Litseen

Khaled Hosseini + Ellen Grace O'Brian
2017-05-18 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In the luminous poems contained in The Moon Reminded Me, Ellen Grace O’Brian manages to braid contemporary moments of everyday life with ancient spiritual teachings–the sight of a hummingbird’s red throat, bread on the table, a couple’s quarrel, a mother’s advice–become doorways into the divine mystical heart. The Moon Reminded Me, subtly laced with Sanskrit, gives us an insight into a poet who bridges two worlds eloquently enough to take us along with her. Sandhya, the numinous time for stepping into the temple, suddenly becomes this moment, now.
Yogacharya Ellen Grace O’Brian is the Spiritual Director of the Center for Spiritual Enlightenment (CSE) with headquarters in San Jose, California, serving seeking souls since 1981. CSE is a meditation center in the spiritual tradition of Kriya Yoga that serves people from all faith backgrounds who are seeking Self- and God-realization.
Khaled Hosseini, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns, has written And the Mountains Echoed, a new novel about how we love, how we take care of one another, and how the choices we make resonate through generations. In this tale revolving around not just parents and children but brothers and sisters, cousins and caretakers, Hosseini explores the many ways in which families nurture, wound, betray, honor, and sacrifice for one another; and how often we are surprised by the actions of those closest to us, at the times that matter most. Following its characters and the ramifications of their lives and choices and loves around the globe from Kabul to Paris to San Francisco to the Greek island of Tinos the story expands gradually outward, becoming more emotionally complex and powerful with each turning page.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and moved to the United States in 1980. He is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Kite Runner, A Thousand Splendid Suns, and And the Mountains Echoed. He is A U.S. Goodwill Envoy to the United Nations Refugee Agency, and the founder of The Khaled Hosseini Foundation, a nonprofit that provides humanitarian assistance to the people of Afghanistan.

Fourteen Hills Release Party - Issue 23.2
2017-05-18 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Fourteen Hills Press is proud to announce the release party for issue 23.2! Join us for wine, snacks, and readings by the following contributors:
JEN SULLIVAN BRYCH has published most recently in sPARKLE + bLINK and The Bygone Bureau. Past publications include The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Timesand Wired. Her plays have also been read and performed in various Bay Area theaters. She’s currently working on a novel and advising Forum, CCSF’s literary magazine.
SYLVIA CHAN is a poet from Hayward, California. She teaches in the Writing Program at the University of Arizona and serves as contributing editor for Entropy. Her debut collection, We Remain Traditional, is forthcoming from the Center for Literary Publishing in 2018. She will be in conversation with CHET WIENER, who selected Chan as the winner of the 2017 Stacy Doris Memorial Poetry Award.
Originally from San Francisco, TONGO EISEN-MARTIN is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest book of poems titled Someone’s Dead Already was nominated for a California Book Award. His next book of poems, Heaven Is All Goodbyes, is being published by the City Lights Pocket Poets Series.
TIFFANY HIGGINS is the author of The Apparition at Fort Bragg (2016), an e-chapbook, winner of Iron Horse Literary Review’s contest, selected by Camille Dungy; And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet (2009), Carolina Wren Poetry Prize winner; and Tail of the Whale, translations from Alice Sant’Anna’s Portuguese (Toad Press, 2016).
LORRAINE LUPO is the author of By Way Of (Green Zone Editions). Her work has appeared in The New England Review, Fourteen Hills, and the Art Book Review, among others. She edits the poetry/art series Periodic Postcards and lives in Oakland, California.
ANDREW MURPHY lives in San Francisco, where he currently teaches English at San Francisco State University and Skyline College.

The Worlds of João Gilberto Noll: Adam Morris + Scott Esposito
2017-05-18 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Called “one of the most celebrated writers in contemporary Brazilian literature” by Guernica magazine, author João Gilberto Noll made a splash in the United States last year with the novel Quiet Creature on the Corner, named a “Best Book of 2016” by World Literature Today and praised in Literary Hub, the Kenyon Review, Electric Literature, and The Rumpus.
Now, Two Lines Press is very proud to announce a launch event at longtime Bay Area publishing mecca City Lights Booksellers to celebrate the release of the follow-up to Quiet Creature, Noll’s career-defining novel Atlantic Hotel.
Two Lines Press’s Scott Esposito will be in conversation with author and Portuguese translator Adam Morris, who has brought both Quiet Creature on the Corner and Atlantic Hotel into English.
Compared to David Lynch, César Aira, the Dadists, and the Situationists, Noll creates strange, surprising books that question our basic assumptions about identity, while delivering madcap plots that revolve around modern-day flâneurs. His innovative stories and difficult-to-pin-down sentences have been met enthusiastically by experimental American authors like Matt Bell, Brian Evenson, and Lance Olsen.
Join us at City Lights Booksellers on May 18 for a reading from Atlantic Hotel, along with an intriguing conversation delving into modern-day Brazil, Noll’s influences (including Clarice Lispector), his mysterious protagonists, and the challenges of translating his labyrinthine, twisty sentences into English.

Granta's Best Young American Novelists
2017-05-18 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | DIESEL, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Lauren Groff, Esmé Weijun Wang, and Anthony Marra from Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists to the store on Thursday, May 18th at 7:00 pm.
Every ten years Granta magazine publishes a special issue of new fiction from the most exciting American writers under the age of forty. The third list of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists was announced on April 26th.
The last Best of Young American Novelists issue was published in 2007 and featured an extraordinary selection of young writers: Kevin Brockmeier, Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, Karen Russell, Akhil Sharma and Gary Shteyngart among them. Similarly, the list of writers from twenty years ago showcases some of today’s most successful and talented writers: Jonathan Franzen, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lorrie Moore, ZZ Packer, Mona Simpson, Elizabeth McCracken, David Guterson, Madison Smartt Bell, Sherman Alexie and more.
Lauren Groff, born in New York in 1978, is the author of four books, including The Monsters of Templeton, shortlisted for the Orange Prize for New Writers. Her most recent novel, Fates and Furies, was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Award and the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award.
Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Atlantic and Tin House, among others. She lives in Gainesville, Florida.
Photo Credit- Megan Brown

Esmé Weijun Wang is a mental health advocate, essayist and the author of the novel The Border of Paradise. She won the 2016 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize for her book of essays, The Collected Schizophrenias. Her work has appeared in Elle, Catapult, Hazlitt, the Believer and Lenny. She lives in San Francisco, California.

Anthony Marra, born in Washington DC, is the author of the collection of stories The Tsar of Love and Techno, a finalist for the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and winner of the 2016 American Academy of Arts and Letters Rosenthal Family Foundation Award. His first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, won the inaugural National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and is currently the Jones Lecturer in Fiction at Stanford University

Natural Heir: The Arisa White Extension Exhibition
2017-05-18 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | Qulture Collective, 1714 Franklin Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Beautiful Things Project presents Natural Heir: The Arisa White Extension, a photographic collaboration with Nye’ Lyn Tho. For the Natural Heir series, Nye’ replaces the subject’s hair with beautiful plant life that represents African and African American cultures. However, in The Arisa White Extension, the models’ hair will be graphically altered with images inspired by poems from White’s You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened. The five participating models, who are queer and trans black women, include: Janet Halfin, health education specialist for TransVision, Tri-City Health Center; Zakiya Harris, cultural architect, artist, and founder of Hack the Hood; UC Berkeley doctoral candidate Kerby Lynch; ecotherapist and Oricha priest J. Phoenix Smith, founder of EcoSoul; and visual artist and educator Orlonda Uffre. The evening includes the unveiling of the photographic portraits, a poetry reading, and a Q& A. Funded by the Akonadi Foundation, Beloved Community Fund.

Sustainability Made Simple: An Evening of Learning and Ideas
2017-05-18 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Third Plateau, 209 Kearny Street, 3rd Fl, San Francisco, CA, United States
The Sustainability Co-Op hosts a night of idea sharing to encourage, recognize and celebrate the shift towards shaping a sustainable future. Signed copies of Sustainability Made Simple will be available for purchase. Refreshments from local, sustainable companies will be provided.

Poet Laureate Celebration
2017-05-18 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave, San Rafael , CA, 94901, United States
Please join MPC in welcoming Marin’s new Poet Laureate, Rebecca Foust, and showing appreciation for our outgoing Poet Laureate, Prartho Sereno, before the Third Thursday event on May 18. Doors will open at Falkirk at 6:00 p.m. for a champagne and cake reception followed by brief remarks by both poets at 6:30.

Rebecca Foust has published five prizewinning books of poetry, most recently Paradise Drive (Press 53 2015), sonnets featuring a modern-day Pilgrim living in Marin County, reviewed in the Marin Independent Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, and Rumpus in the Bay Area and in national venues including the Huffington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Washington Review of Books. Recent recognitions include the James Hearst Poetry Prize judged by Jane Hirshfield, the American Literary Review Fiction Award, the Constance Rooke Prize for Creative Nonfiction and fellowships from the Frost Place, MacDowell, Sewanee, and West Chester Poetry Conference. Foust is the Poetry Editor for Women’s Voices for Change and has been a board member at Marin Poetry Center since 2008.

Prartho Sereno is the author of three poetry collections and has taught poetry to both children and adults. A graduate of Bowling Green University and Syracuse University, Sereno has worked as a counseling psychologist, college mediation instructor, illustrator, cook, farmer and songwriter.

Bawdy Storytelling's '#NerdSex
2017-05-17 20:00 - 22:30 UTC | Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Wednesday, May 17th, 2017

at the Verdi Club (2424 Mariposa, San Francisco, CA)

Remember: Bang-O at 7:00 PM, Stories at 8:00 PM

This Evening of ‘Sex Geekery’ includes:
❤ Bawdy’s NerdSex Carnaval! #Pheromones #AnalogDating #More

❤ Storytellers coming soon – Stay Tuned!

❤ Hosted by Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour

❤ Custom Sex Nerd Songs by Jefferson Bergey #NSFW #Yay

❤ Play Bang-O & WIN Prizes, just for talking to sexy strangers

❤ Reserved Seating puts you right up front, in the action – they’re only sold online!

❤ Sexy cocktails to help you Libate #ItsOK#PublicLibationIsLegal

About Bawdy Storytelling:

Bawdy Storytelling – the Original Sex + Storytelling series – features Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits Live Onstage; think of us as a One Night Stand with the Moth & Savage Love. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of Authors, Porn Stars, Sex Educators, Comics & More, along with Regular Joes just like you who submitted their stories online and were chosen for their panache and sense of (Mis)Adventure.

Bawdy Storytelling features tales of Carnal Wins & Epic Fails with No Scripts, No Nets, and No Holds Barred. These folks aren’t reading from cue cards: this is honest-to-badness story time with true sexcapades and poignant, transformational tales at each and every show. Join Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour & hand-picked Rockstars as they share their own stories of Love, Lust, and making you feel funny in your bathing suit area. Hey, you may even go home with a few new tricks for your boudoir arsenal!

• No Refunds or Exchanges

• Lineup Subject to Change

• General Admission seating is first come, first served. We recommend you arrive by 7:15 for best seating (Reserved Seating guarantees you a seat right up front)

Performer Bios:

❤ Online dating prankster & Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour founded Bawdy Storytelling with one idea: To bring people together to tell, share, and delight in each other’s stories of sex, kink, gender, love, and lust in a live setting. The nation’s premiere sex and storytelling series, Bawdy is lauded for its inclusivity (LGBTQIA, kink, polyamory, swingers, vanilla, and more) as much as it’s celebratory attitude, Bawdy Storytelling is driven to bring acceptance through live autobiographical storytelling to new communities, cities, and countries. Dixie and Bawdy Storytelling have been praised by press both big and small; She has been recognized as a “masterful emcee, and her show is everything that works for storytelling—she creates a warm, safe space in which stories can bloom with dark hilarity, salacious textures, and moments of deep connection.” (Master Storyteller Mike Daisey).

Dixie has hosted and curated Bawdy Storytelling events at Yale Sex Week, the Bondage Awards, the Jewish Community Center of San Francicso, CatalystCon Sexuality Conference, Dark Odyssey, FetFest, and more, as well as her home turf of the Bawdy Mainstage and BawdySlam shows. She can be found at @Bawdy on Twitter, Bawdy Storytelling on Facebook and always, always at www.BawdyStorytelling.com

Rakesh Satyal
2017-05-17 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Rakesh Satyal presents his big-hearted and funny novel, No One Can Pronounce My Name.

Lyrics & Dirges
2017-05-17 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Lyrics & Dirges celebrates Work on Wednesday May 17 from 7:30-9pm with a reading at Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Avenue.
Come hear
Anna Rodas
Dawn McGuire
Tongo Eisen-Martin
Heather Bourbeau
Curated by Mk Chavez and Sharon Coleman, hosted by Sharon Coleman
Free with refreshments and bookstore cats!!!
Anna Christine Rodas is an itinerant teacher and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her academic research has explored the social realities of war, violence, and poverty. And her poetry is an attempt to bring to the page the many voices left out of books.
Dawn McGuire is a neurologist-poet and the author of four poetry collections, most recently American Dream with Exit Wound. She has received numerous prizes, including the Indie Book Award in Poetry and the Sarah Lawrence/Campbell Corner Prize for “poems that treat larger themes with lyric intensity.” Her work appears in Zyzzyva, Nimrod International, Narrative and numerous other literary magazines, and has been featured in a New Yorker podcast selected by Poetry Editor, Paul Muldoon.
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a movement worker and educator who has organized against mass incarceration and extra-judicial killing of Black people throughout the United States. His latest book of poems titled “Someone’s Dead Already” was nominated for a California Book Award. His next book of poems, “Heaven Is All Goodbyes,” is being published by the City Lights Pocket Poets Series.
Heather Bourbeau’s fiction and poetry have been published in 100 Word Story, Cleaver, Duende, Eleven Eleven, Francis Ford Coppola Winery’s Chalkboard, Open City, and The Stockholm Review of Literature. Her journalism has appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and Foreign Policy. She was a contributing writer to Not On Our Watch: A Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond with Don Cheadle and John Prendergast. She has worked with various UN agencies, including the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia and UNICEF Somalia. Her first collection of poetry, Daily Palm Castings, profiles people in overlooked professions.

Andrew Schelling + Jaime de Angulo
2017-05-17 19:30 - 20:30 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
This is the Bay Area book launch for:
Tracks Along the West Coast:Jaime de Angulo & the Pacific Coast
More than an immersive tale of the picaresque life of cowboy linguist, doctor, ethnographer, and author Jaime de Angulo— the Old Coyote of Big Sur—but an exploration of the persecuted Native Californian cultures and languages that had thrived for millennia and endured into his day.
Jaime de Angulo’s linguistic and ethnographic work, his writings, as well as the legends that cloak the Old Coyote himself, vividly reflect the particulars of the Pacific coast. His poetry and prose uniquely represented the bohemian sensibility of the twenties, thirties and forties, and he was known for his reworkings of coyote tales and shamanic mysticism. So vivid was his writing that Ezra Pound called him “the American Ovid,” and William Carlos Williams claimed that de Angulo was “one of the most outstanding writers I have ever encountered.”
In each retelling, through each storyteller, stories are continually revivified, and that is precisely what Andrew Schelling has done in Tracks Along the Left Coast, weaving together the story of a life with the story of the land and the people, languages, and cultures with whom it is so closely tied.
Andrew Schelling is a poet, essay writer, and translator. He works on land use issues in the American West, and teaches poetry and Sanskrit at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. In India, he teaches at Deer Park Institute in the Himalayan foothills.
Recent titles include Love and the Turning Seasons and The Real People of Wind & Rain

Jeff VanderMeer
2017-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Award-winning novelist Jeff VanderMeer will be in conversation with Karen Joy Fowler about his thrilling new novel, Borne, which has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus Reviews.
In Borne, a young woman named Rachel survives as a scavenger in a ruined city half destroyed by drought and conflict. The city is dangerous, littered with discarded experiments from the Company—a biotech firm now derelict—and punished by the unpredictable predations of a giant bear. Rachel ekes out an existence in the shelter of a run-down sanctuary she shares with her partner, Wick, who deals his own homegrown psychoactive biotech.
One day, Rachel finds Borne during a scavenging mission and takes him home. Borne as salvage is little more than a green lump—plant or animal?—but exudes a strange charisma. Borne reminds Rachel of the marine life from the island nation of her birth, now lost to rising seas. There is an attachment she resents: in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet, against her instincts—and definitely against Wick’s wishes—Rachel keeps Borne. She cannot help herself. Borne, learning to speak, learning about the world, is fun to be with, and in a world so broken that innocence is a precious thing. For Borne makes Rachel see beauty in the desolation around her. She begins to feel a protectiveness she can ill afford.
“Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy was an ever-creeping map of the apocalypse; with Borne he continues his investigation into the malevolent grace of the world, and it’s a thorough marvel.” –Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad
Jeff VanderMeer is most recently known as the author of the New York Times bestselling Southern Reach Trilogy—the first volume of which, Annihilation, is currently being made into movie to be released by Scott Rubin / Paramount in 2017—and the coeditor with his wife, Ann VanderMeer, of The Big Book of Science Fiction. His fiction has been translated into twenty languages and has appeared in the Library of America’s American Fantastic Tales and multiple year’s-best anthologies. He grew up in the Fiji Islands and now lives in Tallahassee, Florida.
Karen Joy Fowler is the author of three short story collections and six novels including We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves, winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award. The Jane Austen Book Club spent thirteen weeks on the New York Times bestsellers list and was a New York Times Notable Book. Fowler’s short story collection, Black Glass. won the World Fantasy Award in 1999, and her collection What I Didn’t See won the World Fantasy Award in 2011. Fowler and her husband, who have two grown children and seven grandchildren, live in Santa Cruz, California.

Gordon Ball
2017-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Gordon Ball is a poet, photographer, filmmaker, professor of english, and master storyteller. For 28 years Gordon Ball took informal photographs of poet Allen Ginsberg and other members of the Beat Generation, the literary and cultural phenomenon which has had a world-wide impact since its inception in the mid-1950s. As well as being exhibited at five conferences on Ginsberg and the Beat Generation, at one-man shows at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art and other venues, Ball’s photos have appeared in many books, including Dennis McNally’s Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, and America; Michael Köhler’s Burroughs: Eine Bild Biographie; Carole Tonkinson’s Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation; Steven Watson’s The Birth of the Beat Generation: Visionaries, Rebels, and Hipsters, 1994-1960; and many more. Starting at Ginsberg’s farm in 1968, he worked with the poet on numerous literary and artistic projects, editing three books, including two volumes of journals and the Pulitzer Prize nominee Allen Verbatim: Lectures on Poetry, Politics, Consciousness. He’s the author of ’66 Frames: A Memoir (Coffee House Press, 1999) and Dark Music (Cityful Press, 2006) Gordon now lives in Lexington, Virginia, where he teaches at the Virginia Military Institute.
Visit: http://gordonballgallery.com/

Granta: Best of Young American Novelists
2017-05-16 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Every ten years Granta magazine publishes a special issue of new fiction from the most exciting American writers under the age of forty. The third list of Granta’s Best of Young American Novelists will be announced on April 26; join us as we host some of the Best Young American Novelists!
The last issue was published in 2007 and featured an extraordinary selection of young writers: Kevin Brockmeier, Anthony Doerr, Jonathan Safran Foer, Nicole Krauss, Yiyun Li, Karen Russell, Akhil Sharma and Gary Shteyngart among them. Similarly, the list of writers from twenty years ago showcases some of today’s most successful and talented writers: Jonathan Franzen, Edwidge Danticat, Jeffrey Eugenides, Lorrie Moore, ZZ Packer, Mona Simpson, Elizabeth McCracken, David Guterson, Madison Smartt Bell, Sherman Alexie and more.
Granta’s forthcoming Best of Young American Novelists issue will feature new work from each writer, creating a timely and authoritative commentary on the state of American writing.
The judges for this year’s selection are novelists Patrick deWitt, A.M. Homes, Kelly Link, Ben Marcus and Granta’s editor and publisher Sigrid Rausing.
Check back here on April 26, when we’ll announce which authors will be in the store!
More Info Here: http://www.booksmith.com/event/granta-best-young-american-novelists

Jeff VanderMeer
2017-05-16 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Acclaimed science fiction writer Jeff VanderMeer, author of the Southern Reach trilogy, discusses his new novel, Borne.
Praise for Jeff VanderMeer:
“I’m loving The Southern Reach trilogy by Jeff VanderMeer. Creepy and fascinating.” ―Stephen King on the Southern Reach trilogy
“VanderMeer masterfully conjures up an atmosphere of both metaphysical dread and visceral tension . . . Annihilation is a novel in which facts are undermined and doubt instilled at almost every turn. It’s about science as a way of not only thinking but feeling, rather than science as a means of becoming certain about the world. . . . Ingenious.” ―Laura Miller, Salon
“If J.J. Abrams-style by-the-numbers stories of shadowy organizations and science magic have let you down one too many times, then Annihilation will be more like a revelation. VanderMeer peels back the skin of the everyday, and gives you a glimpse of a world where science really is stretching the bounds of our knowledge–sometimes to the point where we can’t ever be the same . . . [Annihilation] will make you believe in the power of science mysteries again.” ―Annalee Nevitz, io9
About Borne:
In a ruined, nameless city of the future, Rachel makes her living as a scavenger. She finds a creature she names Borne entangled in the fur of Mord, a gigantic despotic bear that once prowled the corridors of a biotech firm, the Company, until he was experimented on, grew large, learned to fly, and broke free. Made insane by the company’s torture of him, Mord terrorizes the city even as he provides sustenance for scavengers.
At first, Borne looks like nothing at all—just a green lump that might be a discard from the Company, which, although severely damaged, is rumored to still make creatures and send them to far-distant places that have not yet suffered collapse.
Borne reminds Rachel of the island nation of her birth, now long lost to rising seas. She feels an attachment that she resents: attachments are traps, and in this world any weakness can kill you. Yet when she takes Borne to her subterranean sanctuary, Rachel convinces her lover, Wick—a special kind of dealer—not to render down Borne as raw genetic material for the drugs he sells.
But nothing is quite the way it seems: not the past, not the present, not the future. If Wick is hiding secrets, so is Rachel—and Borne most of all. What Rachel finds hidden deep within the Company will change everything and everyone. There, lost and forgotten things have lingered and grown. What they have grown into is mighty indeed.

A Leak in the Speakers!
2017-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Rebound Bookstore, 1611 4th Street, San Rafael, CA, 94901, United States
Last teen open mic of the year, organized by Rebound Bookstore intern, Sami Stilson! Come by, share this event with teens you think would like to be involved. Grown ups more than welcome!
Writers, singers, rappers, slammers, speakers, composers, musicians, etc. are welcome, whether performing or supporting (drop-ins welcome)
Friendly feedback!
RSVP at reboundbookstore@aol.com.
Free Refreshments! Meet like-minded artists! Safe space for all!

The WordParty Poetry & Jazz Night
2017-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | PianoFight, 144 Taylor St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
The WordParty Poetry & Jazz Night: Every 3rd Tuesday of the Month from 7:00-9:30pm
NEXT: Tuesday May 16th, 2017
Featured Poet: Tatiana Molinar!
at PianoFight: 144 Taylor Street (between Turk & Eddy), San Francisco, CA 94102 – Powell Street BART
Hosted by Jennifer Barone, Ingrid Keir. Live jazz with Daniel Heffez, Geordie Van Der Bosch and friends. FREE admission, all ages, full menu and bar in the front room. Open Mic for poetry only – 3min time limit, pick your best poem to read with live jazz accompaniment.

GET LIT #24
2017-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Ale Industries, 3096 E 10th Street, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
An amazing gathering of writers will read NEVER-BEFORE-READ material (rough drafts / debuts) within a three-minute time limit.
The emcee for the night will be the one and only NO ‘HARE (Isobel O’Hareand Christine No.)
Featured lineup of writers include: and more TBA!
Musical Guest:
Beer made by Ale Industries on site and coffee by our good friends next door, Red Bay Coffee.
Donations will be kindly requested, though no one will be turned away for lack of funds. All ages are welcome, though profanity will be present.

Eastridge Open Mic
2017-05-16 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Barnes & Noble at Eastridge Mall, 2200 Eastridge Loop, Suite #1420, San José, CA, 95122, United States
Eastridge Open Mic
with host Lorenz Dumuk
Tuesday, May 16, 2017, 6:00pm
Feature: Tyson Amir
open mic follows
Barnes & Noble at Eastridge Mall
2200 Eastridge Loop, Suite #1420, San José
Nearest cross streets are Tully and E. Capitol Expressway
Free and open to the public
Tyson Amir is an author, musician, educator, community organizer, and freedom fighter born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the spirit of The Dragon, George Lester Jackson, he endeavors to utilize any and all resources at his disposal as weapons to bring about the eventual liberation of his people. Tyson has been engaged in movement work since the late 1990s. His movement work has influenced his artistic work. Black Boy Poems, his debut release as an author is an example of that. Black Boy Poems is a powerful, timely, and revolutionary body of literature that seeks to inspire his people towards liberation. Find out more about Tyson Amir at www.BlackBoyPoems.com.

Fenton Johnson
2017-05-16 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | SF Public Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, 94102, United States
The San Francisco Public Library presents Fenton Johnson for a Launch Party in celebration of his new work, Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays. Fenton will be in conversation with Andrew Lam, author of Birds of Paradise Lost–which was a 2013 California Book Awards-finalist for First Fiction.
Part retrospective, part memoir, Fenton Johnson’s collection Everywhere Home: A Life in Essays explores sexuality, religion, geography, the AIDS crisis, and more. Johnson’s wanderings take him from the hills of Kentucky to those of San Francisco, from the streets of Paris to the sidewalks of Calcutta. Along the way, he investigates questions large and small: What’s the relationship between artists and museums, illuminated in a New Guinean display of shrunken heads? What’s the difference between empiricism and intuition?
The collection draws together essays that originally appeared in Harper’s, The New York Times, All Things Considered and elsewhere, along with new work. Johnson reports from the front lines of the AIDS epidemic, from Burning Man, from monasteries near and far. His subject matter ranges from Oscar Wilde to censorship in journalism to Kentucky basketball.
Everywhere Home is the latest title in Sarabande’s Bruckheimer Series in Kentucky Literature.
Fenton Johnson is the author of the novels The Man Who Loved Birds, Scissors, Paper, Rock, and Crossing the River, and the nonfiction books Keeping Faith and Geography of the Heart. Johnson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He writes regularly for Harper’s, and is a professor in the creative writing programs at the University of Arizona and Spalding University.
The thirteen stories in Birds of Paradise Lost shimmer with humor and pathos as they chronicle the anguish and joy and bravery of America s newest Americans, the troubled lives of those who fled Vietnam and remade themselves in the San Francisco Bay Area. The past memories of war and its aftermath, of murder, arrest, re-education camps and new economic zones, of escape and shipwreck and atrocity is ever present in these wise and compassionate stories. It plays itself out in surprising ways in the lives of people who thought they had moved beyond the nightmares of war and exodus. It comes back on TV in the form of a confession from a cannibal; it enters the Vietnamese restaurant as a Vietnam Vet with a shameful secret; it articulates itself in the peculiar tics of a man with Tourette s Syndrome who struggles to deal with a profound tragedy. Birds of Paradise Lost is an emotional tour de force, intricately rendering the false starts and revelations in the struggle for integration, and in so doing, the human heart.
Andrew Lam is the author of Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora, which won the 2006 PEN Open Book Award, and East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres. Lam is an editor and cofounder of New American Media, an association of over two thousand ethnic media outlets in America. He was a regular commentator on NPR s All Things Consideredfor many years, and was the subject of a 2004 PBS documentary called My Journey Home. His essays have appeared in newspapers and magazines such as The New York Times, The LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal, theChicago Tribune, Mother Jones, and The Nation, among many others. His short stories have been widely taught and anthologized. Birds of Paradise Lostis his first story collection. He lives in San Francisco.

Hala Alyan
2017-05-15 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Join us to celebrate a dazzling new literary voice, Hala Alyan, and her debut novel, Salt Houses, about a Palestinian family caught between present and past, between displacement and home.
On the eve of her daughter Alia’s wedding, Salma reads the girl’s future in a cup of coffee dregs. She sees an unsettled life for Alia and her children; she also sees travel, and luck. While she chooses to keep her predictions to herself that day, they will all soon come to pass when the family is uprooted in the wake of the Six-Day War of 1967. Salma is forced to leave her home in Nablus; Alia’s brother gets pulled into a politically militarized world he can’t escape; and Alia and her gentle-spirited husband move to Kuwait City, where they reluctantly build a life with their three children. When Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait in 1990, Alia and her family once again lose their home, their land, and their story as they know it, scattering to Beirut, Paris, Boston, and beyond. Soon Alia’s children begin families of their own, once again navigating the burdens (and blessings) of assimilation in foreign cities. Lyrical and heartbreaking, Salt Houses is a remarkable debut novel that challenges and humanizes an age-old conflict we might think we understand—one that asks us to confront that most devastating of all truths: you can’t go home again.

The Odd Mondays Series
2017-05-15 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
The Odd Mondays Series at Folio Books
Monday, May 15th, 7 PM
3957 24th Street, San Francisco
A LITERARY POTPOURRI
Featuring Authors: Erika Atkinson, Michael Helquist, Andrew McIntyre, Laynie Tzena.
FREE ADMISSION
ERIKA ATKINSON signed up with the Canadian Foreign Service in Washington, D.C., for several years, after which she worked in administrative positions in schools, colleges, and universities across Canada, the United States, and various parts of Europe before settling in Bernal Heights in 1984. She is the author of five books. Two of them, Happily Lost in Time and Place, and More Miles and Moments, are collected stories about adventures of happenstance, about characters, situations, and experiences that were never planned. In her book Frozen Stillness, she recounts her journey to Antarctica in 2010. Her first collection of poetry, Exhort the Goddesses, was compiled in 2015 to honor the Supreme Court’s historic decision that same sex marriage be declared legal across the United States. The most recent book, Ode to the Castro, is her dedication to the neighborhood she loves, where she has now lived and played for nearly two decades.
MICHAEL HELQUIST is an awarding-winning author, journalist, and historian. He has published in “Ms. Magazine,” “The Advocate”, “American Medical News”, and “The Oregon Historical Quarterly.” As a medical journalist, he consulted for the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. State Department. He was inspired to write the biography, Marie Equi: Radical Politics & Outlaw Passions, because of Dr. Equi’s fierce struggle as an outsider to achieve independence, and her commitment to social and economic justice. Helquist lived in Noe Valley for five years before relocating to the North Panhandle neighborhood.
After years of traveling, ANDREW McINTYRE has found a settled existence in San Francisco. He attended universities in England, Scotland, Japan, and the United States, and holds master’s degrees in Economics and Comparative Literature. His stories have appeared in numerous magazines, including “The Mississippi Review,” “3:AM Magazine”, “Long Story Short”, “The Copperfield Review”, and “Pindeldyboz.” In 2002, he was a finalist in Ireland’s Fish Short Story Prize. His short story collection, The Short, the Long, and the Tall, was published by Merilang Press in December, 2010. He lives in San Francisco.
LAYNIE TZENA is a writer, performer, and visual artist based in San Francisco. Her work has been published in “Bayou”, “Event”, “The Michigan Quarterly Review”, “Sonora Review”, and “Zone 3,” among others; she has received an Avery Hopwood Award in Poetry, was named on of the “New Voices in Michigan Poetry”, and has been a Cranbrook Fiction Scholar. “Glimmer Train” recently included her short story, “Egg,” in the top 25 of its “Family Matters” competition. Tzena has been a featured performer at the Austin International Poetry Festival, the Marsh Café, the Monkey House, and on Michigan Public Radio.
Consider joining us for a no-host pizza/salad or other entré dinner ($15-20), before the reading, 5:30 p.m. at the Haystack Pizza Restaurant, south side of 24th near Sanches Street.
The 24 line and the 48 line and the J Church are the nearby Muni transportation lines available.
www.oddmondays.com
Odd Mondays is presented by Judith and Ramón Sender and Folio Books.
“You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” -Flannery O’Connor

POETS! - featured readers followed by an open mic
2017-05-15 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA

Mary Gaitskill
2017-05-15 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Jewish Community Center of San Francisco, 3200 California St, San Francisco, CA, 94118, United States
Reading and Signing with Mary Gaitskill for “Somebody with a Little Hammer”.

Standing O Storytelling Graduation Performance
2017-05-14 19:00 - 22:00 UTC | StageWerx, 466 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Standing O Storytelling’s inaugural graduating class is ready to take the stage! Join us for stories from a new crop of storytellers that you can expect to see on stages all over the bay area soon.
These storytellers deserve a standing ovation for their hard work and dedication to the art of storytelling. If you wanna be the first to see and hear new stories from these Standing O graduates, this is your chance…get your tickets in advance to grab your seat.
Our Graduating Storytellers include:
– Christina McFadden
– Saren O’Grady
– Bandee
– Lora Lewis
– David ‘Hearty’ Heartlife
– Lisa Spitalewitz
– Debby Jensen
– Ana Nelson
– Johanni Thunstrom
– Hervé Mazoyer
– Johanni Thunstrom (not performing)
– Ana Nelson (not performing)
This is also Dixie De La Tour’s birthday, so we’ll have cake, too!

Writers With Drinks
2017-05-13 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Saturday, May 13, 2017:

Lindy West (Shrill)
Julia Vinograd (Graffiti: Poems, Suspicious Characters: Poems)
Meg Elison (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife)
George Higgins (There, There)
Zahra Noorbakhsh (#GoodMuslimBadMuslim)
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.

Chris Higgs, Sunnylyn Thibodeaux, + Cassandra Troyan
2017-05-13 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States

Jennifer Barone + Ingrid Keir
2017-05-13 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Frank Bette Center for the Arts, 1601 Paru Street, Alameda, 94501, United States
Jennifer Barone and Ingrid Keir featuring at Frank Bette
Hosted By: Deborah Ledvick and Jeanne Lupton
Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and artist. She is the author of three books of poetry, her most recent: “Saporoso – Poems of Italian Food & Love.” She is known to collaborate with artists and musicians as founder and co-host of the WordParty Poetry & Jazz Series and as Creative Director for FeatherPress. She has been a featured poet at the SFJazz Poetry & Jazz Festival, The SF Public Library, The Red Poppy Art House, SF MoMa, DeYoung, and The Beat Museum. She was a winner of the 2007 and 2012 SF Public Library’s Poets Eleven contest for North Beach where she resides and has been published in literary journals such as The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, and Quiet Lightning’s sPARKLE & bLINK. She is currently working on a new collection of poetry. Visit thewordparty.com for more.
Ingrid Keir is a poet, performer and educator. She is co-founder of the WordParty, a long-running San Francisco poetry and jazz series. She has been a featured reader at diverse venues in the Bay Area including the DeYoung Museum, The Beat Museum, City Hall, Quiet Lightning as well as many others. Ingrid has lectured Creative Writing at San Francisco State University where she taught undergraduate poetry, fiction and playwriting while simultaneously engaging students with writers of the Bay Area. She also received both her M.F.A and B.A. degrees at San Francisco State University. She has written several chapbooks: The Secrets of Like (2004), Toward the Light (2007) and recently released a new book of poetry in September 2016, The Choreography of Nests, published by Feather Press. Ingrid has been published in many literary journals including: Two Hawks Quarterly, The Haight Ashbury Literary Journal, Sparkle and Blink and Out of Our. She was also shortlisted in the 2016 Litquake poetry contest.

Mama Says: QTPOC Lineage + Storytelling
2017-05-13 18:00 - 21:00 UTC | Galería de la Raza, 2857 24th Street, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
MAMA SAYS: QTPOC Lineage and Storytelling
May 13, 2017
Galeria de la Raza
show @ 6pm
after party @ 8pm
$5-$20 sliding scale (No one turned away for lack of funds)
Featuring…
Indira Allegra
Myriam Gurba
Roberto F. Santiago
Grace Rosario Perkins
José Iñiguez

Indira Allegra is a recipient of the Oakland Individual Artist (2015) and Queer Cultural Center grants (2014) and has been honored with the Jackson Literary Award (2014), Lambda Literary Fellowship (2012) and Windgate Craft Fellowship (2015). Allegra’s commissions include works for the SFMOMA, de Young Museum, The Wattis Institute, Petty Biennial, SFJAZZ Poetry Festival, the City of Oakland and the National Queer Arts Festival. Her time-based works have screened at festivals such as MIX NYC (2013), Perlen Hannover LGBT Festival (2010), Bologna Lesbian Film Festival (2010) and Outfest Fusion (2009).Allegra’s writing has been widely anthologized, she has contributed works to Cream City Review, HYSTERIA Magazine, make/shift Magazine, Konch Magazine and Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought among others. In 2014 she was the Dr. and Mrs. Ella Tag Lecturer at East Carolina University and a Lylle Parker Women of Color Speaker at the University of Oregon. Allegra has completed workshops and residencies at The Banff Centre in Canada (2012) Ponderosa Center for Movement and Discovery in Stolzenhagen (2016) and Takt in Berlin (2016). She is a 2017 Artist in Residence at Djerassi Residence Arts Program and the Headlands Center for the Arts.
Myriam Gurba
Myriam Gurba is a queer spoken-word artist, visual artist, and writer from Santa Maria, California. She currently lives and teaches in Long Beach, California. Her most recent novel, Painting Their Portraits in Winter: Stories, explores Mexican stories and traditions from a feminist lens.
Roberto Santiago
Roberto F. Santiago is a poet, translator, and lead singer in a solo act who produces his own music, and dances rips into his pants. Roberto received an MFA from Rutgers University, BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and is the recipient of the 2011 Alfred C. Carey Prize for Poetry. Currently, he works as College and Career Coordinator at a high school in San Francisco. Be it pedaling past the canals in Amsterdam or the smell of rain in rural Québec, he has begun to rewrite his own passport. Roberto also writes and produces his own music, and has been known to dance until he rips his pants. His frst full-length collection of poems, Angel Park, will be released April 2015 by Lethe Press. His poetry has been published in such anthologies/journals as Assaracus – Sibling Rivalry (2014), CURA: A Literary Magazine of Art & Action(2014), Hypothetical: A Review of Everything Imaginable(2014), and Te Waiting Room Reader: Stories to Keep you Company – CavanKerry (2013).
Grace Rosario Perkins
Capturing feeling through her artwork in a multitude of ways, Grace Rosario Perkins creates visionary pieces by evoking thought, feeling and language onto mediums that allow us to create our own thoughts, feelings and language. Coming from a line of artists and having spent a majority of her time living on the Akimel O’odham Indian and on the Navajo Nation reservations, Grace’s upbringing has affected her artwork greatly through the years, and has created a unique spin on the way language and artwork come together. Repetitive motifs of women, mountainscapes, abstract patterns and shapes all built from a consciousness in which memory, familial identity, pop culture and obsessive mark-making are paired with texts.
José Iñiguez
José Luis Iñiguez is a Central Valley artist currently based in Oakland, California. He received his Master of Fine Arts from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California. Trained as a ceramist; yet, his practice is not solely that, he infuses his visions with tactile procedures and assemblage, utilizing found objects and waste. Iñiguez’s work is encircled with many planes of his identity. His recent investigation immersed his practice into a spiritual quest, weaving in his Roman Catholic upbringing with the occult.

Deborah Fleming
2017-05-13 17:30 - 19:30 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Author Deborah Fleming
Award winning hippie/Vietnam War novel Without Leave published by Black Mountain Press. Winner of the 2013 Asheville Award from Black Mountain Press, the novel Without Leave places brave people into the hippie experience and turbulent antiwar movement of the 1960s and addresses the existential question of freedom of the will.
Published 47 years since the “Summer of Love” and 49 years since the troop surge that ushered in the full-scale American commitment to the Vietnam War, Without Leave chronicles the stories of two alienated young people during 1967-70. David Shields goes AWOL from the Navy where he’d hoped to find training and focus for his life but instead finds boredom and disillusionment during deployment on an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin. In the Haight-Ashbury region of San Francisco in 1967 he meets and falls in love with an artist, Diane Cavanagh, who drops out of college after a brutal rape and the death of the black man she loved. Through turmoil and separation, they find they cannot escape their past.
