Our top picks for the week starting Monday, May 13th, 2013. Suggest an event.

Get some tanka poetry with your Indian food at Poetry Express Monday night with Jeannie Lupton over in Berkeley or head to The Shout in Oakland if you want some stories.

Tuesday you can find Michelle Tea at Books Inc. Castro, reading from her new book Mermaid in Chelsea Creek, or head to Green Apple Books for a rare chance to meet Arturo Mantecon and hear him read the poems of Leopoldo Maria Panero. Also, WritersCorps presents an evening of art, readings, and performance on the realities of motherhood. If you’re in the East Bay, check Joseph Lease and Richard Silberg kicking it together.

Dan Langton @ 14 Hills

It’s hard to say no when Fourteen Hills asks you to come party; they’re so darn good at it. There’s a lot going on Wednesday, but that’s probably your best shot. EBay peeps, Poetry for the People at The Long Haul might be really cool — this from Zack Haber: “anyone can read (but get there on time because we only have time for a certain number of readers) and after every four readers we will have discussion. We’re asking for politically themed poetry but are pretty open to what that can mean” (that’s 6:30p at The Long Haul). The Lyrics & Dirges roster includes Toaster, Daniel Suarez, Chaney Kwak:

Cole Swensen finishes off the Marin Poetry Center’s Third Thursdays season for the Marin Poetry Center. Jaron Lanier is at the JCC, Annalee Newitz has a new book (read the introduction below) and will be at the Mechanics Library, and Walter Mosley is at Book Passage up in Corte Madera — actually, Thursday is pretty packed. If you haven’t been to one, the MFA Mixers are outstanding.

Friday‘s got it going on too: RADAR’s annual Spectacle fundraiser is a rager; a stellar lineup at Canessa; ZYZZYVA’s in Oakland with their new issue; the Grottoites are doing their rapidfire thing at Book Passage; 826 Valencia hosts another meeting of the Secret Writers Society (on writing that YA novel), and over at SFSU they’ll be reading from freshly completed theses.

Doesn’t stop around here! Nikky Finney is in town (that’s all I’m saying about SF, now). If you’re in the EBay and you have a few bucks you will have an outstanding time at Notes & Words, where you can catch Mary Roach, Billy Collins, and… G. Love & Special Sauce? Yup. That’s at the Fox Theatre (I wrote this about it last year). If you’re playing it more low-key, the Brew is back and so is Soulful. OK, I lied about San Francisco: Bang Out’s tonight, too.

Sunday is a perfect day for bagels and bloody marys — and Litquake knows it (too bad for you it’s sold out). The good news is you can catch the 32nd Annual Northern California Book Awards for zero dollars (here’s footage from 2011 — highly recommended). Finally, Peter Orner and Josh Mohr are over at Bird & Beckett — no way you can lose there.

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Evan Karp is founder and president of Quiet Lightning, a literary nonprofit that curates a monthly submission-based reading series and publication. He also writes literary culture columns for the San Francisco Chronicle and SF Weekly and curates the monthly top 10 Bay Area lit events at SFArts.org. evan@litseen.com