Our top picks for the week starting Monday, April 15, 2013. Suggest an event.

Monday, 4/15

There are several options for this literary Monday. The Nato Sessions w/ Gerard Jones is hosted by San Francisco’s favorite comedian, Nato Green, back from New York (where he worked as a contributing writer for Totally Biased with w. Kamau Bell). Appearing at the JCCSF and featuring talks from “famous smart people,” this session showcases Gerard Jones, author of the Eisner Award-winning Men of Tomorrow, The Beaver Papers, and more. Buy tickets here.

Porchlight pairs up with Quiet Lightning (with an appearance by Moneta Goldsmith, among several others) for a night of storytelling.

First Person Singular will have special guest appearances by Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Nabokov.

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Tuesday, 4/16

Tuesday is jam packed with tons of creative and fun literary events to attend! For the more high-action literary individual there is Write Club (with Miquila Alejandre), as well as Matthew Spektor at Litquake, Feast of Words (with Raquel Gutiérrez) and The Word Party. This month there is also Pints & Prose in Fairfax, ZYZZYVA @ Vesuvio (with Lori Ostlund) and lastly Patrick Cotter and Matthew Sweeney at Moe’s Books who traveled all the way from Ireland to Berkeley.

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Wednesday, 4/17

The Holloway Series is glad to welcome Anne Carson, a novelist and essayist specializing in ancient Greek and Roman culture. Carson has written books including Glass, Irony, and God (1992), Plainwater: Essays and Poetry (1995) and Men in the Off Hours (2001) that helped to bring her forth as unique among the contemporary poets of the time. Her novel Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, takes from the legend of Hercules and is an infamous read. Watch Anne Carson read from her novel Nox, which is an epitaph to her runaway brother who she later discovered living in Copenhagen.

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Thursday, 4/18

Get out on a Thursday night and attend Mixer 2.0: The Second Coming, which gives the spotlight to 11 different writers representing 7 different schools such as SFSU and USF. They ask that you bring your literature and dancing shoes. You could also go see Woolsey Heights with Brent Cunningham and Thom Donovan. Lastly, GuyWriters and The San Francisco Queer Open Mic team up for My First Love which celebrates poets and their inspirations (with Sam Sax).

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Friday, 4/19

Come on down to a night of comedy, music and writing with The Rumpus: Spring Fever! Comedian Sean Keene will be in attendance as well as the dynamic writing duo Wendy MacNaughton and Caroline Paul who produced the novel Lost Cat which tells the tale of how they tracked their cat with GPS. The event is free with RSVP so save the date!

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Saturday, 4/20

The Other Fabulous Reading Series presents its first reading in over two months with writers such as Donald Dunbar and San Francisco State University Poetry Center director, Robert Glück. Another important event this Saturday is the Voices Carry Benefit which features seven novelists reading from translations that have inspired their own work (with Anita Amirrezvani).

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Sunday, 4/21

The JCCSF is extremely lucky to have Mary Roach for an evening. Roach is the author of popular novels such as Stiff and more recently Gulp which explores the human body in the most entertaining ways. It should be a fun-filled night discussing the inner-workings of the human body with this science writer. Watch her discuss anatomy and orgasms in this Big Think Interview. Another interesting event on Sunday is at none other than Bird & Beckett Books with the author of Love and Shame and Love, Peter Orner.

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Erica Arvanitis is a Litseen intern and a senior at SFSU for Creative Writing. She is originally from San Diego and enjoys writing short stories, eating burritos, and watching TV in her free time. She hopes to write professionally for a magazine when she grows up — any magazine will do.