POETS! - featured readers followed by an open mic
2017-08-21 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA

Cassandra Dallett
2017-08-21 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
Cassandra Dallett lives in Oakland, CA. Cassandra is a two-time Pushcart nominee and Literary Death Match winner. She has been published online and in many print magazines, such as Slip Stream, Sparkle and Blink, Chiron Review, Stone Boat Review, and Great Weather For Media and reads often around the San Francisco Bay Area. A full-length book of poetry Wet Reckless was released on Manic D Press May 2014. In 2015 she authored Bad Sandy (Lucky Bastard Press), Pearl Tongue (Be About It Press), The Water Wars (Pedestrian Poets Series), On Sunday, A Finch (Nomadic Press) which was nominated for a California Book Award, and most recently Armadillo Heart (Paper Press) with MK Chavez.

Laura Kyriazis + Zaid Shlah
2017-08-22 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
Tuesdays at North Beach is a highly-respected weekly poetry series celebrating internationally acclaimed poets and showcasing local talent. Past guests have included Jonathan Richman, Diane di Prima, California Poet Laureate Al Young and freshly-discovered poets from our sister program, Poets 11.
The series is presented by Friends and curated by Friends’ Poet-in-Residence, Jack Hirschman.
Interested in reading? Please contact Friends’ Literary Director Byron Spooner at byron.spooner@friendssfpl.org or call (415) 522-8602.

Timothy McSweeney's Grand 50th Issue Release Party
2017-08-22 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Did you know McSweeney’s glorious 50th issue is due August 29th? That’s right, FIFTY! We’ve pulled all the stops for this one, including can’t-miss new work from writers who we’ve long published — Jonathan Lethem, Lydia Davis, Sherman Alexie, Etgar Keret, Sheila Heti, Diane Williams, Sarah Vowell, John Hodgman, Steven Millhauser (among many others) — and fantastic new writing from authors who we’ve long admired, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Thomas McGuane, Kevin Young, and Carrie Brownstein. The book itself will be hardback with a dust jacket that folds into two different covers, and folds entirely open to a poster by Tucker Nichols. Choose whatever cover fits your mood, or tack it to the wall and reveal the gem hidden underneath. OKAY, we’ve said enough, now to why we’re really here….
It’s a party! There will be drinks (by Fort Point Beer Company) and mingling and happy moments to share. If we figure out the sound system, there may even be music. (Group meditation is cool, though, right?)

Brontez Purnell
2017-08-22 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Join us at The Bindery as we welcome Brontez Purnell for the release of his novel Since I Laid My Burden Down.
DeShawn lives a high, creative, and promiscuous life in San Francisco. But when he’s called back to his cramped Alabama hometown for his uncle’s funeral, he’s hit by flashbacks of handsome, doomed neighbors and sweltering Sunday services. Amidst prickly reminders of his childhood, DeShawn ponders family, church, and the men in his life, prompting the question: Who deserves love?
A raw, funny, and uninhibited stumble down memory lane, Brontez Purnell’s debut novel explores how one man’s early sexual and artistic escapades grow into a life.
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Brontez Purnell has been publishing, performing, and curating in the Bay Area for over ten years. He is author of the cult zine Fag School, frontman for his band The Younger Lovers, and founder and choreographer of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company. Formerly a dancer with Gravy Train!!!, a queer electro indie band that gained national prominence in the mid-2000s, Purnell’s other prominent artistic collaborations include his supporting role in the queer independent feature film, “I Want Your Love” (dir. Travis Mathews, 2012). He was a guest curator for the Berkeley Art Museum’s L@TE program in 2012, awarded an invitation to the 2012 Radar Lab queer arts summer residency, honored by Out Magazine’s 2012 Hot 100 List and 2013 Most Eligible Bachelors List, and most recently won the 2014 SF Bay Guardian’s Goldie for Performance/Music.

Rex Renee Leonowicz
2017-08-23 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | DIESEL, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland welcomes Rex Renee Leonowicz to the store to perform from when there is no one and there is everyone, on Wednesday, August 23rd at 7:00 pm.
ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE: The multimedia performance acts as a touring funeral party, using drag, poetry, music, and visual art/digital media to create a kind of live memorial/archive that animates the book and brings its story to life to chart the personal, political, and cultural moments that are living, dying, and rebirthing in the book. Rex will perform poems from the book and drag versions of songs that influence the text. A video collage of drawings, art maps, and photos will stream in the background, along with a soundtrack of music that influenced the work. The point of the music, visual art, maps, and ephemera interspliced is to pay homage to the events, people, and sites of protest, grief, and triumph present in the work, as well as to show evidence of communities that often are invisible or displaced. Part history lesson, part mixtape, part memorial, part celebration, the project blends genres to honor and illuminate resistance movements, our heroes, our experiences, failures & successes in solidarity, art, and community love.
ABOUT THE BOOK: when there is no one and there is everyone is a full-length collection of poetry and illustrations set for release in Summer 2017 by Magic Helicopter Press. The collection is experienced as a collage-like mixtape of techniques, influences, pop references, and city cultures that explores the messiness of identity, relationship, and resistance in an unjust world. Its biggest concern is with landscapes of public and private space, specifically how gentrification and intersecting oppressions play themselves out on the intimate geographies of bodies, minds, and cities Beyond this, it’s a celebration of friendship, freakdom, and what it means when people on the margins come together to rough it out in tough times.
ABOUT THE ARTIST: Rex Renee Leonowicz is a multimedia artist, performer, writer, and activist from Queens, New York. As a poor/working class, trans/nonbinary femme, Rex’s art and performance work is grounded in a politics of radical resistance, healing, and witness. Rex is a gender-bending, genre-blending artist whose work critically responds to the relationships people on the margins have with our surroundings and each other. S/he holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from Mills College and a B.A. in Gender & Women’s Studies & Creative Writing from Warren Wilson College.

Perfectly Queer East Bay presents Dispatches From Lesbian America
2017-08-23 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Nomadic Press: Uptown, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Perfectly Queer East Bay presents readings by Joan Annsfire, Xequina Maria Berber, and Giovanna Capone from the anthology DISPATCHES FROM LESBIAN AMERICA on Wednesday, August 23, 7pm at the Nomadic Press: Uptown performance space, 2301 Telegraph Ave., Oakland. Free refreshments and door prizes. A discussion of the anthology and book signing will follow the readings. www.facebook.com/events/137277350195017
INFORMATION ON THE READERS:
JOAN ANNSFIRE is a writer, poet, and retired librarian who lives in Berkeley. Her piece in Dispatches From Lesbian America is non-fiction, based on her experience working at the San Francisco Water Department in the early Eighties.
Joan’s memoir pieces have appeared most recently online in Identity Envy, Read These Lips, Aunt Lute Press, and Uprooted: An Anthology of Gender and Illness. She has also been published in Lavender Review, Sinister Wisdom, The 13th Moon, Bridges, The Evergreen Chronicles, and The Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, among other publications.
Her poetry is in an upcoming anthology, 11/9: The Fall of American Democracy, as well as Older Queer Voices: The Intimacy of Survival, and The Times They Were A- Changing. Headmistress Press published a chapbook of her poems, Distant Music.
In her blog, “Lavenderjoan, somewhere under the rainbow,” the personal and the political meet.
XEQUINA MARIA BERBER is a storyteller, writer, artist, former law librarian, and now elementary school librarian. She came out during early middlessence and makes up for lost Gay time through her creative endeavors: short stories and comic strips celebrating Lesbian personalities and themes. She also rewrites songs to honor Dyke culture, which are then performed for the community with her drag king partner “Johnny Magnolia.”
She is the author of two books, Santora: The Good Daughter, a Latina novel, under the psuedonym Resurrección Cruz, and The Mermaid Girl, a tween and teen book, published under her first name, by Bedazzled Ink. She is also one of the editors of Dispatches From Lesbian America. A collection of her lesbian short stories and memoir, The Only Female Cross-Dresser in Memphis, is due to come out this year. Many of her stories were inspired by her girlfriend’s life.
Xequina is also an artist and paints traditional Mexican retablos (miracle stories) and santos, as well as themes of Mexican Magical Realism. She has degrees in literature, art, Women’s Spirituality, and Library and Information Science. She lives in Oakland with her partner and their two bad cats.
GIOVANNA CAPONE is a poet, fiction writer, and playwright. She was raised in an Italian-American neighborhood in Mt. Vernon, New York, whose strong Neapolitan influence still resonates in her life.
Her work has appeared widely in various publications, including Curaggia: Writing by Women of Italian Descent; Bless Me Father: Stories of Catholic Childhood; Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry; Avanti Opolo: Italian-American Writers Sail Beyond Columbus; Queer View Mirror 2, Lesbian & Gay Short Fiction; What I Want From You: An Anthology of East Bay Lesbian Poets; and Fuori: Essays by Italian/American Lesbians and Gays.
Most recently Giovanna edited the collection Words on Fire! An Anthology of Teen Voices as part of her master’s degree in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.
Giovanna’s first play, “Her Kiss,” was produced and performed to sold-out audiences in San Francisco by Luna See Women’s Performance Project, in their first Dyke Drama Festival. She is also a mixed media collage artist and has exhibited her visual art in venues throughout the Bay Area.
She lives in Oakland, where for many years she has taught poetry writing workshops to children and teens through California Poets in the Schools. Find out more at www.giovannacapone.com.

Flash Fiction Forum
2017-08-23 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Works/San José, 365 S Market St, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
1. Tania Martin, TBA
2. Deiana Hristov, “Witching Hour Child Ghosts”
3. Direct from Cinequest! The Invasive Species (Kimy Martinez, Nicole Alexander, Alecia Parke, and Lori Mahaffey) 1. Pass The Salt, I’m A Section 8 Valley Girl and. Rules Broken
4. Mike Karpa, “Make a Muscle”
5. Ann Hillesland, “About My Mother”
INTERMISSION
6. Suzy Huerta, “Mother Tongue”
7. Erin Redfern, “Velveteria”
8. Julia Halprin-Jackson, “Blossom” and “Maximum Capacity”
9. Laura Diaz, “Roots”
10. Kevin Sharp, “His and Hers,” chapter from novel-in-progress
11. Mighty Mike McGee, identity piece (performed at Cinequest and other venues)

Rex Renee Leonowitch Book Release/Funeral Party/Fundraiser: Oakland #2
2017-08-24 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Join Rex Renee Leonowitch and Denise Benavides for a night of poetry, drag, music, art, feels, and hype to celebrate the release of Rex’s new book of poetry and illustrations, When There Is No One And There Is Everyone, available for preorder here: http://magichelicopterpress.com/wtne.html
The event will feature readings and performances and be a funeral party using drag, music, poetry, and visual art/digital media to pay homage to the events, people, and sites of protest, grief, triumph, and fabulosity present in the work and life.
It’s also a fundraiser for Rex, who is a poor trans disabled working artist who funded their book tour mostly by themselves and who is continuing their education in performance/theatre in the Fall in NYC and needs financial support for housing, life expenses, and tuition costs.
REX RENEE LEONOWICZ is a multimedia artist, performer, writer, and activist from Queens, New York. As a poor/working class, trans/nonbinary femme, Rex’s art and performance work is grounded in a politics of radical resistance, healing, and witness. Rex is a gender-bending, genre-blending artist whose work critically responds to the relationships people on the margins have with our surroundings and each other.
http://www.rexylafemme.tumblr.com/
DENISE BENAVIDES is a performance artist, poet, and educator based in Oakland, California. She writes to document, to archive, and to hold space for what has been lost—most of all, she writes for the women in her family. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College and is currently teaching at Skyline College. Her debut collection of poetry, Split, was released in the winter of 2016 by Kórima Press. For more information please visit www.denisebenavides.com.

Poetry Flash: Melba Joyce Boyd, M.L. Liebler, + Brian Jabas Smith
2017-08-24 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Poet, editor, and professor Melba Joyce Boyd’s book, Wrestling with the Muse: Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press, is a tribute to Dudley Randall (1914-2000) with whom she worked as an editor at Broadside Press and whose authorized biographer she became. Randall was poet laureate of Detroit, a civil rights activist, and a force in the Black Arts Movement. Two of his poems, one for the four little girls killed in the Alabama church bombing in Birmingham, one for the assassination of President Kennedy, were set to music by folk singer Jerry Moore in 1965. Randall published them as broadsides, so the press, publishing chapbooks that opened out the work of African American writers into the canon of American literature, was born. Boyd’s book, connecting politics and art with the wider struggles of black America in that era, is also a dialogue between poets and includes extensive interviews. She, herself, has published six books of poetry, edited an anthology of Detroit poetry, written scholarly books, and produced and directed a documentary film on Randall and the press.
M.L. Liebler is a celebrated poet, literary arts activist, and professor. Most recent of his many books of poetry is I Want to Be Once; others include The Moon a Box and Written in Rain: New and Selected Poems, 1985-2000. He’s edited many books, ranging across labor politics, music, and poetry, and his brand new one is Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond, with a wide range of contributors, including Greil Marcus and Al Young.
Brian Jabas Smith’s debut book of fiction is Spent Saints & Other Stories. Jim Daniels says, “In these fine stories, Brian Smith’s direct, natural, story-telling voice rocks with the authority and grit of someone who’s been there and come back to tell the tale.” Smith is an award-winning journalist, first as a staff writer and columnist for the Phoenix New Times and then as an editor for the Detroit Metro Times. His earlier career was as a songwriter who fronted rock’n’roll bands. He’s written for many performers, including Alice Cooper.

Poetry Night
2017-08-24 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Brynn Saito is the author of two books of poetry, Power Made Us Swoon (2016) and The Palace of Contemplating Departure (2013), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award from Red Hen Press and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Brynn was born and raised in Fresno. Currently, she teaches and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Charif Shanahan is the author of Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing (SIU Press, 2017), winner of the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. His poems and translations have appeared in numerous publications, including Baffler, Boston Review, Callaloo, Literary Hub, New Republic, Poetry International, Prairie Schooner, andA Public Space. A two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Cave Canem Foundation, the Frost Place, the Fulbright Program/IIE, Millay Colony for the Arts, and Stanford University, where he is a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry.
Emily Jungmin Yoon is the author of Ordinary Misfortunes, winner of the Sunken Garden Chapbook Prize at Tupelo Press. Her poems and translations appear or are forthcoming in The New Yorker, Poetry, Apogee, The Literary Review, and elsewhere. For her poetry, she has received awards and fellowships from Ploughshares’ Emerging Writer’s Contest, AWP’s WC&C Scholarship Competition, The Home School in Miami, Aspen Words, New York University, the University of Chicago, and the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund. She is the Poetry Editor for The Margins, the literary magazine of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is a PhD student in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations Department at the University of Chicago.
Javier Zamora was born in El Salvador and migrated to the US when he was nine. He is a 2016-2018 Wallace Stegner Fellow and holds fellowships from CantoMundo, Colgate University, MacDowell, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Yaddo. His first book Unaccompanied is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press, September 2017.

San Francisco Grotto Writers: 3 Minute Reads
2017-08-25 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
Join us for a fast-paced and irreverent evening, showcasing new work from the students of the San Francisco Writer’s Grotto writing classes. On this Friday evening, both fiction and nonfiction writers will read their work — but only for 3 minutes each! Their instructors (Grotto authors) will enforce the time limit. Join us for wine, fun, and fresh new writing.

Red Light Lit: Summer of Lust
2017-08-25 19:30 - 21:00 UTC | PianoFight, 144 Taylor St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Red Light Lit is thrilled to be part of the “Summer of Lust: Comedy and Arts Festival,” featuring the photography of Shelbie Dimond. The show will be hosted by Luna Malbroux with musical guest, Emily Jane White. Featured writers include Amber Flame, Kar A. Johnson, Sarah Kobrinsky, Ari Moskowitz, Sarah Bethe Nelson, Christine No alongside a live musical score by David Williams.
Advanced tickets strongly suggested: $15 in advance, $20 at the door.

15th Annual Berkeley Poetry Festival
2017-08-26 11:30 - 16:30 UTC | Berkeley City College, 2050 Center St., Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Join us to celebrate poets who make things happen in our communities and to honor Naomi Helena Quiñonez with a Lifetime Achievement Award
Host
Baruch Porras-Hernandez
Invocation of the Muse
John Oliver Simon
Readers
Tongo Eisen-Martin
Leticia Hernández-Linares
Cassandra Dallett
Tiff Dressen
Nancy Aidé González
Juba Kalamka
Marguerite Munoz
Greer Nakadegawa-Lee
Hugh Behm-Steinberg
René Vaz
Shelley Wong
Milvia Street readers
Youssef Ahalla
Jalyce Fairley
Fungai Gora
Julian Mithra
Julie Southworth
Co-directed by MK Chavez and Sharon Coleman
Sponsored by the City of Berkeley and Berkeley City College

Kim Shuck + Jennifer Barone featuring at La Palabra Musical
2017-08-26 15:00 - 17:00 UTC | Cesar E. Chavez Oakland Public Library, 3301 East 12th Street, Suite 271, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
La Palabra Musical (The Musical Word), hosted by Avotcja!
Featured poets: Kim Shuck (SF Poet Laureate!), Jennifer Barone, Kirk Lumpkin, and N-Side the Healer reading from their latest work.

Grant Jarrett: The Half-Life of Remorse
2017-08-26 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In The Half-Life of Remorse, three life-scarred people are brought together to confront each other thirty years after the brutal crime that shattered their lives.
When two vagrants meet on the streets of Muncie, Indiana, they are both unaware that their paths crossed years before. Chic, crude and uneducated, is convinced that Sam is nothing more than a harmless lunatic, and Sam, emotionally scarred and psychologically traumatized by events long past, regards Chic as just another denizen of the street. But Chic has spent his adult life trying to purge his soul of the brutal crime he committed as a teenager?the same botched burglary that resulted in the deaths of Sam’s wife and son. Meanwhile, Sam’s daughter Claire is still unable to give up hope that her father might someday reappear. When these three lives converge, the puzzle of the past gradually falls together, but redemption commands a high price, and what is revealed will test the limits of love and challenge the human capacity for forgiveness.
Grant Jarrett lived in Manhattan for twenty years before moving to Marin County, CA, where he now works as a writer, ghostwriter, editor, musician, and occasional songwriter. His publishing credits include numerous magazine articles, essays, short stories, and More Towels, his coming-of-age memoir about life on the road. His debut novel, Ways of Leaving, won the Best New Fiction category in the 2014 International Book Awards. The House That Made Me, his 2016 anthology about the meaning of home, was chosen as an Elle “Trust Us” book. Jarrett is an avid cyclist, skier, and surf skier.

Gabrielle Zevin: Young Jane Young
2017-08-26 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Aviva Grossman, an ambitious congressional intern in Florida, makes the mistake of having an affair with her boss–and blogging about it. When the affair comes to light, the beloved congressman doesn’t take the fall. But Aviva does, and her life is over before it hardly begins: slut-shamed, she becomes a late-night talk show punch line, anathema to politics.
She sees no way out but to change her name and move to a remote town in Maine. This time, she tries to be smarter about her life and strives to raise her daughter, Ruby, to be strong and confident. But when, at the urging of others, Aviva decides to run for public office herself, that long-ago mistake trails her via the Internet and catches up–an inescapable scarlet A. In the digital age, the past is never, ever, truly past. And it’s only a matter of time until Ruby finds out who her mother was and is forced to reconcile that person with the one she knows.
Young Jane Young is a smart, funny, and moving novel about what it means to be a woman of any age, and captures not just the mood of our recent highly charged political season, but also the double standards alive and well in every aspect of life for women.
Gabrielle Zevin is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have been translated into more than thirty languages. Her eighth novel, The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry, spent more than four months on the New York Times Bestseller list, reached #1 on the National Indie Bestseller list, and has been a bestseller all around the world. She has also written books for children and young adults, including the award-winning Elsewhere.

Saturday Night Special: A "Confessional" Open Mic
2017-08-26 19:00 - 21:30 UTC | Nick’s Lounge, 3218 Adeline St., Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
Reveal your skeletons and air your dirty laundry this month at Saturday Night Special! We want to hear your dirty secrets and burning confessions, that thing you did, that you shouldn’t have done. Come share your sins, real or imagined, yours or someone else’s. Our theme this month is: Confession.
As always, we’d love to hear your (three-minute) poems, stories, comedic sketches, songs, or dances, on our optional theme (or any topic).
Our August features are: Vernon Keeve III and Joel Landmine
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First come first served. Sign-up starts at 7pm and closes when it fills up or when the reading starts, so get there early if you want to read! (Note: Sometimes the list is full by 7:03pm)
Each reader will have 3 minutes maximum. For prose writers this is about one and a half double-spaced pages.
PLEASE NOTE: We are strict about the 3 minute max. When you reach your time limit at SNS, we turn on the disco lights! So, please plan ahead. Practice your piece out loud. Time yourself!
After the reading, stick around for karaoke starting at 10pm
Saturday, August 26th, 2017
7 – 9:30 pm
Nick’s Lounge (21+)
3218 Adeline Street, Berkeley, CA
1 block south of Ashby BART
Between Fairview St & Martin Luther King Jr Way
FREE!
But bring CASH if you want to buy drinks (which you sort of have to, because there’s a 1-drink minimum!)
Hosted by Hollie Hardy
Please help out by liking our FB page, where you can also find more details and photos from past events:
https://www.facebook.com/Saturday-Night-Special-an-East-Bay-open-mic-112174188880786/
BIOS
Vernon Keeve III is a writer from Fredericksburg, Virginia, and a California-made educator. He currently teaches high school English and history in Oakland, and has a book Southern Migrant Mixtape in its final stages of publication with Nomadic Press–look for it in the Fall.
Joel Landmine’s work has never been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Yeah, Well…, his first collection of poems, is available from Punk Hostage Press.

Poetry at Florey's
2017-08-26 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Florey’s Book Co., 2120 Palmetto Ave., Pacifica, CA, 94044, United States
Come and share the joy of writing, reading, and poetry!

Poetry Flash tribute to "Heaven Was Detroit" w/ M.L. Liebler + Greil Marcus
2017-08-27 15:00 - 16:00 UTC | DIESEL, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
DIESEL, A Bookstore in Oakland hosts a special installment of Poetry Flash on Sunday, August 27th at 3pm. Editor M.L. Liebler and contributor Greil Marcus will be here to discuss Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip-Hop and Beyond.
Poetry Flash readings are wheelchair accessible; ASL interpreters may be requested one week in advance from editor@poetryflash.org. Visit Poetryflash.org for more events and reviews!
Heaven Was Detroit: From Jazz to Hip Hop and Beyond is the first of its kind to capture the full spectrum of Detroit popular music from the early 1900s to the twenty-first century. Readers will find in this unique and stimulating anthology new essays, and a few classics, by widely known and respected music writers, critics, and recording artists who weigh in on their careers and experiences in the Detroit music scene, from rock to jazz and everything in between. With a foreword by the acclaimed rock writer Dave Marsh and iconic photos by Leni Sinclair, the book features such well-known writers as Greil Marcus, Jaan Uhelszki, Al Young, Susan Whitall, Gary Graff, John Sinclair, and many others.
Divided into nine sections, the book moves chronologically through the early days of jazz in Detroit, to the rock ‘n’ roll of the 1960s, and up to today’s electronica scene, with so many groundbreaking moments in between. This collection of cohesive essays includes Motown’s connection to the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Power Movement through its side label, Black Forum Records; Lester Bangs’s exemplary piece on Alice Cooper; the story behind the emergence of rap legend Eminem; and Craig Maki’s enlightening history on “hillbilly rock” – just to name a few. With a rich musical tradition to rival Nashville, Detroit serves as the inspiration, backdrop, and playground for some of the most influential music artists of the past century.
Heaven Was Detroit captures the essence of the Detroit music scene: the grit, the spark, the desire to tell a story set to the rhythm of the city. Fans of any music genre will find something that speaks to them in the pages of this collection.
M. L. Liebler is an award-winning poet, literary arts activist, and professor. He is the author of several books of poetry, including I Want to Be Once, and editor of the anthology Working Words: Punching the Clock and Kicking Out the Jams. He is also co-editor of Bob Seger’s House and Other Stories. Liebler has taught at Wayne State University since 1980.
Greil Marcus’s books include Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music, Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the Twentieth Century, and The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs. He teaches at Berkeley and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York.

Planned Parenthood Literary Fundraiser
2017-08-27 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Join us on Sunday, August 27th, from 4:00–6:00 for our Read & Rights Literary Fundraiser, benefiting Planned Parenthood Mar Monte. This special event at Bookshop Santa Cruz will feature a silent auction, a scene from The Handmaid’s Tale performed by Jewel Theatre Company, a vintage feminist literature collection, and activity centers to write postcards with Santa Cruz Indivisible, make summertime “pussy hats,” and write a personal thank you to Planned Parenthood.
Ticketed portion: Make a donation (below or at the event) to Planned Parenthood Mar Monte and gain exclusive access to our Literary Refreshment Lounge. Four author-bartenders—Jonathan Franzen, Laurie R. King, Karen Joy Fowler, and Elizabeth McKenzie—will be serving up the beverages! Each ticket can be exchanged at the event for a wristband which will grant you in-and-out access and one drink in the Literary Lounge. Additional beverages may be purchased for $5 each. Light snacks will be provided by Chocolate restaurant. If you would like to secure access for multiple people, please make a donation for each person at a $15 minimum.
100% of all donations benefit Planned Parenthood of Santa Cruz and Watsonville. In order to make this event economically accessible to as many people as possible, tickets are available on a $15–$50 sliding scale. Please note: All are welcome to attend this event—only the Literary Refreshment Lounge requires a ticket.
Very special thanks to George Ow and Gail Michealis-Ow and their generous donation matching grant. And thank you to our event cosponsors: Good Times and Chocolate.

BAY AREA GENERATIONS #48
2017-08-28 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | The Bellevue Club, 525 Bellevue Drive, Oakland, CA, 94610, United States
Guest Curator: John Rowe
Bay Area Generations Curators: Sandra Wassilie + Amos White
READERS
TBA
MUSICAL GUEST
TBA
Get tickets!

BAY AREA GENERATIONS, EDITION #48
Monday, August 28, 2017
at The Bellevue Club, 525 Bellevue Ave., Oakland, CA
*Garage and on street parking
* Full bar and refreshments
* Walkable from 19th st. BART
6:30 p.m. – Writers Mixer at the bar
7:00 p.m. – Doors open to Public
7:30 p.m. – Show Starts
Suggested donation $7.00 (admission), $10.00 with a souvenir chapbook
RSVP Today!
Call for Submissions to Show #48 BAG #48 Show on FaceBook
Bay Area Generations: a literary reading series features notable authors, poets, writers, playwrights and musicians in a paired reading show, monthly.
Web: www.bayareagenerations.com
FB Page: www.facebook.com/bayareagenerations
Twitter: www.twitter.com/bayareagenerati
BAG Events: www.facebook.com/events
Literary and Poetry Submissions: www.bayareagenerations.com/how-to-submit/

The Racket #10: BIRTH
2017-08-28 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Our monthly reading series returns with a bevy of writers talking about BIRTH.
Is it pregnancy? Metamorphosis? A staggering change in life? Well, we’ll find out.
Our readers: KAR A. Johnson, Miah Jeffra, Mike Hsu, Jennifer Lewis and Shideh Etaat.

Georgette Howington
2017-08-28 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
Georgette Howington is a closet poet and short story writer who came out three years ago. Her poems are published in Iodine, Sleet and Poeming Pigeons, among others. Several poems won Honorable Mentions at the North American Women’s Music Festival and Ina Coolbrith Poetry Contest in 2016. As a naturalist and horticulturist, her niche is Backyard Habitat and secondary-cavity nesters. She is a County Coordinator and Assistant State Program Director for the California Bluebird Recovery Program and an activist in the conservation community in the SF Bay Area for over 30 years. Georgette is also a published garden and environmental writer.

Robert Currier - Marin Shakespeare Company
2017-08-28 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Book Passage Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
“A Labour of Love”
Join Marin Shakespeare Company Artistic Director Robert Currier and Marin Shakespeare actors as they discuss the complex wordplay and sly wit of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost, playing through September 24 at Dominican University’s Forest Meadows Amphitheater.
Click here to purchase tickets

Jennifer Barone + James Cagney
2017-08-29 18:30 - 19:30 UTC | North Beach, SF Public Library, 850 Columbus Ave, San Francisco, CA, 94133, United States
Jennifer Barone, host of the WordParty poetry and jazz series and author of “Saporoso – poems of Italian food and love” will be reading from new work along with poet James Cagney, reading from his latest. Hosted by Jack Hirschman and the North Beach Library.
visit: www.jenniferbarone.wordpress.com

The Singing Ship Book Launch
2017-08-29 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Noe Valley Author Rebecca Winterer discusses her debut novel, The Singing Ship, in conversation with Peg Alford Pursell Tuesday, August 29, 7 p.m. at Folio Books, 3957 24th St. in Noe Valley. Pursell is the organizer of the North Bay reading series Why There Are Words. The Singing Ship, “a novel about traversing boundaries,” is set in Winterer’s native Australia. It won the Del Sol Press First Novel Prize. It is the story of two sisters who fight an unorthodox battle for truth after an attack in the Australian Outback. Free admission, champagne, and cake. An author signing follows the discussion. www.facebook.com/events/124981894791558

Daniel Magariel
2017-08-29 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Daniel Magariel discusses his new book, One of the Boys.

Praise for One of the Boys
“Brilliant, urgent, darkly funny, heartbreaking—a tour de force with startling new things to say about class, masculinity, addiction, and family. Daniel Magariel is an exciting new presence in American writing.” (George Saunders, author of Tenth of December and Lincoln in the Bardo)
“Precise and coiled and urgent. Magariel is able–as few writers can–to say so much in so little. A propulsive and intense debut.” (Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life)
“With a charismatic, macho, drug-addicted dad, the young narrator pays an awful price to be One of the Boys in the riveting debut novel by Daniel Magariel. Move over Great Santini, this patriarch is rendered with such artful love, you’ll be haunted by his presence long after you close this graceful and heartbreaking book.” (Mary Karr, author of Lit and The Liar’s Club)

About One of the Boys
The three of them—a twelve-year-old boy, his older brother, their father—have won the war: the father’s term for his bitter divorce and custody battle. They leave their Kansas home and drive through the night to Albuquerque, eager to begin again, united by the thrilling possibility of carving out a new life together. The boys go to school, join basketball teams, make friends. Meanwhile their father works from home, smoking cheap cigars to hide another smell. But soon the little missteps—the dead-eyed absentmindedness, the late night noises, the comings and goings of increasingly odd characters—become worrisome, and the boys find themselves watching their father change, grow erratic, then dangerous.

Set in the sublimely stark landscape of suburban New Mexico and a cramped apartment shut tight to the world, One of the Boys conveys with propulsive prose and extraordinary compassion a young boy’s struggle to hold onto the pieces of his shattered family. Tender, moving and beautiful, Daniel Magariel’s masterful debut is a story of resilience and survival: two foxhole-weary brothers banding together to protect each other from the father they once trusted, but no longer recognize. With the emotional core of A Little Life and the speed of We the Animals, One of the Boys is among the most remarkable debut novels you’ll ever read.

An Expensive Hoax: Environmental Writers Respond to Trump
2017-08-30 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | SF Public Library, 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, 94102, United States
“Snowing in Texas and Louisiana, record setting freezing temperatures throughout the country and beyond. Global warming is an expensive hoax!” —Donald J. Trump, Jan. 29, 2014
And with that tweet, the would-be President of the United States declared war on the environment. Donald Trump has also opined that climate change was invented by the Chinese to hurt U.S. manufacturing, tweeted that wind power is dangerous for our health, deregulated mining waste disposal, forced the EPA to delete mentions of global warming on its website, and taken aim at national monuments, with an eye toward stripping them of their protected status.
And that’s only in the first six months of his presidency. Where will this lead? What can writers and activists do to stem the tide of anti-environmental actions?

Gabriel Tallent
2017-08-30 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Gabriel Tallent discusses his new novel, My Absolute Darling.

Praise for My Absolute Darling
“There are books we like well enough to recommend, but there are a very few— To Kill a Mockingbird, Catch-22, The Things They Carried— that we remember forever. To my own shortlist I can now add My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent. Fourteen-year-old Turtle Alveston is a brilliantly rendered creation, and her father is the most terrifyingly believable human monster to inhabit the pages of a novel since Harry Powell in The Night of the Hunter. This book is ugly, beautiful, horrifying, and uplifting.” —Stephen King
“I read My Absolute Darling in one sitting, well past midnight, despite an early-morning flight: the book is that impossible to put down. Gabriel Tallent depicts Turtle’s battle for her independence–body, mind, and soul–with brutal honesty and overwhelming tenderness. The result is a heartrending debut that will shock, then shake, then inspire you.” —Celeste Ng, New York Times-bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You
“It is unreal how vivid and compelling this book is. Turtle Alveston is one of the most vibrant characters I’ve come across in a long time, and every scene in this astonishing novel packs so much tension, so much insight, such beautiful prose and such masterful handling of detail, I simply could not stop reading.” —Phil Klay, National Book Award-winning author of Redeployment

About My Absolute Darling
Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is confined to the middle school (where she fends off the interest of anyone, student or teacher, who might penetrate her shell) and to her life with her father.
Then Turtle meets Jacob, a high-school boy who tells jokes, lives in a big clean house, and looks at Turtle as if she is the sunrise. And for the first time, the larger world begins to come into focus: her life with Martin is neither safe nor sustainable. Motivated by her first experience with real friendship and a teenage crush, Turtle starts to imagine escape, using the very survival skills her father devoted himself to teaching her. The reader tracks Turtle’s escalating acts of physical and emotional courage, and watches, heart in throat, as she struggles to become her own hero–and in the process, becomes ours as well.
Shot through with striking language in a fierce natural setting, My Absolute Darling is an urgently told, profoundly moving read that marks the debut of an extraordinary new writer.
