Litseen

Sunday of the Spirit: Bhagavad Gita Workshop w/ Navina Nirada Dad
2017-05-28 12:00 - 14:00 UTC | Mad Monk Center for Anachronistic Media, 2454 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Ancient wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita for the battlefield of life. Overview, highlights and insights for your journey as a spiritual warrior.

unsolicited release
2017-05-27 20:00 - 22:00 | International Art Museum of America, 1025 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, United States
foreignfire: unsolicited new poetry bookart and chant release concert saturday twenty seventh may eight oclock iama ten twenty five market street san francisco fifteen to twenty dollars admission books for purchase at event and in independent bookstores preorder david@foreignfire.com

https://www.facebook.com/foreignfirepage/
http://www.foreignfire.com/unsolicited.html
https://www.instagram.com/foreignfire/

david katz voice movement poetry solo ensemble composition improvisation jewish liturgical singing institutions ciis (ba interdisciplinary studies) mills college (ma composition mfa improvistation)sam genovese video installation sound art institutions mills college (mfa electronic music) margaret lyon music student prize film screenings worldfest houston usa film festival johns hopkins film festival recent works entanglementing (one man opera 2017) hive crush (album 2016)
tim silva voice performance composition conducting music education collaborations volti throckappella iron henry institutions ucla boston conservatory holy names university
ben zucker composition improvisation voice trumpet piano collaborations mivos quartet apartment house ny virtuoso singers distractfold ensemble rinde eckert awards new composer talent international audio branding academy la percussion quartet c4 collective sf choral artists sf contemporary music players album confluere institutions wesleyan university (ba music and critical theory) leavell memorial prize brunel university london (postgraduate)

Literary Pop!
2017-05-27 19:30 - 22:00 | Faultline Studios, 1139 Howard St., San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Literature and Pop Culture collide as the bay area’s finest storytellers, comedians and writers gather to share work about and inspired by the pop culture that has influenced their lives.
Doors at 7:30 show at 8pm
Tickets will be sold ONLINE Only!
Save money now with $5.99 Early bird tickets on event brite!
Limited quantity available!
This epidoe will feature:
Marc Abrigo on the Backstreet Boys
Jason LeRoy on actress Julianne Moore
Na’amen Tilahun on Harry Potter and Albus Dumbledore

also featuring Aviva Siegel!
Hosted by Wonder Dave!
Faultline Studios is located on Howard St. In San Francisco. This venue is on the second floor and is not handicap accessible. Literary Pop is currently looking for an affordable handicap accessible space to do our show in again in the future so please stay tuned for future events!

Saturday Night Special: An "invisible" Open Mic
2017-05-27 19:00 - 21:30 | Nick’s Lounge, 3218 Adeline St., Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
This month SNS invites you to explore the unseen. Take it literally or metaphorically. Go to the bottom of the ocean, the North Pole, or the center of the heart. Dream up fairies or contemplate the wind. Get microscopic. Use your hands. Write in the dark. Wrap your words in tangible abstration. Remember the emperor’s new clothes. Consider times you have felt invisible or rendered others invisible. How do we discover what we are missing? What do we know that the eyes don’t? Our theme this month is INVISIBLE.
As always, we’d love to hear your (three-minute) poems, stories, dramas, comedic sketches, songs, or dances, on our optional theme (or any topic).
Our May features are: Cleavon Smith and tba
—
First come first served. Sign-up starts at 7pm and closes when it fills up or when the reading starts, so get there early if you want to read! (Note: Sometimes the list is full by 7:03pm)
Each reader will have 3 minutes maximum. For prose writers this is about one and a half double-spaced pages.
PLEASE NOTE: We are strict about the 3 minute max. When you reach your time limit at SNS, we turn on the disco lights! So, please plan ahead. Practice your piece out loud. Time yourself!
After the reading, stick around for karaoke starting at 10pm
Saturday, May 27th, 2017
7 – 9:30 pm
Nick’s Lounge (21+)
3218 Adeline Street, Berkeley, CA
1 block south of Ashby BART
Between Fairview St & Martin Luther King Jr Way
FREE!
But bring CASH if you want to buy drinks (which you sort of have to, because there’s a 1-drink minimum!)
Hosted by Hollie Hardy
Please help out by liking our FB page, where you can also find more details and photos from past events:
https://www.facebook.com/Saturday-Night-Special-an-East-Bay-open-mic-112174188880786/

An Evening of Political Writing from CWC Authors
2017-05-27 18:00 - 21:30 | Laurel Book Store, 1423 Broadway, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
We’re excited to announce a new series with Laurel Bookstore, beginning with:
AN EVENING OF POLITICAL READINGS BY CWC AUTHORS
It’s been a while since we created a space for socializing, and we want to provide chances for our authors to read from and promote their latest works. So we’re partnering with Laurel Books to present themed readings. Each reader will read a short passage from their work, and when all of the works are finished, a book signing will follow. Since everyone we know is excited to talk about politics right now, that’s the theme we’re starting with.
The event is at 6 p.m.
Laurel Book Store is located at 1423 Broadway in Oakland.
Some of the topics will include bullying, racism, crowds, progressive strategy, the fight for a living wage, and (never surprisingly) president Trump.
Love politics? Hate politics? Come out and show your support! And let us know what theme you want us to do for our next reading in the series. Here are the readers we have signed up for the May 27th event.
RSVP on Facebook
Add the event to your Google Calendar
CWC Political Readers
Ransom Stephens
Al Sandine
Ann Berlak
Jim Beach
Gini Graham Scott
Stephen Cataldo
Mary Luersen
Kristen Caven
Karma Bennett
Henry Hitz

Bikes to Books Springtime Ride
2017-05-27 13:00 - 16:00 | Jack London Street, Jack London Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, United States
Saturday, May 27, 1:00-4:00 pm: Bikes to Books Annual Springtime Ride!
Meet at 12:45 p.m. at Jack London Alley, Northside of South Park in San Francisco
Ride will commence at 1:00 p.m. sharp
Ride will end at approximately 4:00 p.m. in North Beach, outside City Lights Books
Combining San Francisco history, art, literature, cycling, and urban exploration, “Bikes to Books” began as an homage to the 1988 street-naming project spearheaded by City Lights founder and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in which 12 San Francisco streets were renamed for famous artists and authors who had once made San Francisco their home. The resulting 7.1-mile tour is a diverting and unique way to celebrate both the literary and the adventurous spirit of San Francisco. Learn about the authors and neighborhoods that made San Francisco a known literary hub, from South Park to North Beach, Jack London to Jack Kerouac.
Bring bikes with gears, snacks, and enthusiasm. This is an urban ride of moderate difficulty, recommended for riders 16 years of age and older.

STANZA: summer throwback fundraiser party
2017-05-27 12:00 - 15:00 | Temescal Brewery, 4115 Telegraph, Oakland, CA, 94609, United States
It’s a literary party-slash-fundraiser for STANZA–hosted by the delectable Temescal Brewery in Oakland. If you don’t like fun then you’ll at least like the beer.
The magic letter is ‘B’:
– Bake sale: brownies and bites made especially for you by a local book nerd. Perhaps even madelines if we’re feeling Proust-y.
– Bike wash: does your ride need some extra shine? We’ll wax on about Bolaño without waxing off your paint.
– Brews: Temescal Brewery is giving us proceeds from their charity brew of the day! Drink up–we can tell you’re thirsty.
– Book matchmaking: kissing booths aren’t quite our cup of espresso, but you *can* sit down with our experts and get matched with the book of your dreams. Hurry up loves, your unread lit is waiting.
– Booksigning: got unautographed books on your shelf? Gosh, we love opportunities to practice writing our own names. Bring us any book by any author: we’ll totally sign it for you.
– Borges’ Gamble: one lucky guy/gal wins a copy of their very own book from Borges’ never-before-seen Library of Babel! *swoon*
—
FUNDRAISER GOALS:
$1,200 pays for our set design costs
$1,600 pays for our set design costs and gives our performing artists a stipend so they don’t have to work for free
$2,000 pays for our set design costs, gives our performing artists a stipend, and gets us a premier venue near BART!
—
ABOUT STANZA:
STANZA lies somewhere at the intersection of poetry and immersive theatre. There is no stage. No set order. No assigned seats.
Writers perform series of evocative poems simultaneously in separate rooms. You are free to roam the entire building in search of voices.
Enter each room fearlessly: they are designed to throw you head-first into the world of the poem.
SITE: www.stanzapoetrysf.com

Kevin Killian Book Release
2017-05-27 08:00 - 17:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States

Uptown Fridays: MG Roberts + Melissa Eleftherion
2017-05-26 19:00 - 21:00 | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Join us for an Uptown Fridays reading you won’t forget, featuring readings by MG Roberts and Melissa Eleftherion, with musical guest Heather Jovanelli
Suggested donations of $5-25 collected at the door, but no one turned away for lack of funds.
Red wine and Red Bay coffee will be available.
Information about performers:
Born in Subic Bay, Philippines, Mg Roberts is the author of the poetry collections Anemal Uter Meck (Black Radish Books, 2017) and not so, sea (Durga Press, 2014). She is a Kundiman Fellow, Kelsey Street Press member, VONA/Voices Alum, and sits on the Board of Small Press Traffic. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Drunken Boat, Cream City Review, the Stanford Journal of Asian American Studies, Dusie, Bombay Gin, Web Conjunctions, Elderly and elsewhere. She co-edited the anthology Nests and Strangers: On Asian Women Poets (Kelsey Street Press) along with Timothy Yu and is currently co-editing Responses, New Writing, Flesh with Ronaldo Wilson and Bhanu Kapil; an anthology on the urgency of avant-garde writing written for and by writers of color. She lives in Oakland with her three daughters, two hens, one puppy, and geologist husband.
Melissa Eleftherion grew up in Brooklyn. She is the author of huminsec, prism map, Pigtail Dut, the leaves the leave, green glass asterism, and several other chapbooks. Her first full-length collection, field guide to autobiography, is hot off the presses from H_NGM_ Books. ecent work is forthcoming in Glass, Italian-Americana Review, & Poet-Librarians in the Library of Babel. ounder of the Poetry Center Chapbook Exchange, Melissa lives in Mendocino County where she works as a Teen Librarian, teaches creative writing, & curates the LOBA Reading Series at the Ukiah Library. More of her work can be found @ www.apoetlibrarian.wordpress.com.

Maggie Scott: Still Here
2017-05-26 18:00 - 20:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Still Here brings the voices of San Francisco raised LGBTQ persons to conversations of San Francisco as a queer or gay homeland. These artists provide representation of recent San Francisco Histories of the 80s and 90, specifically addressing what it was like to grow up, come out and come of age in San Francisco. Through their performances, these artists challenge imaginaries of San Francisco, share their experiences of navigating sexuality in San Francisco, and claim a space of visibility.

Kerry Egan: On Living
2017-05-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
erry Egan discusses her new book, On Living with Victoria Sweet.

Praise for On Living

There’s nothing preachy about this book, nor is it at all depressing — although it is terribly moving. This is a poetic and philosophical and brave and uplifting meditation on how important it is to make peace and meaning of our lives while we still have them.—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love

“It’s a brave thing to walk into the rooms of the dying with no props–to sit down, open your heart and your mind, and be present to whatever comes up. But that’s exactly what chaplain Kerry Egan does, and in On Living, she reveals some of what she has learned. What does come up? Anger, love, regret, secrets, stories, and insights, well-told and well-felt.” —Victoria Sweet, author of God’s Hotel

“When I forget the importance of kindness, when I forget to listen, when I no longer recognize the comfort of a quiet presence, when no words will help, when I lose sight of what is most important, I will want On Living within arm’s reach, always. I love this book.” —Abigail Thomas, author of A Three Dog Life and What Comes Next and How to Like It

Dan Bellm + Ann Pellertier
2017-05-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Dan Bellm’s new book is Deep Well. Alicia Ostriker says, “With a touch on the keys of language as light as the air we breathe, Dan Bellm traces his mother’s death, and abides her continuing presence…Deep Well is a book of the purest poetry I have read in a long time. I am grateful for it.” He’s published three previous collections, including Practice, which won the 2009 California Book Award. He’s also a translator, whose books include Speaking in Song by Mexican poet Pura López Colomé, Description of a Flash of Cobalt Blue by Mexican poet Jorge Esquinca, and The Song of the Dead by French poet Pierre Reverdy. His honors include a prize from the Cleveland State University Poetry Center and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the California Arts Council.
Ann Pelletier’s debut full-length book of poems is Letter That Never. Carol Snow says, “With each of these ‘imagined autobiographies’—unnamed, evocative, formally inventive—Ann Pelletier seeks, seeks to offer, a haunting solace at the edge of forgetting and being forgotten.” Raised in upstate New York; Madrid, Spain; and New Hampshire, she has been published in The Antioch Review, New American Writing, Volt, and elsewhere.

Ada Calhoun + T.J. Stiles
2017-05-25 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Ada Calhoun & T.J. Stiles in Conversation

about Calhoun’s essay collection, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give.
“This unflinchingly honest, astutely balanced probe of a most perplexing institution asks all the right questions. It sets up a conversation with the reader, who is challenged to reflect at each point, choosing between ‘No, that’s not me’ and ‘How did she know that?’ Most of the time, she knows.”–Phillip Lopate, author of The Art of the Personal Essay

Thursday, May 25, 2017 – 7:30pm

We hear plenty about whether or not to get married, but much less about what it takes to stay married. Cliches around marriage–eternal bliss, domestic harmony, soul mates–leave out the real stuff. After marriage you may still want to sleep with other people. Sometimes your partner will bore the hell out of you. And when stuck paying for your spouse’s mistakes, you might miss being single.
In Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give, Ada Calhoun, acclaimed for her provocative essays in the New York Times Modern Love and Lives columns, presents an unflinching but also loving portrait of her own marriage, opening a long-overdue conversation about the institution as it truly is: not the happy ending of a love story or a relic doomed by high divorce rates, but the beginning of a challenging new chapter of which the first twenty years are the hardest.
Calhoun’s funny, poignant personal essays explore the bedrooms of modern coupledom for a nuanced discussion of infidelity, existential anxiety, and the many other obstacles to staying together. Both realistic and openhearted, Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give offers a refreshing new way to think about marriage as a brave, tough, creative decision to stay with another person for the rest of your life. What a burden–Calhoun calls marriage–and what a gift.
Ada Calhoun has written for the New York Times, New York magazine, and the New York Post. Her book St. Marks Is Dead was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Boston Globe Best Book of the Year.

Alan Lessik
2017-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco , CA, 94107, United States
With non-fiction works include news articles published in the Advocate, San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Frontiers, local author Alan Lessik shares his debut work of fiction, The Troubleseekers.
The Troubleseeker tells the contemporary odyssey of Antinio, a native-born Cuban who confronts his gay identity in post-revolution Cuba and as a refugee in America. Narrated by the ancient Roman Emperor and demigod Hadrian, The Troubleseeker weaves Cuban Santería traditions with classical Greek mythology to depict Antinio’s quest to achieve both freedom and love.

“Lessik’s prose is always sympathetic and eloquent.” —Kirkus Reviews
“An exceedingly rich novel, reminiscent of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” —ALA GLBT Reviews
“This stunningly creative novel combines history and mythology from several cultures to tell the story of Antinio, a gay Cuban man, as he searches for freedom and love in the face of oppression and disease.” —Charles Green, The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide

Jeffrey Tambor
2017-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Roxie Theatre, 3117 16th Street, San Francisco, CA, United States
A Broadway star, a television legend, an accomplished screen actor whose singular wit and heartrending performances have been entertaining audiences for more than four decades, but the question remains: who the hell is Jeffrey Tambor?
In his illuminating, often hilarious, and always unflinchingly honest memoir, Are You Anybody?, Tambor looks back at the key moments in his life that taught him about creativity and play and pain and fear. The son of what you might call eccentric Russian and Hungarian Jewish parents, Tambor grew up in San Francisco a husky kid with a lisp who suffered in his otherness, and found salvation in the theater.
While he learned his art from the best of the best—Al Pacino, George C. Scott, Garry Shandling, Jill Soloway—he also introduces his many unexpected teachers, from the nameless man in a Detroit bookstore who gave him the love of reading, to his young children who (at this ridiculously late stage in his life) have re-introduced him to play, bravery, and the simple joy of not giving a shit.
Tambor shares the triumph of landing his first Broadway role, but not before experiencing the humbling that is commercial work (and how even saying my socks don’t cling can prove a challenge). He invites you behind the scenes of his wildly successful television shows, but he doesn’t leave out the pit stops he made at addiction, Scientology, and what it feels like to get fourth billing after Sylvia the Seal on The Love Boat.
At last, Tambor answers the question ARE YOU ANYBODY? with a promise that success doesn’t mean perfection and failure most definitely is an option.

InsideStorytime DEFIANCE
2017-05-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Ale Industries, 3096 E 10th Street, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
InsideStorytime DEFIANCE, on Thursday May 25th, 7-9 pm, at Ale Industries, 3096 E. 10th Street, Oakland, will feature Micheline Aharaonian Marcom (A Brief History of Yes), Brynn Saito (Power Made Us Swoon), Vernon Keeve III (Southern Migrant Mixtape), and others.

6 Years in Gay Conversion Therapy
2017-05-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Laurel Book Store, 1423 Broadway, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Peter Gajdics is the author of The Inheritance of Shame, just published by Brown Paper Press, which tells the harrowingly true story of his six years in Gay conversion therapy.
Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, says the Gajdics memoir is “a necessary, incredibly nuanced portrait of a survivor. The Inheritance of Shame will change lives.” Gajdics, from Canada, appears with East Bay author Lucy Jane Bledsoe Thursday, May 25, 7-8 p.m. at Laurel Bookstore, 1423 Broadway, in Oakland. Bledsoe will interview Gajdics, and both authors will read from their work. Bledsoe’s newest novel, A Thin Bright Line, is a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. The New York Times says Bledsoe’s book “triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances.”
Free admission and free refreshments. A book signing follows the discussion.

Joel Selvin + John Hell
2017-05-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
If 1967’s Summer of Love heralded a sea change in San Francisco, the disastrous events at Altamont in late 1969 heralded quite another. In Altamont: The Rolling Stones, The Hells Angels, And The Inside Story Of Rock’s Darkest Day, Joel Selvin, longtime music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, details every way in which the presumptive “Woodstock West” dissolved into chaos and bloodshed, a bracing reminder that some of the “good old days” were not as nostalgia would paint them. Joining Selvin onstage will be local radio luminary John Hell (Radio Free Burning Man, Radio Valencia), for an in-depth Q & A about one of rock music’s most notorious moments.

Claire Dederer w/ Peggy Orenstein
2017-05-24 19:30 - 21:30 | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
From the New York Times best-selling author of Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, a ferocious, sexy, hilarious memoir about going off the rails at midlife and trying to reconcile the girl she was with the woman she has become.
Join us as we welcome Claire Dederer to celebrate Love and Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning. She’ll be reading and in conversation with Peggy Orenstein!
Claire Dederer is a happily married mother of two, ages nine and twelve, when she suddenly finds herself totally despondent and, simultaneously, suffering through a kind of erotic reawakening. This exuberant memoir shifts between her present experience as a middle-aged mom in the grip of mysterious new hungers and herself as a teenager – when she last experienced life with such heightened sensitivity and longing. From her hilarious chapter titles (“How to Have Sex with Your Husband of Seventeen Years”) to her subjects – from the boyfriend she dumped at fourteen the moment she learned how to give herself an orgasm, to the girls who ruled her elite private school (“when I left Oberlin I thought I had done with them forever, but it turned out …they also edited all the newspapers and magazines, and wrote all the books”), to raising a teenage daughter herself – Dederer writes with an electrifying blend of wry wit and raw honesty. She exposes herself utterly, and in doing so captures something universal about the experience of being a woman, a daughter, a wife.
Claire Dederer is the author of the New York Times best-selling memoir Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, which has been translated into twelve languages, and which Elizabeth Gilbert called “the book we all need.” A book critic, essayist, and reporter, Dederer is a longtime contributor to The New York Timesand has also written for The Atlantic, Vogue, Slate, The Nation, and New York magazine, among other publications. She lives on an island near Seattle with her family.
Peggy Orenstein is the author of The New York Times best-sellers Girls & Sex, Cinderella Ate My Daughter and Waiting for Daisy as well asFlux: Women on Sex, Work, Kids, Love and Life in a Half-Changed World and the classic SchoolGirls: Young Women, Self-Esteem and the Confidence Gap. A contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, Peggy has also written for such publications as The Los Angeles Times, Vogue, Elle, Time, Mother Jones, Slate, O: The Oprah Magazine, and The New Yorker, and has contributed commentaries to NPR’s All Things Considered and the PBS Newshour. Her articles have been anthologized multiple times, including in The Best American Science Writing.

Perfectly Queer-East Bay: Sea Change Story Hour
2017-05-24 19:00 - 20:00 | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Julian Shendelman, Mya Byrne, + Daniel Riddle Rodgriguez read from their works.
Music by Mya Byrne.

David Brazil w/ Julien Poirier
2017-05-24 19:00 - 20:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
David Brazil celebrates the release of
Holy Ghost
published by City Lights Books
The third full-length collection from poet-scholar-activist David Brazil, Holy Ghost is a hymnal with secular burdens, poured from the mold of our actual life in common, sung against its limits. It seeks a way to find and build a soul together, and records the seekers’ findings along the way, proposing love as our common human denominator. A record of the author’s struggle to forge a relationship between two distinct vocations—one historical, as an activist (with Occupy Oakland, among other projects), and one spiritual, as he explores the path of radical Christian discipleship (in his life as a pastor)—Holy Ghost attempts to articulate an understanding of where class struggle meets the will of God.
David Brazil is a poet, translator, and novelist. His books include The Ordinary and Antisocial Patience. With Kevin Killian, he edited the Kenning Anthology of Poets Theater 1945-1985. From 2008 to 2011 he published over sixty issues of the seminal TRY! magazine with Sara Larsen. David co-pastors a house church in Oakland and works for social justice with the Faith Alliance for a Moral Economy. He’s a Scorpio.
Julien Poirier is a co-founder of Ugly Duckling Presse. He has taught poetry in New York City and San Francisco public schools and at San Quentin State Prison. Previous books include Way Too West (2015) and El Golpe Chileño (2010). City Lights Books recently published his poetry collection titled OUT OF PRINT, as volume 14 in the Spotlight Poetry Series.
Praise for Holy Ghost:
“All singing is contemporaneous in the heart, & thus I’d call Holy Ghost heart-felt. It keeps time with the forms of its devotion, touching various eras of diction, prayer & song & verse & hymn. In the mind then, all at once, it does becomes a work of love; for the reader, for paths of grace & liberation, & for the singing that refuses to abide our time but takes its measure, day by day, in wounded, contemplative poems. Everywhere it must be poor it is. It comes to us in penury because the search for company & love is the struggle of students & poets who seeks out such wealth in an era when they’re ever more in peril. So it arrives rich, by which I mean empty handed, & so doing makes the book into a little ball of light, a trove of mercy’s tone, & my heart’s treasure.” ––Dana Ward
“Musings on Holy Ghost . . . remarkable loveliness . . . a Soul singing praises to souls, free of general rancor . . . One of the special books of this decade and should be read by Souls or Ghosts or Geists in search of assurance and aware of Ecclesiastes’ Preacher who says that the souls of men fly up, up, up, and that the undersoul of beasts dives down, down into the earth. A key to Holy Ghost is that it’s all going at once in all directions. Each time Brazil’s extended poem folds, or curls, or shifts, the point of concentration or consideration is experienced as if under a loupe of the spirit. It is clear that the Holy Ghost is everywhere at all times at once. The poem is not held to historical imaginings of time-space. Resembling the speech of Dogen in his visionary 13th-century fascicles, or the Cloud of Unknowing, or Saint Francis’ lamb in the furnace, Holy Ghost does not speak about itself—it is itself. There is not wisdom to speak of because the field for wisdom does not exist except in a convention that is elsewhere. Brazil’s Holy Ghost is as Romantic as a long poem by Percy Shelley. An act of beauty—breath-taking. As unexpected as A.N. Whitehead’s Function of Reason and Christian Morgenstern’s nonsense poetry. Brazil brings to mind the tenseless, non-subjective (not centered on the ‘I’ figure), and numberless of some Asian languages. I free-float in the presence of this wholly Kindness-Ghost as I would float in a Navajo world—like that world, the surrounding is strange and natural. Bask in it . . . Slip in or out of it . . . Any muscular ring or reflection in, on, or part of the Holy Ghost, is the Ghost. The Holy Ghost shimmers with Jack Kerouac’s Blues, and on the page (typographically) can be as precise as Diane di Prima’s poetry and Leslie Scalapino’s . . . It’s not impossible to hear Kurt Cobain humming in the background.”––Michael McClure

Magazine Launch Party: Forum (CCSF)
2017-05-24 18:00 - 20:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Established in 1937, Forum Magazine is a student-run literary journal that serves the City College of San Francisco community. Dedicated to providing a platform for the contemporary, urban voices of our institution, Forum collects, edits and publishes quality works of literature and the visual arts as produced by the CCSF family. Publication is open to any who have ever been involved with the school, whether as student, educator or employee. Forum is published twice each year, once in both the Fall and Spring semesters.
Forum Magazine is a student-produced publication of the City College of San Francisco and the stories, artwork and views expressed within its pages are not necessarily those of, or shared by, the college as a whole or its administration.
For those who wish to view or purchase copies of Forum, you can find them for purchase at the Ocean Campus bookstore, at the English department on the 5th floor of Batmale Hall, or you can request a copy via email through editor@forumccsf.org.
Questions or comments concerning Forum? Interested in sharing a short piece regarding literary matters? You can also email us at editor@forumccsf.org.

Peg Alford Pursell + Robert Thomas Reading
2017-05-24 18:00 - 19:00 | Mad Monk Center for Anachronistic Media, 2454 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Award-winning local authors Peg Alford Pursell and Robert Thomas will be stopping by our store to read excerpts from their works!

Whistlestop Writers Open Mic
2017-05-24 06:45 - 20:45 | Swirl on the Square, 21 S Livermore Ave, Livermore, CA, 94550, United States
Another Whistlestop Writers Open Mic at Swirl on the Square is rolling into town. The event, which is open to writers of all genres (and lit lovers), occurs on Wednesday, May 24th at 6:45 p.m. Come join us!

Find Yourself Reading
2017-05-23 20:00 - 21:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Find Yourself is an art exhibit that ponders the parallels between a revealing phrase in story-telling and a common occurrence while reading: “one finds oneself…” Artist/author Chris Kerr combines endpapers, sentences by various writers, and playful, austere sculptures (using books he unwittingly found himself purchasing a second time) in order to guide viewers in contemplation of how we use statements like “I found myself [doing this]” or “she finds herself [thinking that].” The opening party on June 9 (7:00-9:30 PM) includes a find-myself-themed poetry reading at 8:00 PM by Genine Lentine, Cedar Sigo, and Stephanie Young!

Mat Callahan
2017-05-23 19:30 - 21:30 | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
As the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love floods the media with debates and celebrations of music, political movements, “flower power,” “acid rock,” and “hippies”; The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965-1975 offers a critical re-examination of the interwoven political and musical happenings in San Francisco in the Sixties. Author, musician, and native San Franciscan Mat Callahan explores the dynamic links between the Black Panthers and Sly and the Family Stone, the United Farm Workers and Santana, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the counterculture.
Callahan’s meticulous, impassioned arguments both expose and reframe the political and social context for the San Francisco Sound and the vibrant subcultural uprisings with which it is associated. Using dozens of original interviews, primary sources, and personal experiences, the author shows how the intense interplay of artistic and political movements put San Francisco, briefly, in the forefront of a worldwide revolutionary upsurge.
A must-read for any musician, historian, or person who “was there” (or longed to have been), The Explosion of Deferred Dreams is substantive and provocative, inviting us to reinvigorate our historical sense-making of an era that assumes a mythic role in the contemporary American zeitgeist.
Mat Callahan is a musician and author originally from San Francisco, where he founded Komotion International. He is the author of three books, Sex, Death & the Angry Young Man, Testimony, and The Trouble with Music as well as the editor of Songs of Freedom: The James Connolly Songbook. He currently resides in Bern, Switzerland.

Mary Gordon
2017-05-23 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Mary Gordon reads from her new novel, There Your Heart Lies, a deeply moving novel about an American woman’s experiences during the Spanish Civil War, the lessons she learned, and how her story will shape her granddaughter’s path.
“An emotionally and historically rich work with a strong character portrait holding together its disparate parts.”–Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Tuesday, May 23, 2017 – 7:30pm

Marian cut herself off from her wealthy, conservative Irish Catholic family when she volunteered during the Spanish Civil War–an experience she has always kept to herself. Now in her nineties, she shares her Rhode Island cottage with her granddaughter Amelia, a young woman of good heart but only a vague notion of life’s purpose. Their daily existence is intertwined with Marian’s secret past: the blow to her youthful idealism when she witnessed the brutalities on both sides of Franco’s war and the romance that left her trapped in Spain in perilous circumstances for nearly a decade. When Marian is diagnosed with cancer, she finally speaks about what happened to her during those years–personal and ethical challenges nearly unthinkable to Amelia’s millennial generation, as well as the unexpected gifts of true love and true friendship.
Marian’s story compels Amelia to make her own journey to Spain, to reconcile her grandmother’s past with her own uncertain future. With their exquisite female bond at its core, this novel, which explores how character is forged in a particular moment in history and passed down through the generations, is especially relevant in our own time. Its call to arms–a call to speak honestly about evil when it is before us, and equally about goodness–will linger long with its readers.
Mary Gordon is the author of seven novels, including Final Payments, Pearl, and The Love of My Youth; six works of nonfiction, including the memoirs The Shadow Man and Circling My Mother; and three collections of short fiction, including The Stories of Mary Gordon, which was awarded the Story Prize. She has received many other honors, including a Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and an Academy Award for Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She teaches at Barnard College and lives in New York City.

Jeffrey Gettleman
2017-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Berkeley, 1491 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94710, United States
Jeffrey Gettleman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times journalist, will discuss his memoir about finding love and finding a calling in one of the most violent and yet most beautiful places in the world, Love, Africa: A Memoir of Romance, War, and Survival.

China Miéville
2017-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Discussing the subject of his new book: October: The Story of the Russian Revolution.
Award-winning author China Miéville plunges us into the year the world was turned upside down
China Miéville has long been inspired by the ideals of the Russian Revolution and here, on the centenary of the revolution, he provides his own distinctive take on its history.
In February 1917, in the midst of bloody war, Russia was still an autocratic monarchy: nine months later, it became the first socialist state in world history. How did this unimaginable transformation take place? How was a ravaged and backward country, swept up in a desperately unpopular war, rocked by not one but two revolutions?
This is the story of the extraordinary months between those upheavals, in February and October, of the forces and individuals who made 1917 so epochal a year, of their intrigues, negotiations, conflicts and catastrophes. From familiar names like Lenin and Trotsky to their opponents Kornilov and Kerensky; from the byzantine squabbles of urban activists to the remotest villages of a sprawling empire; from the revolutionary railroad Sublime to the ciphers and static of coup by telegram; from grand sweep to forgotten detail.
Historians have debated the revolution for a hundred years, its portents and possibilities: the mass of literature can be daunting. But here is a book for those new to the events, told not only in their historical import but in all their passion and drama and strangeness. Because as well as a political event of profound and ongoing consequence, Miéville reveals the Russian Revolution as a breathtaking story.
China Miéville is the multi-award-winning author of many works of fiction and non-fiction. His fiction includes The City and the City, Embassytown and This Census-Taker, and has won the Hugo, World Fantasy and Arthur C. Clarke awards; his non-fiction includes the photo-illustrated essay London’s Overthrow and Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law. He has written for various publications, including the New York Times, Guardian, Conjunctions and Granta and he is a founding editor of the quarterly Salvage.

6 Years in Gay Conversion Therapy
2017-05-23 19:00 - 20:00 | Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Peter Gajdics is the author of The Inheritance of Shame, just published by Brown Paper Press, which tells the harrowingly true story of his six years in Gay conversion therapy.
Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased, says the Gajdics memoir is “a necessary, incredibly nuanced portrait of a survivor. The Inheritance of Shame will change lives.” Gajdics, from Canada, appears with Bay Area author Anne Raeff Tuesday, May 23, 7-8 p.m. at Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro St. in San Francisco. Raeff will interview Gajdics, and both authors will read from their work. Raeff’s short-story collection The Jungle Around Us is a finalist for the California Book Award and won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction.
Free admission and free refreshments. A book signing follows the discussion.
