietra, Tiff Dressen, Patrick Duggan, Gloria Frym, Margit Galanter, Erin Heath, Evan and Miles Karp of Turk and Divis, Kristin Kong, Raina Leon, Alexandra Mattraw, Sarah Rosenthal, Heidi Smith, Adam Thorman, Marissa Bell Toffoli, Della Watson, Jessica Wickens, Valerie Witte, and more!
Join us at Lone Glen’s home: 3132 Harrison Street, Oakland. Bring a friend, a beverage (if you have the means), and an open mind. When you arrive, look for signs pointing you to the side entrance for our garden and garage performance space.
The Bay Area Correspondence School (BACS) is a project that explores experimental writing through online and offline communications, including mail, email, and social media. Mail art and other work by our network can be viewed on our page: https://www.facebook.com/BayAreaCorrespondenceSchool/

Paul Elias Taylor Celebration of Life
2017-04-30 12:00 - 15:00 UTC | Redwood Gardens, 2591 Derby Street, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Please save this date to celebrate Paul’s life. We have reserved the community room at Redwood Gardens where his 70th birthday poetry reading was held.
We will hold a brief reading and time for those who wish to say a few words about Paul followed by a reception including lunch.
If you are interested in reading, speaking about Paul, or would like to help organize/contribte in any way, please reach out to me (Alanna).
I have invited those I know are interested, but do not know everyone’s names. Please feel free to invite guests.

Donna Levin
2017-04-30 15:00 - 17:00 UTC | Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco , CA, 94107, United States
Local author, editor, and writing teacher Donna Levin celebrates the launch of her captivating new work of fiction, There’s More Than One Way Home. Refreshments will be served.
Anna Kagen seems to have it all: She’s young, beautiful, and married to a wealthy, prominent man.
But within the walls of her San Francisco mansion, she spends her time dodging her husband’s barbs and hunting down potential friends for her son, Jack, a 10-year-old on the autistic spectrum.
That old life suddenly seems idyllic when, on a school field trip, she makes the small error in judgment that sets in motion a chain of events that leads to another boy’s death. Suddenly Jack is a suspect, her husband’s career is in jeopardy, and Anna has to choose between loyalty to her son … and what may be her one chance at happiness.

Stranger Than Fiction reading series
2017-04-30 15:00 - 17:00 UTC | Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary St, San Francisco , CA, 94109, United States
Please join co-hosts Alan Black and Frances Stroh for this not-to-be-missed event on April 30, 3-5 pm–check out our stellar line-up:
Ethel Rohan is the author of The Weight of Him, a debut novel published by St. Martin’s Press, February 2017. She is also the author of two story collections, Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone. An award-winning short story writer, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, World Literature Today, Tin House Online, Guernica Magazine, and many others. Raised in Ireland, she lives in San Francisco.
Rachel Howard is the author of The Lost Night, a memoir about her father’s unsolved murder. Her essays and short stories have appeared in ZYZZYVA, Gulf Coast, the Arroyo Literary Review, the Hudson Review, Waxwing, and OZY, among other publications. Her essay for Oprah Magazine, “The Love Fast,” was recently collected in O’s Little Guide to Starting Over. She teaches memoir and personal essay writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. She has also served as Interim Director of Undergraduate Creative Writing at Warren Wilson College, and as Distinguished Visiting Writer for the Saint Mary’s College MFA program. She lives in Nevada City, where she produces a popular reading series, YubaLit. www.rachelhoward.com
Jason Bayani is the author of Amulet from Write Bloody Press. He’s an MFA graduate from Saint Mary’s College, a Kundiman fellow, and works as the Artistic Director for Kearny Street Workshop. Jason performs regularly around the country and recently debuted his solo show, “Locus of Control” in 2016. http://jasonbayani.com/
Alan Black works on “Notes From a Dive Bar” like a bartender tossing a drunk into the alleyway. Reckless, messy and all over the place, it never ends. The Penguin Corporation published his two books. Made in Glasgow, unmade in California.
Peg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow (ELJ Editions, March 2017), a collection of hybrid prose and micro-fictions with praise from Peter Orner, Joan Silber, Margot Livesey and others. Her stories and poems have appeared in Permafrost, the Los Angeles Review, Forklift Ohio, Joyland Magazine, 100 Word Story, and many other journals and anthologies. She is the founder and director of the national reading series Why There Are Words and founder and director of WTAW Press. Visit her at www.pegalfordpursell.com
Jon Boilard is the author of the debut short story collection, Setright Road (Dzanc Books/2017) and two novels, The Castaway Lounge (Dzanc Books/2015) and A River Closely Watched (MacAdam Cage/2012), which was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. His award-winning short stories have appeared in some of the finest literary journals in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Jon has participated in the Cork International Short Story Festival in Cork, Ireland, the Wroclaw Short Story Festival in Wroclaw, Poland, as well as LitQuake. He lives in the San Francisco Sunset district with his wife and two daughters.

Guts, Grit & Glory Poetry Night
2017-04-30 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Two Jacks Denim, 2355 Broadway, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
TWO JACKS DENIM
Presents
In the Tradition of the Two Jacks – Kerouac & London
Guts, Grit & Glory Poetry Night
Sun., April 30, 5-7 p.m.
Featuring Readings by Three Stanford Wallace Stegner Fellows

Edgar Kunz
Kai Carlson-Wee
Grady Chambers

Special Guest: Local Poet Guy Biederman
Two Jacks Denim, 2355 Broadway, Oakland, CA 94612, (510) 788-5832, http://twojacksdenim.com
https://www.facebook.com/events/1413463852030344/

Tony Robles + Tommi Avicolli-Mecca
2017-05-01 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Monday, May 1 – 7-9 pm
POETS!
Tony Robles & Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, followed by an open mic
every 1st & 3rd Monday
April 12, 2017 By Eric

Tony Robles, born and raised in San Francisco, is co-editor and a revolutionary worker scholar of Poor magazine, and recently published Cool Don’t Live Here No More: A Letter to San Francisco. In 2010 he was nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Mythium Literary Journal for his short story, “In My Country.” Robles is also a housing rights advocate and board member of the Manilatown Heritage Foundation, and has written two children’s books, Lakas and the Manilatown Fish and Lakas and the Makibaka Hotel.
Tommi Avicolli-Mecca, born and raised in the infamous South Philly, is a former member of Gay Liberation Front who has never stopped being an activist for queer and social justice causes. He is editor of Smash the Church, Smash the State: The Early Years of Gay Liberation (City Lights Books), and co-editor of Avanti Popolo: Italians Sail Past Colum
bus (Manic D Press). Avicolli-Mecca’s writings have appeared in various anthologies over the years, most recently, That’s Revolting (Soft Skull). He is a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, SF Examiner, and SF Bay Guardian, among other newspapers. In addition, he has published scores of poems since the late 60s, including a recent work about the San Francisco housing crisis (in Philadelphia Poets, edited by Rosemary Cappello). He was featured in St. Martin Press’ Gay and Lesbian Poets in our Time.

Quiet Lightning at Galería de la Raza!
2017-05-01 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Denver) | Galería de la Raza, 2857 24th Street, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
A literary mixtape selected through a blind submission-based process, performed live by the authors, and published as sPARKLE & bLINK 85, handed out free to the first 100 people. Thanks to a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission, all selected authors will be paid. Free show. All ages.
Submissions are open through end of day 4/12—do iiiit!
https://quietlightning.submittable.com/submit/81135/quiet-lightning-galeria-de-la-raza
Curated by Christine No + Abe Becker!
art by Darlene Alvarez, cover artist for sPARKLE & bLINK 85
quietlightning.org for links + more info

Kill the Ampaya!
2017-05-02 18:30 - 20:00 UTC | San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
A rich variety of baseball fiction exists south of the border but almost none of it is available in English. These inventive and entertaining stories reveal the place of baseball in Latin America.
Join us when editor Dick Cluster reads from Kill the Ámpaya! and discusses Latin American baseball fiction. He is joined by Norman Antonio Zelaya who will read in Spanish.
“A welcome reminder that inspired writing about the sport isn’t limited to the United States. Dick Cluster has done a masterful job of curating and translating this collection of short stories. Each story reflects a passion for baseball and a recognition that the sport and its lessons are omnipresent, reflecting and informing and mimicking real life. Most of these stories also tend to be infused with a wonderful mysticism that both reflects and then slyly tweaks its gringo counterpart.”
— Paul Hagen, mlb.com
A book sale by the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library follows the event. Co-sponsored by SABR, Lefty O’Doul chapter of the Society for American Baseball Research.

Nomadic Press at Dog-Eared Books
2017-05-02 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
NOMADIC PRESS AT DOG-EARED BOOKS (CASTRO)

Tuesday, May 2, 2017
7:00pm 9:00pm

Dog-Eared Books (Castro)489 Castro StreetSan Francisco, CA, 94114United States

More information soon.
