Litseen

Virtual Event: Jakob Guanzon and Lysley Tenorio
2021-04-21 18:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | online, CA, United States
Join us on Wednesday, April 21 at 6pm PT when Jakob Guanzon discusses his debut novel, Abundance, with Lysley Tenorio on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84964860993

Praise for Abundance
“Jakob Guanzon’s excellent debut novel, Abundance, is the story of a father and son scraping by in a country that relegates its most vulnerable to day-to-day survival. Despite that struggle, Guanzon infuses his characters with spirit and fight, and renders them in prose that is sharp, blunt, and lyrical, all at once. To read Abundance is to understand America in ways both shockingly new and startlingly familiar. Contemporary American fiction is lucky to add this book to its shelves.”—Lysley Tenorio, author of The Son of Good Fortune

“From the table of contents, Guanzon had me hooked. This haunting and fiercely passionate story takes America’s capitalist heart to task. Here is an unforgettable accounting of family, fever, and the fortunes of our strip mall society.”—Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark

“A quest, a page-turner, and above all a love story, Abundance lays bare one father’s brutal, tender hustle to care for his son in a winner-take-all world. Henry’s meticulously plotted journey, unfolding in heart-stopping prose, marks Jakob Guanzon as a debut author with compassion and talent to burn.”—Mia Alvar, author of In the Country

About Abundance
A wrenching debut about the causes and effects of poverty, as seen by a father and son living in a pickup

Evicted from their trailer on New Year’s Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pickup truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for pushing opioids, is down to his last pocketful of dollars, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: Today is Junior’s birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.

To celebrate, Henry treats Junior to dinner at McDonald’s, followed by a night in a real bed at a discount motel. For a moment, as Junior watches TV and Henry practices for his interview in the bathtub, all seems well. But after Henry has a disastrous altercation in the parking lot and Junior succumbs to a fever, father and son are sent into the night, struggling to hold things together and make it through tomorrow.

In an ingenious structural approach, Jakob Guanzon organizes Abundance by the amount of cash in Henry’s pocket. A new chapter starts with each debit and credit, and the novel expands and contracts, revealing the extent to which the quality of our attention is altered by the abundance—or lack thereof—that surrounds us. Set in an America of big-box stores and fast food, this incandescent debut novel trawls the fluorescent aisles of Walmart and the booths of Red Lobster to reveal the inequities and anxieties around work, debt, addiction, incarceration, and health care in America today.

Unity and Struggle: A Collective Address with Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco's Poet Laureate
2021-04-21 18:00 - 19:30 | online
Register Here

Co-presented with San Francisco Public Library
Please join Tongo Eisen-Martin, San Francisco’s 8th Poet Laureate, and family for an evening of poetry and exposition on the revolutionary potentials of art; as beautifully no incarnation of craft exists outside of the movements, renaissances; the people who pass us through. FREE
Registration required. Event to be held on Zoom.
Featuring:

Marc Bamuthi Joseph
Biko Eisen-Martin
Mahogany Browne
Jive Poetic
Joyce Lee

Eisen-Martin is a poet and the founder of Black Freighter Press. His book Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights, Pocket Poet series), received a 2018 American Book Award, the 2018 California Book Award for Poetry and was short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize. His previous book, someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015), was nominated for a California Book Award. His forthcoming book, A Good Earth: City Lights Pocket Poets Series No 62, will be published in September 2021.
Eisen-Martin is also an educator and organizer whose work centers on issues of mass incarceration, extrajudicial killings of Black people and human rights. He has taught at detention centers around the country and at the Institute for Research in African-American Studies at Columbia University. He is a graduate of Columbia University.
Born and raised in San Francisco, Eisen-Martin spent time as a child hanging out at the Western Addition Cultural Center, now the African American Art and Culture Complex, where he later taught writing workshops. In his vision for Poet Laureate, he aims to organize poetry circles in underserved neighborhoods throughout the City and recruit and nurture artists from San Francisco’s marginalized communities.

Launch Event for American Geography in Honor of Barry Lopez
2021-04-22 16:00 - 17:30 | online
Radius Books and The Green Arcade invite you to join Sandra S. Phillips, Debra Gwartney, Toby Jurovics, and Beverly Dahlen to celebrate the launch of AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY: PHOTOGRAPHS OF LAND USE FROM 1840 TO THE PRESENT, including live readings of recent work from Robert Adams and Barry Lopez.

Books signed by Sandra Phillips can be ordered from The Green Arcade’s Online Shop: www.TheGreenArcade.com

Here is the link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q5YOD4eKT12vqHqyW534EA

Drawing primarily from the vast permanent collection of photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, American Geography charts a visual history of land use in the United States.

From the earliest photographic records of human habitation to the latest aerial and digital imagery, from nearly uninhabited desert and isolated mountainous territories to suburban sprawl and densely populated cities, this compilation offers an increasingly nuanced perspective on the American landscape.
Divided by region, these photographs address ways in which different histories and traditions of land use have given rise to different cultural transitions: from the Midwestern prairies and agricultural traditions of the South, to the riverine systems in the Northeast, and the environmental challenges and riches of the far West.
American Geography provides a complex, thought-provoking survey featuring work from Robert Adams, Dawoud Bey, Barbara Bosworth, Debbie Fleming Caffery, William Eggleston, Mitch Epstein, Terry Evans, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Emmet Gowin, Lee Friedlander, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Trevor Paglen, Wendy Red Star, Mark Ruwedel, Victoria Sambunaris, Stephen Shore, Alec Soth, and Carleton E. Watkins, among others.

Seismic Salon: T.J. Stiles
2021-04-22 17:00 - 18:30 | online
Buy Tickets

News alert, nonfiction fans! Litquake has secured the participation of two-time Pulitzer Prize winning biographer T.J. Stiles for our Seismic Salon series. Called “a superb researcher” by the Washington Post, Stiles received the 2016 Pulitzer Prize in History for Custer’s Trials: A Life on the Frontier of a New America, and the 2010 Pulitzer for Biography (as well as the 2009 National Book Award for Nonfiction) for The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He is also author of Jesse James: Last Rebel of the Civil War, which was a New York Times notable book and a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Biography. A Guggenheim fellow, he has taught creative nonfiction at Columbia. He currently serves on the governing boards of the Authors Guild, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians. And if politics are your thing, T.J. loves to talk about that as well.
Buy T.J. Stiles’ books at the Litquake Bookshop.
Seismic Salons are a series of fundraisers offering conversation time with A-list authors for 10 lucky participants. All proceeds benefit Litquake’s on-going programs.

Open Mic Night | Featuring Jewelle Gomez
2021-04-22 18:00 - 20:00 | online
OPEN MIC THURSDAYS continue. Join us on ZOOM twice a month for our virtual Open Mic. Look for MoAD Open Mic every other Thursday this month. Hosted by poet Nia McAllister, join us for an evening of spoken word, featuring amazing poets and musicians from throughout the Bay Area and beyond. Participate or just watch. Everyone is welcome.
All interested performers, please sign up below. For those interested in listening as part of the audience, no need to fill out the form, just follow the zoom link below:
Sign up to perform below. Everyone is welcome.

Open Mic, April 22 2021

First Name

Last Name

Email Address

Donations of any amount are always welcome, so if you are able to, please consider donating to MoAD online HERE, or donating through Give by Cell by texting the word: MOADSF to the number: 56512 on your cell phone, then follow the link provided to make a donation. All donations will go towards supporting MoAD and continuing to bring you engaging programming.
Here are the instructions for joining via ZOOM:
REGISTER IN ADVANCE VIA ZOOM TO RECEIVE A LINK TO JOIN THE PROGRAM
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUtce2vrzwiEt0a_Tbt0aZXjd2UWKjmTNNB
Once you register, you will receive an email with the link to join the program.
Our Featured Artist: Jewelle Gomez
Jewelle Gomez, (Cape Verdean/Wampanoag/Ioway) is a novelist, essayist, poet, educator, and public speaker. She’s the author of eight books including the first Black Lesbian vampire novel, THE GILDA STORIES, which has been in print more than 25 years and was recently optioned by Cheryl Dunye for a TV mini-series. Her work has appeared numerous anthologies including “Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora,” and “Red Indian Road West.” Her plays about James Baldwin and Alberta Hunter have been produced in San Francisco and New York City. Follow @VampyreVamp

Reclaiming Connection and Community
2021-04-22 19:00 - 20:30 | Virtual
The American Dream as it has been defined for more than a century is about the well-paying job, the nuclear family, and upward mobility. But what both clouds and defines that dream is the distance between us, our neighbors, and that we, our communities, are defined by the dichotomy of winners and losers. What has been lost in many people’s day to day and in the larger American Dream is the key element that helped many of us to succeed in the first place-community.
Join author and activist Mia Birdsong and CIIS Director of Diversity and Inclusion Rachel Bryant for a conversation on reclaiming family, friendship, and communities. Sharing insights from her book, How We Show Up, Mia shows that what separates us isn’t only the ever-present injustices built around race, class, gender, values, and beliefs, but also our denial of our interdependence and need for belonging. Mia highlights how we can return to our inherent connectedness to find strength, safety, and support in vulnerability and generosity, in asking for help, and in being accountable.
Discover how showing up-literally and figuratively-points us toward the promise of our collective vitality and leads us to the liberated well-being we want.
Free, suggested donation of $10.
https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs/event-calendar/birdsong-mia-april-22-2021 publicprograms@ciis.edu 415-575-6175

Alley Cat Celebrates Independent Bookstore Day: Poetry reading with Kim Shuck and 5 Poets!
2021-04-24 17:00 - 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Saturday April 24th starting at 5pm.
We will be wrapping up our celebration of Independent Bookstore Day with some of our favorite poets!
Zoom:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86715102063
Password: [REDACTED] will be messaged to those who respond as “Going.”
The bookstore will also be open for the celebration. Please keep in mind the current capacity is 12 people and a mask is required.
We are honored to host:
Kim Shuck
https://kimshuck.com
Paul Corman-Roberts https://www.nomadicpress.org/paulcormanroberts
Kitty Costello http://www.freedomvoices.org/new/kitty-costello-upon-waking
Lourdes Figueroa
https://www.lourdesfigueroa.net
Mason J.
https://www.nomadicpress.org/store/crossbonesonmylife
Greg Pond
https://nomadicground.tumblr.com/…/i-fell-by-greg-pond

At The Door: Chapter Three
2021-04-24 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us for our monthly reading series, uplifting only Black & Brown voices. If you didn’t attend last month’s event… you missed out. Here’s your chance to make it up.
Featured Readers:
Emily Hoang
Rebeca Flores
Randy James
Sumeera J.
Tureeda Mikell

We look forward to seeing you in community.

Dia de los Ninos/Dia de los Libros Virtual Celebration
2021-04-25 12:00 - 13:15 | Virtual
It’s a celebration of literacy, books and nature! We invite you and your family to enjoy stories, songs, crafts and learn about special places to visit in the City. We are bringing the festival to your home, we hope you can join us.
Es una celebracion de la lectura, libros y la naturaleza. Los invitamos con su familia para que disfruten cuentos, canciones, manualidades y aprenden acerca de lugares especiales dentro de la cuidad. Traemos el festival a sus hogares, esperamos que pueden acompanarnos.
Tune in on Facebook and on YouTube.
This program is sponsored by Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.
For accommodations (such as ASL interpretation or captioning), call (415) 557-4557 or contact accessibility@sfpl.org. Requesting at least 72 hours in advance will help ensure availability.
Free
https://sfpl.org/events/2021/04/25/dia-de-los-ninosdia-de-los-libros-virtual-celebration sfplcpp@sfpl.org 415-557-4400

Sesshu Foster & Arturo Ernesto Romo in conversation with Carribean Fragoza
2021-04-27 18:00 - 19:00 | online
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform.

celebrating the book launch of ELADATL: A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines, published by City Lights Books. Sesshu & Arturo will be in conversation with their fellow City Lights author Carribean Fragoza!
Event is free, but registration is required.
(Click Here) to register.
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(Click Here) to purchase book.
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This event has been sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

Books related to this event:

ELADATL
A History of the East Los Angeles Dirigible Air Transport Lines
Sesshu Foster, Arturo Ernesto Romo
due out in April 2021
Available for pre-order. A 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.

Odd Salon + Context Travel: The Rise and Fall of Angkor
2021-04-27 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Explore the quintessential “lost city” of Angkor Wat with us during this very special interactive seminar led by Charles Higham, archaeologist and Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago, New Zealand.
How did the mighty civilization of Angkor in Cambodia come to be, and why did it collapse? This seminar will explore the impact of climate change on the rise and fall of the Khmer Empire.
There are two fundamentals to life in Southeast Asia: the arrival of monsoon rains and the importance of securing a predictable rice harvest. New research has shown that a period of weakened monsoon led to an agricultural crisis in the late prehistoric period (about 200AD). Motivated by decreased rice yields, this ingenious ancient society developed systems of reservoirs and irrigation to counter the lower rainfall. However, the unintended consequence of these technological advancements was a steep rise in social inequality and the rise to power of the God-Kings of the Kingdom of Angkor. During their peak, they built the epic complex known as Angkor Wat, unrivaled in its scale and grandeur. But, after six centuries of prosperity, a second climatic change brought catastrophe and the system collapsed.
Charles Higham is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is an archaeologist with a particular interest in the origins of Southeast Asian civilizations. His excavations in Thailand and Cambodia have greatly increased our understanding of how the great Kingdom of Angkor began, how God-Kings were revered, and with a climatic deterioration, how it came to an end.
Tuesday, April 27, 6pm
CAMBODIA: THE RISE AND FALL OF ANGKOR WITH CHARLES HIGHAM
Online, via Zoom
This is part one of our four part collaboration with Context Travel, as a special Members & Fellows series. These private events are included for free for all current Odd Salon Members, Fellows. To join us: New members may join by purchasing either the four part series pass for $125, or purchase tickets here to join the membership and reserve a spot for this seminar only for our standard annual membership cost of $100.

ABOUT CONTEXT TRAVEL: Context Learning is a cultural education provider, connecting global scholars with lifelong learners. Founded in Rome in 2003, Context started as a tour operator for travelers seeking off-the-beaten-path experiences in the world’s cultural capitals, growing quickly to 20,000 tours a year across 70+ destinations. After COVID-19 halted travel operations, Context continued to expand, launching live, scholar-led seminars and courses presented online. What emerged was a thriving community of experts and learners keen to continue exploring, growing, and philosophizing, regardless of their location. To date we’ve covered thousands of topics ranging from Tuscany to Timbuktu, Caravaggio to Frida Kahlo, Ancient Rome to Brexit. Context strives to be the cultural center for lifelong learning, at-home, on the ground, and everywhere in between.
If you are not already familiar with the many wonders of Context Travel, we’d heartily encourage you to go forth and explore their virtual and real-world exploration offerings

+ GOOGLE CALENDAR+ ICAL EXPORT

Virtual Event: Damon B. Akins and William J. Bauer Jr.
2021-04-28 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 28 AT 6PM PT WHEN DAMON B. AKINS AND WILLIAM J. BAUER JR. DISCUSS THEIR BOOK, WE ARE THE LAND: A HISTORY OF NATIVE CALIFORNIA, ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82328254294
Or iPhone one-tap :
US: +16699009128,,82328254294# or +12532158782,,82328254294#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdSz0Pf0cW
About We Are the Land
“A Native American rejoinder to Richard White and Jesse Amble White’s California Exposures.”—Kirkus Reviews
Rewriting the history of California as Indigenous.
Before there was such a thing as “California,” there were the People and the Land. Manifest Destiny, the Gold Rush, and settler colonial society drew maps, displaced Indigenous People, and reshaped the land, but they did not make California. Rather, the lives and legacies of the people native to the land shaped the creation of California. We Are the Land is the first and most comprehensive text of its kind, centering the long history of California around the lives and legacies of the Indigenous people who shaped it. Beginning with the ethnogenesis of California Indians, We Are the Land recounts the centrality of the Native presence from before European colonization through statehood—paying particularly close attention to the persistence and activism of California Indians in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book deftly contextualizes the first encounters with Europeans, Spanish missions, Mexican secularization, the devastation of the Gold Rush and statehood, genocide, efforts to reclaim land, and the organization and activism for sovereignty that built today’s casino economy. A text designed to fill the glaring need for an accessible overview of California Indian history, We Are the Land will be a core resource in a variety of classroom settings, as well as for casual readers and policymakers interested in a history that centers the native experience.
About the Authors
William J. Bauer, Jr. is an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Damon B. Akins is Associate Professor of History at Guilford College, in Greensboro, North Carolina, and a former high school teacher in Los Angeles.

Seismic Salon: Juan Felipe Herrera
2021-04-29 17:00 - 18:30 | online
Buy Tickets

Co-presented with City Lights Booksellers & Publishers
To close out National Poetry Month, Litquake is thrilled to welcome former U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera to our Seismic Salon, where he will discuss poetry, his work, and career. Herrera also served as California State Poet Laureate from 2012-2014. His many published collections include the recent Every Day We Get More Illegal; Notes on the Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; and Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He is also author of Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include: SkateFate, Calling The Doves, Jabberwalking, and Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City. Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth.
Buy Juan Felipe Herrera’s books at City Lights.
Seismic Salons are a series of fundraisers offering conversation time with A-list authors for 10 lucky participants. All proceeds benefit Litquake’s on-going programs

Rachel Kushner in conversation with Heidi Julavits
2021-04-29 18:00 - 19:00 | online
City Arts & Lectures presents: Rachel Kushner in conversation with Heidi Julavits
Thursday, April 29, 2021
6:00pm Pacific Time
TICKETS
Rachel Kushner is the bestselling author of The Flamethrowers, a finalist for the National Book Award and a New York Times Top Ten Book of 2013; Telex from Cuba, a finalist for the National Book Award; and, most recently, The Mars Room, which was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Award, winner of the Prix Médicis, selected by the National Book Foundation for its “Literature for Justice” award, and a winner of the California Book Award. She has received grants and prizes from the Guggenheim Foundation and the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her fiction and essays have appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine.
Heidi Julavits is the founding editor of Believer magazine, and the author of four novels, including The Vanishers and The Uses of Enchantment. Her fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, McSweeney’s, Zoetrope All-Story and elsewhere. She is a professor of creative writing at Columbia University.

Black Freighter Press, a celebration: with Mahogany L. Browne, Christopher Malec, Josiah Luis Alderete, Tongo Eisen-Martin, and readings from the final book by the late Q.R. Hand Jr.
2021-04-29 19:00 - 20:00 | online
Remote access event, free and open to the public
Registration link pending
With emcee, Tonya M. Foster
Supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts
Details tba here

Images: Mahogany L. Browne and Q.R. Hand Jr.

Astra Taylor with Robert Reich
2021-05-02 13:00 - 14:00 | online, CA, United States
Sunday, May 2, 2021
1:00pm Pacific Time
KQED Broadcast: 05/02/2021, 05/04/2021, 05/05/2021
DONATE

Astra Taylor’s engagement with philosophy, democracy, and political organizing transcends form, emerging through documentary films, books, essays, and social activism. Her feature documentaries include What is Democracy? (2018), Zizek! (2005), and An Examined Life (2008). Taylor is also the author of Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and the American Book Award-winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Her new book, Remake the World: Essays, Reflections, Rebellions, tackles the rising popularity of socialism, the problem of automation, the politics of listening, the possibility of rights for the natural and non-human world, the future of the university, the temporal challenge of climate catastrophe, and more. Addressing some of the most pressing social problems of our day, Taylor invites us to imagine how things could be different while never losing sight of the strategic question of how change actually happens.
Robert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration, he has written fifteen books, including The System, Aftershock, The Work of Nations, and Saving Capitalism.

Bazaar Writers Salon - May 2021
2021-05-02 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Kim Addonizio is the author of a dozen books of poetry and prose. Her most recent poetry collection is Now We’re Getting Somewhere (W.W. Norton). Her memoir-in-essays, Bukowski in a Sundress, was published by Penguin. She has received NEA and Guggenheim Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and the essay, and her poetry has been widely translated and anthologized. Tell Me was a National Book Award Finalist in poetry. She lives in Oakland, CA. https://www.kimaddonizio.com
Chanda Feldman is the author of Approaching the Fields (LSU Press). Her recent poems appear in Gettysburg Review, Poetry, and the Southern Review. She has received awards and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Cave Canem Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, the National Endowment for the Arts, among others, and she was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Chanda is an assistant professor of creative writing at Oberlin College.
Neha Chaudhary-Kamdar is a former Stegner Fellow in Fiction and has an MFA from Boston University, where she received the William A. Holodnak Prize for her work. She was born and raised in Hyderabad, India, and often writes about the lives of Indian women. Her work has been published in Salamander Magazine and in the Anthology of New Indian Writers. She lives in Oakland, CA, and is working on her first novel.
Jim Whiteside is the author of a chapbook, Writing Your Name on the Glass (Bull City Press, 2019) and is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University. His recent poems have appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, The Southern Review, Pleiades, and Boston Review. Originally from Cookeville, Tennessee, he holds an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and lives in Oakland, California.
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Topic: Bazaar Writers Salon – May 2021
Time: May 2, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://usfca.zoom.us/j/85144902927…
Meeting ID: 851 4490 2927
Passcode: [REDACTED]

Quiet Lightning / literary mixtape curated by Kevin Dublin & Antony Fangary
2021-05-03 18:00 - 19:30 | online
Quiet Lightning presents a virtual literary mixtape featuring all forms of writing, curated through a blind process by Kevin Dublin and Antony Fangary into a one-night only performance featuring:
SIDE A
Rohan DaCosta
Naomi Rosenthal
Carol Dorf
Siamak Vossoughi
Lauren Ito
Michael Warr
Dawn Angelicca Barcelona
Emily Dezurick-Badran
SIDE B
Carol Dorf
Sally Love Saunders
Siok-Hian Tay-Kelley
Charles Kruger
Alexander Laurence
Nick Plett
Genie Cartier
Sara Biel
Paolo Bicchieri
Sara Biel
Carolyn Wilsey
Andrew Paul Nelson
Chun Yu
Lauren Parker
Mary Gayle Thomas
Leah Mueller
All selected authors will be paid and published in sPARKLE + bLINK 110, featuring cover art by Stuart Robertson!
Please note: this show is free and all ages (with mature content), but RSVP is required.
If you’re in a position to support us by making a donation please consider doing so! 100% of our proceeds go directly to local artists and independent businesses, and despite losing out on door monies we’ve decided to keep paying everyone! Thanks for doing what you can to invest in an equitable arts ecosystem. There are two easy ways to support Quiet Lightning:
Make a tax-deductible donation of any amount:
Paypal or Venmo
Or consider supporting us on Patreon!
ABOUT THE BOOKS
If you’d like to purchase the book you can do that here for $10 + shipping, or you can donate $15 or more to Quiet Lightning by Paypal or Venmo and we’ll send you sPARKLE & bLINK 109 + a surprise back issue.
A note about the books: if we don’t sell out before we print our next book, the price will go down to $5/copy. You can order most of our back issues here. You should also know: we make all of our books available to read and watch for free. For virtual events we are printing 75 books/show. 100% of all proceeds, donations or not, go toward local artists and independent businesses.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Kevin Dublin is a writer of poetry, prose, scripts, and code originally from the small town of Smithfield, NC. His words have recently appeared in The Racket, Cincinnati Review, North Carolina Literary Review, Sparkle + Blink, and he is author of the chapbook How to Fall in Love in San Diego (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Kevin holds an MFA from San Diego State, leads workshops all over the bay area, including Litquake’s Elder Writing Project, and enjoys making video adaptations of poetry and developing web apps for writers.
Antony Fangary is a Coptic-American Poet, Educator, and Artist living in San Francisco. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Oakland Review, New American Writing, Interim, Welter, and elsewhere. His chapbook, HARAM, was published by Etched Press in 2019. Antony was Honorable Mention of the Ina Coolbrith Poetry Prize, Finalist for the 2019 Wabash Prize, Runner-up for the 2020 Test Site Poetry Series, and holds an MFA from San Francisco State University.
Can’t make it? The show will be archived in video and full text, like all of our previous readings! Find them, along with a daily calendar of Bay Area literary events + more, @ Litseen.
Not on our mailing list yet? Sign up for email updates of upcoming Quiet Lightning events and calls for submissions.

Odd Mondays Reading "Arisa White & Friends"
2021-05-03 19:00 - 20:00 | online, CA, United States
Celebrate the publication of Arisa White’s new poetry collection, WHO’S YOUR DADDY, with her friends MK Chavez and Vickie Vértiz at Odd Mondays May 3. MK and Vickie read from their newest collections, DEAR ANIMAL, and PALM FROND WITH ITS THROAT CUT, respectively.
Join us from 7pm to 8pm Pacific time on Zoom. Get the link from oddmondaysnoevalley@gmail.com. Buy the books from Folio Books Noe Valley at www.foliosf.com/odd-mondays.

Sean Carroll: The Passage of Time and the Meaning of Life
2021-05-04 17:00 - 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Watch & share this talk on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and Long Now Live.
What is time? What is humankind’s role in the universe? What is the meaning of life? For much of human history, these questions have been the province of religion and philosophy. What answers can science provide?
In this talk, Sean Carroll will share what physicists know, and don’t yet know, about the nature of time. He’ll argue that while the universe might not have purpose, we can create meaning and purpose through how we approach reality, and how we live our lives.
Sean Carroll is a Research Professor of theoretical physics at the California Institute of Technology, and an External Professor at the Santa Fe Institute. His research has focused on fundamental physics and cosmology, especially issues of dark matter, dark energy, spacetime symmetries, and the origin of the universe.
Recently, Carroll has worked on the foundations of quantum mechanics, the emergence of spacetime, and the evolution of entropy and complexity. Carroll is the author of Something Deeply Hidden, The Big Picture, The Particle at the End of the Universe amongst other books and hosts the Mindscapes podcast.

Virtual Event: Ian Manuel with Messiah Ramkissoon
2021-05-04 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Tuesday, May 4 at 6pm PT when we welcome Ian Manuel for the launch of his book, My Time Will Come: A Memoir of Crime, Punishment, Hope, and Redemption, with Messiah Ramkissoon on Zoom!

Limited signed bookplates available.
In partnership with Youth Justice Network
with proceeds benefitting the Prisoners Literature Project
Green Apple will donate 10% of each copy sold to PLP

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88615146964

About My Time Will Come
At fourteen Ian Manuel was sentenced to life without parole. My Time Will Come is a paean to the capacity of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art.

“Ian is magic. His story is difficult and heartbreaking, but he takes us places we need to go to understand why we must do better.” —Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy

“My story has been told many times and by highly regarded experts in their fields—judges, prosecutors, juvenile probation officers, sociologists, journalists. But I would like to try to tell it to you myself. I have reason to believe the experts may be wrong about me. You see, today, thirty years later, I am neither in prison nor dead.” —from My Time Will Come

The United States is the only country in the world that sentences thirteen- and fourteen-year-old offenders, mostly youth of color, to life in prison without parole, regardless of the scientifically proven singularities of the developing adolescent brain—a heinous wrinkle in the scandal of mass incarceration. In 1991, Ian Manuel, then fourteen, was sentenced to life without parole for a non-homicide crime. In a botched mugging attempt with some older boys, he shot Debbie Baigrie, a young white mother of two, in the face. But as Bryan Stevenson, attorney and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative, has insisted, none of us should be judged by only the worst thing we have ever done.

Capturing the fullness of his humanity, here is Manuel’s powerful testimony of growing up homeless in Central Park Village in Tampa, Florida—a neighborhood riddled with poverty, gang violence, and drug abuse—and of his efforts to rise above his circumstances, only to find himself, partly through his own actions, imprisoned for two-thirds of his life, eighteen years of which were spent in solitary confinement. Here is the at once wrenching and inspiring story of how he endured the savagery of the United States prison system, and how his victim, an extraordinary woman, forgave him and bravely advocated for his freedom, which was achieved by a crusade on the part of the Equal Justice Initiative to address the barbarism of our judicial system and bring about “just mercy.”

Full of unexpected twists and turns as it describes a struggle to attain the glory of redemption, My Time Will Come is a paean to the capacity of the human will to transcend adversity through determination and art—in Ian Manuel’s case, through his dedication to writing poetry.

About Ian Manuel
Ian Manuel lives in New York City. He is a motivational speaker at schools and social organizations nationwide.

New Voice Series, featuring Dan Lau, with others tba
2021-05-05 16:00 - 17:00 | online
Remote access event, free and open to the public
Registration link pending, will be announced here
With emcee, Carlos Quinteros III
The Poetry Center is delighted to announce the New Voice series, initiated in Spring 2021 as an annual reading series that will pair a poet alum of SF State, a current SF State graduate student poet in Creative Writing, and a current undergraduate student poet at SF State (any major), to each read their work and engage in conversation. For the premier event, poet Dan Lau has been invited to appear along with student poets on Wednesday May 5, 4:00 pm Pacific Time.
Details tba

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center, New Voice Series

Imagine Us, the Swarm Book Launch
2021-05-05 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States
Wednesday May 5 | 6-7:30pm PST
via Zoom
no fee
KSW is partnering with the San Francisco Public Library for the launch of Muriel Leung’s Imagine Us, The Swarm (Nightboat Books). In this collection of essays in verse, Leung reconciles a familial history of violence and generational trauma across intersections of Asian American, queer and gendered experiences. Following the death of the poet’s father, Imagine Us, The Swarm contemplates vengeance, eschews forgiveness and cultivates a desire for healing beyond the reaches of this present life. Moving between the past and the present, Leung imbues memories with something new to alter time and design a different future.
This launch party will feature a reading from Leung’s new book in addition to readings by Truong Tran, Hari Alluri, Janice Lobo Sapigao, Angie Sijun Lou and Addie Tsai. There will also be a raffle, giveaways, and trivia games woven into the night.
Muriel Leung

Muriel Leung is the author of Imagine Us, The Swarm from Nightboat Books in 2021, 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 the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. Leung 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, Leung is an Andrew W. Mellon Humanities in a Digital World fellow at the University of Southern California where she is completing her PhD in Creative Writing and Literature.

Hari Alluri

Hari Alluri (he/him/siya) is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya). A winner of the 2020 Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Fellowship for Poets of Color and recipient of grants from the Canada Council of the Arts, his work appears recently or soon in the Watch Your Head (Coach House) and Pandemic Solidarity (Pluto) anthologies, as well as Apogee, Solstice, Tinderbox, Witness and elsewhere. Alluri’s collaborations lately are through BIPOC Writing Community, Community Building Art Works, The Cultch, The Digital Sala, Massy Books and Soft Cedar.

Janice Sapigao

Janice Lobo Sapigao (she/her) is a poet from San José, CA. She is the author of two books of poetry, microchips for millions (Philippine American Writers and Artists, Inc., 2016) and like a solid to a shadow (Nightboat Books, 2017). She is the 2020-2021 Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.

Addie Tsai

Addie Tsai (she/they) is a queer nonbinary artist and writer of color, and teaches courses in literature, creative writing, dance and humanities at Houston Community College. She also teaches in Goddard College’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts and Regis University’s Mile High MFA in Creative Writing. They collaborated with Dominic Walsh Dance Theater on Victor Frankenstein and Camille Claudel, among others. Addie holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College and a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University. She is the author of the queer Asian young adult novel Dear Twin, which made the 2021 Rainbow Book List, and received press in Autostraddle, Bustle, Lambda Literary Review and others. Addie’s writing has been published in Foglifter, VIDA Lit, the Texas Review and elsewhere. They are the Fiction Co-Editor at Anomaly, Staff Writer at Spectrum South and Founding Editor & Editor in Chief at just femme & dandy.

Truong Tran

Truong Tran is a poet ad visual artist. His work has been featured in solo exhibitions at California Institute of Integral Studies, The Telegraph Hill Gallery, SOMArts, Mina Dresden Gallery, and The Peninsula Museum of Art. His books include, Placing The Accents, The Book of Perceptions, Dust and Conscience, Within The Margin, Four Letter Words, 100 Words and the much anticipated Book of the Other (October 2021). He is currently The Adjunct Professor of Poetry at Mills College where he teaches graduate courses about poetics and the crossing of writing and visual art.

Angie Sijun Lou

Angie Sijun Lou is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. Her work has appeared in the American Poetry Review, Poetry Northwest, 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 the University of California Santa Cruz, and a calculus instructor at San Quentin State Prison. She has received fellowships and support from the Vermont Studio Center, Millay Colony and the Mendocino Coast Writers’ Conference. She lives in Oakland.

REGISTER

Seismic Salon: Natalie Baszile
2021-05-06 17:00 - 18:30 | online
Buy Tickets

Litquake is excited to welcome Natalie Baszile, author of the New York Times bestseller Queen Sugar (now a series on OWN network) to our Seismic Salon series! Natalie has made the leap from fiction to nonfiction in her newest book, We Are Each Other’s Harvest: Celebrating African American Farmers Land and Legacy, which is published April 6. This anthology of poetry, essays, and interviews examines Black people’s connection to the American land, from Emancipation to today. Natalie has a M.A. in Afro-American Studies from UCLA, and is a graduate of Warren Wilson College’s MFA Program for Writers. Queen Sugar was named one of the San Francisco Chronicle’s Best Books of 2014, and nominated for an NAACP Image Award. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Lenny Letter, The Bitter Southerner, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Rumpus, and a number of anthologies.
Buy Natalie Baszile’s books at the Litquake Bookshop.
Seismic Salons are a series of fundraisers offering conversation time with A-list authors for 10 lucky participants. All proceeds benefit Litquake’s on-going programs.

Michelle Zauner & Bowen Yang
2021-05-06 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Michelle Zauner is best known as a singer and guitarist who creates dreamy indie pop under the name Japanese Breakfast. She has won acclaim from major music outlets around the world for releases like Psychopomp (2016) and Soft Sounds from Another Planet (2017). In a new memoir, Crying in H Mart, Zauner reflects on her experience being raised by a Korean immigrant in the Pacific Northwest, and particularly her memories related to food. When her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and Zauner moved back to Oregon to care for her, she was forced to reckon with her identity and upbringing. Zauner writes about the process of beginning to chase down her mother’s history, culture, and the flavors of Korea to re-gain the feeling of home in the wake of her loss.
Bowen Yang is a featured player on Saturday Night Live, where he wrote for one season before moving on-screen. He can also be seen recurring on Comedy Central’s Awkwafina is Nora From Queens, as well as in the TV shows Broad City, High Maintenance, Jon Glaser Loves Gear, and the upcoming series Girls5eva. He is the co-host of the popular comedy podcast “Las Culturistas,” along with fellow comedian Matt Rogers. This past year, Yang was featured in TIME as one of “23 People Who Are Changing What’s Funny Right Now,”as well as one of their TIME 100 NEXT: Artists, and was featured in this year’s Out100 list.
Photo Credits:
Barbora Mrazkova
Mary Ellen Matthews/NBC

Alison Bechdel in conversation with George McCalman
2021-05-07 18:00 - 19:00 | online
City Arts & Lectures presents: Alison Bechdel in conversation with George McCalman

Friday, May 7, 2021
6:00pm Pacific Time
TICKETS
Alison Bechdel‘s cult following for her early comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For grew wildly in response to her family memoirs, the best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, adapted into a Tony Award-winning musical, and Are You My Mother? She has become a cultural household name for the concept of the Bechdel Test, a metric used when considering the representation of women in fiction. Bechdel has been named a MacArthur Fellow and Cartoonist Laureate of Vermont, among many other honors. Her new memoir, The Secret to Superhuman Strength, delivers a deeply layered story of her fascination, from childhood to adulthood, with every fitness craze to come down the pike: from Jack LaLanne in the 60s (“Outlandish jumpsuit! Cantaloupe-sized guns!”) to the existential oddness of present-day spin class.
George McCalman is an artist and creative director based in San Francisco. His studio, McCalman.Co, designs brands for a range of cultural clientele. Additionally, he’s a visual columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, featured in the “Observed” and “First Person” columns. His first book, Illustrated Black History, is due to be published by Amistad/Harper Collins Fall 2021.
Ticket includes a hardcover copy of Bechdel’s new memoir The Secret to Superhuman Strength. Books will be mailed the week of the event.

Virtual Event: Stephanie Wildman and Emma Bland Smith
2021-05-08 12:00 - 13:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us for story time with Stephanie Wildman and Emma Bland Smith on Saturday, May 8 at 12pm PT to celebrate, Brave in the Water, on Zoom!

An event especially for young readers!
San Francisco children’s book authors Stephanie Wildman and Emma Bland Smith will each read a story,
followed by a special opportunity to ask them any questions you may have about being a children’s book author!
How do they come up with storybook ideas?
Do they make those drawings themselves?
What books do they like to read?
Join us to find out and ask your own question!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83364102484

About Brave in the Water
Are you afraid to put your face in the water? So is Diante. He would like to play in the pool with other children. He’s not afraid to hang upside down, though, and he’s surprised to learn his grandma is. Can Diante help Grandma and become brave in the water?

About Stephanie Wildman
Stephanie M. Wildman, author of the forthcoming Brave in the Water, became a Professor Emerita after serving as the John A. and Elizabeth H. Sutro Chair at Santa Clara Law. She directed the school’s Center for Social Justice and Public Service. In 2007 the Society of American Law Teachers, the largest national organization of law school faculty honored her with their Great Teacher Award. Her most recent books include: Race and Races: Cases and Resources for a Diverse America 3d (with Richard Delgado, Angela A. Harris, Juan F. Perea, and Jean Stefancic) (2015); Social Justice: Professionals Communities and Law (with Martha R. Mahoney and John O. Calmore) (2013) and Women and the Law Stories (with Elizabeth Schneider) (2011). Her book, Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, (with contributions by Margalynne Armstrong, Adrienne D. Davis, & Trina Grillo) won the 1997 Outstanding Book Award from the Gustavus Meyers Center for Human Rights. She has authored dozens of law review articles and journalistic pieces. She is a grandmother, mother, spouse, friend, good listener, and she is able to sit “criss-cross apple sauce” thanks to her yoga practice.

About Emma Bland Smith
Emma Bland Smith is the award-winning author of Journey: Based on the True Story of OR7, the Most Famous Wolf in the West, as well as other fiction and nonfiction books for children. Many of Emma’s books include animals—wolves, dogs, pigs, even alligators! Emma is a librarian and author and lives in San Francisco with her husband, two kids, dog, and cat—but no wolf, pig, or alligator. Visit her online at emmabsmith.com and on Twitter at @emmablandsmith.

David Mitchell in conversation with Pico Iyer
2021-05-08 14:00 - 15:00 | online
City Arts & Lectures presents: David Mitchell in conversation with Pico Iyer
Saturday, May 8, 2021
2:00pm Pacific Time
TICKETS

David Mitchell is the award-winning and bestselling author of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet, Black Swan Green, Cloud Atlas, Number9Dream, Ghostwritten and The Bone Clocks. Named one of the best books of the year by NPR, The Washington Post, The Guardian, his latest novel Utopia Avenue follows the strangest British band you’ve never heard of. Mitchell’s kaleidoscopic novel tells the story of Utopia Avenue’s turbulent life and times; of stardom’s wobbly ladder; of the families we choose and the ones we don’t; of voices in the head, and the truths and lies they whisper; of music, madness, and idealism.
Pico Iyer is a travel writer, essayist, and novelist, whose many books include Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, The Man Within My Head, and The Art of Stillness, a beautiful and thoughtful investigation of the benefits of quiet contemplation and travel to “nowhere.”
NOTE: this is an afternoon event

Virtual Event: Eric Nguyen and Lydia Kiesling
2021-05-10 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Monday, May 10 at 6pm PT when Eric Nguyen joins us to discuss his debut novel, Things We Lost to the Water, with Lydia Kiesling on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88925265993

Praise for Things We Lost to the Water
“I was captivated. The writing is absolutely gorgeous…The voice is strong and this is a powerful novel…Well worth a read. Really enjoyed.”—Roxane Gay, via Goodreads

“This is an elemental book, of water, for sure, but also of other elements of life, including love and loss. Vietnamese people know all about these elements, coming from a country whose entire length is bordered by a sea, and from a history saturated with loss. Love is one element that has enabled their survival, but sometimes at a cost. Eric Nguyen’s powerful novel ripples and gleams with the unpredictable flow and surge of love, which, like water, can drown us or sustain us. From a war to a hurricane, from an ocean to a flood, Things We Lost to the Water proves itself to be a novel that sustains us.”—Viet Thanh Nguyen, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sympathizer

“Exquisitely well-written, Things We Lost to the Water is a tender, haunting story of loss, love, family and survival. A moving and powerful debut.”—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

About Things We Lost to the Water
A stunning debut novel about an immigrant Vietnamese family who settles in New Orleans and struggles to remain connected to one another as their lives are inextricably reshaped.

When Huong arrives in New Orleans with her two young sons, she is jobless, homeless, and worried about her husband, Cong, who remains in Vietnam. As she and her boys begin to settle in to life in America, she continues to send letters and tapes back to Cong, hopeful that they will be reunited and her children will grow up with a father.

But with time, Huong realizes she will never see her husband again. While she attempts to come to terms with this loss, her sons, Tuan and Binh, grow up in their absent father’s shadow, haunted by a man and a country trapped in their memories and imaginations. As they push forward, the three adapt to life in America in different ways: Huong gets involved with a Vietnamese car salesman who is also new in town; Tuan tries to connect with his heritage by joining a local Vietnamese gang; and Binh, now going by Ben, embraces his adopted homeland and his burgeoning sexuality. Their search for identity—as individuals and as a family—threatens to tear them apart, until disaster strikes the city they now call home and they are suddenly forced to find a new way to come together and honor the ties that bind them.

Stress and Resilience with Elissa Epel & Dacher Keltner
2021-05-11 18:00 - 19:00 | online
City Arts & Lectures presents: Stress and Resilience
with Elissa Epel & Dacher Keltner
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
6:00pm Pacific Time

TICKETS
This event appears in the series
Conversations on Science & Health: A Miniseries
Elissa Epel, Ph.D, is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Her research aims to elucidate mechanisms of healthy aging, and to use this science to help vulnerable populations. She studies psychological, social, and behavioral processes related to chronic psychological stress that accelerate biological aging, with a focus on overeating and metabolism. With her colleagues, Epel develops and tests interventions that combine behavioral, psychological, and mindfulness training, in order to improve stress resilience and physiological homeostatic capacity and slow aging. Epel is the Director of the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center, and the Consortium for Obesity Assessment, Study, & Treatment, (COAST), and Associate Director of the Center for Health and Community. She is also the co-author of The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger Longer, which integrates the science of cell aging with practical daily tips.
Dacher Keltner is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. His research focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality. He is the author of several books, including Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence. He has also consulted for Apple, Pinterest, Google, the Sierra Club, and served as a scientific consultant for Pixar’s Inside Out and for the Center for Constitutional Rights in its work to outlaw solitary confinement. Keltner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
