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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200821T194210Z
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SUMMARY:Sandor Ellix Katz: James Beard Award-winner discusses his new book\, Fermentation as Metaphor
DESCRIPTION:Bestselling author Sandor Ellix Katz joins us for a virtual event for his new book\, Fermentation as Metaphor (Chelsea Green). \nThis event will stream on Crowdcast. Visit our Crowdast Channel to register. \nAbout Fermentation as Metaphor\nBestselling author Sandor Katz–an “unlikely rock star of the American food scene” (New York Times)–delivers a mesmerizing treatise on the meaning of fermentation alongside his awe-inspiring photography of this transformative process\, teaching us with words and images about ourselves\, our culture\, and being human. \nIn 2012\, Sandor Ellix Katz published The Art of Fermentation\, which quickly became the bible for foodies around the world\, a runaway bestseller\, and a James Beard Book Award winner. Since then his work has gone on to inspire countless professionals and home cooks worldwide\, bringing fermentation into the mainstream. \nIn Fermentation as Metaphor\, stemming from his personal obsession with all things fermented\, Katz meditates on his art and work\, drawing connections between microbial communities and aspects of human culture: politics\, religion\, social and cultural movements\, art\, music\, sexuality\, identity\, and even our individual thoughts and feelings. He informs his arguments with his vast knowledge of the fermentation process\, which he describes as a slow\, gentle\, steady\, yet unstoppable force for change. \nThroughout this truly one-of-a-kind book\, Katz showcases fifty mesmerizing\, original images of otherworldly beings from an unseen universe–images of fermented foods and beverages that he has photographed using both a stereoscope and electron microscope–exalting microbial life from the level of “germs” to that of high art. When you see the raw beauty and complexity of microbial structures\, Katz says\, they will take you “far from absolute boundaries and rigid categories. They force us to reconceptualize. They make us ferment.” \nFermentation as Metaphor broadens and redefines our relationship with food and fermentation. It’s the perfect gift for serious foodies\, fans of fermentation\, and non-fiction readers alike. \nAbout Sandor Ellix Katz\nSandor Ellix Katz is a fermentation revivalist. A self-taught experimentalist who lives in rural Tennessee\, his explorations in fermentation developed out of overlapping interests in cooking\, nutrition\, and gardening. He is the author of Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation\, which was a New York Times bestseller and won a James Beard Foundation award in 2013–as well as the forthcoming Fermentation as Metaphor (October 2020). The hundreds of fermentation workshops he has taught around the world have helped catalyze a broad revival of the fermentation arts. The New York Times calls Sandor “one of the unlikely rock stars of the American food scene.” \nSee also this Believer interview with Sandor.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/sandor-ellix-katz-james-beard-award-winner-discusses-his-new-book-fermentation-as-metaphor/
CATEGORIES:Free,North Bay,Virtual
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T200000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220647Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220647Z
UID:60040-1603738800-1603742400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:San Francisco Public Virtual Library - Book Club: Pura Neta by Benjamin Bac Sierra
DESCRIPTION:We will be discussing Pura Neta by Benjamin Bac Sierra\, our Sept./Oct. On the Same Page author. \nSet in the San Francisco Mission varrio from 2012 to 2014\, Pura Neta explores the creative struggle of Homeboys and Homegirls fighting against gentrification\, police brutality\, racism and economic and educational injustice. Cartoon\, a Homeboy who had been banished from the barrio twenty years earlier\, has returned from his educational and spiritual odyssey. He finds the hood under attack\, and it is no longer the gangs\, but the monsters of cafes\, cheese schools and micro-breweries\, protected by their own police force\, that are destroying the native San Franciscans. In order to strategize a meaningful movement\, Cartoon visits his old mentor\, El Lobo\, a barrio shot caller who is now serving a life prison sentence in San Quentin. Cartoon then recruits the young Homeys to begin implementing amor action in the hood\, until the police murder a Loved One\, which ultimately sparks The Revolt of the Roots. \nRegistration: https://bit.ly/OTSPBkClb10-26-20 \n–
URL:https://litseen.com/event/san-francisco-public-virtual-library-book-club-pura-neta-by-benjamin-bac-sierra/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/eblast.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="San Francisco Public Library - Virtual Library":MAILTO:anissa.malady@sfpl.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T200000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201010T033220Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T033220Z
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SUMMARY:VIRTUAL: Inter•Col•Lab: A Reading and Film Screening with Valerie Witte\, Sarah Rosenthal\, and Ayana Yonesaka
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith and The Bindery host a special virtual event of interrelated\, genre-crossing collaborations: a book of sonnets and letters\, an essay collection\, and a film\, all of which investigate postmodern dance. \nThis virtual event is free and all ages\, but RSVP is required. \nIf you’d like to order a copy of The Grass is Greener When the Sun is Yellow\, you can do that here. We’re currently offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. \nIn their book The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow\, poets Valerie Witte and Sarah Rosenthal engage with the work of dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Through research into these innovative women’s dances\, ideas\, and lives\, Witte and Rosenthal use language from and about the choreographers to create a series of co-written sonnets that are interwoven with letters between the two poets. These letters describe the process of composing the poems and branch into discussions of dance\, poetics\, gender\, transgression\, and the unfolding disaster of the current political scene. Together\, the poems and letters construct an environment of reflection\, intimacy\, and vulnerability\, one that is both challenging and invitational. \nWitte and Rosenthal will read from The Grass Is Greener\, and briefly describe the essay project which their book has spawned. Rosenthal and dancer-choregrapher Ayana Yonesaka will then introduce and screen their short film\, We Agree on the Sun\, which draws on one of the essays to explore the intersection of dance and houselessness. A Q&A will follow. \nSarah Rosenthal (pictured top left) is the author of several books and chapbooks including The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System\, 2019; a collaboration with Valerie Witte) Lizard (Chax\, 2016)\, and Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil\, 2009). She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Poets of the Bay Area (Dalkey Archive\, 2010). She has done grant-supported writing residencies at Vermont Studio Center\, Soul Mountain\, Ragdale\, New York Mills\, Hambidge\, and This Will Take Time\, and has been a Headlands Center Affiliate Artist. She lives in San Francisco where she works as a Life & Professional Coach\, develops curricula for the Center for the Collaborative Classroom\, and serves on the California Book Awards jury. More at sarahrosenthal.net. Author photo by Denise Newman. \nValerie Witte (pictured top center) is the author of a game of correspondence (Black Radish Books\, 2015) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System\, 2019; a collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal)\, as well as two chapbooks. She is a founding member of the Bay Area Correspondence School\, and for eight years\, she helped produce many innovative books by women as a member of Kelsey Street Press. In her daytime hours\, she edits education books in Portland\, OR. Read more at valeriewitte.com. Photo by Andrew Hedges. \nBorn and raised in Sapporo\, Japan\, Ayana Yonesaka (pictured top right) moved to San Francisco in 2009 to pursue her career in dance. Since graduating summa cum laude with a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University in 2013\, she has worked in the Bay Area as a dance instructor\, performer\, and choreographer. In addition to teaching at San Francisco Youth Ballet Academy\, RoCo Dance & Fitness\, and ODC\, she also directs ayanadancearts\, a company she founded in 2017. Ayana aims to create highly innovative choreography that is rooted in contemporary dance aesthetics with a strong Japanese cultural narrative. Her work seamlessly navigates her Japanese and American identities\, choreographing through a unique cross-Pacific framework. Photo by jGuerzonPictorials. \nPlease note: \n> This is a free\, all-ages event but RSVP is required. RSVP here. \n> If you’d like to order a copy of The Grass is Greener When the Sun is Yellow\, you can do that here. We’re currently offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay. \n> If you have any questions or concerns\, don’t hesitate to write events@booksmith.com.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-intercollab-a-reading-and-film-screening-with-valerie-witte-sarah-rosenthal-and-ayana-yonesaka/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/grass-greener.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T190000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201024T220627Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201024T220627Z
UID:60448-1603731600-1603738800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Book Passage & Left Coast Writers®: America After November 3rd (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:This special event will introduce Left Coast Writers® to the broader community and showcase the many programs that it offers to authors. As part of the evening LCW\, is hosting a special discussion that will look at the future of our country through the eyes of two authors who have written recently about the political crisis our country is facing. \nAmerica After November 3rd: A Discussion Led by Mort Rosenblum and Bill Petrocelli \nMort Rosenblum is a famed international-affairs reporter for the AP and Intl Herald-Tribune. He is editor of the popular site mortreport.org and author of Saving our World From Trump. \nBill Petrocelli is a lawyer\, novelist\, bookseller\, and author of Electoral Bait & Switch: How the Electoral College Hurts American Voters and What Can Be Done About It. \nLeft Coast Writers® has been providing support and inspiration to writers in Northern California for more than 17 years. Through its monthly meetings and frequent book events\, it provides literary connections\, mutual support\,readings\, writing tips\, literary chats\, unabashed networking\, and great fun. LCW hosts many activities to launch the books of members and explore publishing alternatives. LCW writers are often featured at Book Passage events. Left Coast Writers is led by famed writer\, editor\, and teacher Linda Watanabe McFerrin.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/book-passage-left-coast-writers-america-after-november-3rd-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/saving-from-trump.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T150000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T160000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T221034Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T221034Z
UID:60061-1603724400-1603728000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Magical Feminism: An Editorial Discussion
DESCRIPTION:Electric Literature executive director Halimah Marcus talks to Marie-Helene Bertino (Parakeet\, 2 a.m. at the Cat’s Pajamas\, Safe as Houses) and Elissa Washuta (White Magic\, My Body Is a Book of Rules\, Shapes of Native Nonfiction) about coping with trauma and subverting expectations at the intersection of magic and reality. They will discuss how magic works in practice and as a rhetorical device in fiction. Q&A to follow.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/magical-feminism-an-editorial-discussion/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Magical-Feminism.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T130000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201026T143000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201010T040619Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T040619Z
UID:60213-1603717200-1603722600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Kandinsky: Dramatist\, Poet. Talk and Reading: Lissa Tyler Renaud
DESCRIPTION:Globus Books presents a talk on Wassily Kandinsky’s writings for the theatre and a reading of his poetry by Lissa Tyler Renaud\, one of the world’s leading scholars of Kandinsky’s lesser-known rich heritage. \nThis event is in English and will be held on Zoom on October 26\, 2020\, at 1.00 pm PST (SF)\, 3 pm EST (NY). There will be a limited number of seats; please contact Globus Books via FB messenger to register. We will also be live streaming the event on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/GlobusBooksSF/videos) and later will share the edited version of the program. \nPART 1\nKANDINSKY: Dramatist\, Dramaturg\, and Demiurge of the Theatre\nWassily Kandinsky\, independently of his revolutionary contributions to painting\, also wrote on and for the theatre from 1908 until his death in 1944. In his day\, his theories of dramatic art\, as well as his own plays\, were hailed by great theatrical innovators such as Hugo Ball\, founder of Dada\, and Oskar Schlemmer\, founder of the Bauhaus Theatre. He also crossed paths with important theatrical figures such as Diaghilev\, Stanislavsky\, Massine\, Andre Breton\, and many others. Today\, although his writings offer an important link between traditional and experimental values in the theatre\, they have been almost entirely neglected. This paper\, delivered in an earlier version at the Russian State Institute of Performing Arts in St. Petersburg\, Russia\, offers introductions to Kandinsky’s dramatic theories\, to the plays he wrote\, and to the two extraordinary programs he outlined for training the theatre artist. \nPART 2\nSome Known and Unknown Poems by Kandinsky\nKandinsky wrote poetry that was new when he wrote it and is still new now. In the world of early 20th century experimental poetry\, a host of painter-poets\, sculptor-poets\, musician-poets\, dancer-poets all wanted to challenge conventional language in one way or another. Kandinsky approached the matter of breaking ground in language from a variety of inventive directions that influenced countless others. What he called the “inner voice” that compelled his work has now been widely heard for over a century\, not least through his singular poetry. A longtime recitalist\, I will read selections from Kandinsky’s 1912/13 series of groundbreaking poems entitled Sounds–a remarkable departure from Russia’s 19th century “Golden Age” verse poetry–as well as poems unknown in English. \nLissa Tyler Renaud (MFA Directing; Ph.D. Theatre History/Criticism\, UC Berkeley 1987). Lifelong actress. Since 1985\, founder-director of the Actors’ Training Project studio based in Oakland\, for training inspired by Kandinsky’s work. Since 2004\, as visiting professor\, master teacher\, invited speaker\, actor-scholar and recitalist\, she has taught\, lectured and published widely on theatre training\, dramatic theory and the early European avant-garde: at major theatre institutions of Asia\, around the U.S\, in England\, Mexico\, Russia and Sweden. Founding editor\, English-French Critical Stages; board member. Co-editor\, The Politics of American Actor Training (Routledge); invited chapter\, Routledge Companion to Stanislavsky. Editor\, Wuzhen Theatre Festival\, China; Editor\, Stan Lai: Twelve Plays (U. Michigan Press\, pending). Senior Writer\, Scene4; founder-editor\, “Kandinsky Anew” series. \nThe program is produced and hosted by author Zarina Zabrisky.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/kandinsky-dramatist-poet-talk-and-reading-lissa-tyler-renaud/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/lissa-tyler.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Globus Books":MAILTO:info@globusbooks.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T213000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T233000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200925T232119Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200925T232119Z
UID:59865-1603661400-1603668600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Colossus: Home Reading
DESCRIPTION:D.L. Lang\nYolanda Morrissette\nTyrice Brown\nJos Burns\nAquila Lewis- Ross\nElizabeth Costello
URL:https://litseen.com/event/colossus-home-reading-2/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/colossus.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Colossus":MAILTO:colossuspress510@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T180000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201016T233850Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201016T233850Z
UID:60325-1603641600-1603648800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Conversations with Authors - Marilyn Chase (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:Marilyn Chase’s compelling new biography\, Everything She Touched\, recounts the life of WWII prison camp survivor Ruth Asawa\, who broke barriers of race and gender to become an artist of genius. \nMarilyn is an author\, journalist\, and teacher at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism. After more than two decades as a reporter and columnist for The Wall Street Journal focusing on health science\, she returned to independent writing and teaching. She has taught narrative writing at her alma mater Stanford\, as well as news\, health\, business\, and narrative writing as a Continuing Lecturer for her grad school at U.C. Berkeley. She is also the author of The Barbary Plague: The Black Death in Victorian San Francisco\, which tells the story of a young public health doctor treating patients during an outbreak of bubonic plague in the city’s Chinatown in 1900. \nJan Yanehiro is a well renowned broadcast journalist who has won several Emmys for her work. She has also co-authored three books including This is Not The Life I Ordered. \n  \nBelow\, please find links to purchase their books.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/conversations-with-authors-marilyn-chase-virtual-event/
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/ruth-asawa.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201010T210408Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212608Z
UID:60227-1603634400-1603643400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Writing for Power & Resiliency with Thea Matthews
DESCRIPTION:You may trod me in the very dirt \nBut still\, like dust\, I’ll rise. \n–Maya Angelou \n“The power of language\, of the voice\, is not to be underestimated\,” says instructor Thea Matthews. “In order to generate the change we hope to see in our world\, the time is now more than ever to remember and know our own individual power\, as well as our collective power. How can you use creative writing to affirm your own power\, and in turn the resiliency of our humanity?” \nIn this 5-week class\, participants will generate new work\, or continue preexisting literary projects\, that reflect personal and collective power and resiliency. Thea says\, “We will turn to authors\, from poet Etel Adnan to poet and novelist Maya Angelou\, who have shown us what it means to be in power and to be resilient. We will explore literary tools and strategies used in various genres of poetry\, fiction\, and lyric essay\, as well as movement/verbal hybrids. From generative discussions\, there will be prompts issued\, and we will have an opportunity to workshop our writing in a safe and encouraging environment.” \nThis course is great for beginners as well as seasoned writers. “At the end of the five weeks\,” says Thea\, “there will be a virtual reading to celebrate our time together.” \nOctober 25 – November 22\n5 Sundays\, 2-4;30pm (PST)\n\n$274.35 for members\n$295 for non-members
URL:https://litseen.com/event/writing-for-power-resiliency-with-thea-matthews/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/download-7.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T160000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200929T221811Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200929T221811Z
UID:59911-1603634400-1603641600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL: Omnidawn Fall Book Launch
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith and The Bindery are pleased to host Omnidawn Press for their seasonal launch of new titles\, for which each author will be reading from their work. Be the first to own these new treasures: \n \nwyrd] bird by Claire Marie Stancek \nThis Red Metropolis What Remains by Leia Penina Wilson \nStorage Unit for the Spirit House by Maw Shein Win \nQuiet Orient Riot by Nathalie Khankan \nThe Lower East Side Tenement Reclamation Association by David Rothman \n\n** Please note: This event is free and all ages\, but RSVP is required. RSVP here. ** \n\nAbout wyrd] bird by Claire Marie Stancek \n \nIn times fraught with ecological and individual loss\, Claire Marie Stancek’s wyrd] bird grapples with both the necessity and apparent impossibility of affirming mystical experience. It is at once a book-length lyric essay on the 12th-century German mystic Hildegard of Bingen\, a dream journal\, a fragmentary notebook\, a collection of poems\, and a scrapbook of photographic ephemera. Stancek follows Hildegard as she guides the poet through an underworld of climate catastrophe and political violence populated by literary\, mythical\, and historical figures from Milton’s Eve to the biblical Satan to Keats’s hand. The book deconstructs a Western tradition of good and evil by rereading\, cross-questioning\, and upsetting some of that tradition’s central poetic texts. By refusing and confusing dualistic logic\, wyrd] bird searches for an expression of visionary experience that remains rooted in the body\, a mode of questioning that echoes out into further questioning\, and a cry of elegiac loss that grips\, stubbornly\, onto love. \n \nClaire Marie Stancek is the author of two previous poetry books\, Oil Spell and MOUTHS. With Jane Gregory and Lyn Hejinian\, she co-edits Nion Editions\, a chapbook press. She lives in Oakland\, California. \n\nAbout Storage Unit for the Spirit House by Maw Shein Win \n \nWith sharp focus and startling language\, the poems in Maw Shein Win’s second book\, Storage Unit for the Spirit House\, look through physical objects to glimpse the ephemeral\, the material\, and the immaterial. Vinyl records\, felt wolverines\, a belt used to punish children\, pain pills\, and “show dogs with bejeweled collars” crowd into Win’s real and imagined storage units. Nats\, Buddhist animist deities from her family’s homeland of Burma\, haunt the book’s six sections. The nats\, spirits believed to have the power to influence everyday lives\, inhabit the storage units and hover around objects while forgotten children sleep under Mylar blankets and daughters try to see through the haze of a father’s cigarette smoke. \nAssemblages of both earthly and noncorporeal possessions throughout the collection become resonant and alive\, and Win must summon “a circle of drums and copper bells” to appease the nats who have moved into a long-ago family house. This careful curation of unlikely objects and images becomes an act of ritual collection that uses language to interrogate how pain in life can transform someone into a nat or a siren that lives on. Restrained lines request our imagination as we move with the poet through haunted spaces and the objects that inhabit them. \n \nMaw Shein Win‘s poetry chapbooks include Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects\, 2013) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press\, 2016). A full-length collection Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Maw was the inaugural poet laureate of El Cerrito (2016 – 2018) and often collaborates with visual artists\, musicians\, and other writers. She lives and teaches in the San Francisco Bay Area.” \n\nAbout This Red Metropolis What Remains by Leia Penina Wilson \n \nAnswering a call to go feral\, these poems are part invocation and part prayer\, re-imagining the form of the confessional poem by exploring the nature of confession from a feminist and anti-colonial perspective. In This Red Metropolis What Remains\, Leia Penina Wilson composes a mysteriously stark and playful pop-surreal romp through a mythic apocalypse. Dropping in and out of this mystic narrative are voices of characters who are trying to survive and to reconcile their own belonging. \nThese poems reckon with what happens in the aftermath of brutality\, questioning what anyone can or should do after tragedy\, questioning everything until they begin to break down even their own authority. The landscape in the world of This Red Metropolis What Remains is itself deeply unsettled. Each form varies and reflects an endless transformation of embodiment and interrogation. These poems ask what can be recovered\, if anything\, through an uninterrupted interrogation of memory\, category\, and language and with an unbroken attention to the speaker’s own power. Creating shifting architecture and landscape that reveals both the disintegration of cultural time and the eternity of interior time\, confession and lyric wrap both speaker and listener together. \n \nLeia Penina Wilson is a Samoan poet. She is the author of i built a boat with all the towels in your closet (and will let you drown) from Red Hen Press\, and Splinters are Children of Wood from Notre Dame Press. Her work has appeared in Denver Quarterly\, Dream Pop Press\, and Split Lip Magazine. \n\nAbout Quiet Orient Riot by Nathalie Khankan \n \nTracing the conception of a child through to her birth\, Quiet Orient Riot addresses birth regimes and the politics of reproduction\, unspooling the many ways that liturgical commands and an intense demographic anxiety affect a journey towards motherhood. Through these poems\, Nathalie Khankan considers what it means to bear a Palestinian child in the occupied Palestinian territory\, particularly with a pregnancy enabled through contingent access to Israel’s sophisticated fertility treatment infrastructure. The poems confront questions of how to be a national vessel and to bear a body whose very creation is enabled by the pronatalist state\, yet not recognized by it. \nWhile Quiet Orient Riot chronicles a journey that is specific and localized\, the larger questions that emerge from these poems reach beyond this particular story. The book asks questions of itself\, wondering what kind of language may hold precarious life and what kind of poem may see an unborn body through emergency\, diminishment\, and into blossoming. \nThrough the trials of pregnancy and birth\, demographic and religious imperatives\, these poems are concerned with many kinds of worship. They bow to a “chirpy printed sound\,” “what grows in the rubble\,” and “the capacity for happiness despite visual evidence.” Wherever you look\, there are water holes for the thirsty and a grove of “little justices.” \n \nNathalie Khankan’s work appears in the Berkeley Poetry Review\, jubilat\, Crab Creek Review\, and The Laurel Review. Her book quiet orient riot was selected by Dawn Lundy Martin as the winner of Omnidawn’s 1st/2nd Book Prize. She is the founding director of The Danish House in Palestine and teaches Arabic language and literature in the Department of Near Eastern Studies at UC Berkeley. Straddling Danish\, Finnish\, Syrian and Palestinian homes and heirlooms\, Nathalie currently lives in San Francisco. \n\nAbout The Lower East Side Tenement Reclamation Association by David Rothman \n \nThis magical realist tale follows the travails of a burnt-out teacher from Queens who spends his time obsessing over the fact that he has been cheated out of living in his Grandma Rose’s Lower East Side apartment and is thus priced out of his “More Recent Ancestral Home” of Manhattan. \nIn The Lower East Side Tenement Reclamation Association\, David Rothman weaves a rich story about real estate\, family\, and memory. Daniel\, the protagonist\, is haunted by the memories of his childhood experiences in his grandmother’s apartment\, a home that he desperately wants to inhabit. One day he discovers a hidden relic on Rivington Street: a tenement reclamation office run by an eccentric centurion named Hannah. When Daniel inquires about the chances of reclaiming his grandmother’s old tenement\, Hannah is not impressed. “Things don’t work like that\, you rude\, young schlub!” And so begins Daniel’s journey to take back his past and to secure an affordable space for his family in downtown Manhattan. This is a journey full of twists and turns\, ups and downs\, and an ending that would make even the most thick-skinned New York real estate agent shake. \nThe Lower East Side Tenement Reclamation Association is the winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction Novelette Prize\, selected by Meg Ellison. \nDavid Rothman has had short stories published in such journals as Glimmer Train\, Hybrido\, The Piltdown Review\, Newtown Literary\, among others. He has a Master’s Degree in English and Linguistics from the University of Wisconsin\, and has taught writing for the City University of New York for over twelve years. He is the drummer for the NYC-based band\, The Edukators\, and is a proud resident of Jackson Heights\, Queens (and has little or no interest in reclaiming his actual grandparents’ tenement on the Lower East Side). \n\nThis event is free and open to all ages\, but RSVP is required. RSVP here.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-omnidawn-fall-book-launch/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/quiet-orient.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T153000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201003T145916Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201003T145916Z
UID:59964-1603634400-1603639800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Eastwind Book Club: Minor Feelings
DESCRIPTION:Join Eastwind Book Club this October as we read Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAbout this Event\n\n\nEastwind Book Club is a community of readers connected by Asian and Asian American literature. Members gather once a month through a virtual meeting to discuss the month’s book selection. October’s book club pick is Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. \nThe book club meeting will take place via Zoom on Sunday\, October 25 at 2pm PST. Register to receive the meeting link. \nJoin our Book Club Facebook* group to engage in conversation throughout the month: www.tinyurl.com/ewclub \n​Book Club members can use coupon code BOOKCLUB2020 for a 10% discount at www.asiabookcenter.com \n  \nAbout the book: \nPoet and essayist Cathy Park Hong fearlessly and provocatively blends memoir\, cultural criticism\, and history to expose fresh truths about racialized consciousness in America. Part memoir and part cultural criticism\, this collection is vulnerable\, humorous\, and provocative–and its relentless and riveting pursuit of vital questions around family and friendship\, art and politics\, identity and individuality\, will change the way you think about our world. \nBinding these essays together is Hong’s theory of “minor feelings.” As the daughter of Korean immigrants\, Cathy Park Hong grew up steeped in shame\, suspicion\, and melancholy. She would later understand that these “minor feelings” occur when American optimism contradicts your own reality–when you believe the lies you’re told about your own racial identity. Minor feelings are not small\, they’re dissonant–and in their tension Hong finds the key to the questions that haunt her. \nWith sly humor and a poet’s searching mind\, Hong uses her own story as a portal into a deeper examination of racial consciousness in America today. This intimate and devastating book traces her relationship to the English language\, to shame and depression\, to poetry and female friendship. A radically honest work of art\, Minor Feelings forms a portrait of one Asian American psyche–and of a writer’s search to both uncover and speak the truth. \nCathy Park Hong is the author of three poetry collections including Dance Dance Revolution\, chosen by Adrienne Rich for the Barnard Women Poets Prize\, and Engine Empire. Hong is a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize\, a Guggenheim Fellowship\, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her poems have been published in Poetry\, The New York Times\, The Paris Review\, McSweeney’s\, Boston Review\, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of The New Republic and full professor at the Rutgers University-Newark MFA program in poetry. \nReview \nCatherine Park Hong examines her development from a ‘model minority’ Asian American into new awareness of racial injustice and identification with people of color. The essays take us through her younger years with the 1992 burning of L.A. Koreatown\, and as an adult enduring racist slurs and discrimination. Hong shares a growing criticism of white privilege and racial inequality through her essays. Importantly she discovered her rebellious influencers Richard Pryor\, Yuri Kochiyama\, Theresa Cha\, among the race activists who helped define an Asian American movement and liberated their generation in unity with the long sixties Black Power Movement. \nBook Club Reading Guide \nHow do you define your racial identity\, and what are your major influences? \nThe Model Minority controversy has gripped Asian Americans. Has being defined as a Model Minority helped Asian American ethnicities attain opportunities\, or is it an elusive gamble for white privileges? \nAs an Asian American\, do you identify as a person of color? And how has racial discrimination affected you or your family? \nWe are challenged by the book to join Asian Americans in support of Black Lives Matter. What side of history should Asian Americans stand? \n~ \nEastwind Book Club is co-sponsored by OCA – Asian Pacific American Advocates Bay Area Chapters\, Asian Pacific American Student Development (APASD) and AsAmNews (www.asamnews.com).
URL:https://litseen.com/event/eastwind-book-club-minor-feelings/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/minor-feelings.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Eastwind Books":MAILTO:eastwindbooks@gmail.com
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T150000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201003T205728Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201003T205728Z
UID:59998-1603634400-1603638000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Eoin Colfer
DESCRIPTION:THIS EVENT IS ONLINE \nEoin Colfer is best known for his New York Times bestselling blockbuster series Artemis Fowl  which gained a huge worldwide readership for its mix of hilarious mayhem and snarky humor. Artemis Fowl\, the boy-genius criminal mastermind\, deals with fantastical beings and megalomaniacal villains in madcap adventures over eight books. There’s a movie adaptation that came out this year directed by Kenneth Branagh and starring Judi Dench\, a series of graphic novels\, and the series spin offs revolving around the Fowl Twins . \nEoin is also the author of the critically acclaimed WARP trilogy\, Airman\, Half Moon Investigations\, The Supernaturalist\, The Wish List and Highfire And he was named Ireland’s Laureate for children’s literature in 2014 \nWe are thrilled that Eoin is writing more stories in the Artemis Fowl universe and are excited for Eoin to tell us about his second Fowl Twins adventure\, Deny All Charges\, which starts with a bang – literally. \nArtemis’s little brothers Myles and Beckett borrow the Fowl jet without permission\, and it ends up as a fireball over Florida. The twins plus their fairy minder\, the pixie-elf hybrid Lazuli Heitz\, are lucky to escape with their lives but the Fowl parents and fairy police force place the twins under house arrest.. Myles has questions which must infuriate someone\, because Myles is abducted and spirited away from his twin. Can Beckett and Lazuli collaborate to find and rescue him? Will Beckett be able to come up with a genius plan without a genius on hand? \nDon’t miss this opportunity to meet Eoin Colfer and rediscover the joy of another Fowl Brothers adventure that will keep you engaged\, entertained\, and grinning. \n\nPhoto of Eoin Colfer by Sonya Sones.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/eoin-colfer/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/deny-all-charges.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T170000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220610Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220610Z
UID:60036-1603612800-1603645200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:San Francisco Public Virtual Library - Before Columbus Foundation 41st Annual American Book Awards
DESCRIPTION:The Before Columbus Foundation recognizes the winners of the 41st Annual American Book Awards. The American Book Awards were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community\, honoring excellence in American Literature without restriction to race\, sec\, ethnic background or genre. \nConnect with the Before Columbus Foundation – Website | Facebook \nZoom Registration \nSFPL YouTube Live \n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/san-francisco-public-virtual-library-before-columbus-foundation-41st-annual-american-book-awards/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/beforeColumbus_eblast.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="San Francisco Public Library - Virtual Library":MAILTO:anissa.malady@sfpl.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T180000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201010T031209Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T031209Z
UID:60180-1603555200-1603562400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Conversations with Authors - Claire Messud (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:Claire Messud‘s latest release\, Kant’s Little Prussian Head and Other Reasons Why I Write\, opens a window on her own life: a peripatetic upbringing; a warm\, complicated family; and\, throughout it all\, her devotion to art and literature. \nClaire is a recipient of Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She is the author of six works of fiction including The Burning Girl\, The Emperor’s Children\, and The Woman Upstairs. She lives in Cambridge\, Massachusetts\, with her family. \nSheila Heti is the author of eight books of fiction and non-fiction\, including the novels Motherhood; chosen by the book critics at the New York Times as one of their top books of 2018\, and by New York magazine as the best book of the year; How Should a Person Be?\, named one of the 12 “New Classics of the 21st Century” by Vulture\, as well as a New York Times Notable Book\, a best book of the year in The New Yorker\, and cited by Time as “one of the most talked-about books of the year”; and Ticknor; as well as the story collection\, The Middle Stories. She was named one of “The New Vanguard” by the New York Times; a list of fifteen women writers from around the world who are “shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.” Her books have been translated into twenty-two languages.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/conversations-with-authors-claire-messud-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/kants-little-head.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T170000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220515Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220515Z
UID:60032-1603555200-1603558800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:San Francisco Public Virtual Library - Libby Copeland\, The Lost Family
DESCRIPTION:The Lost Family explores the rapidly evolving phenomenon of home DNA testing\, its implications for how we think about family and ourselves and its ramifications for American culture broadly. \nLibby Copeland is an award-winning journalist who has written for the Washington Post\, New York magazine\, the New York Times\, the Atlantic and many other publications. She specializes in the intersection of science and culture. Copeland was a reporter and editor at the Post for eleven years\, has been a media fellow and guest lecturer and has made numerous appearances on television and radio. \nIn collaboration with the Bay Area’s scientific\, cultural and educational institutions\, the Bay Area Science Festival\, now in its 10th year\, is an annual celebration of science\, technology\, engineering and mathematics. Organized by the Science and Health Education Partnership at UCSF\, the Festival features hundreds of online activities\, provocative conversations and virtual tours of cutting-edge facilities\, all designed to connect residents with the region’s scientists and engineers. \nThe festival runs from Oct. 21-25 and at SFPL we will feature picture books with a science connection during our live story times that week. Also join us online for STEM workshops aimed at elementary school-age audiences that explore basic science\, engineering\, math and technology topics. \nCopies of The Lost Family\, signed and personalized by Libby Copeland\, can be purchased through The Village Bookstore in Pleasantville\, NY (Attention: Jennifer Kohn\, 914-769-8322). \nConnect with Libby Copeland – Website | Twitter | \nConnect with the Bay Area Science Festival – Website | Instagram | Twitter | Facebook \nRegistration: http://bit.ly/LostFamily10-24-20 \nSFPL YouTube Live: https://youtu.be/yQBUYM1E6Yw \n–
URL:https://litseen.com/event/san-francisco-public-virtual-library-libby-copeland-the-lost-family/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/lostFamily_eblast.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="San Francisco Public Library - Virtual Library":MAILTO:anissa.malady@sfpl.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201010T205921Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212404Z
UID:60224-1603548000-1603557000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:On Point: Crafting a Short-Form Point of View Piece with David Jacobson
DESCRIPTION:“Many people are driven to write by the simple human need to express ourselves\,” says instructor David Jacobson. “There may be no better way to meet that need than through the short\, pointed burst of intellectual and emotional energy that goes into a newspaper column\, op-ed or blog post.” \nIn this online series\, through a mixture of short lectures\, readings\, discussions\, writing exercises\, and independent work between class sessions\, you will learn how to write a 500-1500 word piece that shares your perspective and stays on point. In class\, you will brainstorm subjects for your writing\, select a topic for a piece to draft over the weeks that the class meets\, choose a point of view that is personal and powerful\, and strategically structure your beginning\, middle\, and end. The class will gently workshop the writing of students who are ready to share their pieces. \nBy the end of three weeks\, you will take away: \n\ntools to help you identify\, select and reject topics for your future opinion pieces\ntips on applying the right voice to a given topic\ntricks for persisting through starts and stops.\n\nOur goal is that you leave the series of classes with a draft of a piece that is “On Point.” Whether your piece is meant for personal satisfaction\, use in your professional life\, or for eventual publication\, David will draw from his four decades of writing with a point of view to help you get to the point and stay on point. \n\nLive Zoom Meeting: Saturday\, October 24\, 2:00pm-4:30pm\nLive Zoom Meeting: Saturday\, October 31\, 2:00pm-4:30pm\nLive Zoom Meeting: Saturday\, November 07\, 2:00pm-4:30pm
URL:https://litseen.com/event/on-point-crafting-a-short-form-point-of-view-piece-with-david-jacobson/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/download-6.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T163000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201009T021414Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212518Z
UID:60152-1603548000-1603557000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Creative Writing 101 with Kathy Garlick
DESCRIPTION:“Have you wanted to test the waters of creative writing but don’t know where to begin\, or how?” asks instructor Kathy Garlick. “Have you waded into those waters before\, but it’s been a while?” \nIn this online class\, you will be guided surely and safely into the writing experience. There’s no pressure to work on a specific project or even settle on a genre you prefer. The idea is to explore—see with a writer’s eyes\, spark ideas\, gain confidence\, and try out fun writing exercises. \nKathy will build each class around helpful writing tools and strategies. You will complete a range of exercises to learn the most essential parts of creative writing\, including creating vivid images\, telling an engrossing story\, and building well-rounded characters. \nYou’ll also read and learn from writers such as Jhumpa Lahiri\, Zadie Smith and Fanny Howe. Kathy says\, “In writing we’re always trying to find something honest\, something hidden under the trap door of the skull. Our reactions to other writers can open that door.” \nDiscussions and collaboration will be an important part of this class. The sharing of your writing will be up to you\, and everyone will respond with a supportive and open spirit. \nOctober 24 – November 21\n5 Saturdays\, (PST) 2:00pm – 4:30pm
URL:https://litseen.com/event/creative-writing-101-with-kathy-garlick/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/download-5.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T130000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201009T015400Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212332Z
UID:60149-1603535400-1603544400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Writing the Big Themes with Erin Rodoni
DESCRIPTION:Love. Loss. Transformation. These themes are so integral to the human experience that writers have returned to them again and again for centuries. But how can we write anything new about growing up\, falling in love\, breaking up\, or losing a parent/child/lover/friend? \n“To me\, making something new means making it personal\,” says instructor Erin Rodoni. “Often the best way to give a piece of writing universal appeal is to make it as specific as possible. So we need to become great observers of our own experiences of love\, our private journeys through loss\, growth\, and change. We need to bring our devastating details\, our kinks and quirks\, our breathtaking intimacies\, to the page.” \nIn this online workshop we’ll explore a different theme each week. Our reading and discussion of poems\, short stories\, and personal essays will serve as a prompt for us to create new work\, both inside and outside of class\, centered around each week’s theme. We will then come together to share and gently workshop these new pieces as a group. \n“I want students to come away from this class with five new pieces of writing that make each big theme new and personal for them\,” says Erin. “I also hope they come away with a better understanding of how writers use detail and specificity to make a big theme feel new and personal for their readers too.” \n5 Saturdays\, October 24 – November 21
URL:https://litseen.com/event/writing-the-big-themes-with-erin-rodoni/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/download-4.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T103000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T130000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201009T015018Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212251Z
UID:60146-1603535400-1603544400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Jumpstart Your Memoir Writing! with Kerry Muir
DESCRIPTION:Have you ever experienced the nagging feeling you ought to be writing down your life stories\, but have simply lacked the time and the tools to do it? If so\, this is the class to jumpstart your memoir-writing engine! \n“The act of writing memoir is vastly different for everyone\,” says instructor Kerry Muir. “It can be an intensely personal\, private act—a way to unearth and sift through events of the past\, ascertaining their meaning in retrospect. For some\, it can be a way to leave a legacy for future generations\, offering children (and grandchildren) an intimate glimpse into the life of a loved one. For others\, writing memoir serves as a way to revisit fleeting moments and reclaim them on the page\, thereby capturing them for posterity\, much like a photograph.” \nMark Twain once said\, “Truth is stranger than fiction\, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” In this online class\, students will gain tools to transform their own unique\, stranger-than-fiction truths into vibrant\, original narratives. In-class exercises and weekly assignments are geared to help students generate new material and access their individual\, story-telling voice. All writers are welcome! \n5 Saturdays\, October 24 – November 21
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jumpstart-your-memoir-writing-with-kerry-muir/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/download-3.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201024T170000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201024T224939Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201024T224939Z
UID:60460-1603526400-1603558800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Azadeh Moaveni and Salar Abdoh
DESCRIPTION:Discussing the intersections of their new books \nReTargeting Iran \npublished by City Lights Books \n& \nOut of Mesopotamia \npublished by Akashic Books \n——— \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(CLICK HERE) to register \n————- \nPurchase ReTargeting Iran (CLICK HERE)  \nPurchase Out of Mesopotamia (CLICK HERE) \n————- \nAbout ReTargeting Iran\, edited by David Barsamian\, with Azadeh Moaveni and others \nThe United States and Iran seem to be permanently locked in a dangerous cycle of brinkmanship and violence. Both countries have staged cyber attacks and recently shot down one another’s aircraft. Why do both countries seem intent on escalation? Why did the U.S. abandon the nuclear deal (which\, according to the UN\, was working)? Where can Washington and Tehran find common ground? To address these questions and the political and historical forces at play\, David Barsamian presents the perspectives of Iran scholars Ervand Abrahamian\, Noam Chomsky\, Nader Hashemi\, Azadeh Moaveni\, and Trita Parsi. A follow-up to the previously published Targeting Iran\, this timely and urgent book continues to affirm the goodwill between Iranian and American people\, even as their respective governments clash on the international stage. \n  \nAbout Out of Mesopotamia: A Novel by Salar Abdoh \nSaleh\, the narrator of Out of Mesopotamia\, is a middle-aged Iranian journalist who moonlights as a writer for one of Iran’s most popular TV shows but cannot keep himself away from the front lines in neighboring Iraq and Syria. There\, the fight against the Islamic State is a proxy war\, an existential battle\, a declaration of faith\, and\, for some\, a passing weekend affair. \nAfter weeks spent dodging RPGs\, witnessing acts of savagery and stupidity\, Saleh returns to civilian life in Tehran but finds it to be an unbearably dislocating experience. Pursued by his official handler from state security\, opportunistic colleagues\, and the woman who broke his heart\, Saleh has reason to again flee from everyday life. Surrounded by men whose willingness to achieve martyrdom both fascinates and appalls him\, Saleh struggles to make sense of himself and the turmoil in his midst. \nAn unprecedented glimpse into “endless war” from a Middle Eastern perspective\, Out of Mesopotamia follows in the tradition of the Western canon of martial writers—from Hemingway and Orwell to Tim O’Brien and Philip Caputo—but then subverts and expands upon the genre before completely blowing it apart. Drawing from his firsthand experience of being embedded with Shia militias on the ground in Iraq and Syria\, Abdoh gives agency to the voiceless while offering a meditation on war that is moving\, humane\, darkly funny\, and resonantly true.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/azadeh-moaveni-and-salar-abdoh/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/retargeting-iran.jpeg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201023T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201023T190000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200828T221908Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200828T221908Z
UID:59353-1603472400-1603479600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Funeral Diva
DESCRIPTION:A poetic memoir about coming-of-age in the AIDS era\, and its effects on life and art. \n“She is a writer for the future\, in that she defies genre.”—Hilton Als \n“Pamela Sneed’s Funeral Diva charts the ‘grieving patterns’ informing a life with unflinching honesty and clarity. This notable achievement\, traveling from youth to adulthood\, is a harrowing account of how Sneed transforms violence and pain into an artist’s life.”—Claudia Rankine\, author of Citizen: An American Lyric \nIn this collection of personal essays and poetry\, acclaimed poet and performer Pamela Sneed details her coming of age in New York City during the late 1980s. Funeral Diva captures the impact of AIDS on Black Queer life\, and highlights the enduring bonds between the living\, the dying\, and the dead. Sneed’s poems not only converse with lovers past and present\, but also with her literary forebears—like James Baldwin\, Toni Morrison\, Audre Lorde—whose aesthetic and thematic investments she renews for a contemporary American landscape. \nOffering critical focus on matters from police brutality to LGBTQ+ rights\, Funeral Diva confronts today’s most pressing issues with acerbic wit and audacity. The collection closes with Sneed’s reflections on the two pandemics of her time\, AIDS and COVID-19\, and the disproportionate impact of each on African American communities. \n“Riveting\, personal\, open-hearted\, risky and wise. This is Pamela Sneed at the top of her gifts\, firmly grounding her history into our history\, enriching both\, acknowledging all the legacies and losses\, influences gold and ash.”—Sarah Schulman\, author of Conflict Is Not Abuse \n“Pamela Sneed’s Funeral Diva is deft\, defiant\, and devastating. Nothing exists in her work without history\, without teaching me\, as she writes\, ‘the power of what words can do.’ Through her brilliant mind it’s evident that everything is truly connected. You just have to find the string.”—Tommy Pico\, author of Feed \n“Funeral Diva is urgent and necessary reading to live by. This is writing at its finest. Sneed poetically processes individuation\, life’s journey of becoming\, a visionary elegy that transforms trauma and abandonment to recognition and virtuosity. Here\, with perceptive awareness we are invited along the way with mysterious encounters\, beloved attachments\, and then the cruelties\, the sorrows\, and profane acts of injustices confronted and given Cassandra full due diligence. Sneed magnificently refuses to back down\, and gives courageous and compassionate requiem with imagination\, integrity and inspiration for humanity. Keep this book close to your heart and soul.”—Karen Finley\, author of Shock Treatment \n“Reminiscent of Audre Lorde’s Zami\, Pamela Sneed’s memoir is\, in itself\, a healing balm\, affirming in its truths and honesty. Sneed takes us by the hand and leads us while she meditates on her journey from being orphaned as a baby to coming of age as a black lesbian in the 1980’s\, sometimes cutting corners and jay walking into deeper memories of childhood hurts and adolescent desire—the result\, a syncopated rhythm with a brilliant mix of emotions and sensations and poetry to describe a period of being gay and black in the shimmering strangeness of a vibrant city on the cusp of the AIDS epidemic that claimed the lives of many. I cannot remember ever reading a book that illustrates the impact of the AIDS epidemic on our community more poignantly than Funeral Diva.”—Nicole Dennis-Benn\, author of Patsy \n“Pamela Sneed takes enormous risks in this book. She tells the truth with fierce concentration and an abiding sense of purpose.”—Dorothy Allison\, author of Bastard Out of Carolina \n“In her latest collection\, Funeral Diva\, Pamela Sneed ‘articulates at a mathematical speed’ her journey as a Black lesbian poet coming to terms with a new name\, to her evolved consciousness as an activist in New York City in the rage and devastating loss of the HIV epidemic. Sneed delivers an immersive experience with a grief that is porous\, inexplicable\, urgent\, and untamed. In Sneed’s distinctive style of prophetic foreshadowing\, Funeral Diva is the tome for our awakening and for our survival.”—Erica Cardwell\, writer\, critic\, and educator \n“If you wonder what political agency feels like\, read this book. If you want to know what a broken heart feels like\, read this book. If you’re not sure how to express political agency in spite of a broken heart\, read this book.”—Avram Finkelstein\, author of After Silence: A History of AIDS Through its Images \n“What does death take? Something or someone unacceptably absent. And how does grief exact? The costs are incalculable. Silver linings are just damn insulting. Yet\, somehow Sneed qualifies loss in the perfect most appropriate forms. Not psalms\, not proverbs\, perhaps a hint of prophecy\, but mostly through righteous lamentations. In this book\, Sneed testifies with clarity\, urgency\, and conviction. These compositions are necessary to the very soul of art itself. The compositions are the spirit-work and mind-breath demanded by the much (and too often late) lamented—our lost loves who remain ever-present. Gratitude to the author. All of us should read and thank this poet repeatedly.”—Gregg Bordowitz\, author of General Idea: Imagevirus (The AIDS Project)
URL:https://litseen.com/event/funeral-diva/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201023T120000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201023T130000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220436Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220436Z
UID:60028-1603454400-1603458000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:San Francisco Public Virtual Library - Native Tongues: Tres Poetas de Califas
DESCRIPTION:An afternoon of ¡VIVA! poetry with Alejandro Murguía\, Leticia Hernández-Linares and José Héctor Cadena. \nAlejandro Murguía author of Southern Front and This War Called Love\, Nine Stories\, City Lights Books (winner of the American Book Award). In non-fiction he has published The Medicine of Memory: A Mexican Clan in California\, University of Texas Press. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts. Currently he is a professor in Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University. In 2013 City Lights Books published his new book Stray Poems. His short story\, The Other Barrio\, was recently released as a full length feature\, filmed in the street of the Mission District. He was the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino to hold the position. \nConnect with Alejandro Murguía – Website \nLeticia Hernández-Linares is a poet\, interdisciplinary artist and educator. She is the author of Mucha Muchacha\, Too Much Girl\, and co-editor of The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States. Widely published\, her work appears in Other Musics\, Latinas: Struggles & Protests\, Maestrapeace\, Huizache\, and Pilgrimage.  A four-time San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist grantee\, she teaches in the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University. \nConnect with Leticia Hernández-Linares – Website | Twitter \nJosé Héctor Cadena is a poet\, scholar and collage artist who grew up along the San Ysidro/Tijuana borderlands. He is currently a doctoral candidate in the Department of American Studies at The University of Kansas. His work has appeared in Raices y Mas: An Anthology of Young Border Voices\, Cipactli\, Transfer Magazine\, Pacific Review\, La Bloga\, Red Light Lit and San Diego Poetry Annual. \nZoom Reservation \nSFPL YouTube Live \n–
URL:https://litseen.com/event/san-francisco-public-virtual-library-native-tongues-tres-poetas-de-califas/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/nativeTongues_eblast.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="San Francisco Public Library - Virtual Library":MAILTO:anissa.malady@sfpl.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201023T080000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201025T170000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200925T233302Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200925T233302Z
UID:59875-1603440000-1603645200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Berkeley Poetry Festival
DESCRIPTION:The Berkeley Poetry Festival is a City of Berkeley sponsored celebration of the city’s poets. We honor a local poet with a Lifelong Achievement award for service in the community and writing. Organized by Sharon Coleman and MK Chavez . \nBerkeley Poetry Festival is so honored to announce that Michael Warr is the Lifetime Achievement Awardee for our 18th annual festival. We will be celebrating Michael and many more poets October 23-25 online.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/berkeley-poetry-festival/
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/berkeley-poetry-festival.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T210000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201016T233605Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201016T233605Z
UID:60322-1603393200-1603400400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Leslie K. Barry - Newark Minutemen (Virtual Event)
DESCRIPTION:In between World Wars\, during the Great Depression\, American democracy was threatened by a shadow Nazi party\, complete with a self-proclaimed American Hitler and a 1939 Nuremberg-like rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. Join Marin author Leslie K. Barry for a discussion of her family’s incredible true story—and the inspiration for her new novel\, Newark Minutemen—that of a Jewish boxer in 1930s New Jersey who was recruited by the Jewish mob and the FBI to go undercover against the rising German-American Nazi party\, falling in love with the enemy’s daughter along the way.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/leslie-k-barry-newark-minutemen-virtual-event/
CATEGORIES:Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/minutemen.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T203000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201009T000318Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201010T212206Z
UID:60119-1603393200-1603398600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Publish Your Opinion\, with Laird Harrison (via Zoom)\, Oct. 22
DESCRIPTION:HURSDAYS\, OCT. 22 — 29 |Your opinion matters. You have taken the time to research an issue and think it through. Now how can you get the word out to the people who need to hear it? Newspapers\, magazines\, and websites are looking for well-reasoned essays. But their criteria are very different from the ones your college English professor used. In this three-hour course\, you will learn the basics of writing an essay or op-ed for publication. You will write your own opinion piece\, then submit it for critique by the instructor and peers so you can polish it for publication.\n \nThis class will meet on Zoom. Registered students\, please contact the instructor directly for Zoom details. \nLaird Harrison has published opinion pieces in Salon\, The Nation\, and the San Francisco Chronicle among other publications. His journalism has appeared in Time\, Reuters and Smithsonian. He has taught writing at San Francisco State University\, U.C. Berkeley Extension and Mediabistro. He is the author of the novel Fallen Lake. \n  \nNumber of sessions: 2 \nContact: lairdharrison@gmail.com \nDates: Thursdays\, October 22\, 29 \nTime: 7:00pm – 8:30pm Pacific Time \nCourse fee: $85
URL:https://litseen.com/event/publish-your-opinion-with-laird-harrison-via-zoom-oct-22/
CATEGORIES:Classes and Workshops,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Screen-Shot-2020-10-08-at-12.59.11-PM.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T170000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201022T190000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220953Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220953Z
UID:60057-1603386000-1603393200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Swords Out: A Dungeons & Dragons Murder Mystery
DESCRIPTION:John Darnielle (Wolf in White Van\, Universal Harvester\, the Mountain Goats)\, Leah Johnson (You Should See Me in a Crown)\, Daniel Lavery (Something That May Shock and Discredit You\, The Merry Spinster\, Slate’s Dear Prudence\, the Toast)\, Amber Sparks (And I Do Not Forgive You\, The Unfinished World)\, and R. Eric Thomas (Here for It\, Elle magazine) join Dungeon Master Matt Lubchansky to play a classic tabletop role-playing game with a literary twist. If you’ve never played D&D before\, don’t worry—most of our players haven’t either.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/swords-out-a-dungeons-dragons-murder-mystery/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Dungeons-and-Dragons.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T200000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200922T173440Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200922T173440Z
UID:59740-1603303200-1603310400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:VIRTUAL: Lunch Poems: San Francisco and Chicago
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith and Friends of the San Francisco Public Library present Mike Puican (L) and Michael Warr (R) reading from their poetry to celebrate the publication of Puican’s new collection\, Central Air. Join us! \nThis is a free event\, but RSVP is required. RSVP here. \n\nMike Puican and Michael Warr will share poems centered on cities they’ve called home. The poets met in Chicago\, a place that served as a living incubator for their writing over a period of 20 years. Puican has a new book of poems\, Central Air\, that focuses on the spiritual as well as the corporal intensities of Chicago. Warr grew up in San Francisco and spent his twenties in Chicago and Addis Ababa\, Ethiopia. \nThese gifted artists will present poems of place that contrast and compare life in these two great cities. \n\nAbout Central Air \nSet in the urban Chicago landscape\, Central Air explores the human challenge of living with strong desires\, limited knowledge\, and no saving direction. The voices in this mix of elegies and soft litanies negotiate lives within the strangeness and unpredictability of each moment. In every case\, language is a swift prayer\, ode\, and lyric. Chicago is an intensely experienced\, blue-collar homeplace where injustice is a given. The poems are stern\, compressed\, and unsentimental. But they are also empathic to human shortcomings and doubts\, scored in unobtrusive consistency in both voice and language. \nPuican’s focus on the city\, its people and underbellied spaces\, pays homage in the tradition of the great Chicago masters: Carl Sandburg\, Gwendolyn Brooks\, and Campbell McGrath. This contemporary Chicago son finds his own place with lyrical integrity. \n\nMike Puican has published poems in Poetry\, Bloomsbury Review\, Crab Orchard Review\, and New England Review\, among others. His work has also been featured on WBEZ\, Chicago’s NPR affiliate. Puican was a member of the 1996 Chicago Slam Team and holds an M.F.A. in poetry from Warren Wilson College. As a longtime board member of the Guild Literary Complex in Chicago\, he has been deeply involved in supporting and promoting other Chicago writers. He also leads poetry workshops at St. Leonard’s House for formerly incarcerated men and at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago. \nMichael Warr‘s books include Of Poetry and Protest: From Emmet Till to Trayvon Martin\, (W.W. Norton)\, and from Tia Chucha Press The Armageddon of Funk\, and We Are All The Black Boy. He is the recipient of the 2020 Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Award and is a San Francisco Library Laureate. Other honors include a Creative Work Fund Award\, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature\, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award\, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award\, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Michael is the former Deputy Director of the Museum of the African Diaspora and is a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Follow his creative work at https://michaelwarr-creativework.tumblr.com/. \n\nThis event is free and open to all ages\, but RSVP is required. RSVP here.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/virtual-lunch-poems-san-francisco-and-chicago/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/central-air.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T200000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200904T212503Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200904T212503Z
UID:59427-1603303200-1603310400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Third Man Books Night @ City Lights
DESCRIPTION:Celebrating three awesome new books! \n     \nThird Man Books (the publishing imprint of Jack White’s Third Man Records) returns to City Lights to launch three excellent new titles: IT CAME FROM MEMPHIS by Robert Gordon\, CAR MA by Alison Mosshart\, and Nine Bar Blues by Sheree Renée Thomas. \nThird Man Books and Records: Where your turntable’s not dead\, and your page still turns! \nThis is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights and Third Man on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before\, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom. \n———- \nEvent is free\, but registration is required. \n(Click Here) to register \n———– \n(Click Here) to purchase books (link to be posted soon!) \n———– \nabout It Came From Memphis \nVienna in the 1880s. Paris in the 1920s. Memphis in the 1950s. These are the paradigm shifts of modern culture. Memphis then was like Seattle with grunge or Brooklyn with hip-hop—except the change was more than musical: Underground Memphis embraced black American culture when dominant society simply ignored or abhorred it. The effect rocked the world. Like no other music history\, It Came From Memphis dishes its tuneful tale with a full context of social issues. From institutional racism to cowboy movies\, from manic disc jockeys to Quaalude motorcycle gangs\, this story is as unvarnished a history of rock and roll as ever has been written. Stars pass through— Elvis\, Aretha\, Jerry Lee—but the emphasis is more on the singular achievements of artists like Alex Chilton\, Jim Dickinson\, Furry Lewis and wrestler Sputnik Monroe. This is a book about the weirdos\, winos and midget wrestlers who forged the rock and roll spirit. The Memphis aesthetic is to invert expectations: artists encounter imperfection with a joyous enthusiasm\, embracing mistakes and doing it all wrong by forging their own paths to get it exactly right\, unwittingly changing the fabric of America. A storyteller’s storyteller\, Robert Gordon puts you in the shotgun seat\, riding with the old coots and the young rebels as they pass a bottle and a blunt. Memphis changed the world\, this book might change you. The paragraph that begins updated and revised should be all bold. \nRobert Gordon is a writer and a filmmaker\, a Grammy winner and an Emmy winner. He’s a native Memphian who has been exporting the city’s authentic weirdness since long before his first book\, It Came From Memphis (1995). He’s been nominated for six Grammys; his win was for the liner notes to the Big Star box set Keep an Eye on the Sky. His Emmy was for Best of Enemies\, the 2015 documentary about Gore Vidal\, William Buckley\, and the demise of civil discourse in America. He’s not the rockabilly singer\, he’s not author of Deep Blues\, and he’s not the university in Scotland. He lives in Memphis. \nVisit: TheRobertGordon.com \n  \nabout CAR MA \nCAR MA is artist and musician Alison Mosshart’s first printed collection of paintings\, photographs\, short stories\, and poetry. It is a book about cars\, rock n’ roll\, and love. It’s a book about America\, performance\, and life on the road. It’s a book about fender bender portraiture\, story tellin’ tire tracks\, and the never-ending search for the spirit under the hood. Mosshart imagines the auto body shop like some other Coney Island. And America’s highways- the last great roller coasters. Shows us that the engine on fire is connected to the guitar feeding back since birth. And the sensation of walking on stage and facing an audience is like the laugh before the scream in a car without brakes. Mosshart ruminates that automobiles- with their doors and mirrors and windows\, engines and wheels and radios- portray us. Mirror our need to be in or to exit\, our inward reflections and outward visions\, our lifetimes of tinkering with the mysterious heart. That which runs until it doesn’t. Throughout history the car has been a symbol of freedom and hopeful adventure. It stands to reason it is also a symbol of our subsequent spinning out … over things we never thought could happen during a song that fucking good and with the volume up that fucking loud. \nAlison Mosshart is best known for her work in her musical duo The Kills\, as well as fronting the Grammy nominated rock n’ roll band\, The Dead Weather. Mosshart is also a visual artist\, working in paints\, multi-media and photography. She studied art for two years at the University of Florida\, following a brief unrecorded spell at the University of Honolulu learning print making in the middle of the night. She is for the most part self taught. She has had 5 major solo exhibitions: “Fire Power” at the Joseph Gross Gallery in NYC\, 2015\, “Fire Power Los Angeles” at Maxfield in Los Angeles\, 2017\, “Tonight Only” in Muscle Shoals\, Alabama\, 2016\, “Side Effects” at Panteon in Mexico City\, 2018\, and “Los Trachas” at FF-1051 Gallery in Los Angeles\, 2018. \nVisit: Alison Mosshart on Facebook \n  \nabout Nine Bar Blues \nSheree Renée Thomas is a two-headed woman\, one crown\, earthbound\, rooted in the Mississippi Delta and the New Weird South\, the other spinning far off into space. And if music is the embedded memory of a culture\, then her remarkable fiction collection is its excavated soul. Individually\, these tales explore nearly every genre of music that has formed the heart of American culture\, but their shared song is the story of the blues. Thomas’s writing haunts and mesmerizes you. Her imagination takes you down through it like the best traditional blues song\, then opens you up again\, delivering you into that mysterious\, transcendental space that is the ninth bar. \nHaunting and evocative\, Nine Bar Blues carries the soul’s songbook\, from the dark laughter of strange sisters forced to make a perilous journey into a land their mothers have never known\, to the fortified funk of extraterrestrial mixtapes. \nSheree Renée Thomas imagines stories that are sonic rituals\, works that cultivate and affirm the magical and the mystical in everyday living. Nine Bar Blues explores the multitudinous forms of music and the people who make it and appreciate it—the body’s music\, the spirit’s music\, and what moves a soul forward in the crossroads journey of life. Her stories travel from haunted West African and Middle Eastern forests to the mysterious back roads in the Mississippi Delta\, from the ancestral realms of the afterlife to the alien sounds beyond. And throughout the journey\, Nine Bar Blues heralds the arrival of a unique writer whose voice carries the hope and the past-future-present of a people. \nVisit: Sheree Renée Thomas’ Website
URL:https://litseen.com/event/third-man-books-night-city-lights/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/nbb_cover_finalfinalcover.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T180000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T190000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20201007T220352Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20201007T220352Z
UID:60024-1603303200-1603306800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:SFPL Virtual Library: Celia Stahr\, Frida In America The Creative Awakening of a Great Artist
DESCRIPTION:The riveting story of how three years spent in the United States transformed Frida Kahlo into the artist we know today. \nMexican artist Frida Kahlo adored adventure. In November\, 1930\, she was thrilled to realize her dream of traveling to the United States to live in San Francisco\, Detroit and New York. Still\, leaving her family and her country for the first time was monumental. \nOnly twenty-three and newly married to the already world-famous forty-three-year-old Diego Rivera\, she was at a crossroads in her life and this new place\, one filled with magnificent beauty\, horrific poverty\, racial tension\, anti-Semitism\, ethnic diversity\, bland Midwestern food and a thriving music scene\, pushed Frida in unexpected directions. Shifts in her style of painting began to appear\, cracks in her marriage widened and tragedy struck\, twice while she was living in Detroit. \nFrida in America is the first in-depth biography of these formative years spent in Gringolandia\, a place Frida couldn’t always understand. But it’s precisely her feelings of being a stranger in a strange land that fueled her creative passions and an even stronger sense of Mexican identity. With vivid detail\, Frida in America recreates the pivotal journey that made Senora Rivera the world famous Frida Kahlo. \nCelia Stahr is a professor at the University of San Francisco\, where she specializes in modern American and contemporary art with an emphasis on feminist art and gender studies\, as well as African and multicultural art. She holds a Doctorate of Philosophy from the University of Iowa and lives in the Bay Area. \nConnect with Celia Stahr – Website | Instagram | Blog \nZoom Registration \nSFPL YouTube Live \n—
URL:https://litseen.com/event/sfpl-virtual-library-celia-stahr-frida-in-america-the-creative-awakening-of-a-great-artist/
LOCATION:online
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/StahrFrida_eblast.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="San Francisco Public Library - Virtual Library":MAILTO:anissa.malady@sfpl.org
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20201021T180000
DTSTAMP:20260403T162719
CREATED:20200923T175358Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200923T175358Z
UID:59820-1603296000-1603303200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Sherri Duskey Rinker & AG Ford\, Construction Site Mission: Demolition!
DESCRIPTION:We are delighted to welcome Sherri Duskey Rinker and AG Ford as they share their newest adventure\, Construction Site Mission: Demolition! Everyone’s favorite construction crew is back in this brand-new addition to the Goodnight\, Goodnight series. Kids will be delighted to hear the author reader here story and to meet the illustrator of this awesome book\, where the crew CRASH-BANG-BOOMS through the demolition process. \nRegister for this free Crowdcast event here!
URL:https://litseen.com/event/sherri-duskey-rinker-ag-ford-construction-site-mission-demolition/
CATEGORIES:Free,Virtual
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/construction.jpg
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END:VCALENDAR