Litseen

Kelsey St. Press 45th Anniversary Celebration: Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ching-In Chen, Andrea Abi-Karam
2019-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | McRoskey Mattress Company, Inc, 1687 Market St, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
The Poetry Center joins Kelsey St. Press for a public celebration of the press’s 45th Anniversary, with readings by poets Mei-mei Berssenbrugge, Ching-In Chen, and Andrea Abi-Karam. Kelsey Street Press was founded in 1974 to address the marginalization of women writers by small press and mainstream publishers. Forty-five years later, the press, still located in the East Bay, remains true to its commitment to bring out a wide range of voices, including the gifted work of trans and genderqueer authors. Hosted by McRoskey Mattress Co., in their third-floor loft space, this event is co-sponsored by Kelsey St. Press and The Poetry Center, and is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Free and open to the public.
Mei-mei Berssenbrugge was born in Beijing, grew up in Massachusetts, and lives in northern New Mexico. She has published twelve books of poetry, including five books with Kelsey St Press. Recent works include I Love Artists: New and Selected Poems and A Lit Cloud, a collaboration with artist Kiki Smith. Her latest book, A Treatise on Stars, is forthcoming from New Directions, along with a new edition of Empathy.
Ching-In Chen is author of The Heart’s Traffic: a novel in poems (Arktoi/Red Hen Press, 2009), recombinant (Kelsey Street Press, 2017; 2018 Lambda Literary Award Winner for Transgender Poetry), to make black paper sing (speCt! Books, 2019), and Kundiman for Kin :: Information Retrieval for Monsters (forthcoming from Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs). Chen is also co-editor of The Revolution Starts at Home: Confronting Intimate Violence Within Activist Communities (South End Press, 2011; AK Press 2016) and Here Is a Pen: an Anthology of West Coast Kundiman Poets (Achiote Press, 2009). Born of Chinese immigrants, they have received fellowships from Kundiman, Lambda, Watering Hole, Callaloo, Can Serrat, Storyknife, and Imagining America and are a member of Macondo and Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation. A community organizer, they have worked in Asian American communities in San Francisco, Oakland, Riverside and Boston. In Autumn 2019, they join the School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences and the MFA in Creative Writing and Poetics at the University of Washington Bothell as an assistant professor. More at chinginchen.com
Andrea Abi-Karam is an arab-american genderqueer punk poet-performer cyborg, writing on the art of killing bros, the intricacies of cyborg bodies, trauma & delayed healing. Their chapbook, THE AFTERMATH (Commune Editions, 2016; download the PDF), attempts to queer Fanon’s vision of how poetry fails to inspire revolution. Andrea’s first book, EXTRATRANSMISSION (Kelsey Street Press, 2019), is a poetic critique of the U.S. military’s role in the War on Terror. They toured with Sister Spit 2018 and live in New York.

Kelsey St. Press

2019 Michael Rubin Book Award Release Party!
2019-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Join Fourteen Hills press to celebrate OPPRESSORFACE, the 2019 Michael Rubin Book Award winning book of poetry written by Rob Hendricks.
There will be drinks, food, a prize drawing. and a reading by Rob Hendricks.
Other readers include: Truong Tran, Vanessa Marie Hamill, Steven Kennedy, Jens Mikkelsen, London Pinkney, and Izabella Santana.
See you there!

Lyrical Opposition: Unplugged
2019-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | 483 14th St, San Francisco, CA 94103
You’re cordially invited to join us for an intimate showcase of socially-conscious, acoustic hip-hop music.
Based in Bay Area, CA, Lyrical Opposition creates safe platforms that foster lyrical expression for hip-hop artists, spoken word poets, and other artistic talents through gatherings, icebreakers, freestyles, cyphers, artist development workshops, panel discussions, training and fellowship.
December 13, 2019 Delaplane will host a live acoustic performance by Bay Area based rapper, poet, and performer Fego Navarro and Dela Paz, in an intimate setting.
Limited seating available.

The Fire Thieves in the Gallery
2019-12-13 19:00 - 21:00 | San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, 401 Van Ness Ave, Ste 126, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Organized by Kim Shuck, San Francisco Poet Laureate in consultation with Pam Peniston, artistic director of the Queer Cultural Center.
The SFAC is pleased to welcome the The Fire Thieves Poetry Series—an inter-generational and inter-sectional collaboration between established, mid-career and new poets working, producing, and presenting new work—to the gallery for an evening of readings dear to their hearts. A selection of accomplished Native poets read their work surrounded by the powerful and uplifting photographs on view in the exhibition The Continuous Thread. The evening’s readers include Jewelle Gomez, playwright, novelist and social justice activist; Stephen Meadows, Ohlone poet and KFOF folk music dj; Linda Noel, Poet Laureate emerita of Ukiah; and Ramona Webb, artist in word, movement, and culture change.

Jeff VanderMeer: Dead Astronauts
2019-12-13 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Jeff VanderMeer joins us to discuss his new novel, Dead Astronauts.
Praise for Jeff VanderMeer
“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
“VanderMeer is that rare novelist who turns to nonhumans not to make them approximate us as much as possible but to make such approximation impossible. All of this is magnified a hundredfold in Borne . . . Here is the story about biotech that VanderMeer wants to tell, a vision of the nonhuman not as one fixed thing, one fixed destiny, but as either peaceful or catastrophic, by our side or out on a rampage as our behavior dictates–for these are our children, born of us and now to be borne in whatever shape or mess we have created.” —Wai Chee Dimock, The New York Times Book Review
“The conceptual elements in VanderMeer’s fiction are so striking that the firmness with which he cinches them to his characters’ lives is often overlooked . . . Borne is VanderMeer’s trans-species rumination on the theme of parenting . . . [Borne] insists that to live in an age of gods and sorcerers is to know that you, a mere person, might be crushed by indifferent forces at a moment’s notice, then quickly forgotten.” —Laura Miller, The New Yorker
About Dead Astronauts
A messianic blue fox who slips through warrens of time and space on a mysterious mission. A homeless woman haunted by a demon who finds the key to all things in a strange journal. A giant leviathan of a fish, centuries old, who hides a secret, remembering a past that may not be its own. Three ragtag rebels waging an endless war for the fate of the world against an all-powerful corporation. A raving madman who wanders the desert lost in the past, haunted by his own creation: an invisible monster whose name he has forgotten and whose purpose remains hidden.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Dead Astronauts presents a City with no name of its own where, in the shadow of the all-powerful Company, lives human and otherwise converge in terrifying and miraculous ways. At stake: the fate of the future, the fate of Earth—all the Earths.

Vera Polozkova in San Francisco | presented by M.ART
2019-12-13 19:30 - 21:30 | Marine’s Memorial Theater, 609 Sutter Street, San Francisco, 94102
// For English please scroll down //
M.ART представляет премьеру поэтического концерта Веры Полозковой «Высокое разрешение» в Сан-Франциско на сцене театра Marines’ Memorial.
Билеты в продаже!
Впервые в США Вера Полозкова исполнит свою новую программу, в которой поэтическая часть предельно точно сочетается с музыкой и видеорядом. Стихи, которые вошли в новое представление, так или иначе несут в себе отголоски путешествий поэта и перемен в её жизни, но все так же остаются о вечных темах — о любви и страхе, богатстве душевном и денежном, возрасте и людях.
Имя Веры Полозковой уже давно известно всем, кто интересуется русской поэзией. Вере было всего 15, когда вышел ее первый авторский сборник стихов, мгновенно ставший сенсацией современной русской литературы. Сейчас она продолжает оставаться самым популярным молодым поэтом России, выпустив два авторских сборника стихов «Непоэмание» и «Осточерчение», а также книгу «Фотосинтез», созданной совместно с Ольгой Паволгой. Полозкова — феномен нового поколения. Она заставила аудиторию социальных сетей заново полюбить поэзию и стала флагманом новой литературной волны.
«Ты всегда наедине со стихотворением, и каждое проделывает в тебе индивидуальную работу. Это даже вопрос соавторства, потому что каждый читает стихотворение по-своему, и для него оно о чем-то еще» — Вера Полозкова.
M.ART — некоммерческий негосударственный проект, продвигающий современную российскую культуру в Великобритании, Израиле и США.
______________
M.ART presents a poetry evening “High Resolution” by Vera Polozkova, in San Francisco on the stage of the Marines’ Memorial Theatre.
Tickets are available!
For the first time in the States, Vera Polozkova will perform her new show, where poetry is supplemented by music and visual elements with extreme precision. The poems included in the new program somehow echo Polozkova’s travels and changes in her life, while still revolving around the same eternal themes — love and fear, money and spiritual wealth, aging and people.
Vera Polozkova is well-known to those interested in Russian poetry. Vera was only 15 when she published her first collection of poems, instantly becoming a sensation in contemporary Russian literature. Nowadays, she continues to be Russia’s most popular young poetess, having published two collections of poems — “Nepoemanie” and “Ostocherchenie” — as well as a book “Photosynthesis” together with photographer Olga Pavolga. Polozkova is a phenomenon of the new generation. She made the audience of social media fall back in love with poetry, and became the flagship of the new wave in literature.
“You are always one-on-one with a poem, and each one of them makes its way inside of you. One can even call it co-authorship, because every person reads a poem in their own way, and for each reader it’s about something else” — Vera Polozkova.
M.ART is a non-profit, non-governmental project promoting contemporary Russian culture in Britain, Israel and the United States.

“Chan Family Picnic”—Reading by Eugenie Chan Theater Projects
2019-12-14 13:00 - 15:30 | CHSA Museum, 965 Clay Street, San Francisco, CA, 94108, United States
Eugenie Chan Theater Projects and the Chinese Historical Society of America invite you to a reading of Chan Family Picnic, a rollicking new vaudeville about the mental health impact of America’s legacy of anti-Asian legislation and sex trafficking on three generations of the playwright’s Chinese American family.
Eugenie Chan, playwright
Byron Au Yong, composer
along with Bay Area performing artists
Q&A will follow the reading

Admission is free, but there is limited space. Reserve your ticket on Eventbrite.

This program is part of our Chinese American: Health Legacy Series, highlighting health issues that have particular impact on Asian American communities.

Instead of Your Office Party: Quiet Lightning's 10 Year Anniversary
2019-12-14 19:00 - 22:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Save the date: Our 10-year anniversary party is Saturday, December 14!

Saturday, December 14, 2019 @ The Bindery, 7-10pm
10 years to the date of our first show, we’re throwing a party to celebrate:
1200+ readings
900+ local writers
129 live shows
108 publications
90 venues
60 curators
10 years
1 party
!
Readings by:
Namwali Serpell is a Zambian writer who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award for women writers in 2011 and was selected for the Africa 39, a 2014 Hay Festival project to identify the best African writers under 40. She won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing. The Old Drift is her first novel. Author photo by Peg Skorpinksi.
Kim Shuck embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell and she spent many hours with her mother and grandmother wandering the Mission St. Miracle Mile, taking books out of the Mission Branch library and watching aquarium fish on the ground floor of what used to be Hale’s. She firmly believes in carrying a bubble wand, keys, pen and notebook and cat’s cradle string at all times. Shuck is widely published in journals, anthologies and a couple of solo books. She enjoys volunteering in SFUSD elementary school classrooms to share her loves of origami, poetry and basket making… in other words, math of various kinds. In 2019 Shuck was awarded an inaugural National Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets, and a PEN Oakland Censorship Award.
Susan Steinberg is the author of Machine, Spectacle, Hydroplane, and The End of Free Love. She is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship, a National Magazine Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She teaches at the University of San Francisco. Author photo by Noah Doely.
Mimi Lok is the recipient of a Smithsonian Ingenuity Award and an Ylvisaker Award for Fiction, a finalist for the 2018 Katherine Anne Porter Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the Susan Atefat Arts and Letters Prize for nonfiction. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Electric Literature, Nimrod, Lucky Peach, Hyphen, the South China Morning Post, and elsewhere. Mimi is also the executive director and editor of Voice of Witness, a human rights/oral history nonprofit she co-founded that amplifies marginalized voices through a book series and a national education program. Last of Her Name, a collection of stories, was published in October, 2019. Mimi currently lives in San Francisco, CA.
&:
:: video highlights from our first 10 years ::
:: portrait-monials: get your portrait done by Connie Zheng while you testify ::
:: make a tv show out of literature (and we’ll broadcast it) ::
:: have your tarot read ::
:: visit the wishing well ::
:: enter the raffle ::
and more!
Tickets are only $10 (that’s just $1 per year!) but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. If you’d like another 10 years of Quiet Lightning, consider being a supporter and donating an extra $10+. We’ll save you a seat and give you a surprise at the door (plus you can write off your donation).

Writers With Drinks
2019-12-14 19:30 - 21:30 | Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Alvin Orloff (Disasterama! Adventures in the Queer Underground)
Olga Zilberbourg (Like Water and Other Stories)
Megan E. O’Keefe (Velocity Weapon)
FEATURING SPECIAL GUEST HOST Maggie Tokuda-Hall!
Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit a local nonprofit, TBA.
At The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

A Holiday Impeachment Party
2019-12-15 18:00 - 21:00 | Royal Towers, 1750 Taylor St., San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
~*It’s the most wonderful time of these four years!*~
House Democrats have pledged to finish their impeachment deliberations by Christmas – sounds like cause for a Holiday Impeachment Party to us! This San Francisco extravaganza features an illuminated digital poetry installation, a bespoke drinks menu crafted towards a new political reality, delicious seasonal hor d’oeuvres, and all the political schmoozing you’ve been longing for, plus an *~Extra! Extra!*~ Special Surprise Guest (wasn’t even on the witness list) – and all this from the gorgeous, glittering panoramic perch of Royal Towers in North Beach with its sweeping views of Baghdad-by-the-Bay. 100% of proceeds benefit Poets Reading the News, the nonprofit focused on helping the world process the news through poetry.

Get Lit #54
2019-12-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Ale Industries, 3096 E 10th Street, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
Heading into its fourth consecutive year, Get Lit is a community gathering of 12–15 writers reading NEVER-BEFORE-READ material (rough drafts / debuts) within a three-minute time limit. There is live music at every show, beer made by Ale Industries on site, and wonderful food by Guadalajara Restaurant & Tequila Bar just down the block. All ages are welcome.
Doors open at 7:00 PM; show starts at 7:30 PM SHARP!

Music Release Party and Solstice Celebration with Mat Callahan and Yvonne Moore
2019-12-17 19:00 - 21:00 | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Mat and Yvonne will serenade us with some of the songs on their new album, discuss the companion book and we’ll toast the coming of the light!

Working Class Heroes is a collection of American working-class, pre–World War II folk songs revived by Mat Callahan & Yvonne Moore. Here the duo presents 20 songs written both by folk canon heavyweights and lesser known but equally gifted songwriters. Both beautiful and emotionally arresting, the album is a collection of stories as much as songs—stories of the women and men who (sometimes literally) gave their lives to emancipate the working class.

Mat Callahan is a musician and author originally from San Francisco. Recent projects include the re-publication of Songs of Freedom by Irish revolutionary, James Connolly, the recording and publication of Working Class Heroes and the launch of Songs of Slavery and Emancipation. He is the author of five books including, in 2017, The Explosion of Deferred Dreams.
Yvonne Moore is a singer and band leader originally from Schaffhausen, Switzerland. In addition to recording numerous albums of her own music, Moore is co-founder and treasurer of the Association “Art in History and Politics.” The purpose of the Association is to discover, publish and popularize music, graphic art and texts created by participants in conflicts such as the struggle to abolish slavery. Her exploration of the songs of Sarah Ogan Gunning led to the making of Working Class Heroes.

Anna Wiener with Alexis Madrigal
2019-12-19 08:00 - 17:00 | Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
TICKETS
To purchase over the phone: 415-392-4400
This event appears in the series
Special Events

Anna Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, covering Silicon Valley, startup culture, and technology. Her first memoir, Uncanny Valley, is a humorous and penetrating reflection on the absurdities, contradictions, excesses, and deficiencies that she observed and was complicit in while working in the tech industry. Her writing has appeared in n+1, The Atlantic, Wired, The New Republic, New York, Harper’s, and the Times Magazine.
Photography credit: Russell Perkins

Zora Neale Hurston: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
2019-12-19 08:00 - 17:00 | Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, United States
Buy Tickets

Co-presented by Litquake and MoAD

In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston—the sole black student at the college—was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life, transforming her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period.
Released just in time for Black History Month, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick(Amistad Press) unveils an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.
With readings and discussion from UC Berkeley African American studies professor Chiyuma Elliott, poet and CCA professor Tonya M. Foster, and bestselling novelist Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Moderated by writer and radio journalist Jenee Darden. Audience discussion and book sales to follow. $10 general, $5 student/senior, free for MoAD members
*NOTE: This event will be recorded for Litquake’s Lit Cast podcast

Moderators

Jenee Darden
Jeneé Darden is an award-winning journalist, public speaker, mental health advocate and proud Oakland native. She hosts KALW’s arts segment Sights & Sounds and is their East Oakland reporter. Jenee has reported for NPR, Time, Ebony, Los Angeles Times, and other outlets. She blogs… Read More →

Speakers

Chiyuma Elliott

Tonya Foster
Tonya M. Foster was raised in New Orleans. She is an Assistant Professor of Writing & Literature, and of Graduate Writing at California College of the Arts. A poet and essayist, she is the author of A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna, 2015), the bilingual chapbook La Grammaire… Read More →

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton
Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, born and raised in New Orleans, studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her debut novel, A Kind of Freedom, was long-listed for the National Book Award and the Northern California Book Award, won the Crook’s Corner Book Prize… Read More →

My Life, My Stories / Real life. Told by SF seniors.
2019-12-19 08:00 - 17:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Join us for an evening of learning and listening, hosted by My Life, My Stories! The theme is FAMILY.
My Life, My Stories is a local non-profit that preserves the life legacies of older adults in our community. We match a volunteer with one older adult, and over the course of several months, the senior’s memories are recorded and transcribed into memoirs. We focus on helping underserved populations in the Bay Area including minorities, immigrants, homeless seniors, vets, and LGBTQ elders.
Our volunteers hear inspiring, heartbreaking, and touching stories that, otherwise, would be left untold and lost forever. My Life, My Stories wants to give older adults a public platform to share their amazing memories with the young SF community in a live event. You may be surprised with what you learn and how much you can relate to someone who may be decades older than you.
Check back soon for bios of each of our speakers. All ticket sales go directly back to the organization. Purchase your ticket here.

PEOM: Poetry Every Other Month
2019-12-19 19:00 - 21:00 | Julie’s Coffee and Tea Garden, 1223 Park St., Alameda, CA, 94501, United States
Join us every other month at 7pm for a featured poet, an open mic and great drinks and treats!
Featured Poet: Gene Kahane
(more dates/poets later)

Speaking Axolotl Reading and Open Mic
2019-12-19 20:00 - 22:00 | Nomadic Press, 2926 Foothill Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94601, United States
A Latinx poetry reading series y open mic that happens every third Thursday (unless otherwise noted) in “The Chapel” at Nomadic Press.

Radar Productions / Show Us Your Spines: November Resident Reading
2019-12-20 18:00 - 20:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
In collaboration with RADAR Productions and the James C. Hormel LGBTQIA Center at the SF Public Library! QTPOC writers who were participants of the Show Us Your Spines Writer’s Residency will be reading at Alley Cat Books to showcase the work they did during their time at the Hormel Center.
SHOW US YOUR SPINES is a month-long writer residency + reading in collaboration with the SF Public Library’s Hormel Center. For a month QTIPOC writers work with Hormel Center LGBTQIA archives around a specific queer theme, writing/producing a piece that will then be read/presented the following month at a local venue.
RADAR Productions is the longest running queer feminist spoken word literary production organization.
▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼
December 20th 2019
Alley Cat Books
3036 24th St
6:00pm
FREE
FEATURING…
Alexander Torres
Clem Breslin
Jianda Monique
Muriel Leung
▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼▼
Alex Torres is a queer Chicanx man. A graduate of Stanford University, he is currently pursuing his PhD in Latinx and Queer literature at UC Berkeley. Before that, he taught at an underserved public university in Bogotá, Colombia as a Fulbright Scholar and curated an exhibition at the Cantor Arts Center. A Ford Predoctoral Fellow, a Beinecke Scholar, and a Mellon Mays Fellow, Alex is dedicated to serving POC communities in academia.
Clem Breslin is a trans masculine-identified poet. They studied poetry in their undergraduate days at Sarah Lawrence College. By day they work as a QA Engineer at Twitter and by night they roam the streets looking for their next Aperol Spritz. They live in Oakland and are a proud card carrying Sagittarius.
Jianda Monique: A conscious artist, musician, vocalist/guitarist and oft-published writer, featured Om Lounge 10 recording artist Jianda Monique is a poet, photographer, filmmakers, creative-spirituality coach and singer-songwriter with singles/albums that are both self-released and available on several international independent labels including: Om Records, Merck, Ghostly, Kinkysweet, Jam Recordings/Jam Music Australia and Gammaphone, as well as her self-titled solo CD. A lover of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction, she’s also been published in several literary publications, and written myriad reviews and opinion pieces.
Muriel Leung is the author of Bone Confetti, winner of the 2015 Noemi Press Book Award. A Pushcart Prize nominated writer, her writing can be found in The Baffler, Cream City Review, Gulf Coast, The Collagist, Fairy Tale Review, and others. She is a recipient of fellowships to Kundiman, VONA/Voices Workshop and the Community of Writers. She is the Poetry Co-Editor of Apogee Journal. She also co-hosts The Blood-Jet Writing Hour podcast with Rachelle Cruz and MT Vallarta. Currently, she is a Dornsife Fellow in Creative Writing and Literature at the University of Southern California. She is from Queens, NY.

The Southeast Asian Diaspora in Poetry & Memoir
2019-12-20 18:30 - 20:30 | Oakland Asian Cultural Center, 388 9th St Ste 290, Oakland, CA, 94607, United States
Join us for a reading that brings together the work of Laotian poet and dancer Krysada Phounsiri and Cambodian writer Sieu Sean Do.
Krysada Phounsiri’s debut book of poetry, Dance Among Elephants, is at turns intimate and interrogative, interested in unpacking the many layers of his family’s journey from Laos to the United States and around the world. Phounsiri is a Lao American professional dancer who has performed with the acclaimed group Jabbawockeez in Las Vegas, award winning poet, engineer, and avid photographer.
Sieu Sean Do’s memoir, A Cloak of Good Fortune, traces his coming of age from the idyllic, peaceful years of childhood in rural Cambodia through his family’s forced exile by the Khmer Rouge. Sieu Sean was born in 1963 and grew up in Kampong Speu, a rural town about fifty kilometers outside Phnom Penh.
Co-presented by Oakland Asian Cultural Center and Eastwind Books of Berkeley.
FREE, suggested donation $3-5 (no one turned away for lack of funds)

Martinis & Writers with Literary Speakeasy
2019-12-26 19:00 - 20:30 | Martuni’s, 4 Valencia St, San Francisco , CA, 94103, United States
Come raise a glass at Literary Speakeasy and celebrate the closing of another year! We have five amazing artists for you this month, including poet Natasha Dennerstein; authors Danny Thanh Nguyen, Alvin Orloff, and Olga Zilberbourg; and musical guest Dawn Oberg. Your host and curator every month is James J. Siegel.
Literary Speakeasy is a FREE event with NO drink minimum. Arrive early and receive a FREE raffle ticket for your chance to win the evening’s secret Speakeasy prize.
Performer bios:
Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Natasha has had poetry published in many journals internationally. Her collections Anatomize (2015), Triptych Caliform (2016) and her novella-in-verse About a Girl (2017) were published by Norfolk Press in San Francisco. Her trans chapbook Seahorse (2017) was published by Nomadic Press in Oakland. She lives in Oakland, California, where she is an editor at Nomadic Press and works at St James Infirmary, a clinic for sex-workers in San Francisco. She was a 2018 Fellow of the Lambda Literary Writer’s Retreat.
Danny Thanh Nguyen’s short stories and personal essays have appeared in The Journal, Foglifter, South Dakota Review, Entropy, New Delta Review, Gulf Coast, and other magazines. He has been awarded fellowships from Lambda Literary Foundation, Kundiman, and Ragdale Foundation. Danny recently received an individual artist grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission for his collection of essays about parallel survivalism between Southeast Asian American refugee communities and queer leather communities in the post-AIDS epidemic era. He runs a social media persona project he calls “Sluterary Thirsterature” on Instagram: @engrishlessons.
Dawn Oberg is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Her music is influenced by multiple genres, including jazz and cabaret. In 2008, she released her first solo album, Horticulture Wars, followed by Rye in 2013 and Bring in 2015. Mic’s Dan Weiss named Oberg’s song “Nothing Rhymes with Orange” one of the 16 best anti-Donald Trump songs of 2017.
Alvin Orloff spent the 1980s working as a telemarketer and exotic dancer while concurrently attending U.C. Berkeley and performing with The Popstitutes, a performance art/homocore band. In 1990 he and his bandmates founded Klubstitute, a queer cabaret featuring spoken word, theater, drag, and musical acts. In 1995 the club closed its doors and Orloff turned to writing. He published three novels before penning his recent memoir of life in the queer underground during the height of the AIDS crisis, Disasterama! He lives in San Francisco.
Olga Zilberbourg’s English-language debut, LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES was published in September 2019 by WTAW Press. She grew up in St. Petersburg, Russia and makes her home in San Francisco. Her fiction and essays have appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, Alaska Quarterly Review, World Literature Today, Tin House’s The Open Bar, and elsewhere. She serves as a co-facilitator of the San Francisco Writers Workshop.

Zora Neale Hurston | Stories from the Harlem Renaissance
2019-12-27 08:00 - 17:00 | Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, 94105, United States
Co-presented by MoAD & Litquake
In 1925, Barnard student Zora Neale Hurston—the sole black student at the college—was living in New York, “desperately striving for a toe-hold on the world.” During this period, she began writing short works that captured the zeitgeist of African American life, transforming her into one of the central figures of the Harlem Renaissance. Nearly a century later, this singular talent is recognized as one of the most influential and revered American artists of the modern period. Released just in time for Black History Month, Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick (Amistad Press) unveils an outstanding collection of stories about love and migration, gender and class, racism and sexism that proudly reflect African American folk culture. Brought together for the first time in one volume, they include eight of Hurston’s “lost” Harlem stories, which were found in forgotten periodicals and archives. These stories challenge conceptions of Hurston as an author of rural fiction and include gems that flash with her biting, satiric humor, as well as more serious tales reflective of the cultural currents of Hurston’s world. All are timeless classics that enrich our understanding and appreciation of this exceptional writer’s voice and her contributions to America’s literary traditions.
With readings and discussion from UC Berkeley African American studies professor Chiyuma Elliott, poet and CCA professor Tonya M. Foster, and bestselling novelist Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Moderated by writer and radio journalist Jeneé Darden. Audience discussion and book sales to follow.

GhostTourSF's "Memories of Glen Park": Zine Release
2019-12-28 16:30 - 18:30 | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Ghost Tour: San Francisco is an ongoing art project charting collective memories of San Francisco neighborhoods. The third section focuses on Glen Park. The upcoming zine “Memories of Glen Park” is an illustrated collection of autobiographical stories of the neighborhood. This reading celebrates the release of the zine and the corresponding artwork. Selected authors:
Elina Ansary (project creator)
Gail Bensinger
Liliana Silva
Jessamyn Ansary
With original music by Jesse Cobb.
After party with charity art raffle at Glen Park Station Bar to follow.

VeteransWrite meetings
2020-01-03 13:00 - 16:00 | SJSU MLK Library, 150 E San Fernando St, San Jose, CA, 95112, United States
led by Nick Butterfield, Jeffrey Leonard, and Amy Meier
First Friday of each Month, 1pm-4pm
MLK Library, contact VeteransWrite@yahoo.com if interested in attending
Admission FREE
Poetry Center San Jose is offering a monthly writing group to veterans of any age, any military experience and to family members of veterans. All levels of writing experience from beginner to experienced are welcome.
Small group setting to a maximum of 12 participants. Emphasis on poetry including prose poems. Format includes examples, prompts and guidance given by facilitators, time provided to write individually, and for participants to read to group and receive group feedback if desired. Goal is to give voice to the experiences of veterans and family members. Subject matter is unrestricted.
Nick Butterfield served for 10 years in USN-R as a Hospital Corpsman. He was activated during Operation Desert Storm, and has worked in Family Practice as a Nurse Practitioner in a FQHC Community Clinic and with the Health Care for the Homeless Project for last 17 years. Nick has been writing poetry since he was 13 years old and has participated in the Willow Glen Poetry Project and other local venues since 1996. His poems have been in 4 anthologies and 2014 issue of Ceasura with poem entitled “PTSD.”
Jeffrey Leonard served in the U.S. Army between 1966-1968. Drafted out of San Jose State, he trained as a 11C40, leaving the service as an E-5. He is a 12th generation descendant of men who have served in every major conflict dating back to pre-Revolutionary America. A survivor of the Vietnam Era, he is drawn to the stories of the returning soldiers and how their lives unfold after they remove the uniform. Writing–especially poetry–is a powerful tool that Jeffrey uses to express conflicting, mysterious, dark, and difficult thoughts and emotions. He has spent the last 30 years as an Elementary Educator.
Amy Meier was born in New York City and has lived in the San Jose, CA area for over 30 years. Amy’s poems have been published in Porter Gulch Review, Caesura, Portside, and Remembering, An Anthology of Poems Read at Willow Glen Books. She has been a featured reader at Flash Fiction Forum in San Jose, California, Stone Griffen Gallery and TEN10 Gallery in Campbell, CA. In 2015 Amy founded VeteransWrite, a writing group for veterans and their family members, currently meeting once a month on the San Jose State University campus, and performed with this group at the 2016 San Jose Poetry Festival.

Vi Ruggiero + Lauren Napier
2020-01-03 19:00 - 20:30 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Join Vic Ruggiero and Lauren Napier as they return to the Beat Museum for an evening of melodies.

Bay Area Poets Coalition
2020-01-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
STRAWBERRY CREEK LODGE
1320 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)

Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)

All Ages Welcome

Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂

After the reading, join us for dinner if you’d like at a nearby restaurant

Walnut Creek Poetry Workshop [Meetup]
2020-01-06 18:30 - 20:30 | Eat and Cre-ate, 313 North Civic Drive, Walnut Creek
Monday night’s Weekly Poetry Workshop at House of Sake in Walnut Creek.Bring one or two, at most, poems with copies to be passed out to compatriots for comments of praise, questions and suggestions for future thought. House of Sake, 313 North Civic Drive, Walnut Creek, 8 minute walk from BART Station

Abigail Hing Wen with Sabaa Tahir
2020-01-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Join us to celebrate the launch of Abigail Hing Wen’s highly anticipated, romantic, and layered debut, Loveboat, Taipei, praised as “an intense rush of rebellion and romance” by Stephanie Garber (NYT bestselling author of the Caraval series). This dazzling, fun-filled romantic comedy of our dreams is “Fresh as a first kiss” (Stacey Lee, author of The Downstairs Girl), “a story about finding your place—and your people—where you least expected.” (Kelly Loy Gilbert, author of Picture Us in the Light) Think Crazy Rich Asians meets To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before.
“Our cousins have done this program,” Sophie whispers. “Best kept secret. Zero supervision.”
And just like that, Ever Wong’s summer takes an unexpected turn. Gone is the strict educational program in Taiwan that Ever was expecting. In its place, she finds Loveboat: a summer-long free-for-all where hookups abound, adults turn a blind eye, snake-blood sake flows abundantly, and the nightlife runs nonstop.

Like Ever, the students of Loveboat are all hiding their own secrets and insecurities—and when their lives collide, it’s guaranteed to be a summer Ever will never forget.
“Abigail Wen’s LOVEBOAT, TAIPEI is smart and raucous at the same time, full of both thoughtful, cultural learning moments and drama drama drama! I lived vicariously through the characters’ crazy adventures and hope there will be more stories from them in the future.” —Evelyn Skye, NYT bestselling author of The Crown’s Game
Abigail Hing Wen holds a BA from Harvard, a JD from Columbia Law School, an MFA from the Vermont School of Fine Arts. Loveboat, Taipei is her first novel.
Abigail will be in conversation with Sabaa Tahir, NYT bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes, A Torch Against the Night, and A Reaper at the Gates.
Come celebrate with us. We could not be more excited.

Quiet Lightning at the Balboa Theater
2020-01-06 19:00 - 22:00 | Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St., San Francisco, CA, 94121, United States
January 6, 2020, 7pm at The Balboa Theatre
Curated by Sophia Passin and Kathleen Torrez, all selected authors will be paid and published in sPARKLE & bLINK 103, featuring cover art by Golbanou Moghaddas!

“Torn for Attachment” by Golbanou Moghaddas, cover artist for sPARKLE & bLINK 103

After the readings (and a hearty intermission: beer, wine, and snacks are available at the concession stand), we will screen our feature-length film Water Under the Bridge (directed by Katie Wheeler-Dubin and Mila Puccini, 2016).

Tickets / RSVP

Slam Jam! live at The Marsh Berkeley
2020-01-07 18:30 - 22:00 | The Marsh Cabaret Bar, 2120 Allston Way , Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Slam Jam is a monthly series featuring a rotating lineup of some of the SF Bay Area’s most radical poets accompanied by the Noise All-Stars, a band of 5 or 6 of the baddest musicians performing original music and poetry, with cheap drinks & ample table seating. ADA accessible and only 1/2 block from Downtown Berkeley BART station!
This month’s featured poets are:
Dee Allen: an African-Italian performance poet currently based in Oakland, California. Allen is author of 3 books (Boneyard, Unwritten Law and Stormwater) and 14 anthology appearances (Poets 11: 2014, Rise and Your Golden Sun Still Shines & more).
Samuel Getachew, @youthpoetlaureate: a 17-year-old spoken word poet and writer from Oakland, California. His poetry has garnered over a million cumulative views online and he has been published in The New York Times & more. He and his work has been featured by the East Bay Express, National Public Radio (NPR), KQED, KTVU News, Voice of America, and more. Samuel is the 2017, 2018, and 2019 Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Grand Champion and the 2018 Oakland Youth Vice Poet Laureate, and a 2019 YoungArts Winner in Spoken Word. He is currently serving as the 2019 Oakland Youth Poet Laureate. He was a part of the team that represented the Bay Area at the Brave New Voices (BNV) Festival, the largest youth poetry competition in the world, in 2017, where he and his team were ranked within the top 8 in the world.
Tony Aldorando: Puerto Rican American writer, Tony The Poet has authored poetry, short stories, one act plays & songs. His works have been enjoyed by audiences around the globe.
Maw Shein Win: a Burmese-American poet, editor, educator & former punk rock drummer who lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
themarsh.org
sanfrancisconoise.com

Aaron Cohen / Move On Up
2020-01-07 19:00 - 20:30 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Aaron Cohen
discusses the subject of his new book
Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power
published by the University of Chicago Press

Curtis Mayfield. The Chi-Lites. Chaka Khan. Chicago’s place in the history of soul music is rock solid. But for Chicagoans, soul music in its heyday from the 1960s to the 1980s was more than just a series of hits: it was a marker and a source of black empowerment. In Move On Up, Aaron Cohen tells the remarkable story of the explosion of soul music in Chicago. Together, soul music and black-owned businesses thrived. Record producers and song-writers broadcast optimism for black America’s future through their sophisticated, jazz-inspired productions for the Dells and many others. Curtis Mayfield boldly sang of uplift with unmistakable grooves like “We’re a Winner” and “I Plan to Stay a Believer.” Musicians like Phil Cohran and the Pharaohs used their music to voice Afrocentric philosophies that challenged racism and segregation, while Maurice White of Earth, Wind, and Fire and Chaka Khan created music that inspired black consciousness. Soul music also accompanied the rise of African American advertisers and the campaign of Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, in 1983. This empowerment was set in stark relief by the social unrest roiling in Chicago and across the nation: as Chicago’s homegrown record labels produced rising stars singing songs of progress and freedom, Chicago’s black middle class faced limited economic opportunities and deep-seated segregation, all against a backdrop of nationwide deindustrialization.
Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and a music critic’s passion for the unmistakable Chicago soul sound, Cohen shows us how soul music became the voice of inspiration and change for a city in turmoil.
Aaron Cohen is the author of Aretha Franklin’s ‘Amazing Grace‘ (Bloomsbury). He teaches humanities, journalism and English composition at City Colleges of Chicago and received a Public Scholar fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2016. Cohen’s articles have appeared in The Chicago Tribune, DownBeat, Washington Post and The Nation and he is the two-time recipient of the Deems Taylor Award for outstanding music writing from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP).
