Litseen

San José Poetry Slam
2018-12-09 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Cafe Stritch, 374 S. First Street, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
Sunday, December 9
hosted by Mighty Mike McGee, Santa Clara County Poet Laureate
feature: tba
Doors and sign up list opens at 5:00pm
Sign up list closes at 5:29pm
Show starts at 5:30pm
Follow the Slam on Facebook!
at Cafe Stritch
374 South First Street
in downtown San José
Admission: $5 to $10 sliding scale
(and yes we do accept credit cards)

Poetry Event: GEARS TURNING w/ Kim Shuck
2018-12-09 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Join us for an afternoon of wonderful poetry by SF Bay Area based poets, artists, and musicians with your host Kim Shuck.
To participate in the open mic sessions, please arrive by 4 and plan to listen to all of the featured poets. Seating/space is limited.

Tongues of Fire Reading Series
2018-12-08 20:00 - 22:00 UTC | Bound Together Bookstore, 1369 Haight St,, San Francisco, CA, 94117, United States
TONGUES OF FIRE Reading Series
8pm
bound together anarchist collective bookstore, 1369 Haight St.
Featuring Anna Allen, James Warner, Phyllis Oscar, and others!

Michael Lally will read from and sign his new book Another Way to Play: Poems 1960-2017
2018-12-08 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
From a ’60s-era verse letter to John Coltrane to a 2017 examination of Life After Trump, Another Way to Play collects more than a half century of engaged, accessible, and deeply felt poetry from a writer both iconoclastic and embedded in the American tradition. In the vein of William Carlos Williams and Frank O’Hara, Lally eschews formality in favor of a colloquial idiom that pops straight from the page into the reader’s synapses. This is the definitive collection of verse from a poet who has been around the world and back again: verse from the streets, from the political arena, from Hollywood, from the depths of the underground, and from everywhere in between. As Lally himself writes: “I suffered, I starved, and so did my kids, / I did what I did for poetry I thought / and I never sold out, and even when I did / nobody bought.”

Writers with Drinks
2018-12-08 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Jaymee Goh (The Sea is Ours: Steampunk Tales of Southeast Asia)
Jennifer S. Cheng (Moon: Letters, Maps, Poems)
Bryan Thao Worra (On the Other Side of the Eye)
Alan Chazaro (Ghost Town Literary Review)
Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

Studio One Reading Series
2018-12-07 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Studio One Arts Center, 365 45th Street, Oakland, CA, 94609, United States
Friday, December 7th, feat. Brenda Hillman and Rae Armantrout!
Please join us on Friday, December 7th, from 7:30-9:30 pm,
for a reading featuring Brenda Hillman and Rae Armantrout,
plus art by Patrick Sumner and Peggy Videtta!

*****
author & artist bios & photos below.

All of our readings are free & open to the public.
Snacks, wine & Lagunitas beer will be served.

365 45th Street | Oakland | 94609
Here’s a map.

+ a huge thank you to our generous sponsors!

Lagunitas Brewing Company
Clorox Company Foundation
Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation
*****
Brenda Hillman is the author of 10 collections from Wesleyan University Press, most recently Extra Hidden Life, among the Days (2018), Seasonal Works with Letters on Fire (2013), and Practical Water (2011). Hillman recently co-translated At Your Feet, the poems of Ana Cristina Cesar (Free Verse Editions, 2018). She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, Robert Hass and is Olivia Filippi Professor of Poetry at St. Mary’s College in Moraga, California.
Rae Armantrout’s most recent books, Versed, Money Shot, Just Saying, Itself, Partly: New and Selected Poems, Entanglements, (a chapbook selection of poems in conversation with physics), and Wobble were published by Wesleyan University Press. Wobble was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Award. In 2010 her book Versed won the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry and The National Book Critics Circle Award. Her poems have appeared in many anthologies and journals including Poetry, Lana Turner, The Nation, The New Yorker, Bomb, Harper’s,The Paris Review, Postmodern American Poetry: a Norton Anthology, The Open Door: 100 Poems, 100 Years of Poetry Magazine, etc. She is recently retired from UC San Diego where she was professor of poetry and poetics. She lives in the Seattle area.
Posted by Casey at 11:34 AM No comments:
Labels: brenda hillman, Rae Armantrout
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2018
Friday, November 2nd, feat. Raina J. León, Jacob Kahn, and Susan Kolodny!
Please join us on Friday, November 2nd at 7:30 pm for a reading featuring Raina J. León, Jacob Kahn,
and Susan Kolodny!
Event is FREE.
Lagunitas beer, wine, and snacks will be served.
Studio One Art Center | 365 45th Street | Oakland
Here’s a map.
As always, a generous thank you to our sponsors:
Lagunitas Brewing Company
Clorox Company Foundation
Oakland Parks and Recreation Foundation
Raina J. León, PhD, CantoMundo graduate fellow, Cave Canem graduate fellow, and member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, has been published in numerous journals as a writer of poetry, fiction and nonfiction. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra: (dis)locate (2016) and the chapbook, profeta without refuge (2016). She has received fellowships and residencies with Macondo, Montana Artists Refuge, the Macdowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She is an associate professor of education at Saint Mary’s College of California. She is currently a teaching poet-in residence at the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco.
Jacob Kahn is a bookseller and editor and organizer and curator and lots of other things at E.M. Wolfman Books in Oakland, CA. He is a 2018 Frontier Fellow at Epicenter in Green River, Utah, a rural design studio and community-based artist residency, and his writing can be found in ‘A Circuit of Yields’ (Wolfman Books, 2014) and elsewhere.
Susan Kolodny is the author of two poetry collections: After the Firestorm (Mayapple Press, 2011) and Preserve (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poems appear in New England Review, Bellingham Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, and in other journals and several anthologies, and have been featured on American Life in Poetry and Poetry Daily. She is a psychoanalyst in practice in the East Bay, a faculty member at the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, and author of The Captive Muse: On Creativity and Its Inhibition (PsychoSocial Press, 2000).

OAKLAND FIRST FRIDAYS AT NOMADIC PRESS!
2018-12-07 19:00 - 22:00 UTC | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Doors open at 7:00 PM; show starts at 7:30 PM SHARP! Join us at Nomadic Press as we celebrate Oakland First Fridays! Featuring readings by 4-5 Nomadic Press authors in our intimate space amongst the hustle at 23rd and Telegraph Avenue. Come early and catch our authors reading on a street stage just down the block at 6:30 PM. This month features readings by TBD and music by TBD.
To help pay for our space and our artists and ensure that we can continue our robust programming series, we are asking for suggested donations of $10-15 at the door, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF). Nomadic Press books, as always, will be for sale at the event.
Wine and Red Bay coffee will be available.

WOULD YOU BE CAUGHT DEAD IN THAT OUTFIT?
2018-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Stud Bar, 399 9th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
WOULD YOU BE CAUGHT DEAD IN THAT OUTFIT?
A multimedia event celebrating the aesthetics of ’80s and ’90s underground clubbing by pájaros, maricones, mariposas, mariquitas and those who love them.
Curated by artists Juliana Delgado Lopera & Rebeka Rodriguez in collaboration with Aunt Lute Books, this 1980s Latinx fashion extravaganza will include:
*A runway featuring YOU – fabulous young and elder queers!
*A kiki panel on the resiliency of people living and performing on 16th street in the 80s and 90s [FULL LINEUP TO BE ANNOUNCED]
*A cute and cuir photo booth
*DRAG!
And more! Bring your best looks for a chance to win some fabulous prizes (glamorous books)!
This event is FREE! Ages 21 and up. The Stud is ADA accessible.

When: December 6, 2018 @ 7pm
Where: The Stud (399 9th St, San Francisco, CA)
=====
About the curators:
Juliana Delgado Lopera is an award-winning Colombian writer, historian based in San Francisco. The recipient of the 2014 Jackson Literary award, she’s the author of Quiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017) and ¡Cuéntamelo! Oral Histories by LGBT Latino Immigrants (Aunt Lute 2017), which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. She is currently the Creative Director of RADAR Productions.
Rebeka Rodriguez is an artist, curator, and cultural producer working in San Francisco communities. She is currently the Civic Engagement Manager at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and the founder of BYOQ, a daytime music, art & performance festival.
Aunt Lute Books is a nonprofit women’s publishing press based in San Francisco. For over thirty years, we have been publishing literature that voices the perspectives of women who have been traditionally under-represented in mainstream and small press publishing.

InsideStorytime LAPSARIANS
2018-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Edinburgh Castle Pub, 950 Geary St, San Francisco , CA, 94109, United States
InsideStorytime LAPSARIANS will occur at Edinburgh Castle, 950 Geary Street, San Francisco, Thursday December 6th, 7-9 pm, featuring Ingrid Rojas Contreras (Fruit of the Drunken Tree), and others. lapsarians n. (lap-?ser-?-?n) Believers in the Fall. Origin: Latin lapsus, a fall.

Chaya Bhuvaneswar in conversation with Louise Aronson
2018-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s new book
White Dancing Elephants
from Dzanc Books
In luminous, vivid, searingly honest prose, the stories in White Dancing Elephants center on the experiences of diverse women of color—cunning, bold, and resolute—facing sexual harassment and racial violence, as well as the violence women inflict upon each other. One woman’s miscarriage is juxtaposed against the story of the Buddha’s birth. Another cheats with her best friend’s husband, only to discover it’s her friend she most yearns for. In three different stories, three artists struggle to push courageous works into the world, while a woman with an incurable disease competes with her engineer husband’s beautiful android.
Combining the speculative elements and wry psychological realism beloved by readers of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Margaret Atwood, Danzy Senna and Sandra Cisneros, this collection introduces Chaya Bhuvaneswar as an original and memorable new voice. White Dancing Elephants is the winner of the 2017 Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize.
Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a practicing physician and writer whose work has appeared in Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Awl, jellyfish review, aaduna and elsewhere, with poetry forthcoming in Natural Bridge, Quiddity, apt magazine, Hobart and more. Her poetry and prose juxtapose Hindu epics, other myths and histories, and the survival of sexual harassment and racialized sexual violence by diverse women of color. She received the Dzanc Books Short Story Collection Prize, a MacDowell Colony Fellowship, and a Henfield award for her writing. Her work received four Pushcart Prize anthology nominations in 2017. Follow her on Twitter at @chayab77 including for upcoming readings and events.
Louise Aronson is a geriatrician, writer, educator, and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) where she directs UCSF Medical Humanities. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Warren Wilson Program for Writers, Dr. Aronson has received the Gold Professorship in Humanism in Medicine, the California Homecare Physician of the Year award, and the American Geriatrics Society Clinician-Teacher of the Year award, as well as numerous awards for her teaching, educational research and writing. She is the author of the PEN America debut fiction award finalist, A History of the Present Illness, and the forthcoming non-fiction Elderhood: Redefining Medicine, Life, and Old Age in America. Her articles, essays and stories appear regularly in literary and medical journals, newspapers and blogs, including the New York Times, New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Narrative Magazine, Bellevue Literary Review, and the Lancet.
PRAISE FOR WHITE DANCING ELEPHANTS:
“A magnificent collection of stories that defy conventions, stereotypes, and reveal the universal complexity we all share as humans—gifted and flawed individuals, who struggle to reconcile the mixed signals of our own hearts.”
—Jamie Ford, author of House on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s debut collection maps with great assurance the intricate outer reaches of the human heart. What a bold, smart, exciting new voice, well worth listening to; what an elegant story collection to read and savor.”
—Lauren Groff, author of Florida
“Reading Chaya Bhuvaneswar is like receiving Lasik via literature—the world you return to is a little clearer and sharper for the time you’ve spent in her pages. She is a formidable talent, formally accomplished and intellectually alive.”
—Anthony Marra, Whiting-award winning author of The Constellation of Vital Phenomena
“Bhuvaneswar’s daring mix of ancient, contemporary, and dystopic stories carries us to the heart of rarely exposed longing, loss, and the politics of violence and endurance in remarkable, elegant, heart-stopping prose.”
—Jimin Han, author of A Small Revolution
“From the first page, I was swept away by the riveting undertow of Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s inventive and spellbinding stories, each moment cast in powerfully intelligent prose. White Dancing Elephants is a remarkable debut; we are so lucky to hold this book in our hands.”
—Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel
“White Dancing Elephants is a searing and complex collection, wholly realized, each piece curled around its own beating heart. Tender and incisive, Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a surgeon on the page; unflinching in her aim, unwavering in her gaze, and absolutely devastating in her prose. This is an astonishing debut.”
—Amelia Gray, author of Isadora
“A bold, honest, often provocative first collection from a fresh new voice.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
“Chaya Bhuvaneswar is a master of literary stealth. Seduced by her luminous, intimate voice, I was unprepared for the shattering force of her honesty and insight. Authentic, fearless and wholly original, White Dancing Elephants is a knockout collection.”
—Jillian Medoff, author of This Could Hurt
“Filled with dark music, nuance, and intelligence, White Dancing Elephants takes readers on a thrilling journey. In sharp takes, Chaya Bhuvaneswar unfolds the complexities of race and gender, tragedy and eros. This unforgettable collection will hold its readers captive to the very last page.”
—Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Life Without a Recipe
“Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s stories reveal a rare sensitivity to the strange and complicated acrobatics of the human heart. These are astonishing, urgent portraits of people trying to see the world for what it is and what it might be.”
—Emily Geminder, author of Dead Girls and Other Stories
“White Dancing Elephants dazzles from the start. There are so many wonderful stories in this collection that center on female characters of color in all sorts of situations. Readers are treated to deep characters, mesmerizing language, and a story that propels forward across a city and the landscape of a mind effortlessly. This is a new gifted voice in contemporary literature and we are so lucky to have it!”
—Victoria Chang, American Book Award-winning author of Barbie Chang
“The stories in White Dancing Elephants show impressive dexterity and range. The prose can be rich and intricate one moment, then shifts registers into sharp humor; the characterization is many-dimensional; Bhuvaneswar’s ability to take on larger topics, such as Bhopal, and to locate and intensify their complexity within individuals is amazingly fine.”
—Peter Rock, Alex-award winning author of My Abandonment
“Bhuvaneswar’s stories are as insightful as they are ineffable and as devastating as they are delightful. As I read these important and hilarious tales about the lives of queer people of color, I kept asking myself, ‘You can do this in writing?’”
—Emma Eisenberg, GLAAD-nominated journalist and author of The Third Rainbow Girl
“Chaya Bhuvaneswar’s deft and poignant stories bring the whole damned world into clearer focus. A pure pleasure to read, White Dancing Elephants is a remarkable book that will stay with me for a long time.”
—Skip Horack, author of The Other Josep

Noir: Nighthawks
2018-12-06 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Featured readers: Jon Sindell, Sara McAulay, Robert Pesich, Susan Cohen. Open Mic Night follows the featured readers. Sign-up now for Ist Annual Open Mic Award’s Contest. Book & Broadside Giveaway. Free, 7-9 pm. The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St., Oakland.

NEW DATE! In Common Writers Series: Kiese Laymon and Tongo Eisen-Martin, reading their work
2018-12-06 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Marcus Books, 3900 Martin Luther King Jr Way, Oakland, CA, 94609, United States
Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center is thrilled to launch our new In Common Writers Series. We’ll present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading here and in conversation with their paired writer, and then off-campus with both writers reading their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our local bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified greater community. Both events are free and open to the public. Note: Marcus Books Oakland event, 6:30 pm door; readings at 7pm sharp!
Kiese Laymon will be presenting his powerful new book Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), and coming to San Francisco from his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. After reading, then joining Tongo Eisen-Martin in conversation at The Poetry Center during the afternoon, Thursday December 6, the two of them will each present their own work that same evening at Oakland’s landmark Marcus Books, “the oldest African American-themed bookstore in the country.”
“Oh my god. I just finished Heavy by Kiese Laymon. It is. Astonishing. Difficult. Intense. Layered…. Wow. Just wow.” —Roxane Gay
Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. Laymon is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the award-winning novel, Long Division, a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and Heavy: An American Memoir, brand new from Scribner in October 2018. Laymon has written for numerous publications including New York Times, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Guardian, McSweeneys, Colorlines, The Best American Series, Ebony and many others. He is a contributing editor of Oxford American.
Born in San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015) and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, Pocket Poets Series, 2017). He is a movement worker, educator, and poet who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. Subscribing to the Freirian model of education, he designed curricula for oppressed people’s education projects from San Francisco to South Africa. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He uses his craft to create liberated territory wherever he performs and teaches. He recently lived and organized around issues of human rights and self-determination in Jackson, MS. Eisen-Martin was The Poetry Center’s premier Mazza Writer in Residence in 2017, and has recently taught writing at Mills College and the St. Mary’s College in the Bay Area. Heaven Is All Goodbyes was recognized with a California Book Award, an American Book Award, and was short-listed for Canada’s prestigious Griffin International Poetry Prize for 2018.

Related event:
In Common Writers Series
Kiese Laymon
reading and in conversation with Tongo Eisen-Martin
Thursday OCT 25
*1:00pm @ The Poetry Center
HUM 512, SFSU, free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
FEATURE: Kiese Laymon, What Bill Cosby Taught Me About Sexual Violence and Flying
VIDEO: Kiese Laymon with Mark Anthony Neal, on Heavy: An American Memoir

FEATURE: Rules Are Meant to Be Broken, an interview with Tongo Eisen Martin, by Erica Lewis
VIDEO: Mazza Writer in Residence, Tongo Eisen-Martin, in performance and in conversation
VIDEO: Tongo Eisen-Martin with Marshall Trammell, in performance

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center and Marcus Books Oakland

NEW DATE! In Common Writers Series: Kiese Laymon, reading and in conversation with Tongo Eisen-Martin
2018-12-06 13:00 - 15:00 UTC | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center In Common Writers Series will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading here and in conversation with their paired writer, and then off-campus with both writers reading their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our local bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified greater community. For our second program in the series, renowned novelist and essayist Kiese Laymon is joined by San Francisco poet Tongo Eisen-Martin. Free and open to the public.
Kiese Laymon will be presenting his powerful new book Heavy: An American Memoir (Scribner, 2018), traveling to San Francisco from his hometown of Jackson, Mississippi. He’ll read and join Tongo Eisen-Martin in conversation at The Poetry Center during the afternoon, Thursday December 6, then the two of them will each present their own work that same evening at Oakland’s landmark Marcus Books, “the oldest African American-themed bookstore in the country.”
“Oh my god. I just finished Heavy by Kiese Laymon. It is. Astonishing. Difficult. Intense. Layered…. Wow. Just wow.” —Roxane Gay
Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA in Fiction from Indiana University. Laymon is currently a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the award-winning novel, Long Division, a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America, and Heavy: An American Memoir, brand new from Scribner in October 2018. Laymon has written for numerous publications including New York Times, NPR, Los Angeles Times, Esquire, The Guardian, McSweeneys, Colorlines, The Best American Series, Ebony and many others. He is a contributing editor of Oxford American.
Born in San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is the author of someone’s dead already (Bootstrap Press, 2015) and Heaven Is All Goodbyes (City Lights Books, Pocket Poets Series, 2017). He is a movement worker, educator, and poet who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. Subscribing to the Freirian model of education, he designed curricula for oppressed people’s education projects from San Francisco to South Africa. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. He uses his craft to create liberated territory wherever he performs and teaches. He recently lived and organized around issues of human rights and self-determination in Jackson, MS. Eisen-Martin was The Poetry Center’s premier Mazza Writer in Residence in 2017.

Related event:
In Common Writers Series
Kiese Laymon and Tongo Eisen-Martin
reading from their works
Thursday DEC 6
*6:30 door; readings 7:00pm sharp @ Marcus Books
3900 Martin Luther King Jr. Way (one block west of MacArthur BART), Oakland, free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
FEATURE: Kiese Laymon, What Bill Cosby Taught Me About Sexual Violence and Flying
VIDEO: Kiese Laymon with Mark Anthony Neal, on Heavy: An American Memoir

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center

Mary Jo Bang
2018-12-06 12:10 - 12:50 UTC | Morrison Library, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Mary Jo Bang is the author of eight books of poems—including A Doll For Throwing, Louise in Love, The Last Two Seconds, and Elegy, which received the National Book Critics Circle Award—and a translation of Dante’s Inferno, illustrated by Henrik Drescher. She has received a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Berlin Prize Fellowship at the American Academy of Berlin. She teaches creative writing at Washington University in St. Louis.

Joshua Rivkin and R.O. Kwon
2018-12-05 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Joshua Rivkin discusses his new biography, Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly, with R.O. Kwon.

Praise for Chalk

“Reviled when young, revered when old, the elusive Twombly surprisingly emerges in this fascinating biography, which traces the difficulties of tracking down the man as thoroughly as it fills in the blurred, half-erased likeness. This is the record of a heroic journey of discovery.” —acclaimed author and memoirist Edmund White

“Joshua Rivkin’s sensitive eye and investigative ambition expand and enrich our understanding of Cy Twombly’s genius in this tenderly rendered biography.”—Rachel Corbett, author of You Must Change Your Life

“So much more than a study of the life and work of the famously guarded Twombly. At once candid and tender, meditative and unsparing . . . this book is a gift to Twombly devotees and newcomers alike—as imbued with beauty, genius, and vitality as the artist’s work that is its subject.” —Lacy Johnson, author of The Other Side

About Chalk

The first book to explore the life and work of painter Cy Twombly, one of the most important and influential artists of the Twentieth Century
Cy Twombly was a man obsessed with myth and history—including his own. Shuttling between stunning homes in Italy and the United States where he perfected his room-size canvases, he managed his public image carefully and rarely gave interviews.
Upon first seeing Twombly’s remarkable paintings, writer Joshua Rivkin became obsessed himself with the mysterious artist, and began chasing every lead, big or small—anything that might illuminate those works, or who Twombly really was.
Now, after unprecedented archival research and years of interviews, Rivkin has reconstructed Twombly’s life, from his time at the legendary Black Mountain College to his canonization in a 1994 MoMA retrospective; from his heady explorations of Rome in the 1950s with Robert Rauschenberg to the ongoing efforts to shape his legacy after his death.
Including previously unpublished photographs, Chalk presents a more personal and searching type of biography than we’ve ever encountered, and brings to life a more complex Twombly than we’ve ever known.

BINDERY: Poetry from USF's Graduate Program in Writing
2018-12-05 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts the concluding event in Prof. D. A. Powell‘s “San Francisco Poetics,” an open classroom experience celebrating poets in San Francisco. The founding director of the University of San Francisco’s Master of Fine Arts degree in writing program, Aaron Shurin (pictured), will read and discuss his own work and how it relates to ideas of community and culture in San Francisco. Graduate students from the USF’s MFA program will read poems written this semester. Please join us!

This is a free, all-ages event open to the public.

RSVP appreciated by not required.

Bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

2ND SET: ‘OVERTHROWING CAPITALISM’ ANTHOLOGY RELEASE
2018-12-05 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
WED. DEC. 5TH, 7PM
By popular demand, we’ve added a second night of readings from the newly released Overthrowing Capitalism: Volume Five.
Featured readers:

Lincoln Bergman
William Crossman
Anita Odena Cruz
Romeo Cruz
Carol Denney
Arnoldo Garcia
Lapo Guzzini
Dan Katz
Karen Melander Magoon
Janice Mirikitani
Alejandro Murguia
Jeanne Powell
Stephen Schur
Nina Serrano
Cathleen Williams
Nellie Wong
Andrena Zawiinsky
Fady Zouby
Facilitator:
Rosemary Manno

George Lakey
2018-12-05 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of his new book
How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning
by George Lakey
from Melville House
A lifetime of activist experience informs this playbook for building and conducting nonviolent direct action campaigns — teaching us how to achieve real progressive change.

Today’s new direct action campaigns require a new, down-to-earth guide to effective campaigning. George Lakey’s How We Win is that timely guide. The Women’s March of January 21, 2017 was estimated at four million people — the largest assembly of activist protest in U.S. history. Many of those assembled were in the streets for the first time, or returning after a period of inactivity.
Lakey, a lifelong activist, helps us understand our political moment (extreme polarization, ripe for political change), teaches us how to plan a campaign to overcome that polarization, demonstrates how to launch these ideas into action, and shows us how to grow and sustain our movements. This is what democracy looks like.
GEORGE LAKEY has been active in direct action campaigns for six decades. Recently retired from Swarthmore College, where he was the Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues in Social Change, Lakey was arrested for the first time at a civil rights demonstration in March 1963, and most recently on March 29, 2018 in the Power Local Green Jobs Campaign. He lives in Philadelphia.
What has been said about the work of George Lakey:
“If you want to be a soldier, you can go to West Point. If you want to be a nonviolent change-maker — well, this is an awfully good place to start. George Lakey has been near the center of American resistance for decades, and so he has both remarkable stories and remarkable insights — not to mention some remarkable colleagues who add their perspective to this necessary manual!”
–Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org

El Cerrito Out Loud: Poetry Event
2018-12-05 17:00 - 20:00 UTC | San Pablo & Fairmount Avenues, 6159 Fairmount Avenue, El Cerrito, 94530
Join City Poet Laureate Dani Gabriel for “El Cerrito Out Loud” at Off the Grid. Hear featured poets and participate in an open mic and writing activities. All ages encouraged to participate. No experience necessary. Food available for purchase at food trucks.

1st Tuesday's Spoken Word & Open Mic
2018-12-04 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Cafe Envy, 1701 Yosemite Ave, San Francisco, 94124
1st Tuesday’s Spoken Word TV showcase is a community event that creates a positive space for expression through the arts.
We highlight local talent and bring awareness to local business, including Radio Africa and Kitchen Cuisine and the new Cafe Envy.
This event is an upscale, black carpet affair where artists receive lots of press coverage, exposure and a great experience to share their art. We highlight spoken word artists, poets, storytellers, singers, artists and more.
Join us every 1st Tuesday from 7:30-9:30pm. This is a free event & Cafe Envy’ has extended their Happy Hour menu just for this special evening.
We’re doing this to build community & on our own so come out and support.
#BigMouthProductions #1stTuesdaysRemixTV #BayviewHuntersPoint

Thomas Lynch reads Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”
2018-12-04 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Join us for fruitcake and cheer in this annual Mrs. Dalloway’s tradition.

Tuesday, December 4, 2018 – 7:30pm

First published in 1956, this much sought-after autobiographical recollection from Capote about his rural Alabama boyhood is a perfect gift for fans young and old, a “gem of a holiday story.” (School Library Journal, starred review).
Seven-year-old Buddy inaugurates the Christmas season by crying out to his cousin, Miss Sook Falk: “It’s fruitcake weather!” Thus begins an unforgettable portrait of an odd but enduring friendship and the memories the two friends share of beloved holiday rituals.
Reader Thomas Lynch is an actor and longtime resident of the Elmwood.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

The Wall of Birds
2018-12-04 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Jane Kim and Thayer Walker discuss their new book, The Wall of Birds:One Planet, 243 Families, 375 Million Years.

About The Wall of Birds

A celebration of the diversity and evolution of birds, as depicted in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s magnificent 2,500-square-foot Wall of Birds mural by artist Jane Kim.

Part homage, part artistic and sociological journey, The Wall of Birds tells the story of birds’ remarkable 375-million-year evolution. With a foreword by John W. Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and full of lush photographs of gorgeous life-size birds painted in exacting detail, The Wall of Birds lets readers explore these amazing creatures family by family and continent by continent. Throughout, beautifully crafted narratives and intimate artistic reflections tell of the evolutionary forces that created birds’ dazzling variety of forms and colors, and reveal powerful lessons about birds that are surprisingly relevant to contemporary human challenges.

From the tiny five-inch Marvelous Spatuletail hummingbird to the monstrous thirty-foot Yutyrannus, The Wall of Birds is a visual feast, essential for bird enthusiasts, naturalists, and art lovers alike.

Designing Change: A Conversation with David Hogg
2018-12-04 19:00 - 21:30 UTC | Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco , CA, 94107, United States
On December 4, The Museum of Craft and Design welcomes Parkland activist, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student and author David Hogg, to San Francisco to share his personal story and vision for change in our country.
“Designing Change: A Conversation with David Hogg” will include a lecture and Q&A at Minnesota Street Project followed by a reception and book signing with Hogg at the Museum of Craft and Design. Both arts venues are located within walking distance of each other in the historic Dogpatch district in San Francisco. David Hogg’s new book, “#NeverAgain” will be on sale during the event at both locations and in advance of the lecture at MCD’s Store.
Concurrently, Al Farrow: Divine Ammunition, a new exhibition of work by internationally acclaimed artist Al Farrow will be on view at the Museum of Craft and Design. Farrow is known for his works that employ used munitions-bullets, guns, grenades, bombs-to make powerful sculptures of reliquaries and holy sites. Through his chosen media, Farrow reclaims tools of destruction to evoke peaceful social commentary.
Times and Locations
7:00-8:00 PM | Lecture and Q&A
At Minnesota Street Project, 1275 Minnesota St., San Francisco
8:30-9:30 PM | Reception & Book Signing
At Museum of Craft and Design, 2569 Third St, San Francisco
Ticket Details
Lecture and Q&A only | $30 public, $25 MCD Members and students*
Lecture, Q&A, Reception and Book Signing with Author | $60 public, $55 MCD Members and students*
*Members and students will be required to present current membership cards or student ID upon entry.
Lecture, Q&A, Reception and Book Signing with Author – $60 (Lecture and Q&A only – $30).
Presented by Museum of Craft and Design.

Norma Cole with Steve Dickison: An Omnidawn Party
2018-12-04 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of two new books of poetry from Omnidawn Press
Fate News
by Norma Cole
and

Inside Song
by Steve Dickison
about Fate News:
All timing all the time! Fate News is poetry in the crosshairs of action (kairos) and clock time (chronos). With a topical setlist in four sections, “Local,” “On-Going,” “Stay Songs,” and “Harmolodics,” Fate News relentlessly pierces the surface of lyric gesture. Its osmotic exchanges and searching encounters vibrate with the clarity of fiercely delicate shouts and murmurs, undertones and overtones. The vision of “Mount Fiasco” is on fire.
Norma Cole is a poet, translator, and visual artist. Her books of poetry include Actualities, Where Shadows Will, and Win These Poster and Other Unrelated Prizes Inside. To Be At Music: Essays & Talks appeared in 2010. Her visual work has been shown at 2nd floor projects in San Francisco and the Berkeley Art Museum. Born in Toronto, Canada, Cole lives in the sanctuary city of San Francisco.

about Inside Song :
These poems sense music as a generative force, always gone other ways than culture and commerce need and declare it to travel. Half the book (Zora Neale Hurston) obliquely teases out the practice of “fieldwork” as the study of “getting into the crowd,” and half follows from Charlie Haden’s deployment of “liberation music” as communitarian voice in the face of acts of State targeted at peoples and persons.
Steve Dickison teaches at San Francisco State University, where he directs The Poetry Center. His work has appeared in SFMOMA’s Open Space, BAX 2015: Best American Experimental Poetry, and Bomb, which awarded him the 2014 Poetry Prize. He was born and raised in Northern Minnesota.
Omnidawn Press is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, seeks to support and expand the community of writers and readers through the work we choose to publish, which questions, in both form and content, the prevailing limits of convention. Omnidawn began in 2001 with the intent is to explore internal and external boundaries and push, with compassionate insight, the limits of risk. At the core of Omnidawn’s mission is the belief that lively, culturally pertinent, emotionally and intellectually engaging literature can be of great value, and they participate in the dissemination of such work.

City Arts & Lectures NADINE BURKE HARRIS
2018-12-03 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Nourse Theatre, 275 Hayes Street, San Francisco, CA, 94117, United States
In Conversation with Indre Viskontas
Monday, December 3, 2018, 7:30 pm
Venue: Nourse Theater
Series: “On Arts” Benefiting 826 Valencia Scholarship Program
Buy Tickets | Buy Series Tickets | 415.392.4400

As a pediatrician working in the Bay View-Hunter’s Point neighborhood of San Francisco, Nadine Burke Harrisnoticed that the children who came to her clinic with health problems—including ADHD, asthma, and eczema—had histories of severe adversity. Her research has shown that exposure to violence and stress affects the developing brains and bodies of children, resulting in increased instances of substance dependence, impulse control, engagement in high-risk behavior, and heart disease or cancer. In response to her findings, Harris founded the Center for Youth Wellness which provides care coordination, mental health services, nutrition, holistic interventions, and medication when necessary. She is the author of The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity.
Indre Viskontas is a cognitive neuroscientist at University of California, San Francisco and on the faculty at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She has published groundbreaking work on the neural basis of memory and creativity and is co-host of the podcast Inquiring Minds. Her forthcoming book, How Music Can Make You Better, comes out Spring 2019.

POETS! - featured readers to be announced followed by an open mic
2018-12-03 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA

GERD STERN @ 90
2018-12-02 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
SUN. DEC. 2ND, 7PM
Gerd Stern joins the circle of Beat nonagenarians this year, and we’re hosting a gathering to celebrate! Gerd has worn many hats over the last 90 years, from Beat poet to psychedelic media artist, and most recently, was vindicated as the poet who did not lose the Joan Anderson Letter over the side of his houseboat 60 years ago.
Join us for an evening of readings, conversation, and celebration of Gerd at 90!
More details to follow.

Flight of Poets: Pairings for the Senses
2018-12-02 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, 551 Broadway, Sonoma, 95476, United States
The best of California art, poetry, food, and wine all come together at our 3rd annual Pairings event.
Meet Sonoma winemakers, chefs, and artists along with our featured “Flight of Poets”: Julia Bouwsma, Joseph Rios, Sam Sax and Melissa Stein. Sommelier Chris Sawyer co-hosts with curators Hollie Hardy and Tess Taylor.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
Doors at 5:30pm
Sonoma Valley Museum of Art
551 Broadway, Downtown Sonoma
Tickets include wine flight & snacks
$25 SVMA members, $35 general public
This event usually sells out. Advance tickets recommended:
http://www.svma.org/calendar/events/pairings-senses-art-poetry-food-wine
Featured Poet Bios:
Julia Bouwsma is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018), selected by Afaa Michael Weaver for the Poets Out Loud Prize, and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), which recently received the 2018 Maine Literary Award. She lives and works on an off-the-grid farm in the mountains of western Maine where she serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.
Joseph Rios is the author of Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations (Omnidawn), winner of the Before Columbus American Book Award. In 2016, his debut poetry collection was chosen by Claudia Rankine as a finalist for Omnidawn’s first book prize. Recent poems published or forthcoming in The Nation, The San Francisco Chronicle, Huizache, and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Fresno City College and the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Los Angeles.
Sam Sax is a queer, jewish, writer & educator. The author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series and ‘Bury It’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda Literary, & the MacDowell Colony. He’s the two-time Bay Area Grand Slam Champion with poems in BuzzFeed, The Nation, The New York Times, + other journals. He’s a 2018 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellow from the Poetry Foundation and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Currently sam’s the poetry editor at BOAAT Press.
Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collections Terrible blooms (Copper Canyon Press) and Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Tin House, Harvard Review, New England Review, American Poetry Review, Best New Poets, and others, and she’s received awards and fellowships from the NEA, Pushcart Prize, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Yaddo, and MacDowell Colony, among others. She is a freelance editor in San Francisco.

The Fifth Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair - Fighting for the Air We Breathe
2018-12-02 10:00 - 18:00 UTC | CCSF mission campus, 1125 Valencia Street, San Francisco, United States
The Fifth Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair will be held in San Francisco from 10-6 on Sunday, December 2nd, 2018 at the Mission Campus of City College at 1125 Valencia Street at 22nd. The fair draws upon the legacy of legendary historian and activist Howard Zinn by gathering together authors, zinesters, bloggers and publishers for a day of readings, panel discussions and workshops exploring the value of dissident histories towards building a better future.

The HZBF has become an invaluable annual event for left political culture in the San Francisco Bay Area and this year will feature over 40 author readings and panel discussions on a wide range of issues relating to economic and social justice and will include SARAH JAFFE, ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ, TONGO EISEN MARTIN, PAUL ORTIZ, CAT BROOKS, LETICIA DEL TORO, MEAGAN DAY, RICHARD WALKER, GEORGE LAKEY and many more.
The centerpiece of the fair is a bookroom featuring over 60 exhibitors including independent publishers, radical journals, and progressive organizations of all stripes.
The fair’s theme this year, Fighting for the Air We Breathe, considers the effects of human-caused environmental devastation which have become impossible to ignore. The land we live on, the water we drink, and the air we breathe are under threat by relentless fossil fuel extraction and the toxic byproducts of profit driven mass production. The suffocation of our natural world is paralleled in society at large. Persistent poverty, racism and sexism are exacerbated by countless mass shootings, police violence, escalating wars, and the violence of an emboldened far right. While conventional politics often expect market forces or new technologies to solve the world’s problems, we know the real solutions will come from the collective action of everyday people, through the very struggles chronicled by the late historian Howard Zinn author of A People’s History of the United States.
Building on Zinn’s legacy, the mission of the HZBF is to showcase authors and organizations which chronicle the often overlooked experiences of oppressed people and their struggle for justice. Since its founding, the HZBF has been held annually as a free, volunteer-run, one-day event in the Mission District of San Francisco, drawing around 2000 attendees each year.
The HZBF is a unique event that cultivates a welcoming environment where discussion can flow freely; where differences can be articulated, heard, and debated; and where people can connect with each other and talk about creating a better world.
Please join us on Sunday, Dec. 2 from 10-6 for the Fifth Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair! We request a $5 donation, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
For our program of speakers and exhibitors and for more info visit our website at:
https://howardzinnbookfair.com/

2018 Howard Zinn Book Fair FIGHTING FOR THE AIR WE BREATHE
2018-12-02 10:00 - 18:00 UTC | CCSF mission campus, 1125 Valencia Street, San Francisco, United States
CCSF Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia Street
The Fifth Annual Howard Zinn Book Fair is an annual celebration of people’s history, past, present and future. This year features more than 40 readings and more than 60 tables of exhibitors. We gather together authors, zinesters, bloggers and publishers for a day of readings, panel discussions and workshops exploring the value of dissident histories towards building a better future. In the spirit of the late historian Howard Zinn we recognize the stories of the ways that everyday people have risen to propose a world beyond empires big and small. The Howard Zinn Book Fair is a non-sectarian left event that welcomes a wide variety of political left traditions.
This year’s theme is Fighting for the Air We Breathe and will be the focus of a number of our readings. The effects of human-caused environmental devastation have become impossible to ignore. The land we live on, the water we drink, and the air we breathe are under threat by relentless fossil fuel extraction and the toxic byproducts of profit driven mass production. The suffocation of our natural world is paralleled in society at large. Persistent poverty, racism and sexism are exacerbated by countless mass shootings, police violence, escalating wars, and the violence of an emboldened far right. While conventional politics often expect market forces or new technologies to solve the world’s problems, we know the real solutions will come from the collective action of everyday people, through the very struggles chronicled by historian Howard Zinn under the banner of “a People’s History.”
A donation of $5 is requested but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Please join us for one of the highlights of the year for the Bay Area’s political progressives. Take a look at the Howard Zinn Book Fair website for more details.

And please tell all your friends!
Click here for pdf flier to print & share!
