Litseen

Well-RED
2018-05-08 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Works/San José, 365 S Market St, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
features: Deborah Kennedy and Ken Weisner
open mic follows
at Works/San José
365 South Market Street
in downtown San José
doors open 6:30pm
$2 admission, no one turned away
Works is on the Market Street edge of the San Jose Convention Center,
just to the right of the parking garage entrance
Bios to come.
Upcoming at Well-RED:
June 12: ASHA and Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour

EPIC
2018-05-08 18:30 - 22:00 UTC | Public Works, 161 Erie Street, San Francisco , CA, 94103, United States
Tales of great undertakings and heroic deeds, world changers, story spinners, and tales passed down through time
Curated by Isolde Honore
Artwork by Imogen Speer
Tuesday, May 8
Public Works SF: 161 Erie St, San Francisco
Doors at 6:30 for pre-salon cocktails, conversation and gallery show; talks begin at 7:30
General Admission $15
Limited Reserved tickets $25
Ages 21+

Perfectly Queer SF Book Reading "Contrasts: Poetry & Prose"
2018-05-08 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Poets Susan Dambroff and David Hathwell and novelists Anne Raeff and Rob Rosen will read from new work at Perfectly Queer San Francisco’s “Contrasts: Poetry & Prose,” Tuesday, May 8, 7pm to 8pm at Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro St. in San Francisco. Author signing follows. Admission is free, and free refreshments will be provided. Door prizes awarded at 7pm!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Susan Dambroff is a poet, performer and teacher, living in San Francisco. Her poetry chapbook Conversations With Trees was recently published by Finishing Line Press. Her first book of poetry, Memory in Bone, was published by Black Oyster Press. Her poems have appeared in Stoneboat, Earth’s Daughters, and Red Bird Chapbooks, among other literary venues. She performs in Spoken Duets, a poetic and improvisational collaboration with performance artist Chris Kammler. Throughout her creative work, she is drawn to the detailed placement of words, the alchemy of sequence and timing.
David Hathwell published Between Dog and Wolf, his second poetry collection, in 2017. Muses, his debut collection, appeared in 2016 to acclaim from, among others, Richard Wilbur, Dana Gioia, and Edmund White. His poems have appeared in more than a dozen literary magazines .A former English teacher, he has degrees in English from Stanford and Columbia and a degree in music theory from the City University of New York. He has studied piano at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and sung baritone in two Bay Area choruses.
Anne Raeff’s second novel, Winter Kept Us Warm, just came out in February, 2018. Her short story collection The Jungle Around Us won the 2015 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. It was also a finalist for the California Book Award and on The San Francisco Chronicle’s 100 Best Books of 2017 list. Her first novel, Clara Mondschein’s Melancholia, was published in 2002. Anne’s stories and essays have appeared in New England Review, ZYZZYVA, and Guernica, among other places. She is proud to be a high school teacher and works primarily with recent immigrants. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and two cats.
Rob Rosen (www.therobrosen.com) is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Sparkle: The Queerest Book You’ll Ever Love, Divas Las Vegas, Hot Lava, Southern Fried, Queerwolf, Vamp, Queens of the Apocalypse, Creature Comfort, Fate, Midlife Crisis, Fierce, and And God Belched. His short stories have appeared in more than 200 anthologies. You can find 20 of them in his erotic romance anthology Good & Hot. He is also the editor of Lust in Time: Erotic Romance Through the Ages, Men of the Manor, Best Gay Erotica 2015, and Best Gay Erotica of the Year, Volumes 1 and 2 and 3.

Rita Bullwinkel and Lisa Brown
2018-05-08 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Rita Bullwinkel and Lisa Brown

Rita Bullwinkel celebrates the release of
Belly Up: Stories
from A Strange Object Press
Lisa Brown presents a sneak preview of an upcoming new graphic novel forthcoming in late 2018
Rita and Lisa will also discuss the creative process in an evening of readings accompanied by talks.
about Belly Up:
The stories of Belly Up occupy the space between the familiar and the surreal. Through fiercely intelligent prose and quotidian moments, a receptionist becomes fascinated with harp music, two high school girls debate taking gym class and a bored beauty corresponds with an inmate. Fantastical stories filled with ghosts, mediums and carnivorous churches find humanity and warmth in the grotesque. The characters and voices of Belly Up, whether a sentient snake who eats children or a widow building a life without her husband, are all seeking to find a way to cope with the bodies they’ve been given and the bodies they must encounter.
Rita Bullwinkel’s writing has been published in Tin House, Conjunctions, Vice, NOON, and Guernica. She is a recipient of grants and fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Brown University, Vanderbilt University, Hawthornden Castle, and The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Both her fiction and her translation have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She is an Editor at Large for McSweeney’s. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, she now lives in the Richmond and works in the Mission. This is her first book.
Lisa Brown draws things like illustration and comics, writes things like books and book reviews, and teaches things to kids and college students. Her debut picture book, How to Be, was one of the Thirteen Best Children’s Books for Family Literacy. Since then she has published a ton more books, including Vampire Boy’s Good Night and The Latke Who Couldn’t Stop Screaming, a New York Times bestseller by elusive author Lemony Snicket. She co-authored Picture the Dead, an illustrated young adult novel, with acclaimed writer Adele Griffin, and created the award-winning Baby Be of Use series of board books for McSweeney’s. Lisa draws the Three Panel Book Review cartoon strip, and is a comics contributor at The Rumpus. She teaches illustration at the California College of the Arts, and is a long-time workshop instructor and field trip leader at the 826 Valencia tutoring center. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son, but can usually be found wandering around the internet.

Chronicle Chats: On Science
2018-05-08 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | Herbst Theatre, 01 Van Ness Avenue, Room 110, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
The San Francisco Chronicle presents Chronicle Chats — an ongoing series of events featuring thought-leaders, influencers, newsmakers and trend-setters, discussing issues that affect the Bay Area and its citizenry.
Join us on Tuesday, May 8th at the Herbst Theatre for our next Chronicle Chats – On Science: Should We Live Forever? A lively discussion centered around the medical potential and ethical implications of living forever.
Questions that will be explored include: Should we invest in the promise of ending all disease or ending aging? What are the ramifications for the planet (or the environment)?
Guests include:
Audrey Cooper: San Francisco Chronicle Editor in Chief (Moderator)
Aubrey de Grey: Chief Science Officer of the SENS Research Foundation (Panelist)
William Hurlburt: MD, Adjunct Professor of Neurobiology at the Stanford Medical School (Panelist)
Learn more and buy your tickets today: https://info.sfchronicle.com/chroniclechats/on-science-57OO-161ED.html
Are you a Chronicle Member? Members receive discounts on Chronicle Events. Subscribe today and save $10 on your event ticket price! If you’re a current Chronicle Member, log into your account on SFChronicle.com to secure your discount code.

wordWind Chorus Live + Tongo Eisen-Martin
2018-05-08 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Institute Of advanced Uncertainty, P.O. Box 460908, San Francisco, 94146
Institute Of advanced Uncertainty [I.O.U.] hosts wordWind Chorus:
Q.R. Hand Jr.
Lewis Jordan
Brian Auerbach
With Tongo Eisen-Martin
Tuesday, May 8, 2018
Doors: 6:30 p.m.
Program:7:00 p.m.
Free entry
296 Ivy Street, between Gough & Franklin, Western Addition, S.F.

Porchlight Open Door: Lesson Learned
2018-05-08 19:30 - 20:30 UTC | Hemlock Tavern, 1131 Polk Street, San Francisco , CA, 94109, United States
Come out on a Tuesday night to celebrate National Teachers’ Day! Bring your five-minute story about teaching, learning, going to school, skipping class, mentors, bad examples and all the ways you’ve been educated. The show is free and really fun. Come on down!! Michael O’Brien is bringing a ruler to discipline storytellers with bad attitudes.
Porchlight Open Door is a small stage open mic event launched by Porchlight in September 2009. Storytellers add their names to a sign-up sheet, receive a free drink, and then have five minutes to spiel on the monthly theme.

Launch for Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story
2018-05-08 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts the launch for Nothing Short Of: Selected Tales from 100 Word Story, with editors Grant Faulkner,Lynn Mundell, and Beret Olsen. Please join us!
Gems, shards, bon bons, quickies … nuggets, tickles, or even pinpricks. Each 100 Word Story is its own kind of special.
Nothing Short Of presents the best of 100WordStory.org, the leader in short-short fiction and a popular go-to for great reading. In these very short stories, every word, every detail, every moment matters. And the things left out, the spaces around the stories, are just as intense.
What can a hundred words do? They can send chills, they can bring you to tears, they can take your breath away. In charged, sometimes racy encounters — from wild, messy breakups to a disgruntled clown dinner to quiet revelations over folded laundry — these 100-word stories take us to lightning moments when everything is at stake.

Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. His stories have appeared in dozens of literary magazines, including Tin House, The Southwest Review, and The Gettysburg Review. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. He has published a collection of one hundred 100-word stories, Fissures, and his book of essays on creativity, Pep Talks for Writers: 52 Insights and Prompts to Boost Your Creative Mojo, was published last fall by Chronicle Books.

Lynn Mundell is co-founder and co-editor of 100 Word Story, as well as a managing editor at a large health care organization. Her short-short stories and creative nonfiction have appeared in many U.S. and U.K. literary journals, including Tin House online, Booth, Superstition Review, Portland Review, Permafrost, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, The Sun, and Five Points, as well as in anthologies including The Lobsters Run Free (Bath Flash Fiction), Short on Sugar, High on Honey (Flash International), and New Micros: Exceptionally Short Stories (W.W. Norton & Company, August 2018). Lynn earned her MFA in Creative Writing from American University and is an advisory board member of the U.C. Berkeley Extension Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Writing.

Beret Olsen is a writer, photographer, and the photo editor for 100 Word Story. Her art, essays, and fictions have been published in a variety of places including: First Class Lit, Flash: The International Short-Short Story Magazine, and her blog, Bad Parenting 101. A longtime educator, Beret has also written grants to help low-income, first-generation college students get into, through, and beyond college.

RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Nothing Short Of, and/or any of the authors’ books, order below and put your request in the comments field.

Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

Matt Miller
2018-05-08 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Matt Miller reads from his new poetry collection, The Wounded for the Water. Also featuring readings by Mario Chard and Peter LaBerge.

Praise for The Wounded for the Water

“Matt W. Miller’s The Wounded for the Water is a horrific, undulating, beautiful, sublime lesson on the art of drowning, the wonder of living, and the scars that act as memory. You will have no choice but to dive into this meditation, and you will have no choice but to go deep. Miller’s portrait of masculinity is a lyrical homage to the survived and resilient, to the learned and unlearned, a prayer for the departed. Like so many hurricanes, Miller teaches us that sometimes you’re left with nothing, and that is the moment when you can choose to be reborn or continue holding your breath.”—Willie Perdomo author The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award

“The reality of drowning, and the powerful metaphor of it, inform Matt Miller’s lyrical muscular new collection. Although water, violent or not, is often the book’s setting, these relentless poems explore the pain and perils of tenderness , of friendship, our physical and moral vulnerability, the challenges of loving and being loved. As Miller puts himself at risk again and again, his poetry grabs me by the throat, breaks my heart, even makes me laugh—and, oddly, gives me hope.”—Gail Mazur, author of Forbidden City

“One needs read only a poem or two in Matt Miller’s The Wounded for the Water to sense we’re in the hands of a poet with tremendous control. There are musical moments so lush I hear echoes of Hopkins, coupled with a tender directness and images of clinical grit. Whether he’s offering the straight dope on the different suits boys try on as they audition for manhood, or meditating on what the rain can and can’t wash away, Miller takes us time and again to the moment, as children, when the force of the world struck us, and we were left to examine the mark.” —Michael Bazzet, author of Our Lands Are Not So Different

An Evening with David Sedaris
2018-05-08 20:00 - 21:30 UTC | Zellerbach Hall, UC Berkeley, 101 Zellerbach Hall #4800, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
David Sedaris returns to Berkeley with his signature sardonic wit and incisive social criticism. A master of satire and one of America’s preeminent humorists, Sedaris contributes regularly to The New Yorker and BBC Radio 4 and his latest book, Theft By Finding, was recently released to widespread critical acclaim. The evening concludes with an audience Q&A and book signing.

Ashley Dawson
2018-05-09 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of his new book
Extreme Cities: The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change
from Verso Books

A cutting exploration of how cities drive climate change while being on the frontlines of the coming climate crisis

Named One of the Top 10 Books of the Year by Publishers Weekly and Planetizen
How will climate change affect our lives? Where will its impacts be most deeply felt? Are we doing enough to protect ourselves from the coming chaos? In Extreme Cities, Ashley Dawson argues that cities are ground zero for climate change, contributing the lion’s share of carbon to the atmosphere, while also lying on the frontlines of rising sea levels. Today, the majority of the world’s megacities are located in coastal zones, yet few of them are adequately prepared for the floods that will increasingly menace their shores. Instead, most continue to develop luxury waterfront condos for the elite and industrial facilities for corporations. These not only intensify carbon emissions, but also place coastal residents at greater risk when water levels rise.
In Extreme Cities, Dawson offers an alarming portrait of the future of our cities, describing the efforts of Staten Island, New York, and Shishmareff, Alaska residents to relocate; Holland’s models for defending against the seas; and the development of New York City before and after Hurricane Sandy. Our best hope lies not with fortified sea walls, he argues. Rather, it lies with urban movements already fighting to remake our cities in a more just and equitable way.
As much a harrowing study as a call to arms Extreme Cities is a necessary read for anyone concerned with the threat of global warming, and of the cities of the world.
Ashley Dawson is a professor of English at the City University of New York, and the author of Extinction: A Radical History.

What has been said about Extreme Cities:
“Extreme Cities is a ground-breaking investigation of the vulnerability of our cities in an age of climate chaos. We feel safe and protected in the middle of our great urban areas, but as Sandy and Katrina made clear, and as this fine book reveals anew, the massive shifts on our earth increasingly lay bare the social inequalities that fracture our civilization.”
– Bill McKibben, author and founder of 350.org

“A substantive contribution to the growing dialogue about our response—or lack thereof—to climate change.”
– Kirkus Reviews

“The way we design and live in cities will determine humanity’s ability to avoid an anthropogenic mass extinction event in the coming century. Dawson makes this vividly clear in Extreme Cities, laying out in detail the nature of the problem and some possible positive actions we can take. Crucial to his argument is the fact that technological solutions will not be enough, so that we need to drastically reform the capitalist economic system to properly price and value the biosphere and human lives. His point that social justice is now a necessary survival strategy makes this not just a meticulous history and analysis of our situation, but also an exciting call to action.”
– Kim Stanley Robinson, author of The Red Mars Trilogy and New York 2140

“Dawson makes a convincing case that, unless urban dwellers and civic leaders engage in a fundamental reconceptualization of the city and whom it serves, the future of urban life is dim.”
– Publishers Weekly (★ Starred Review)

“Cities both in the North and the South are already suffering the effects of climate change. Government and business fitfully recognize and respond, but in ways that reinforce existing injustices and as often as not make things worse. Dawson shows how social movements have combined action on disaster relief with forms of equitable common life to produce models for radical adaptation from which we can all learn. This is a brillant summation of what we know and what we can do build a new kind of city in the ruins of the old.”
– McKenzie Wark, author of Molecular Red: Theory for the Anthropocene

“Many books have elucidated the ever-increasing dangers of climate change, particularly the disastrous impact that rising sea levels will have on coastal regions, but Dawson goes further as he outlines some potential solutions to this crisis. Massive technological projects may not be what’s needed, he finds; instead, the solution may already exist in radical movements to forge a more just and equitable society.”
– Publishers Weekly

“A powerful argument in a dire situation: that we revise our cities to the new game changer, or climate change will revise urban existences as we know it.”
– Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, director-general of Bengal Institute of Architecture, Landscapes and Settlements

“A sophisticated and provocative exploration of the unfolding impact of climate change on urban environments.”
– Christoph Lindner, Professor of Urban Theory and Visual Culture, University of Oregon

“A revelatory confrontation between two forms of ‘surplus liquidity’: the rent-seeking excess of circulating global capital and the more literal liquidity of the rising tides of climate change. The setting is the city and this meticulously researched and argued book probes the nexus of myopia, greed, environmental disaster – and hope – that has placed the urban habitat of billions of us in extremis.”
– Michael Sorkin, author of All Over the Map: Writing on Buildings and Cities

“A must-read for everyone who wants to understand the politics of climate change in an increasingly urban planet, and to explore the possibilities for radical change beyond all technological fixes and governmental adjustments that only reproduce the system as it is.”
– Marco Armiero, director of the Environmental Humanities Laboratory, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

“An ultimate call to action.”
– Joep Janssen, author of Living with the Mekong: Climate Change and Urban Development in Ho Chi Minh City and the Mekong Delta

“A superb essay of political ecology, Extreme Cities demonstrates that there is nothing more depending on nature than the city, offering both a diagnosis and a possible therapy for one of the greatest challenges of our time.”
– Serenella Iovino, editor of Material Ecocriticism and Environmental Humanities: Voices from the Anthropocene

“Extreme Cities takes the critical long view to challenge city decision-makers to deal seriously with the clash of business-as-usual development, threats from climate change, and persistent social inequality to develop real transformations to drive cities toward sustainability and resilience.”
– Timon McPhearson, Director, Urban Systems Lab at The New School, New York City

“With the majority of humanity located in cities, it behooves us to consider urban ecologies as recent and future sites of non-natural disasters as well as inspiring places of collective resilience and struggles for justice. Dawson’s book is a guiding light.”
– T.J. Demos, Professor of History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz, Director of its Center for Creative Ecologies

“The definitive study of an urban – and planetary – system pushed to the breaking point. Extreme Cities paints a terrifying, but also hopeful, picture, weaving together accounts of iron-fisted states, greedy real estate developers, and the communities that challenge their rule.”
– Jason W. Moore, author of Capitalism in the Web of Life

“A profoundly sobering picture of climate change’s uneven urban toll, both across global expanses and within particular neighborhoods, while also spotlighting instances of radical, on-the-ground resistance to such trends.”
– Emily Scott, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture, ETH Zuric and co-editor of Critical Landscapes: Art, Space, Politics

“[Ashley Dawson] is well attuned to the ways that upheavals and disasters disproportionately affect the socioeconomically disadvantaged. As Donald Trump continues to roll back protection measures and disavow the U.S.’s role in global cooperation to mitigate the effects of climate change, this book is a clear-eyed reminder of who, and what, will be left most vulnerable as a result.”
– Fast Company

“Dawson’s book destroys the comforting global discourse of climate change, resilience and adaptation and introduces the key words of our time: the dramatic ‘climate apartheid’ currently unfolding in front of us. A shrewd analysis of the prodigious contradiction of capitalism at the time of the anthropocene: what happens when coastal cities, the great capital sinks of capital, literally sink.”
– Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, coauthor of The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth, History and Us

“Books on climate change are a dime a dozen now, but few, if any, truly reckon with the potential scale of the disasters that await. Dawson reveals the inadequacies of current plans to deal with the problems that cities around the world will face. Forget such buzzwords as ‘green cities,’ ‘resilience,’ and ‘sustainable development’ — the age of ‘disaster communism’ is here.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Extreme Cities is a sobering account of how planetary urbanization has put us on a collision course with the natural world.”
– Sierra Club

“Extreme Cities is an angry book—as it should be. ….Ashley Dawson outlines the existential dilemma facing coastal cities, and the refusal of various powerbrokers to acknowledge that reality, in bold and frequently horrifying terms.”
– Chris Barsanti, Rain Taxi

Flash Fiction Forum Reading Series:
2018-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Works Gallery, 364 S. Market St., San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
Upcoming Readings

Mae Boeve of 350.org and Rebecca Solnit - Rivers of Change and SF Global
2018-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | McRoskey Mattress Company, Inc, 1687 Market St, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
This September in San Francisco, the Global Climate Action Summit will bring together leaders from state, tribal, and local governments, business, and citizens from around the world, to demonstrate how the tide has turned in the race against climate change, showcase climate action taking place around the world, and inspire deeper commitments from each other and from national governments—in support of the Paris Agreement.
2018 is a turning point: countries and all of us must step up the commitments that were made in Paris and do more. The momentum we generate this year must lead to a climate turning point by 2020 in order to prevent the worst effects of climate change. It must be the beginning of a new phase of action and ambition on climate change.

350.org executive director May Boeve talks about the near future of climate activism, including September’s Climate Summit.

In 1963 the waters began rising behind Glen Canyon Dam and 170 miles of the Colorado River slowly disappeared as the riverbed and surrounding canyons filled with water. Those who supported and those who opposed the dam considered it a longterm transformation; environmentalists mourned Glen Canyon as dead and gone forever. But it’s coming back, in a victory that is also the pervasive disaster of climate change.

“Lake Powell and the wreckage of where it used to be and will never be again was the right place to think about the madness of the past and the terror of the future, even amidst the epiphanies of beautiful light and majestic space,” writes Rebecca Solnit in Drowned River: The Death and Rebirth of Glen Canyon on the Colorado (Radius Books), her collaboration with photographers Mark Klett and Byron Wolfe.

Doors at 6:30pm. Admission $5.

Christopher Moore
2018-05-09 19:30 - 20:30 UTC | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Christopher Moore is the author of fifteen previous novels: Practical Demonkeeping, Coyote Blue, Bloodsucking Fiends, Island of the Sequined Love Nun, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel, A Dirty Job, You Suck, and Fool. He lives in San Francisco.
Join one of the Bay Area’s biggest, most wisecracking fiction writers as he takes readers from the peaks of Mount Ranier, through the deserts of New Mexico, and all the way to the bustling, braggadocious streets of 1947 San Francisco on an outrageous detective story you will never forget. With a cast of characters that includes the unforgettable gumshoe, Sammy “Two Toe” Tiffin, it’s clear from page one that this is anything but a conventional mystery. Zany, hilarious, and everything we have come to expect from one of the Bay Area’s biggest stars, this might just be the finest, most gut-busting mystery novel you can find.
Get your ticket today and don’t miss one of the Bay Area’s greatest, and might we say funniest, authors as he presents his new novel, Noir.

Roman Muradov
2018-05-09 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Roman Muradov discusses his new book, On Doing Nothing: Finding Inspiration in Idleness.

Praise for On Doing Nothing

“Roman Muradov’s whimsical, clever, and companionable book On Doing Nothing provides a much-needed correction to our distracted, anxiety-ridden, and increasingly disembodied culture. Muradov has written and illustrated a kind of Situationist, Oulipian Ways of Seeing—a manual for clarity and presence, a book which issues a call to attention; a call to pay attention. The smart yet approachable philosophical reflections unfold like a leisurely stroll through a beautiful and unfamiliar city, provoking thoughtfulness and eliciting in the reader a spirit of discovery.” —Peter Mendelsund, author of What We See When We Read

About On Doing Nothing

In an age of obsessive productivity and stress, this illustrated ode to idleness invites readers to explore the pleasures and possibilities of slowing down. Beloved author and illustrator Roman Muradov weaves together the words and stories of artists, writers, philosophers, and eccentrics who have pursued inspiration by doing less. He reveals that doing nothing is both easily achievable and absolutely essential to leading an enjoyable and creative life. Cultivating idleness can be as simple as taking a long walk without a destination or embracing chance in the creative process. Peppered with playful illustrations, this handsome volume is a refreshing and thought-provoking read.

Melissa Broder / The Pisces
2018-05-09 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts an evening with So Sad Today author Melissa Broder reading from her anticipated debut novel, The Pisces. With her in conversation is The Millions editor, Lydia Kiesling — please join us!
Lucy has been writing her dissertation on Sappho for nine years when she and her boyfriend break up in a dramatic flameout. After she bottoms out in Phoenix, her sister in Los Angeles insists Lucy dog-sit for the summer. Annika’s home is a gorgeous glass cube on Venice Beach, but Lucy can find little relief from her anxiety — not in the Greek chorus of women in her love addiction therapy group, not in her frequent Tinder excursions, not even in Dominic the foxhound’s easy affection.
Everything changes when Lucy becomes entranced by an eerily attractive swimmer while sitting alone on the beach rocks one night. But when Lucy learns the truth about his identity, their relationship, and Lucy’s understanding of what love should look like, take a very unexpected turn. A masterful blend of vivid realism and giddy fantasy, pairing hilarious frankness with pulse-racing eroticism, THE PISCES is a story about falling in obsessive love with a merman: a figure of Sirenic fantasy whose very existence pushes Lucy to question everything she thought she knew about love, lust, and meaning in the one life we have.
—
Melissa Broder is the author of the essay collection So Sad Today and four poetry collections, including Last Sext. Her poetry has appeared in POETRY, The Iowa Review, Tin House, Guernica, and she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. She writes the “So Sad Today” column at Vice, the astrology column for Lenny Letter, and the “Beauty and Death” column on Elle.com. She lives in Los Angeles. Author photo by Lord Byron.
Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions and the author of The Golden State, a novel publishing September from FSG/MCD. Her essays and criticism have appeared at outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, Slate, and The New Yorker online, and have been recognized in Best American Essays 2016. She lives in San Francisco with her family. Author photo by Andria Lo.

StageWrite presents: Drama, Trauma, Dance-O-Rama - Short Plays by Short People
2018-05-10 18:00 - 20:00, 2018-05-12 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Brava Theater Center, 2781 24th Street, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Come see original plays written by fifth graders from SFUSD, inspired by works of visual art at the de Young Museum, and performed as staged readings by professional actors with music by The Write-Ons.
Enter a world where…
Superheroes speak secret languages
Flowers fight nukes
Silly string is not a plaything
Chimps are chumps
Bedtime meltdowns explode
& Old guys take a dirt nap.
Wine reception before and after the show on Saturday to celebrate StageWrite’s 15th anniversary

Voz Sin Tinta: Our monthly bilingual poetry series and open mic.
2018-05-10 18:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Sponsored by Alejandro Murguia, curated by Marguerite Munoz and Rene Vaz.
Join Voz Sin Tinta for our May reading!
3 FEATURES as always and an open mic to follow!
Bring a friend, a poem, some snacks and some wine!
Open Mic list goes live at 6:30, please keep pieces to only 1 and under 4 minutes.
Featured Writers this month are:
Amanda Muniz
Daniel Ari
Diana Torres

Why There Are Words Presents: "The Return"
2018-05-10 19:00 UTC | Studio 333, 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito , CA, 94965, United States
Join Why There Are Words on May 10, 2018, at Studio 333 in Sausalito as seven acclaimed authors read on the theme of “The Return.
Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10 entry fee at the door. Cash bar. For more details, including the authors’ full bios, see the website, www.whytherearewords.com. For more details about WTAW Press, of which the reading series is a program, visit www.wtawpress.org.

Peter Neil Carroll’s newest collections of poetry are An Elegy for Lovers (Main Street Rag, 2017), The Truth Lies on Earth (Turning Point Press, 2017), and Fracking Dakota: Poems for a Wounded Land (Turning Point Press, 2017). His poems have appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Southern Quarterly, Amsterdam Quarterly, and many others.
Kirstin Chen‘s new novel, Bury What We Cannot Take (Little A, March 2018), has been named a Most Anticipated Upcoming Book by Electric Literature, The Millions, The Rumpus, Harper’s Bazaar, and InStyle, among others. Born and raised in Singapore, she currently resides in San Francisco. www.kirstinchen.com
William Luvaas’ new novel, Welcome To Saint Angel with Anaphora Literary Press was just published on March 15, 2018. He has also published three other novels and two story collections. www.williamluvaas.com
Lone Mørch is an award-winning author, photographer and speaker whose work lives at the intersection of art, body, identity, culture and change, whose latest book is Embody: Intimate Photographic Encounters With Women (Narayana Press, May 2018). Her photos and essays have been featured in Cosmopolitan, People, SF Chronicle, and many others. www.lonemorch.com
Tim J. Myers’ children’s books have won recognition from the New York Times, NPR, and the Smithsonian; he has published three books of adult poetry, as well as a book of nonfiction on fatherhood, and has won a major prize in science fiction. www.TimMyersStorySong.com
Anne Raeff‘s latest book is her second novel, Winter Kept Us Warm (Counterpoint Press, February 2018). Her short story collection, The Jungle Around Us (University of Georgia Press, 2015) won the 2015 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction. www.anneraeff.com
Barbara Ridley’s debut novel When It’s Over (She Writes Press, 2017), historical fiction set in Europe during WWII, is based on her mother’s experience as a refugee from the Holocaust. Her work has been published in Ars Medica, The Copperfield Review and Stoneboat, among others. www.barbararidley.com

Why There Are Words (WTAW) is an award-winning national reading series founded in Sausalito in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, now expanded to six additional major cities in the U.S. with more planned in the future. The series draws a full house of Bay Area residents every second Thursday to Studio 333, located at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965. The series is part of the 501(c)3 non-profit WTAW Press. For more information see the website www.whytherearewords.com or email whytherearewords@gmail.com. Phone: Studio 333 at (415) 331-8272.

MARX NOW: Karl Marx @ 200 - A Reading & Discussion
2018-05-10 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Opening Statement by Jale Yoldas (Goethe Institut San Francisco) with guest appearances by Alan Black, Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, and Richard Walker. Moderator Frederick Young
On the occasion of the 200th Anniversary of Karl Marx’ birthday Goethe-Institut San Francisco and City Lights Booksellers and Publishers will pick up on the tradition of small group study focused on specific texts like Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto. We will concentrate on a few brief passages, interpret and critically analyze them together with guest speakers well versed in the work of Karl Marx and the audience. The event will begin with readings followed by a moderated round table discussion and open up to the audience after.
Karl Marx would have celebrated his 200th birthday in 2018. His criticism of capitalism appears even more pertinent today amidst climate crisis, chronical unemployment and global inequality. A reason to look back and re-read. Marx’s idea that tools and the mode of production of a society determine its political and social structure, and that human thought is formed by the use of tools and moral positions by interests – insights which Marx and Engels encapsulated in the concept of “historical materialism” – have found their way into many individual sciences, into sociology, educational theory, psychology, the study of religion, law, literary theory, engineering and the cognitive sciences, to name only a few. Join us in an evening of discussion examining where we stand in relation to marx and his ideas in contemporary times.

Clemantine Wamariya / The Girl Who Smiled Beads
2018-05-10 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Clemantine Wamariya for her extraordinary debut, The Girl Who Smiled Beads, and her coauthor Elizabeth Weil, who collaborated intimately with Clemantine to write this luminescent book. Clemantine and Elizabeth will be in conversation — please join us!
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when her mother and father began to speak in whispers, when neighbors began to disappear, and when she heard the loud, ugly sounds her brother said were thunder. In 1994, she and her fifteen-year-old sister, Claire, fled the Rwandan massacre and spent the next six years migrating through seven African countries, searching for safety — perpetually hungry, imprisoned and abused, enduring and escaping refugee camps, finding unexpected kindness, witnessing inhuman cruelty. They did not know whether their parents were dead or alive.
When Clemantine was twelve, she and her sister were granted refugee status in the United States; there, in Chicago, their lives diverged. Though their bond remained unbreakable, Claire, who had for so long protected and provided for Clemantine, was a single mother struggling to make ends meet, while Clemantine was taken in by a family who raised her as their own. She seemed to live the American dream: attending private school, taking up cheerleading, and, ultimately, graduating from Yale. Yet the years of being treated as less than human, of going hungry and seeing death, could not be erased. She felt at the same time six years old and one hundred years old.
In The Girl Who Smiled Beads, Clemantine provokes us to look beyond the label of “victim” and recognize the power of the imagination to transcend even the most profound injuries and aftershocks. Devastating yet beautiful, and bracingly original, it is a powerful testament to her commitment to constructing a life on her own terms.
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“Extraordinary and heartrending. Clemantine Wamariya is as fiercely talented as she is courageous.” — Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

“Clemantine Wamariya has written a defining, luminescent memoir that shines a sharp light on the dark forces that roil our age. If you read this book—and once you read the first page, you will not put it down—you will never think about political violence, displacement, or the privileges and responsibilities of citizenship the same way again. Clemantine summons us to follow her fierce and unrelenting example to try to help build the world we wish to see.” —Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell
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Clemantine Wamariya is a storyteller and human rights advocate. Born in Kigali, Rwanda, displaced by conflict, Clemantine migrated throughout seven African countries as a child. At age twelve, she was granted refugee status in the United States and went on to receive a BA in Comparative Literature from Yale University. She lives in San Francisco. Author photo by Julia Zave.
Elizabeth Weil is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, a contributing editor to Outside magazine, and writes frequently for Vogue and other publications. She is the recipient of a New York Press Club Award for her feature reporting, a Lowell Thomas Award for her travel writing, and a GLAAD Award for her coverage of LGBT issues. In addition, her work has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, a James Beard Award, and a Dart Award for coverage of trauma. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two daughters. Author photo by Ana Homonnay.

Kent Harrington
2018-05-10 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Kent Harrington discusses his new novel, Last Ferry Home, with Kevin Hunsanger.

Praise for Kent Harrington

“Strong, hard-edged stuff by a writer in complete control of the narrative. Respected noir veteran Harrington returns with a tough and thoughtful novel about grief and its consequences.” ―Kirkus Reviews

“Delivers quite a punch. The alternating time lines keep readers on their toes and do a stellar job of creating a sense of impending doom. The author also fleshes out several minor characters and story lines with depth and color that add greatly to this noir tale.”―Library Journal
“Dark Ride is a gripping tale that takes you into the dark and violent heart of obsession. It reads like Jim Thompson interpreted by Quentin Tarentino. This one puts a chilling finger down your spine.” –Michael Connelly

About Last Ferry Home

Since his wife’s death at sea, San Francisco Police Detective Michael O’Higgins has been paralyzed by grief and shame – unable to care for their teenaged daughter, who saw her mother swept away, and unable to deal with the daily requirements of his job. Almost a year after his wife’s death, O’Higgins takes a ferry ride as part of his therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder. On the boat, he meets a charming Indian family: successful young husband, two lovely daughters, and a kind, beautiful wife and mother.
O’Higgins has no idea that he will meet this woman again on his first day back after bereavement leave, when he and his partner are called to a Nob Hill mansion to investigate a homicide. The victim is the handsome man O’Higgins met on the ferry, and his wife, Asha Chaundhry, is the obvious suspect.
Asha Chaundhry becomes the center of O’Higgins’ investigation. The victim’s father, a prominent Indian politician and business tycoon, is anxious to keep his son’s death out of the public eye, and to have the investigation resolved as quickly as possible. As O’Higgins digs into the Chaundhrys’ business and political dealings, he becomes convinced of Asha’s innocence, while her father-in-law seeks to isolate her from friends and defenders, even sending her children back to extended family in India. Increasingly desperate, Asha turns to O’Higgins for comfort, in a way that threatens both his recovery and his career.
LAST FERRY HOME is a riveting novel of grief, obsession, recovery and passion from acclaimed author Kent Harrington, as well as a gripping portrait of a man torn apart by loss, but looking for something, anyone, to believe in.

Jennifer Firestone and Tonya M. Foster
2018-05-11 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Jennifer Firestone is the author of five books of poetry and four chapbooks,including Story (Ugly Duckling Presse, forthcoming),Ten, (BlazeVOX [books], forthcoming), Gates & Fields (Belladonna* Collaborative), Swimming Pool(DoubleCross Press), Flashes (Shearsman Books), Holiday (Shearsman Books), Waves (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs), from Flashes and snapshot (Sona Books) and Fanimaly (Dusie Kollektiv). She co-edited (with Dana Teen Lomax) Letters to Poets: Conversations about Poetics, Politics and Community (Saturnalia Books) and is collaborating with Marcella Durand on a book about Feminist Avant-garde Poetics. Firestone has work anthologized in Kindergarde: Avant-Garde Poems, Plays, Songs, & Stories for Children and Building is a Process / Light is an Element: essays and excursions for Myung Mi Kim. She won the 2014 Marsh Hawk Press’ Robert Creeley Memorial Prize. Firestone is an Assistant Professor of Literary Studies at the New School’s Eugene Lang College and is also the Director of their Academic Fellows pedagogy program.
Tonya M. Foster was born in Bloomington, Illinois, and raised in New Orleans. She earned a BA from Newcomb College, Tulane University, and an MFA from the University of Houston. Foster is the author of the poetry collection A Swarm of Bees in High Court (Belladonna*, 2015) and co-edited the book Third Mind: Creative Writing through Visual Art (2002). Her work has appeared in Callaloo, MiPoesias, Western Humanities Review, the Hat, and elsewhere. In a review, Patricia Spears Jones says, “Foster’ s imaginative work glories in language’s ambiguities, discords, emotions and logic—she allows that imaginative thrall to explore race and gender and political dysfunction.”
Foster has received fellowships from New York Foundation for the Arts, the Macdowell Colony, the Ford Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, and the Graduate Center, CUNY, where she is a PhD candidate. She has taught at Bard College, Queens College CUNY, Baruch College CUNY, and she currently is an assistant professor at California College of the Arts.

Berkeley Poetry Review Issue 48 Release Party
2018-05-11 18:00 - 20:30 UTC | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Berkeley Poetry Review will be holding a release party for issue 48 of our annual poetry journal. The party will be hosted by E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore @ 410 13th st, Oakland, near Broadway, @ 6pm and will feature readings by a few of the poets to be published in our journal, Lo Ferris, Claire Marie Stnacek, and Daniel Benjamin. Snacks and beverages will be included & we hope to see you there!
Readers:
Claire Marie Stancek
Bio: Originally from outside Toronto, Ontario, Claire Marie Stancek now lives in Berkeley, California. She is the author of MOUTHS (Noemi, 2017), and with Lyn Hejinian and Jane Gregory, she edits Nion Editions. These poems are taken from her second book of poetry, Oil Spell, which is forthcoming from Omnidawn in spring 2018.
Lo Ferris
Bio: Lo Ferris is a poet and translator living in the East Bay. Their work can also be found in Fence, Bombay Gin, and The Atlas Review.
Daniel Benjamin
Bio: Daniel Benjamin is a PhD candidate in English and Critical Theory at UC Berkeley, researching minoritarian forms of universality in lyric poetry. With Eric Sneathen, he is the co-editor of The Bigness of Things: New Narrative and Visual Culture (Wolfman Books, 2017); with Claire Marie Stancek, he is the co-editor of Active Aesthetics: Contemporary Australian Poetry (Tuumba / Giramondo, 2016).

Source:: https://www.facebook.com/events/2122238844723108/

After Hours: 7th Annual Poetry World Series
2018-05-11 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Mill Valley Public Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley , CA, 94941, United States
Friday, May 11th – 7:00pm
Main Reading Room
Daniel Handler returns to emcee as baseball and poetry collide to create a fabulous and wacky literary event. Two teams of illustrious poets duke it out using words to swing for the fences. This boisterous slugfest of wordplay, repartee, and quips, mixed with ballpark music, beer and popcorn, makes for a great outing. You don’t even have to like poetry or baseball to enjoy this animated and quirky program.
Featured Poets:
Tongo Eisen-Martin, Kai Carlson-Wee, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, Arisa White, Maw Shein Win, and Kathleen Winter
For adults and high school students only. Pregame refreshments starting at 6:30pm for registered guests. Program starts at 7:00pm.
Registration is strongly recommended. Click here to register.
Add to my:iCal/Outlook
When:Friday, May 11, 2018
Time:7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where:Mill Valley Public Library – Main Reading Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, California, 94941
Event Type:Library, Teens
Contact:(415) 389-4292

Reading - Eckes, Seidenberg, Spencer Smith
2018-05-11 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Eckes, Seidenberg, and Spencer Smith

Brenda Hillman and giovanni singleton
2018-05-12 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Pt. Reyes Books, 11315 CA-1, Pt. Reyes Station, CA, 94956, United States
Brenda Hillman and Giovanni Singleton discuss recent work and the role poets can play as activists.
About the poets:
Brenda Hillman is an activist, writer, editor, and teacher. She has published nine collections of poetry, all from Wesleyan University Press, including Practical Water, for which she won the Los Angeles Times Book Award for Poetry. Hillman serves on the faculty of Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, California, as the Olivia Filippi professor of poetry.
giovanni singleton is a poet, teacher, and founding editor of nocturnes (re)view of the literary arts, a journal dedicated to the work of artists and writers of the African Diaspora and other contested spaces.

5th Annual Ecopoetry Festival at the John Muir House
2018-05-12 17:00 - 20:00 UTC | John Muir House, 4202 Alhambra Avenue, Martinez, CA, CA, 94553, United States
The Fifth Annual Ecopoetry Festival will feature two poet laureates of Central Valley
cities, along with special guests. Indigo Moor, current laureate of Sacramento, and
Gillian Wegener, former laureate of Modesto, will read along with Alhambra students,
and other poets who have a long personal association with Martinez. The theme will be
the evolution of ecological stewardship and poetry’s contribution to it. To root that
evolution, we will also express the essence of place, specifically Martinez, where John
Muir settled as an adult.
WHERE: The John Muir National Historic Site, 4202 Alhambra Avenue, Martinez, CA
WHEN: Saturday, May 12th, 5-8 PM
COST: Free, but reservations required
Contact: Eliot Schain or James McDonald
Phone: 925-228- 8860, ext. 6431 (the John Muir House)
Email: eschain@martinez.k12.ca.us (Alhambra High School)

Book Release II: The Edge of Fruitvale by Rohan DaCosta
2018-05-12 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | The Rite Spot Cafe, 2099 Folsom Street, San Francisco, 94110, United States
Join us at The Rite Spot, a cozy Mission District dive in San Francisco that has been around for 60 years, as we celebrate the release of Rohan DaCosta‘s The Edge of Fruitvale.
With readings by Tongo Eisen-Martin, Josiahluis Alderete, Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, TBD, and the star of the evening, Rohan DaCosta, and music by Azuah, it’ll be a night in the City to remember. Art work by TBD (for sale) will adorn the walls, and the artist will speak to their work briefly at the outset of the event.
Donations will be collected for the performers and the press (suggested $10-20 with no one turned away for lack of funds), and books will be available for sale and signature at the end of the event.
Hope to see you there!
