InsideStoryTime: Persist
2018-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Coming up: InsideStorytime SWAY at Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St, Oakland, on Thursday May 17th, 7-9 pm, will feature, Kaitlin Solimine (Empire of Glass), Townsend Walker (3 Women 4 Towns 5 Bodies), Colette Phair (In Your Shadow), and Juba Kalamka.

Poetry Readings @ Willow Glen Library Featuring Mighty Mike McGee
2018-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 | Willow Glen Library, 1157 Minnesota Ave, San Jose , CA, 95125, United States
Willow Glen Library
1157 Minnesota Avenue, San José, CA, 95125
(408) 808-3045 or (408) 266-1361
Free and open to the public.
Mike brings out a mixture of spoken word and humor to his performances. His award marks a broadening of Poetry Center San Jose’s offerings to include younger people. Mike McGee is the first slam poet to win both the American National Poetry Slam Individual Grand Championship (2003) and the Individual World Poetry Slam Championship (2006). His poetry publications include “The Graveyard Shift,” From Page to the Stage; “Open Letter to Neil Armstrong,” Spoken Revolution Redux; and In Search of Midnight: A Collection of Poems by Mike McGee. As a poet, he has toured throughout the U.S., Canada and Europe. He has performed at the University of Paris, on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, on CBC Radio & Television, and is a regular on NPR’s Snap Judgment. McGee is the fifth and current Santa Clara County Poet Laureate.
upcoming featuresL
June 21: Lisa Rosenberg
September 20: David Eisenbach
October 18: David Denny

Todd Robert Petersen presents IT NEEDS TO LOOK LIKE WE TRIED
2018-05-17 19:00 - 21:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
Thursday, May 17
7pm

EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Todd Robert Petersen to discuss his novel, It Needs to Look Like We Tried, on Tuesday, May 17th at 7pm.
“Todd Robert Petersen is crazy-talented, and the wild, weird, hilarious stories of It Needs to Look Like We Tried are just what’s called for in these bizarre, frightening times.” — Richard Russo, author of Trajectory
Everyone has a dream, an idea, a goal. But what happens when those desires are thwarted, when dreams and goals fall apart? In It Needs to Look Like We Tried, Todd Robert Petersen explores the ways in which our failures work on the lives of others, weaving an intricate web of interconnected stories.
A fastidious man takes a detour on the way to his father’s wedding and kicks off a series of events that ricochets from the bride to her real estate clients; to a crazed former homeowner and his sister-in-law’s reality TV lover; to a hoarding family whose lives are wrecked by their appearance on the second-rate show. Their daughter decides to escape the gravity of her tiny town with the help of her boyfriend who has a not-quite-legal plan to scrape together enough money to fund their departure.
On their way across the country, these star-crossed lovers encounter our fastidious man, and the Rube-Goldberg machine of life continues. Their fling has petered out, and they are driving home, whatever home is left after walking away from everything they abandoned a month before.
About the Author
Todd Robert Petersen’s work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Hobart, and the Wisconsin Review, and he has published two books with a small regional press. He is currently writing a dark comedy about Native American antiquities theft set in the desert Southwest.

Event date:

Thursday, May 17, 2018 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Perfectly Queer Plus East Bay Book Reading "Queer Fiction Authors"
2018-05-17 19:30 - 20:30 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Visiting author James Han Mattson (The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves) reads with local authors Wayne Goodman, Lori Ostlund, and Barbara Ridley at a Perfectly Queer Plus East Bay book reading, Thursday, May 17, 7:30pm to 8:30pm at Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave., Berkeley. An author signing follows the readings. Free admission, free refreshments. Door prizes at 7:30!
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
James Han Mattson was born in Seoul, Korea and raised in North Dakota. A Michener-Copernicus Fellowship recipient and graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has taught at the University of Iowa, the University of Cape Town, the University of Maryland, the George Washington University, and the University of California – Berkeley. His first novel The Lost Prayers of Ricky Graves was an Amazon Literature and Fiction Pick, an Amazon Best Book of the Month, a Publishers Lunch Bookseller Pick, a Kindle First Pick, a New York Post Required Reading, and was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition with Scott Simon. He currently lives in Maryland.
Wayne Goodman has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area most of his life (with too many cats). He and his fiancé Rick May host Perfectly Queer, a reading series which holds monthly events in San Francisco and Oakland. Goodman also hosts Queer Words, a quarterly in-conversation series. His books include Better Angels, Britain’s Glory, Fortune’s Lot, The Last Great Hope, The Seed of Immortality, and Vanya Says Go! When not writing, he enjoys playing Gilded Age parlor music on the piano, with an emphasis on women, Gay, and Black composers.
Lori Ostlund’s story collection The Bigness of the World won the Flannery O’Connor Award, the California Book Award for First Fiction, the Edmund White Debut Fiction Award, and was a Lambda Finalist. Stories from it appeared in the Best American Short Stories and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. Her second book, After the Parade (Scribner, 2015), was a Barnes & Noble Discover pick and a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and the Ferro-Grumley Award. She is a teacher and lives in San Francisco with her wife and cats, though she spent her formative years in Minnesota, cat-less.
Barbara Ridley was born in England but has lived in California for over 35 years. After a successful career as a nurse practitioner, she is now focused on creative writing. Her work has appeared in journals such as Writers Workshop Review, Ars Medica, The Copperfield Review, Blood and Thunder, and Stoneboat. Her debut novel When It’s Over (She Writes Press, 2017) is set in Europe during World War Two and is based on her mother’s story as a Holocaust refugee. Barbara can be followed at www.barbararidley.com

Dorianne Laux + Joshua Mensch
2018-05-17 19:30 - 21:00 | Falkirk Cultural Center, 1408 Mission Ave, San Rafael , CA, 94901, United States
Dorianne Laux‘s most recent collections are The Book of Men, winner of the Paterson Poetry Prize and Facts about the Moon, winner of the Oregon Book Award.

Laux is also author of Awake, What We Carry, and Smoke from BOA Editions. Only As The Day Is Long, her new and selected poems, is forthcoming from W.W. Norton.
She teaches poetry in the MFA Program at North Carolina State University and is founding faculty at Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA Program.

Joshua Mensch is a poet, visual artist, and a founding editor of the online literary journal B O D Y. His poetry has appeared in several magazines, including Plume, Brick, The Collagist, and Smartish Pace. His first book of poetry, BECAUSE, a lyric memoir, will be published by W. W. Norton in 2018. He lives in Prague, Czech Republic.

Glori Simmons and Dickson Lam
2018-05-17 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Glori Simmons and Dickson Lam read from their latest works from Autumn House Press
About Carry You

In Carry You, a Sunni museum official accidentally hits a Shiite child with her car. A group of young GIs sneak into the women’s quarters wearing night vision goggles. A father makes a daily ritual of searching the streets of war-torn Baghdad for his missing daughter. An injured vet finally mails a letter he found in a dying woman’s pocket. Moving between the Khalil family in Iraq and Clark, an American soldier from Deer Park, Washington, the eleven stories in Carry You reveal the redeeming powers of love and family in a time of war.

About Glori Simmons
Glori Simmons is an award-winning writer whose books include Graft: poems (Truman State University Press, 2002), Suffering Fools: stories (Spokane Prize, Willow Springs Books, 2017), and Carry You: stories (Fiction Prize, Autumn House Press, 2018). She lives in Oakland and directs the Thacher Gallery at the University of San Francisco.

About Paper Sons

Set in a public housing project in San Francisco, Lam’s memoir explores his transformation from a teenage graffiti writer to a high school teacher working with troubled youth while navigating the secret violence in his immigrant’s family’s past.

About Dickson Lam

Dickson Lam’s work has appeared in StoryQuarterly The Kenyon Review Online, Hyphen Magazine, The Normal School, PANK, The Good Men Project, The Rumpus, and Kartika Review. He is a VONA alum and has been a resident fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. He holds MFA degrees in creative writing from the University of Houston and Rutgers-Newark. Lam is an Assistant Professor of English at Contra Costa College.

Ellen Forney / Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life
2018-05-17 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Ellen Forney for Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life, the anticipated companion volume to her bestselling graphic memoir Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me, which she presented at Booksmith. Please join us in welcoming Ellen back to San Francisco!
Whereas Marbles was a memoir about her bipolar disorder, Rock Steady turns the focus outward, offering a self-help guide of tips, tricks, and tools by someone who has been through it all and come through stronger for it.
With Marbles, Forney helped de-stigmatize mood disorders with her candid presentation of her struggle to find mental stability while retaining her passion and creativity. This is the jumping off point for her new book, Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life. Personal stories and solid advice from Forney on how to overcome the hassle of meds, recognize red flags, and other tools from her own experience of 14 years of stability — all in comics form. Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life invites readers into Ellen’s home, head, and Peanuts pill box.

“Ellen Forney is an inspiration to me as an artist and as a human being! Let her drawings springboard you into self-acceptance!” — Maria Bamford, Lady Dynamite

Ellen Forney lives in Seattle, WA, with her partner. She was the 2012 recipient of The Stranger Genius Award for Literature as well as the winner of the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis 2013 Gradiva Award.

RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Rock Steady and/or Marbles order below and put your request in the comments field.

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

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

Poetry Flash presents Melissa Stein and C. Dale Young
2018-05-17 19:30 - 21:00 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Melissa Stein’s new book of poems is Terrible Blooms. The New York Times says, “Ms. Stein reminds us that there is no honey—rough, or otherwise—without the sting.” Her first book of poems, Rough Honey, won the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She’s received fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She’s a freelance editor in San Francisco.
C. Dale Young’s new novel-in-stories, The Affliction, is his first collection of fiction. Charles Baxter says, “The linked stories in C. Dale Young’s The Affliction send us off to a magical location, where the fantastical can seem both miraculous and ordinary. These tales treat life-and-death matters with a beautifully eloquent fervor, and, like the stories of Julio Cortázar, they remind us off how varied and unpredictable short stories, like the world itself, can be.” He’s published four collections of poetry, most recently The Halo, and his poetry has been anthologized several times in Best American Poetry. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. He practices full-time as a medical doctor.

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: POETRY, PROSE & EVERYTHING GOES
2018-05-17 19:30 - 22:30 | The Lost Church, 65 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
YOU’RE GOING TO DIE: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes…
is an open mic event,
a communal offering for us to explore the conversation of death & dying,
to embrace our losses & mortality,
to grieve, bereave & honor those we’ve lost & love…
while all the while making room for simply being ALIVE.
Sign-ups will be the night of & the list fills up quickly, so if you want to perform, you’d better get there early…
If you’re going to perform, keep it under 5 MINUTES. That’s right: 5 MINUTES. WE WILL TIME YOU. And we will hug you when we have to stop you [just to make it easier on you (or harder – depending on your propensity for intimacy)].
Poetry, prose, music, dancing, comedy, drama, happy, sad, & on & on & on… Remember: EVERYTHING GOES… so do whatever you want.
You don’t have to perform anything; the audience is as essential as the performers.
Please don’t perform anything with a setup that takes much more time than the time it takes for you to walk onstage. Honestly, plugging things in is endlessly boring. If you need to borrow an instrument, figure it out before you’re called to the stage.
IMPORTANT ::: DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO SERIOUSLY. Come and have fun. The end. Remember. Someday, we won’t exist and neither will the English language. If you choose to take yourself seriously, then take yourself so seriously that it’s stupid. Ridiculousness is encouraged.
You’re Going to Die. No. Really. You are.

Bawdy Storytelling's 'F*CK BUDDIES'
2018-05-17 20:00 - 22:30 | Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Thursday, May 17th, 2018
at the Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco CA
Remember: Bang-O & Games at 7 PM, Stories at 8 PM
Want a sample? Listen to our podcast at
http://bit.ly/bawdypodcast
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
The Bawdy Storytelling is a live Storytelling series – and yeah, WE GO THERE.
The evening of Stories, Songs & Sex Toys includes:
❤ Hosted by Sexual Folklorist & Storyteller Dixie De La Tour
❤ ‘Watt the Safeword’s host Amp the (Human) Pup
❤ Pitch your story to Dixie@BawdyStorytelling.com by 5/6
❤ Custom Bawdy Songs by the brilliant Rachel Lark
❤ Play Bang-O, Bawdy’s beloved icebreaker
❤ Take home goodies, just for talking to sexy strangers
❤ You could walk off with the gift bag from Kink Store
❤ WIN the Grand Prize from Good Vibrations
❤ Lube Giveaways from UberLube & Good Clean Love
❤ Condom Giveaways from Lucky Bloke
❤ Sexy cocktails to help you Libate #SchlongIslandIcedTea
About Bawdy Storytelling:
Bawdy Storytelling – the Original Sex + Storytelling series – features Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits Live Onstage; think of us as a One Night Stand with the Moth & Savage Love. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of Authors, Porn Stars, Sex Educators, Comics & More, along with Regular Joes just like you who submitted their stories online and were chosen for their panache and sense of (Mis)Adventure.
Bawdy Storytelling features tales of Carnal Wins & Epic Fails with No Scripts, No Nets, and No Holds Barred. These folks aren’t reading from cue cards: this is honest-to-badness story time with true sexcapades and poignant, transformational tales at each and every show. Join Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour & hand-picked Rockstars as they share their own stories of Love, Lust, and making you feel funny in your bathing suit area. Hey, you may even go home with a few new tricks for your boudoir arsenal!
A REVIEW of Bawdy Storytelling : “Stories are powerful. No other medium has the ability to move, inspire, or change us quite like a well-crafted narrative. Never has this been more true than the world of sex, where fear, shame, and misinformation abound. This is all a high-minded and roundabout way of telling you to check out Thursday’s edition of Bawdy Storytelling, a rousing and arousing night of true sex stories that promises to make you laugh, make you think, and make you hard … pressed to find a more interesting thing to do on a Thursday night.” – SF Weekly

Bookworks :: An Artist's Book Fair
2018-05-18 17:30 - 20:00 | San Francisco Center for the Book, 375 Rhode Island St., San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
About the Bookworks :: An Artist’s Book Fair
Bookworks at San Francisco Center for the Book is a great place to start your artist’s book collection, to meet fantastic book artists, and spend time with friends over cocktails and light hors d’oeuvres. The vision of Bookworks is to encourage the beginning artist’s book collector, support local book artists (especially in the early stages of their career), and provide a social event for the community.

Friday Night Poetry: w/ Carmen Giménez Smith & MK Chavez
2018-05-18 19:00 - 20:30 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
Friday, May 18
7:00pm

East Bay Booksellers is excited to host a fantastic Friday night of contemporary poetry, featuring Carmen Giménez Smith and MK Chavez, on May 18th at 7pm.
Carmen Giménez Smith
“In the body, through the lyric, and twitching with every sense of the word ‘nerve, ‘ [Cruel Futures] book sings a mongrel nation into and across its cruel futures. Like Neruda in his Plenos Poderes/Full Powers, Giménez Smith has all the mastery she needs to cast a cold eye on her positioning, and ours. In this way Cruel Futures is an autobiography that won’t stay in its genre or premise, caring less to author a self than to follow turns of magic in words that might soothe our ‘collisions with the living.'”–Farid Matuk
A Latina feminist State of the Union address at the intersection of pop culture and interiority.
Cruel Futures is a witchy confessional and wildly imagistic volume that examines subjects as divergent as Alzheimers, Medusa, mumblecore, and mental illness in sharp-witted, taut poems dense with song. Chronicling life on an endangered planet, in a country on the precipice of profound change compelled by a media machine that produces our realities, the book is a high-energy analysis of popular culture, as well as an exploration of the many social roles that women occupy as mother, daughter, lover, and the resulting struggle to maintain personhood–all in a late capitalist America.
Carmen Giménez Smith is the author of four poetry collections, including Milk and Filth, a finalist for the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. She was awarded an American Book Award for her memoir Bring Down the Little Birds (2010) and the Juniper Prize for Poetry for Goodbye, Flicker (2012). She also co-edited Angels of the Americlypse: New Latin@ Writing (2014), an anthology of contemporary Latinx writing. Be Recorderwill be published by Graywolf Press in 2019. She now serves on the planning committee for CantoMundo and on the board of RASA, which sponsors the Thinking Its Presence conference on race and art. She serves as the publisher of Noemi Press. She is a professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech and the poetry editor for The Nation.
* * *
MK Chavez
“MK Chavez wields a torrential consciousness that exists both as racing music and a suspended realm of human astronomy. Memorials share food with births. Freedom fighters and artists must be one. Patriarchy must answer for its brutalization and farce. Sketches of loves expand the boundaries of poetry. Reading her poetry, I feel invincible. Dear Animal, is the incantation before justice, and truly our return.” – Tongo Eisen-Martin, author ofsomeone’s dead already
MK Chavez will be reading from their most recent collection, Dear Animal, which is a re-imagination of the Linnaean taxonomy from a feminist perspective. This collection is a love letter to the resilient feral female and an exploration of the myriad Animalia that dwell in the margins.
Chavez is co-founder/co-curator of the Berkeley-based monthly reading series Lyrics & Dirges, and the co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She believes in literary confrontation and its capacity to obliterate all forms of oppression. Recent and upcoming work can be found in Story Magazine, Aspasiology, and Jam Tarts Literary Magazine.

Event date:

Friday, May 18, 2018 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

THERE
2018-05-18 19:00 - 21:00 | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
NEXT THERE: THERE 23 – Friday, May 18, 2018, with East Bay novelist Cameron MacKenzie, award-winning local writer Tamara Schuyler, local novelist Yang Huang,and musical guest TBA.
THERE (THe Eastbay Reading Extravaganza) is a reading series showcasing emerging and established writers from Oakland and Berkeley, with the occasional San Franciscan. Doug hosts it on the third Friday of each month at Octopus Literary Salon in Uptown Oakland. It also features a live original musical performance by a local musical artist at “halftime” of each month’s reading, and Doug’s famous original LitQuiz literary trivia contest. It’s from 7:00-9:00pm. THERE has been putting the there back in Oakland since 2015!
THERE will take its annual summer break from June-August and return in September!

‘NEARING THE EXIT’: POEMS BY HERBERT GOLD
2018-05-18 19:00 - 21:00 | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Novelist, memoirist, essayist, Herbert Gold returns to his earliest form of literary expression, poetry—here in a publishing first, Nearing the Exit. In these poems 94-year-old Gold visits his past and future, with a tip of the hat to the theme of his recent book Still Alive: A Temporary Condition(2008, republished as Not Dead Yet, 2011).
Includes an interview with Herb by publisher Les Gottesman at Omèrta Press.

Herbert Gold began writing poetry in high school in Cleveland in the 1930s. Writing propelled him to New York City after several of his poems had been accepted by New York literary magazines. He studied philosophy at Columbia University (interrupted by 3 years in “downtown World War II,” as he calls it) and became involved with the burgeoning Beat Generation, which resulted in a lifelong friendship with Allen Ginsberg. He won a Fulbright to Paris, where he joined a literary scene around Saul Bellow. Gold recalls, “Somehow I got to writing prose, confining my poetry to folders which will in due course be excavated by my children. Along the way, I’ve published approximately 20 novels and collections of stories (who’s counting?) and maybe 6 or 8 nonfiction books (I’m not a mathematician). I’ve temporarily taught at Harvard, Cornell, Stanford, UC-Berkeley, and UC-Davis, but didn’t want to depart San Francisco. I’ve had 2 wives and 5 children Isn’t that enough bio? There could be more…” At age 94, Gold returns to poetry in these new poems, lyrical but tough reflections on his loves, joys, and losses.

Laura Catherine Brown
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Laura Catherine Brown dicusses her new novel, Made By Mary.

About Made By Mary

When Mary and Ann agree to a surrogacy partnership everything goes awry. Ann, a pre-school teacher, is desperate for the children she physically can’t have. Mary, a 50-year-old pagan jeweler, hopes to make amends for years of maternal neglect. Together, they plunge into the expensive, morally complex world of reproductive technology and an intimacy neither they, nor Ann’s husband, Joel, is prepared for. Financially hard-pressed, Joel goes behind Ann’s back and agrees to help Mary grow a marijuana crop in her attic. Ann struggles with the rigors and enforced togetherness of the reproductive regime. And Mary’s delight in being a “bountiful earth mother” is offset by the physical ordeal of bearing multiple fetuses. The stakes escalate as the police start sniffing around the grow house, a pagan ritual goes tragically awry, and the pregnancy becomes more perilous, forcing Ann, Joel, and Mary to confront the potentially calamitous consequences of pursuing their deepest desires. Sharp and audacious, Made by Mary is a black comedy using magic realism to blow up myths about women, mothers, and motherhood, where even the most extreme situations are rendered with candor, intelligence, and empathy.

Molly Crabapple / Brothers of the Gun
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Molly Crabapple for Brothers of the Gun: A Memoir of the Syrian War, which she illustrated and co-authored with Marwan Hisham. Please join us!
A bracingly immediate memoir by a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, Brothers of the Gun is an intimate lens on the century’s bloodiest conflict and a profound meditation on kinship, home, and freedom.
In 2011, Marwan Hisham and his two friends — fellow working-class college students Nael and Tareq — joined the first protests of the Arab Spring in Syria, in response to a recent massacre. Arm-in-arm they marched, poured Coca-Cola into one another’s eyes to blunt the effects of tear gas, ran from the security forces, and cursed the country’s president, Bashar al-Assad. It was ecstasy. A long-bottled revolution was finally erupting, and freedom from a brutal dictator seemed, at last, imminent. Five years later, the three young friends were scattered: one now an Islamist revolutionary, another dead at the hands of government soldiers, and the last, Marwan, now a journalist in Turkish exile, trying to find a way back to a homeland reduced to rubble.
Brothers of the Gun is the story of a young man coming of age during the Syrian war, from its inception to the present. Marwan watched from the rooftops as regime warplanes bombed soldiers; as revolutionary activist groups, for a few dreamy days, spray-painted hope on Raqqa; as his friends died or threw in their lot with Islamist fighters. He became a journalist by courageously tweeting out news from a city under siege by ISIS, the Russians, and the Americans all at once. He watched the country that ran through his veins — the country that held his hopes, dreams, and fears — be destroyed in front of him, and eventually joined the relentless stream of refugees risking their lives to escape.
Illustrated with more than eighty ink drawings by Molly Crabapple that bring to life the beauty and chaos, Brothers of the Gun offers a ground-level reflection on the Syrian revolution—and how it bled into international catastrophe and global war. This is a story of pragmatism and idealism, impossible violence and repression, and, even in the midst of war, profound acts of courage, creativity, and hope.

“This powerful memoir, illuminated with Molly Crabapple’s extraordinary art, provides a rare lens through which we can see a region in deadly conflict, a struggle for peace, and a human tragedy in desperate need of attention. It is a compelling, sobering, and necessary book.”— Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy
“From the anarchy, torment, and despair of the Syrian war, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple have drawn a book of startling emotional power and intellectual depth. Many books will be written on the war’s exhaustive devastation of bodies and souls, and the defiant resistance of many trapped men and women, but the Mahabharata of the Levant has already found its wisest chroniclers.”— Pankaj Mishra, author of Age of Anger and From the Ruins of Empire

“A revelatory and necessary read on one of the most destructive wars of our time . . . In great personal detail, Marwan Hisham and Molly Crabapple poignantly capture the tumultuous life in Syria before, after, and during the war—from inside one young man’s consciousness.”— Angela Davis
“Marwan Hisham took part in the uprising against Bashar al-Assad and then did the unthinkable—wrote journalism from inside ISIS territory, risking his life so that the world might know the truth. He gives us an unforgettable portrait of what it feels like to resist a tyrannical dictator, live under ISIS occupation, brave bombs falling from the sky, and somehow survive with your humanity intact. Punctuated by Molly Crabapple’s beautiful, haunting art, this heart-rending memoir is essential reading to understand one of the greatest catastrophes of our time.”— Anand Gopal, author of No Good Men Among the Living

Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer in New York. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, was published by HarperCollins in 2015. Brothers of the Gun, her illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, will be published by One World/Penguin Random House in May 2018. Her reportage has been published in the New York Times, New York Review of Books, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, VICE, and elsewhere. She has been the recipient of a Yale Poynter Fellowship, a Front Page Award, and a Gold Rush Award, and shortlisted for a Frontline Print Journalism Award. She is often asked to discuss her work chronicling the conflicts of the 21st Century, and has appeared on All In with Chris Hayes, Amanpour, NPR, BBC News, PRI, and more. The New Yorker described her 2017 mural “The Bore of Babylon” as “a terrifying amalgam of Hieronymus Bosch, Honoré Daumier, and Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Her art is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Rubin Museum of Art and the New York Historical Society.

RSVP appreciated but not required. If you cannot attend this event but would like to request a signed copy of Brothers of the Gun, 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, at 1727 Haight.

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

Laura Catherine Brown and Maw Shein Win
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Laura Catherine Brown and Maw Shein Win read from their latest works, Made By Mary and Invisible Gifts.
About Made By Mary

When Mary and Ann agree to a surrogacy partnership everything goes awry. Ann, a pre-school teacher, is desperate for the children she physically can’t have. Mary, a 50-year-old pagan jeweler, hopes to make amends for years of maternal neglect. Together, they plunge into the expensive, morally complex world of reproductive technology and an intimacy neither they, nor Ann’s husband, Joel, is prepared for. Financially hard-pressed, Joel goes behind Ann’s back and agrees to help Mary grow a marijuana crop in her attic. Ann struggles with the rigors and enforced togetherness of the reproductive regime. And Mary’s delight in being a “bountiful earth mother” is offset by the physical ordeal of bearing multiple fetuses. The stakes escalate as the police start sniffing around the grow house, a pagan ritual goes tragically awry, and the pregnancy becomes more perilous, forcing Ann, Joel, and Mary to confront the potentially calamitous consequences of pursuing their deepest desires. Sharp and audacious, Made by Mary is a black comedy using magic realism to blow up myths about women, mothers, and motherhood, where even the most extreme situations are rendered with candor, intelligence, and empathy.

About Invisible Gifts

In her first full-length collection of poems, Win depicts a colorful world imbued with unexpected paradoxes: nature is both comforting and savagely unnerving; love is permanent and fleeting; the accuracy and flaws of memory abound. Her experiences with illness and recovery intertwine with her identity as a Burmese American daughter of immigrant doctors, flowing in poems like “Hands” My father’s hands, frail birds, shaking wings. / In Burmese, “win” means bright. / Hands that stitched skin together and brought back life. Win’s unique perspective and artful language offer readers insight into how the heart can bend and mend without breaking.

David Ulrich
2018-05-18 19:30 - 21:30 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
David Ulrich

presents Zen Camera: Creative Awakening with a Daily Practice of Photography, an unprecedented photography practice that guides you to the creativity at your our fingertips, calling for nothing more than your vision and any camera, even the one embedded in your phone.
“Zen Camera is to photographers what The Artist’s Way is to writers. This master class in creativity deserves a place in your home.”–Create with Joy
To reserve your seat, purchase a copy of Zen Camera by speaking to a bookseller or ordering from our website.

Friday, May 18, 2018 – 7:30pm

David Ulrich draws on the principles of Zen practice as well as forty years of teaching photography to offer six profound lessons for developing your self-expression. Doing for photography what The Artist’s Way and Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain did for their respective crafts, Zen Camera encourages you to build a visual journaling practice called your Daily Record in which photography can become a path of self-discovery. Beautifully illustrated with 83 photographs, its insights into the nature of seeing, art, and personal growth allow you to create photographs that are beautiful, meaningful, and uniquely your own.
You’ll ultimately learn to change the way you interact with technology–transforming it into a way to uncover your innate power of attention and mindfulness, to see creatively, and to live authentically.

David Ulrich is a professor and co-director of Pacific New Media Foundation in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He teaches frequent classes and workshops, and is an active photographer and writer whose work has been published in numerous books and journals including Aperture, Manoa, and Sierra Club publications. Ulrich’s photographs have been exhibited internationally in more than 75 one-person and group exhibitions. He blogs about creativity and consciousness at www.theslenderthread.org, and is a consulting editor for Parabola magazine. Visit his website at: www.creativeguide.com.

AfroSurreal Writers Monthly Meeting
2018-05-19 10:00 - 12:00 | AfroSurreal Writers Workshop, Oakland, CA, United States
Folks, do the grown person thing and RSVP yes only if you can confirm your attendance so we can plan accordingly. We need to know how much food, chairs, etc to bring.
Those who RSVP yes will receive the venue address via messenger. Thank you!
This is the monthly (every 3rd Saturday) meeting of the AfroSurreal Writers Workshop in Oakland.
We welcome new members so please share with your networks even if you aren’t able to join this month.
This group was “HOTLISTED” by the Writers Guild of America for Experimental Writing and we have exciting events planned for the coming year!
Join us to be in like-minded community with artists of all genres (literary, podcasting, digital storytelling, film, comics, theater, photography, sculpture, trans-media, singing, dancing, audio, video, spoken word…) who creatively express with persepectives rooted and centered in the African diaspora and all communities of color.
Our current members’ work focuses on AfroSurreal, AfroFuturist, horror, fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction, memoir, absurd, weird, or uncategorical art forms.

Mitali Perkins
2018-05-19 13:00 - 14:30 | San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Get up close and personal with Mitali Perkins, author of ten novels for young readers. Her latest book, You Bring the Distant Near, is an unforgettable story that spans decades and continents as it moves among three generations of Indian women, some new immigrants to the U.S., all struggling to bridge cultures. Come and discover why Mitali has been honored by independent booksellers across the country as a “Most Engaging Author.” A book-signing session will follow the presentation. Join us!
For more information about the author, visit www.mitaliperkins.com.
This is a Reading, Writing & Poetry program from SFPL. We love reading/sharing/creating words.

Bikes to Books Five-Year Anniversary Spring Ride
2018-05-19 13:00 - 16:00 | Jack London Street, Jack London Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, United States
Celebrate five years of Bikes to Books with our annual spring ride! Combining San Francisco history, art, literature, cycling, and urban exploration, Bikes to Books began as an homage to the 1988 street-naming project spearheaded by City Lights founder and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in which 12 San Francisco streets were renamed for famous artists and authors who had once made San Francisco their home. The resulting 7.1-mile tour is a diverting and unique way to celebrate both the literary and the adventurous spirit of San Francisco. Learn about the authors and neighborhoods that made San Francisco a known literary hub, from South Park to North Beach, Jack London to Jack Kerouac, all from the comfort of your own bicycle seat!

Bring bikes with gears, snacks, and enthusiasm.

This is an urban ride of moderate difficulty, recommended for riders 16 years of age and older.

Meet at 12:45 p.m. at Jack London Alley
(Northside of South Park in San Francisco)
Ride will commence at 1:00 p.m. sharp
Ride will end at approximately 4:00 p.m. in North Beach
(outside City Lights Books)

Caroline Paul / You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World
2018-05-19 16:30 - 18:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts a launch party for Caroline Paul‘s new book, You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World. Bring the family and join us for fun, food, and books!
Kids all over the world are making a difference. With protests, marches, town halls, and speeches, kids have proven that they are paying attention. They’re not going to let their age be a reason to stay quiet.
It’s time for the youngest generation to show what they can do.
To guide them, New York Times bestselling author of The Gutsy Girl Caroline Paul has written an inspiring, instructional, and fun guide for kid activists: The Gutsy Girl, You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World.
This guide features change-maker tips as well as anecdotes of young activists around the globe and throughout history. The suggested activist tactics covered range from tweaking everyday habits—like the sisters who call themselves the Plastic Patrol and convinced their family to stop using grocery bags and straws—to stretching to achieve something extraordinary—like the teen who used food waste to invent a water purification system.
Told in Caroline’s trademark breezy voice and including delightful illustrations from Lauren Tamaki, as well as tons of DIY activities, this is the ultimate practical—and fun!—manual for anyone looking to change the world.

Caroline Paul is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Gutsy Girl: Escapades for Your Life of Epic Adventure as well as the adult titles Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology; East Wind, Rain; and Fighting Fire. She lives in San Francisco, California.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

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

Bar opens at 4, event begins at 4:30pm.

Spring Poetry & Place | El Cerrito
2018-05-20 13:30 - 17:00 | El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane, El Cerrito, CA, 94530, United States
Spring Poetry & Place | El Cerrito
Please join us on Sunday, May 20 from 1:30 – 5 pm at the El Cerrito Community Center for our Spring Poetry & Place celebration!
This event will feature readings by Rafael Jesús González, poet laureate of Berkeley, Indigo Moor, poet laureate of Sacramento, Kim Shuck, poet laureate of San Francisco, and Maw Shein Win, poet laureate of El Cerrito.
Music by Dan Plonsey, Ethan Port, and Thomas Scandura in their debut as Moeser.
There will also be an all-ages open mic. Please bring a poem!
In addition, there will be tables for local authors, presses and organizations such as Sixteen Rivers, Manic D Press, Nomadic Press, Works and Conversations, Left Margin Lit, Poetry Flash and others. This event will be in partnership with Poetry Flash, one of the key literary organizations that has served the state of California since 1972. poetryflash.org
Snacks and beverages will be served and the event will be free to the public.
El Cerrito Community Center, 7007 Moeser Lane, EC, 94530
https://www.el-cerrito.org/Facilities/Facility/Details/El-Cerrito-Community-Center-18
https://www.facebook.com/poetryandplace.elcerrito/

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Poetry & Place El Cerrito — Rafael Jesús González, Prof. Emeritus of literature and creative writing, was born and raised biculturally/bilingually in El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, C…
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Poetry & Place El Cerrito
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Welcome to my events & announcements page for literary & art events taking place in El Cerrito.

Poetry Flash
Arts & Entertainment · Berkeley, California
Founded in 1972, Poetry Flash magazine builds community through literature through its online review and events.

4 posts in the discussion.

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Christopher DeLorenzo discusses his celebration of cooking, KITCHEN INHERITANCE
2018-05-20 15:00 - 16:30 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Christopher DeLorenzo to the store to discuss his part-memoir, part-cookbook, Kitchen Inheritance: Memories and Recipes from My Family of Cooks, on Sunday, May 20th at 3pm. This collection of narratives and recipes tells a non-traditional coming of age story. Christopher’s is the story of a man on a journey, which ultimately leads him to see himself as part of a large and growing family.

Jason Dewees
2018-05-20 15:00 - 17:00 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Join Mrs. Dalloway’s and the Mediterranean Garden Society for a talk and signing by Jason Dewee’s on his just released book, Designing with Palms (photography by Caitlin Atkinson).
To reserve your seat, purchase a copy of Designing with Palms by speaking to a bookseller or ordering from our website.

Sunday, May 20, 2018 – 3:00pm

In this comprehensive guide, Dewees shares the many ways palms can transform courtyards, gardens and landscapes. Detailing the most important species and highlighted by striking photography, Designing with Palms imparts vital advice on making the most of these statement-making plants.
“Contains virtually everything you need to know about these plants and their usage in gardens. This is the go-to book.”– Raymond Jungles, landscape architect
Jason Dewees is the staff horticulturist at Flora Grubb Gardens and East West Trees in San Francisco. Responsible for the Tree Canopy Succession Plan for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, he serves on the Horticultural Advisory Committee for the San Francisco Botanical Garden, and on The San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers Advisory Council.

Express Yourself: Celebrating Gender Diversity
2018-05-20 16:00 - 17:30 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
When living in a world that is still learning about the gender spectrum, forms of expression become survival tools helping trans and nonbinary people live authentically and tell their stories. This event celebrates all forms of expression we use to affirm who we are and ensure our voice is heard. Music, writing, art, makeup, style, or dance are examples that will be discussed as strategies for survival, building resilience, and finding community.
Join us for this event celebrating gender diversity that is sure to be informative and inspiring. Lead by Mere Abrams, MSW, ASW, Gender Specialist, educator, consultant and advocate, and Janna Barkin, author, advocate, and parent of a transgender son, the event will feature a diverse panel of transgender, gender expansive, and non-binary people who will share their stories of self discovery and the many creative ways they have found to express themselves along the way.
There will be time for questions and discussion.

Please note: This event will be at the Bindery, 1727 Haight. RSVP appreciated but not required.

Bar opens at 3:30, event begins at 4pm.

Event image created by April Adelman

KASSIDAT: Spoken word and music
2018-05-20 16:00 - 18:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Featured readers –
James Zealous
Christine No
Tifa Love
Clara Hsu
Sarita de la Madrid
Musical guests:
Brother Spellbinder
Ed Dang
With your host Bloodflower

An Opportunity to Meet London Breed
2018-05-20 18:00 - 20:00 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
As part of a series for meet and greet opportunities with San Francisco’s mayoral candidates, we are pleased to host London Breed on Sunday, May 20 starting at 6:30pm at The Bindery at 1727 Haight street.
New to the city? First time voter? Have a pressing issue on your mind? The Bindery has extended an invitation to all mayoral candidates to come meet our community. The format will be of a typical “house party” and include a short speech by the candidate, followed by time for mingling and Q&A.

Timeline:
6pm Doors open
6:30pm – 7:30pm London speaks & fields questions
8pm Event ends

RSVP appreciated but not required.

This event is free and all ages event. Doors open at 6, event begins at 6:30pm. The bar will be open.

Simulation featuring Justine Musk
2018-05-20 19:30 - 21:30 | Swedish American Hall, 2174 Market Street, San Francisco, CA, 94114, United States
What do courage and confidence have to do with maximizing human potential? How can we humanize others rather than villainize them? How can we best move forward into this technology-driven globalized world?
Join us on May 20th as we host author Justine Musk for powerful conversation at the Swedish American Hall in San Francisco.
SCHEDULE
6:30 PM Doors Open
7:30 – 9:00 PM Fireside Chat
9:00 – 9:30 PM Q & A
9:30 – 10:00 PM VIP Meet & Greet
11:00 PM Doors Close
Simulation inspires YOU to build the future.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/simulationshow
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/simulationseries
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/simulationseries/
******
Here’s our full list of thought-provoking questions: www.simulationseries.com/the-list
Reach out to us! We’d love to hear from you and we’re always looking for people to join our team, please email: simulationseries@gmail.com

THE RACKET! #19
2018-05-21 19:00 - 20:30 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
It feels like The Racket has skewed dark as of late – obsession, grief, ghosts – so we thought, let’s try something a little more positive oomph, something with a little sensuality. Thus, The Racket #19: PLEASURE. As well know, writers are dark, morbid folks, and we expect this to be as probing of the seedier side of what pleasure is as any other event we’ve thrown.
But hey, we can try.
More info to come.
