Lit Crawl San Francisco: Full Schedule

5:00pm

Action Fiction

Literary magic happens when local writers give their best stories, and creative control, to local actors who bring each story to life in a full theater.

Participants

Gabriel Bellman

Gabriel Leif Bellman graduated from USC's Cinema School before going to work at MTV in New York. As a television Producer, Mr. Bellman helped start the 'True Life' series at MTV. He received his M.A. from New York University, and his J.D. from U.C. Hastings. Gabriel has directed... Read More →

Ben Black

Ben Black received his MFA from SFSU. His work appears in Smokelong Quarterly, New American Writing, Harpur Palate, and the Los Angeles Review.

Scott Lambridis

My debut novel, THE MANY RAYMOND DAYS, about a scientist who discovers the end of time, received the 2012 Dana Award and is represented by Richard Florest of Robert Weisbach Creative Management. Stories of mine have appeared in Amazon's Day One, Slice, Memorious, Cafe Irreal, Painted... Read More →

Eric Myers

Eric Myers writes and teaches in San Francisco--and sometimes Columbus. He is the cofounder of MadLab Theatre and Burning Man Information Radio.

Benjamin Wachs

Benjamin Wachs is author of the short fiction collection A Guide to Bars and Nightlife in the Sacred City, and is Bar Columnist for SF Weekly, where he writes short facts.

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Stagewerx 446 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Bay Area Generations

Bay Area Generations: A reading series for the ages pairs poets and authors of different generations in a curated literary reading and music show.

(Please note that this event has had to relocate from the venue shown in the print program and on the map.)

Participants

Kwan Booth

Writer, Boothism

Kwan Booth spends his days at a big tech company teaching people how to make money on the internet. At night he writes fiction, articles and essays that often detail the dangers of big tech companies and the ridiculous ways that people try to make money on the internet. It’s strangely... Read More →

Raluca Ioanid

Raluca Ioanid was born in communist Romania and raised in capitalist New York City. By day she is a Family Nurse Practitioner at a community health center in Fruitvale, Oakland. By night she is a traveling, trapeze flying, writer of stories. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Riverbabble... Read More →

Sarah Kobrinsky

Sarah Kobrinsky was the 2013-2015 Poet Laureate of Emeryville, CA. Her collection, Nighttime on the Other Side of Everything, is forthcoming by New Rivers Press (Autumn 2019). Her poems and stories have appeared in Magma Poetry, Eleven Eleven, Monkeybicycle, 100 Word Story, Fjords... Read More →

Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong

Bonnie Wai-Lee Kwong is a multidisciplinary artist and software developer in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has lived in nine states and two continents. Art is a way for her to traverse seen and unseen geographies. Bonnie's poetry has been published in such journals as The California... Read More →

Danusha Lameris

Danusha Laméris’s next book, Bonfire Opera (Pitt Poetry Series), is due out in April 2020. Other work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Tin House, and New Ohio Review, as well as in a variety... Read More →

Janice Mirikitani

Janice Mirikitani is recognized as a poet, visionary, editor, administrator and community activist. is the Co-Founder and Founding President of GLIDE where she in partnership with her husband, Reverend Cecil Williams, for over 5 decades, have achieved worldwide recognition for their... Read More →

John Oliver Simon

Sage on the Stage, California Poets in the Schools

John Oliver Simon is one of the legendary poets of the Berkeley Sixties who has persevered in his calling. Published from Abraxas to Zyzzyva, he is a distinguished translator of contemporary Latin American poetry, and received an NEA fellowship for his work with the great Chilean... Read More →

Michael Warr

Michael Warr’s books of poetry include Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton & Company, 2016), and from Tia Chucha Press: The Armageddon of Funk; We Are All The Black Boy; and others. 2017 Library Laureate (Friends of the San Francisco Public Library... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Harrington Galleries 599 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Bazaar Writers Salon

For five years Bazaar Writers Salon has featured many of the very best Bay Area writers in a warm and intimate setting.

Participants

Nicholas Friedman

Jones Lecturer, Stanford University

Judy Halebsky

Judy Halebsky is the author of the poetry collections Sky=Empty, Tree Line and the chapbook Space/Gap/Interval/Distance. Fellowships from the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, and the Vermont Studio Center have supported her work. Her passions include the Moth-style storytelling... Read More →

Ammi Keller

Ammi Keller was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Fiction at Stanford University. Her short stories appear in The 2015 Best American Nonrequired Reading, American Short Fiction and Joyland. She wrote the zine Emergency from 1998-2006 and has been supported by residencies at VCCA and the... Read More →

James Siegel

James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection "How Ghosts Travel" from Spuyten Duyvil Press, which was a finalist for the Ohioana Library Book Award. He hosts and curates the monthly Literary Speakeasy show at Martuni's, always held on the last Thursday of every month, which... Read More →

Jenn Alandy Trahan

Jenn Alandy Trahan was born in Houston, Texas, and raised in Vallejo, California. She holds a BA from the University of California, Irvine, as well as an MFA and MA from McNeese State University. Though Jenn has lived in eleven cities across the country, her heart belongs to the... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Dalva 3121 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Beyond Boundaries: Mapping the Narrative

Mirabel Street Writers in the Mission invites you to board the omnibus. Nightingales and runaways lead you through emotional dives and dangerous districts.

Participants

David Jefferies

Sari Kossowksy

Cynthia Kreuz-Uhr

Richard Schwarzenberger

Richard Schwarzenberger is author of In Faro’s Garden, with work in The Utne Reader, Agni, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

William Torphy

William Torphy’s poetry, critical reviews and articles have appeared in numerous magazines. Ithuriel’s Spear in San Francisco has published three books. His short stories have appeared in The Fictional Café, ImageOutWrite Volume 5, Chelsea Station, Main Street Rag, Miracle Monocle... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
The Green Arcade 1680 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Cancer as Fuck

A swing dancer, epidemiologist, social justice activist, wine hawker, and techie will read and represent Bay Area Young Survivors (BAYS), an action group for young breast cancer survivors.

Participants

Allison B.

Allison B. is a swing dancer by night and user experience guru by day. She has been the Global Creative Director/VP for StyleList.com, a #1 fashion and beauty site. The work of Allison's teams has been recognized by Wired Magazine and HOW Magazine's "The Strategic Designer," and given... Read More →

Hillary Flynn

Cat Huegler

Cat H. has no nipples. Between a constant quest for fun, she works in tech, managing meetings and conference calls around hot flashes. Cat has been published in Shivering in a Paper Gown and Agony and Absurdity: Adventures in Cancerland.

Emily Kaplan

Emily Kaplan just passed year four since her second diagnosis of breast cancer. She is featured in a series of large-scale portraits of young breast-cancer survivors (www.thescarproject.org). Emily has been published in The Day My Nipple Fell Off, Shivering in a Paper Gown, and Agony... Read More →

Yamini Kesavan Ranchod

Yamini Kesavan Ranchod is an epidemiologist and an expert in chasing after a toddler while fanning her hot flashes. Her academic research on social determinants of health has been cited in Reuters and published in prestigious public health journals such as The American Journal... Read More →

Sia Sellu

Sia Sellu identifies as Multicultural Black Woman. She is the child of Sierra Leonean immigrants, who was an inner Sunset girl and teen punk rock chick. She was a single mom when Newt Gingrich assured the world that moms like her were responsible for the downfall of our Nation... Read More →

Robin Bruns Worona

Robin Bruns Worona is a copywriter whose work for brands like Gap, Macy’s, Travelocity and adidas has hopefully made you drop some cash. While she recently joined the exodus to Portland, her heart (and one breast) will forever remain in San Francisco. Robin’s longer writing has... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Evil Eye 2937 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Cave Canem

Committed to fostering African American poets, Cave Canem presents a reading of works from West Coast fellows. These poets will show you why you need to "beware of the dog."

Participants

Anastacia-Renee

Anastacia-Renee is the Seattle Civic Poet and former 2015-2017 Poet-in-Residence at Hugo House. She is the author of four books: Forget It (Black Radish Books), (v.), (Gramma Press), Answer(Me) (Argus Press), and 26 (Dancing Girl Press), and her poetry, prose and fiction have been... Read More →

Chiyuma Elliott

Chiyuma Elliott is Assistant Professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Her scholarly work and teaching focus on poetry and poetics, visual culture, and intellectual history from the 1920s to the present. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, Elliott... Read More →

Natalie J. Graham

Associate Professor, Cal State University Fullerton

Author of BEGIN WITH A FAILED BODY (University of Georgia Press).

Cynthia Manick

Cynthia Manick is the author of Blue Hallelujahs (Black Lawrence Press, 2016). A Pushcart nominee with a MFA in Creative Writing from the New School; she has received fellowships from Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, Poets House, and the MacDowell Colony among others. A winner of the 2016... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Valencia Gardens Community Room 390 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Celebrating June Jordan's Legacy: Poetry for the People

The late poet June Jordan founded Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley. The celebration features poets whose participation spans multiple decades of the program's legacy.

Participants

Jahan Khalighi

Student Teacher Poet, Poetry For The People

Poet, musician, and educator with a passion for the arts as a tool for personal and social transformation. I am a poet teacher for June Jordan's Poetry For The People program and California Poets In The Schools. I was a former member of the Eugene Poetry Slam team. I am currently... Read More →

Dyanna Loeb

Dyanna Loeb aka Dyna*Mic is an MC, poet and arts educator who started performing with Youth Speaks in 2001. She has shared her words and music for international audiences, at venues including the San Francisco Opera House, the Nuyorican (NYC), and Project HeartBeat Jerusalem. Her... Read More →

Sandra Garcia Rivera

Sandra García Rivera is author of two chapbooks. She curates and hosts the monthly bilingual literary series Lunada at Galeria de la Raza.

Stephanie Mee-hae Yun

Stephanie Yun is a genderqueer artist and educator of the Korean diaspora. Coming up through the youth poetry scene in the Bay Area, they are a Student Teacher Poet for June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program, a former member Youth Speak’s advisory board, SPOKES, and served... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Time Frame 418 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Clitquake 2

Clitquake returns for its second Litcrawl! #Clitquake presents stories about the clitoris, bringing a spirit of fun sexuality to a literary scene that's traditionally been focused on cis male experience.

Participants

Meg Elison

Meg Elison is a San Francisco Bay Area author. Her debut novel, “The Book of the Unnamed Midwife” won the 2014 Philip K. Dick Award and was a Tiptree mention that same year. It was reissued in 2016 and was on the Best of the Year lists from Amazon, Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus... Read More →

Louis Evans

Ardra Hren

Lauren Parker

Lauren Parker is a writer based in Oakland. She is the cohost of GLOW the Distance: a Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling podcast, and a graduate of Hiram College’s Creative Writing program. She has written for the Toast, the Tusk, Ravishly, The Bold Italic, Harlot Magazine, Hoodline... Read More →

Danielle Truppi

Danielle Truppi is a writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. .

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Armory Club 1799 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+

5:00pm

Crime Time

Crime Time features six of the genre's rising stars and invites you to come and explore the dark side of the story.

Participants

Kris Calvin

When Kris Calvin isn't writing, she's cheering on the Warriors or SF Giants with her kids. Or reading. She loves reading. Trained in economics & psychology, she's been honored by the CA Assembly & Gov's office for child advocacy. Her debut novel was awarded the Killer Nashville... Read More →

Dietrich Kalteis

Award-winning author of Zero Avenue, House of Blazes, Triggerfish, The Deadbeat Club and Ride the Lightning – from Vancouver, BC.

Rob Pierce

Rob Pierce wrote the novels Uncle Dust and With The Right Enemies, the novella Vern In The Heat, and the short story collection The Things I Love Will Kill Me Yet. Rob has been nominated for a Derringer Award for short crime fiction and a Pushcart Prize, and has had stories published... Read More →

Tom Pitts

Author

Tom Pitts is a Canadian/American author and screenwriter who received his education on the streets of San Francisco. He remains there, working, writing, and trying to survive. He is the author of 101, AMERICAN STATIC, HUSTLE, and the novellas PIGGYBACK and KNUCKLEBALL. His new novel... Read More →

Simon Wood

USA TODAY bestselling author, Simon Wood is a California transplant from England. He's a former competitive racecar driver, a licensed pilot, an endurance cyclist, an animal rescuer and an occasional PI. He shares his world with his American wife, Julie. Their lives are dominated... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Blondie's 540 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Diasporic Vietnamese Artists Network presents: "She who has no master(s)"

DVAN-sponsored "She who has no master(s)" is a collective of writers elucidating the Vietnamese "feminine" as touched by war, history, heritage, mythology, and personal experience.

Participants

Thi Bui

Thi Bui is a writer, artist, and former public school teacher. She came to the U.S. as a refugee in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and continues to advocate for refugees and immigrants today. Her debut graphic memoir, The Best We Could Do (Abrams ComicArts, 2017) started as... Read More →

Angie Chau

Angie Chau is the author of Quiet As They Come, a book described by Publisher's Weekly in a starred review as "serenely stirring stories" in which, "characters radiate dignity and depth, seek freedom but find crushing loneliness." She has received awards and support from Hedgebrook... Read More →

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud

Isabelle Thuy Pelaud teaches at SFSU and leads DVAN. She is author of This Is All I Choose To Tell and co-editor of Troubling Borders.

Aimee Phan

Aimee Phan is a Vietnamese-American author. She was born and raised in Orange County, California. She received her BA in English from UCLA and her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. Her first novel, We Should Never Meet, was named a Notable... Read More →

Julie Thi Underhill

Julie Thi Underhill is a Bay Area filmmaker, photographer, poet, essayist, and performer with fine art, documentary, experimental, & historical work.

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Four Barrel 375 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Finishing School

Come hear how the Finishing School formed a successful and encouraging writing group and how you can build your own accountable writing community.

Participants

Danae Barnes

I am particularly interested in myth, flash fiction and deconstruction sci-fi that uses a politicized, world-building lens. Also, I enjoy awkward interactions with gorgeously intelligent strangers.

Christina Ortega

Joe Wadlington

Joe Wadlington has satire and personal essays published in The New Yorker, The Rumpus, Racked.com, Sparkle + Blink, and Loose Lips (A SF Shipwreck anthology).

Zoe Young

Zoe Young is a fiction writer and journalist. She holds a writing M.F.A. from California College of the Arts and has taught at San Francisco State University. Her short fiction has been published in A Tale of Four Cities Review and The Bensonhurst Review. Her short story “Angel... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Skunkfunk 302 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Friends of South Asia (FOSA): Kindness of Strangers

Authors who have dared to travel while being brown or just different and have encountered the kindness of strangers irrespective of scrutiny by authoritarian regimes.

Curators

S. S. Mausoof

S.S. Mausoof is a Pakistani-American writer and filmmaker. Mausoof's feature narrative, Kala Pul, The Black Bridge (2006), a noir thriller shot in Karachi by Markus Huersch, was short listed at the Singapore Media Development Authority’s Asian Festival of First Films, and... Read More →

Participants

Kashif Maqsood

Unrealized humanist. Frequently found contemplating, discussing and selling the humanist agenda through familiar tales of overcoming challenge. In a time of talking over each other without the willingness to understand another voice. I specifically want to gear the conversations... Read More →

Fyza Parviz

Writer and software engineer.

Maheen Adamson, PhD

Senior Scientific Research Director/Clinical Associate Professor, Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC) VA Palo Alto/ Neurosurgery and Psychiatry, Stanford School of Medicine

@AdamsMausoof Dr. Maheen Adamson is the senior scientific research director for DVBIC at the VA Palo Alto Health Care System. She is also the clinical associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University. Adamson completed her undergraduate degrees in... Read More →

Savitha Samu

Savitha Samu came to the United States 15 years ago, from the bustling city of Mumbai in India, in pursuit of a Masters degree in electrical engineering and is a Silicon Valley techie by day. When not at work, she indulges in her passion of reading, creating art, writing poetry in... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Dolores Park Cafe 501 Dolores Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Identity Theory

Identity Theory is an online literary magazine and cultural hub that has been publishing original writing, interviews, and other forms of creative expression since 2000.

Curators

Matt Borondy

Founding Editor, Identity Theory

Matt Borondy founded identitytheory.com in 2000 and has edited the site for 17 years. He is driving up from Las Vegas just to hang out with you.

Participants

Kevin Canty

Kevin Canty is the Director of Creative Writing at University of Montana. Canty is the author of seven books, most recently a novel called Everything and a collection of stories, Where the Money Went. His stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, The New Yorker... Read More →

Giano Cromley

Kennedy-King College

Giano Cromley's collection of short stories, entitled What We Build Upon the Ruins, will be released this fall. He is the author of the novel The Last Good Halloween, which was a finalist for the High Plains Book Award. He is the chair of the Communications Department at Kennedy-King... Read More →

Alta Ifland

Alta Ifland writes in French, English and Romanian. She is the author of two collections of short stories, Elegy for a Fabulous World and Death-in-a-Box; and two books of prose poems, Voice of Ice (bilingual, translated by the author from French into English) and The Snail's Song... Read More →

Alex A.G. Shapiro

I say "hi" to everyone. University of Montana MFA (Fiction) '04.

Judy Viertel

A proud public educator, in 2014 Judy Viertel was named San Francisco Teacher of the Year. She can't seem to stay away from fiction, though. She's been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Gold Dust Magazine, Read Short Fiction, Mad Swirl, and others. One of her stories will appear... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Casanova Lounge 527 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

InsideStorytime DELUGE

Every force evolves a form. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold. Everything that rises must converge. Always keep a diamond in your mind.

Curators

Ransom Stephens

Ransom Stephens’ novels mix science and religion, environmentalism and technology, oligarchy and anarchy, and his latest, Too Rich to Die, is set at the intersection of love and money. www.ransomstephens.com

Participants

Makram Abu-Shakra

Makram Abu-Shakra is an award-winning writer, artist, and experimental musician whose interests lie in exploring consciousness and excavating expressions from the deeper self. Working with the subtle and the ambiguous led him to develop a multi-faceted creativity to "create a matrix... Read More →

Rajshree Chauhan

Rajshree Chauhan is a San Francisco author of emotive fiction and poetry who empowers others through collaboration. Her work appears in Red Wheelbarrow and Sparkle&Blink.

Rob Davidson

Rob Davidson’s most recent book is Spectators: Flash Fictions (Five Oaks, 2017), which Kirkus Reviews praises as “A small but mighty collection of textual snapshots… Flash fiction at its best that’s definitely worth a look.” Davidson’s previous story collections are Th... Read More →

Erika Mailman

Erika Mailman is the author of historical novels Woman of Ill Fame, House of Bellaver and The Witch’s Trinity, which was a Bram Stoker finalist and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book. Her latest, The Murderer's Maid, looks at the Lizzie Borden murder case from the point of view... Read More →

Rebecca Winterer

Rebecca Winterer is the author of The Singing Ship, awarded the Del Sol Press 2016 First Novel Prize and selected as a finalist for the Black Lawrence Press 2016 Big Moose Prize. She’s received fellowships at the Millay Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Virginia Center for Creati... Read More →

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Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Muddy Waters Coffee House 521 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Introvert Happy Hour with Silent Book Club

At Silent Book Club, there's no required reading — it's BYOBook. Order a drink and settle in for some quiet reading with friends. Free books and coasters on us!

Curators

Guinevere de la Mare

Founder, Silent Book Club

Guinevere is the author of I'd Rather be Reading: A Library of Art for Book Lovers (Chronicle Books) and the founder of Silent Book Club.

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Bond Bar and Lounge 3079 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Kundiman

Kundiman Northern California presents writings on landscape / heartbreak from Kundiman fellows that explore the wet map and disintegration.

Participants

Danny Thanh Nguyen

Danny Thanh Nguyen is the editor of AS IS, an anthology of Vietnamese American art and literature, and is the former fiction editor of Indiana Review. His stories and personals essays have appeared in Gulf Coast, Hyphen Magazine, and The Full Spectrum. Danny is currently a Kundiman... Read More →

Michelle Penaloza

A proud daughter of immigrants, Michelle Peñaloza was born in the suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and grew up in the suburbs of Nashville, Tennessee. She is the author of two chapbooks: landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias Press, 2015) and Last Night I Dreamt of Volcanoes (Organic... Read More →

Ploy Pirapokin

Ploy Pirapokin's work is featured in: Griffith Review, Hyphen, Asia Literary Review, Queen of Statue Square: New Short Fiction from Hong Kong, and Transfer Magazine.

Janice Lobo Sapigao

Janice Lobo Sapigao is a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. She was named one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s Women to Watch by KQED Arts. She is the author of two books of poetry: Like a Solid to a Shadow (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2017) and microchips for millions (Philippine... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
18 Reasons 3674 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Lit Camp presents: Failed States

From states of mind to politics, Lit Camp 2017 attendees read about failure in all its glory, chaos, and wisdom.

Participants

Karolina Connolly

Karolina Connolly scribbles stories and chips away at a novel. Raised in former USSR, she currently lives in the Bay Area where her day job in Organization Development inspires strange ideas about future societies.

Emily Cooke

Emily has written a memoir about life in California and death on the road. She is currently at work on a novel, tentatively titled Magic Bus, about tech bros, Mission pros, and sad Silicon Valley teenagers.

Roy Dufrain

Roy Dufrain is a former college dropout, speedfreak, dive-bar pool shark, and newspaperman. He is a recent graduate of the Novel Writing Certificate program at Stanford University. He lives in the hills of Northern California, and makes a living as the editor and publisher of a travel... Read More →

Robyn Johnson

Robyn Johnson believes in third chances. After earning not just one but two English degrees, she finally decided to stakeout her own cranny in the literary world. Consequently she's working on a lyrical memoir about space travel and death. Mostly death.

Julie Lythcott-Haims

I'm the New York Times bestselling author of the anti-helicopter parenting manifesto, How to Raise an Adult (Holt, 2015). This fall I'm out with a new book, a memoir on race and racism called Real American (Holt, 2017). I gave a TED Talk on the harm of overparenting that was released... Read More →

Kurt Wallace Martin

Kurt is an SF writer, known for rolling on two wheels and talking about it. He's writing a novel about a Utopian community fighting for survival in the near future Bay Area.

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Mission Workshop 541 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Mystery Writers of America: Noir at the Bar

Drinks, crimes, and a microphone, as authors from Mystery Writers of America/NorCal read and raise spirits of all kinds.

Participants

Cara Black

Cara Black lives in San Francisco and writes the NYTimes bestselling Aimée Leduc investigations set in different arrondissements of Paris. She lives in Noe Valley with her husband, a former bookseller, their dog and gets to Paris whenever she can. She received the Medaille de... Read More →

Tony Broadbent

Tony Broadbent is the award-winning author of the In The Smoke mystery series about a Cockney cat burglar in austerity-ridden, black-market-riddled, post-war London.

Jerry Kennealy

Jerry Kennealy, a native San Franciscan, has worked as a policeman and as a licensed private investigator in the City by the Bay. He has written twenty-three novels, including a series featuring private eye Nick Polo, two of which were nominated for a Shamus Awards. The eleventh... Read More →

Laurie R King

Laurie R. King is the New York Times bestselling author of 25 novels and other works, including the Mary Russell-Sherlock Holmes stories (from The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, named one of the 20th century’s best crime novels by the IMBA, to 2016’s The Murder of Mary Russell... Read More →

Ellen Kirschman

Mixing humor with serious issues, Ellen Kirschman writes the Dot Meyerhoff Mystery series, based on her 30 year career as a police psychologist. Too dedicated for her own good, Dot Meyerhoff should be counseling cops, not solving crimes. Or running from her personal problems. You... Read More →

Kelli Stanley

Kelli is the creator of the Miranda Corbie series (CITY OF DRAGONS, CITY OF SECRETS, CITY OF GHOSTS), literary noir novels set in 1940 San Francisco and featuring "one of crime's most arresting heroines" (Library Journal). Critics have compared her work to her icons Raymond Chandler... Read More →

Jacqueline Winspear

Jacqueline’s first novel, Maisie Dobbs, was a National Bestseller and received an array of accolades, including New York Times Notable Book 2003, a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Mystery 2003, and a BookSense Top Ten selection. In addition, the novel was nominated for 7 awards, including the Edgar® for Best Novel—only... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Latin American Club 3286 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Ninth Sin-phony - Musical Tales of Temptation from BARtab

BARtab, the Bay Area Reporter’s nightlife section, hosted by Lambda Literary Award-winning author Jim Provenzano, brings you tales of sin, sex, and ribald rock and roll.

Curators

Jim Provenzano

Jim Provenzano is the author of the Lambda Literary Award winner 'Every Time I Think of You,' and its sequel 'Message of Love' (a Lambda Literary Award Finalist), the novels 'PINS,' 'Monkey Suits,' 'Cyclizen,' the stage adaptation of 'PINS' (commissioned by New Conservatory Theatre... Read More →

Participants

Mark Abramson

Mark Abramson is the author of the Beach Reading Mystery series, set in San Francisco's Castro District, as well as three non-fiction books, his AIDS memoir: "For My Brothers," plus "Sex, Drugs and Disco - San Francisco Diaries from the Pre-AIDS Era" and its sequel "MORE Sex, Drugs... Read More →

Race Bannon

I've been an organizer, writer, educator, speaker and activist in the LGBT, leather/kink, polyamory and HIV/STI prevention realms since 1973. I've authored two books, been published extensively, spoken to hundreds of audiences, created the world's largest kink-friendly psychotherapist... Read More →

Nicole Henares

Born and raised on the Monterey Peninsula, Nicole Henares lives in the Bay Area but still considers Monterey County home. She has worked as an educator for over twenty years, and is currently a PhD candidate in Women’s Spirituality at the California Institute of Integral Studie... Read More →

Maria Konner

Host, Under the Golden Gate

Maria performs around town with her rock band Not From Jersey! playing guitar and singing mostly original songs, as well as playing jazz/blues/cabaret piano at various venues. She is also a host for her YouTube channel underthegoldengate.com where she performs, interviews guests... Read More →

Cornelius Washington

Owner, CuirPhoto.net

Background: -Born and raised in New Orleans, LA. -Photojournalist, TheBay Area Reporter:Subjects include Annie Liebowitz, Sen. Barney Frank, "Little" Joe Dallesandro, Tré Cool(Green Day), RuPaul, Paul Mooney, Erykah Badu, Mary Wilson, Big Freedia, Jose Xtravagana, Craig Newmark(Founder... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Martuni's 4 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Persistent Visions Magazine

Persistent Visions is a new speculative fiction magazine embracing the diversity of human experience. Our authors will push your boundaries and feed your soul!

Participants

Zach Chapman

Zach is an editor, author and gamer. His fiction has appeared in numerous anthologies and podcasts such as Star Ship Sofa, and Tales to Terrify. In 2016 he edited the anthology Time Travel Tales, which includes stories by Catherine Wells, Sean Williams, and Robert Silverberg. Like... Read More →

Greta Christina

Greta Christina is an American blogger, speaker, and author. Her most recent book is The Way of the Heathen: Practicing Atheism in Everyday Life.

David Ira Cleary

Oakland-based, David Ira Cleary writes technical documentation by day and science fiction by night. His credits include Asimov's, Interzone, SF Age, Writers of the Future, Full Spectrum II, and The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2013. One of his stories was filmed... Read More →

Dominica Phetteplace

Dominica Phetteplace is the founder of the San Francisco branch of Women Who Submit Writing. Her work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, Asimov's and Clarkesworld. Her honors include a Pushcart Prize, a MacDowell Fellowship and a Rona Jaffe Award.

Ryan Row

Ryan Row writes both literary and speculative fiction. His work has appeared in Clarkeswold, Quarterly West, Shimmer, Third Coast, Interzone, and elsewhere. He is a winner of the Writers of the Future Award, and holds a B.A. in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Double Dutch 3192 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Red Light Lit

Red Light Lit explores love relationships and sexuality through poetry, prose and song.

Participants

Lara Coley

Curator for VelRo Reading Series MFA Candidate in Poetry at SFSU Poetry, fiction, and art published in New American Writing, Rogue Agent, sPARKLE&bLINK, Opium Magazine, and others.

Matthew Davison

Founder & Teacher, www.matthewclarkdavison.com

Matthew Clark Davison's prose has been recently anthologized in By the Rivers of Babylon: Apostates Remember Believing (forthcoming, Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others... Read More →

Miah Jeffra

Miah Jeffra is from Baltimore and lives in San Francisco. His work has most recently appeared in Glitterwolf, The Citron Review, Jonathan, Fifth Wednesday, Educe and Fourteen Hills. He is recipient of the Sidney Lanier Prize, the Clark-Gross Award and the Lambda Literary Fellowship... Read More →

Loria Mendoza

Loria Mendoza hails from Austin, Texas, where she learned to keep it weird. Her stories have been published in The Walrus Literary Journal, featured at the MFA Mixer, Beast Crawl, Red Light Lit, and Voz Sin Tinta. She studies fiction in the Creative Writing MFA program at San Francisco... Read More →

Joshua Mohr

Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoir "Sirens" (2017), as well as five novels including "Damascus", which The New York Times called "Beat-poet cool." He’s also written "Fight Song" and "Some Things that Meant the World to Me," one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and... Read More →

Ari Moskowitz

Born in Philadelphia, Ari Moskowitz holds a BA from Wesleyan University and an MFA from SFSU, where he was the Editor of Fourteen Hills. In February '17, he was awarded a fellowship to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, where he was inspired to write from a second person voice... Read More →

Kim Pierce

Kim Pierce is a non fiction story teller who writes humor into the darkest corners of life. Working with homeless people, attempts at queer love, and not-so-queer love, a religious mother, a polygamist father, and mental illness are frequent themes in her work. Kim is one of the... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Public Works (downstairs) 161 Erie Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

San Francisco Writer's Grotto

Writers from the San Francisco Writer's Grotto reveal the traumas, collisions and best intentions that leave a mark. Physical or emotional, these scars are real. Emceed by Larry Rosen and Bridget Quinn, co-hosts of the Grotto's weekly podcast, The GrottoPod: Writers on Writing, where creative triumphs and enduring scars are dissected year round.

Curators

Bridget Quinn

Bridget Quinn is the author of Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art & Made History (In That Order), essays on the artwork, lives and legacies of fifteen essential but overlooked artists, and co-host of The GrottoPod: Writers on Writing, the weekly podcast of the San Francisco Writers... Read More →

Larry Rosen

Larry Rosen is the co-host of the GrottoPod and a longtime freelance journalist, writer, former San Francisco Examiner columnist and current humor columnist for the J Weekly in San Francisco. He is also the co-host and founder of the (Is it) Good for the Jews? podcast and is presently... Read More →

Participants

Laurie Ann Doyle

Writer & Teacher of Writing, UC Berkeley

Laurie Ann Doyle is an award-winning writer and teacher of writing at the San Francisco Writers Grotto and UC Berkeley. She is the author of World Gone Missing, coming September 30 from Regal House Publishing, and winner of the Alligator Juniper National Fiction Award. Select stories... Read More →

Laura Fraser

Laura Fraser is a long-time San Francisco journalist and author of three non-fiction books, including the NYT-bestselling An Italian Affair. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto.

Laird Harrison

Laird Harrison writes about science and medicine. His work has appeared in magazines (TIME, Audubon, Discover, Men’s Fitness, Health) and newspapers (San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press), and on Web sites (Salon, Reuters, MSNBC, CNN.com). He has produced... Read More →

Susan Ito

writer, The Grotto

Susan Ito is the author of The Mouse Room. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption. She has been a columnist and editor at Literary Mama, and her work has appeared in Growing Up Asian American, Choice, Hip Mama, Catapult, The Bellevue... Read More →

Julia Flynn Siler

Author, Alfred A. knopf

Julia Flynn Siler is a New York Times bestselling author and journalist. She wrote “Lost Kingdom: Hawaii's Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America's First Imperial Adventure” (Grove/Atlantic) and “The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty” (Gotham/Penguin... Read More →

Lyzette Wanzer

Author, Authors Guild

Lyzette Wanzer is a writer, editor, and creative writing workshop instructor. Her work reflects the peri-racial, social, and economic experiences of African-Americans and others in these times. A flash fiction connoisseur and essay aficionado, her work has appeared in Callaloo, Tampa... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Public Works (upstairs) 161 Erie Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

The Arts Resistance

"Everything's sadder than it was
All earthly gods must wither
Within your voice laments the universe
And three by three
New beings surge" -- Apollinaire.

Participants

Janina Glasov

Janina Glasov was a young journalist, fiction writer and burgeoning filmmaker. Glasov wrote for The Bay Guardian and Oakland Magazine and was awarded The Sander Thoenes Journalism Research Award and the Gregory and Toni Prince Research Award for Bad Girls and Their Stories of Glory... Read More →

Ginger Murray

Ginger Murray is a writer and performer. A once SF Weekly columnist and founder of Whore! magazine, she now spends far too much time in her kitchen reading political diatribes. You can find her behind the bar over at the Rite Spot and on Medium.com. Ginger currently lives in West... Read More →

Roman Rimer

Writer, performer, activist, radio host, improvisor, and actor, Roman Rimer, grew up in the SF Bay Area and outside of Chicago. Roman has been performing and studying various combinations of improv, stand up and storytelling since 2002, and has written and performed two solo shows... Read More →

Simon Rogghe

Simon Rogghe grew up in Belgium and studied philosophy in Netherlands, France, and New York. He is currently pursuing Ph.D. in French Literature at U.C.Berkeleу. He is an author of Green Lions, a collaborative book of poetry.

Jan Steckel

Jan Steckel is a former pediatrician who left the practice of medicine because of chronic pain. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Nonfiction. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry... Read More →

Terry Taplin

Terry Taplin holds several local and national slam poetry championships and final-stage performances spanning 2006–2012 across the youth and collegiate circuits. By occupation he is a scholar of Classical and Medieval/Renaissance Art, Literature, History and Philosophy.

Zarina Zabrisky

Zarina Zabrisky is an award-winning American author of five books published internationally, including a novel "We, Monsters" and three short story collections, "Iron," "A Cute Tombstone," "Explosion" and "Green Lions," a book of collaborative poetry co-written with Simon Rogghe... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Clarion Alley (main stage) Between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

The Fabulist: Live With Us Now in Fantasy and Dream

The Fabulist Words & Art presents an hour of fantasy, science fiction, lucid dreams, magic realism, fables, yarns and tales by seven Bay Area fabulists. In a world where our stories are measured, quantified, marketed to, distorted and contorted into mass-produced spectacle, we will take back the narrative of our imagination. Live with us now in fantasy and dream.

Curators

Josh Wilson

Publisher, The Fabulist Words & Art

I'm a San Francisco writer and editor, and also publisher of The Fabulist Words & Art, which publishes sporadically, and has a very (very) slow review process. We aim to pair great stories and art as a means of honoring the creators, and providing a worthy venue for their work. By... Read More →

Participants

Jen Burke Anderson

Jen Burke Anderson is a writer in San Francisco. This summer, she had her first poem published by Virginia Commonwealth University's Medical Literary Messenger, and her short story "Obituary" will appear in Fabulist Yarns & Fables this autumn. In September she earned a German-language... Read More →

Jenny Bitner

Jenny Bitner’s short stories have been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Sun, PANK, The Fabulist, Fence, The San Francisco Bay Guardian, and Writing That Risks. Her nonfiction writing has appeared in Anything That Moves, Utne Reader, Men’s Health and other... Read More →

Heather Bourbeau

Heather Bourbeau is a Berkeley-based writer. She was a Tupelo Press30/30 poet, a journalist whose work appeared in The Economist, The Financial Times and Foreign Affairs, and a former Political Affairs Officer with the UN peacekeeping mission in Liberia. Her first collection of... Read More →

Peg Alford Pursell

Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes Into the Forest (Dzanc 2019) and Show Her A Flower, a Bird, a Shadow, which was the Foreward Indie’s 2017 Book of the Year for Literary Fiction. Peg lives in Northern California and is the founder and director of WTAW Press and of... Read More →

Jeremy Adam Smith

Jeremy Adam Smith edits Greater Good Magazine and is the author or co-editor of four books, including The Daddy Shift, Rad Dad, and Are We Born Racist? His coverage of racial and economic segregation in San Francisco schools has won numerous honors, including the Sigma Delta Chi Award... Read More →

Maw Shein Win

Maw Shein Win's writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Poetry International, Fanzine, The Fabulist, and others. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers. Along with composer and musician, Amanda... Read More →

John Zic

John Zic holds an MFA from Warren Wilson College. His fiction has appeared in The Fabulist, and the museum of americana. His poetry has appeared in Fierce Hunger. He has worked in Bay Area theatre for 30 years, including Aurora Theatre, Berkeley Repertory, TheatreWorks, Attic Theatre... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Peoples Barber & Shop 321 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

The National Writers Union Salutes: Moments Making Movements

A celebration of transformative ideas, expressed through prose and lyrics that resist repression by promoting human consciousness.

Participants

David Colin Carr

David Colin Carr has been a long-time freelance editor (non-fiction, literary fiction, memoir, and dissertations) with writers as far-flung as Beijing and Johannesburg. Formerly a city council member, donut shop owner, executive director of Mendocino County Big Brothers/Big Sisters... Read More →

Christopher Cook

Christopher Cook is a poet, author and award-winning writer, and member of The Writers Grotto.

Sarah E. Kornfeld

Writer + Cultural Curator, Author of WHAT STELLA SEES

Sarah E. Kornfeld is a cultural curator and writer. She is a member of the National Writers Union Northern California Chapter. In 2017, Sarah previewed WHAT STELLA SEES at LitCrawl which is a work of literary ficiton. She now returns to it in the Movement around disability, exploring... Read More →

Alan Lessik

Author of The Troubleseeker

Alan Lessik is a novelist, writer, zen practitioner, amateur figure skater, LGBT activist and member of the National Writers Union. His debut novel, The Troubleseeker, was a finalist for Publishing Triangle's 2017 LGBTQ Fiction Award. Critics have compared his writing to Gabriel Garcia... Read More →

Ismael Parra

I am a member of the National Writers Union. I write songs, poetry, translate, teach, organize and fight for worker and civil rights. I am fluent in three languages ( Spanish, Italian, English). The scope of my work has been broad, including having been a union tradesman and... Read More →

September Williams

Author, Chasing Mercury

September Williams is a physician-writer, bioethicist and filmmaker. She is a contributing writer/editor of works on justice, bioethics and film. She's a member of the National Writers Union (UAW 1981/AFL-CIO) and the International Federation of Journalists. Her debut novel, Chasing... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Noisebridge 2169 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

USF MFA Program

Readings from poetry, fiction, and nonfiction students currently in the Master of Fine Arts in Writing at University of San Francisco. (Please note that this event is no longer taking place in the venue indicated on the program.)

Participants

Dani Cirignano

David Harber

Julie Henderson

Nathan Spicer

MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. I do four things: I write, play guitar, go to Target, and write. Sometimes I think about basketball for about fifteen seconds.

Sean Stevens

Writer, University of San Francisco

MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. Avid sleeper, eater, and long walk taker. Currently working on a novel focused on the shifting relationships of a family set in Trump Town USA: Michigan.

Preeti Vangani

Preeti Vangani is an Indian poet and writer. Her poems have been published/ forthcoming in Juked, The Knickknackery, Public Pool, Lines+Stars and The Bombay Review among other journals. She has been a featured spoken word performer at several events in India, New York, Chicago... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Pacific Felt Factory 2830 20th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Writers on the Verge: Litquake's Writing Contest Winners

Join us for readings of poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction from Litquake's third annual writing contest winners for 2017.

Participants

Teck Sway Bien

I am a writer based in the East Bay. I have been featured on Wattpad.com, the world’s largest writing community, and in 2016 won a Watty, one of its annual prizes. I write fiction and non-fiction, and am currently working on a novel titled Memoirs of a Gaysian.

Sage Curtis

Poet, University of San Francisco

Sage is a Bay Area poet/ writer and MFA candidate at the University of San Francisco. Her work has been published in numerous literary journals and she performs it whenever possible. Recently, she's been interested in the glamour and grit of addiction, and the places where it creeps... Read More →

Lucy Gray

Lucy Gray has two books of photography published and she is working on her first collection of short stories.

Mary Ladd

SF Writers’ Grotto member and writer for: California Magazine, Playboy, Time Magazine/Extra Crispy, SF Weekly, etc. I love walking my adorable rescue dog around the Mission District.

Olga Zilberbourg

Olga Zilberbourg is the author of Like Water And Other Stories (WTAW Press, 2019), and of three Russian-language story collections, the most recent published in Moscow in 2016.

Maria Zilberman

Poet

Maria was born in Minsk, Belarus, the former Soviet Union, and immigrated to the United States with her family as a Jewish refugee at the age of three. She grew up near Baltimore and lives in San Francisco.

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Samovar 411 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

5:00pm

Writers Studio: Art Speaks to Art

The fresh, colorful, surprising, and moving work of artists at Creativity Explored inspires The Writers Studio students.

Participants

Thomas Adams

Founder, Alta Vista Productions

My Pacifica home looks out on the ocean. Been married since 1987. We still hold hands and kiss. We both write, work, travel together, and from time to time go paddleboarding. I surf, write, bike, hike, sip coffee with milk and maple syrup.

Grace Chao

Market Research and Publications, Tribe Dynamics

Grace Chao grew up in the Bay Area and graduated from Stanford in 2015, where she received her bachelor's and master's degrees in English and wrote mostly creative nonfiction. She has written with the Writers Studio since fall of 2016. Her perfect Sunday would incorporate watching... Read More →

Eanlai Cronin

Eanlai Cronin is a schoolteacher, memoirist, and certified facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists Method. She runs writing groups and retreats in San Francisco’s East Bay for anyone in recovery from addiction, alcoholism, trauma and abuse, and for anyone longing to return... Read More →

Meaghan Douglas

Meaghan Douglas, a Bay Area native, has been writing for years because of her keen interest in exploring family stories and the role of women within those families and the wider world. She is currently finishing her first novel which contends with issues of femininity and grief... Read More →

Kim Huynh

Market Research and Publications, Tribe Dynamics

A Bay Area native, Kim Huynh graduated from Stanford in 2014 with a major in English and an emphasis in non-fiction creative writing. She is currently a research and reporting associate for Tribe Dynamics, where she writes about influencer marketing data and trends in the fashion... Read More →

Mohita Mohan

Elizabeth Pohlman

Elizabeth Pohlman has been telling stories for a long time as an anthropologist. She discovered fiction as a best venue for truths somewhat late in the game and has returned to school at the Writer's Studio in San Francisco. She lives in Oakland, attends beginner's improv classes... Read More →

Manikya Veena

Before moving to the United States in 2001, Manikya worked as a journalist for Magna Publishing, India’s largest publications company, and freelanced for several National newspapers and magazines. In addition, she authored a short story compilation for children, The Banjara Boys... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Creativity Explored 3245 16th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 1

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

KALW presents Music / Moments and Movements

Bay Area musicians and journalists share songs, lyrics, and stories about the music they make and listen to.

Participants

Bill Amatneek

Bill Amatneek, a life-long string bassist in the acoustic music movement, has concertized with Peter, Paul & Mary, played bluegrass with Jerry Garcia, and accompanied Bill Monroe, the father of bluegrass music. His book, Acoustic Stories: Pickin' for the Prez, won a silver book of... Read More →

Sandhya Dirks

Sandhya Dirks works on storytelling podcasts for KQED Public Radio. She's a co-creator and reporter behind the docu-podcast American Suburb, exploring the flip side of gentrification in a changing suburbia. She hosts, produces and edits KQED's new narrative podcast, Q'ed Up.

Paul Keim

Paul Keim is a seasoned musician, songwriter, and community organizer who has been living, performing, and working in and around the East Bay for over 15 years. His unique approach to songwriting comes from his appreciation for many different forms and styles of music, along with... Read More →

Alphabet Rockers

Alphabet Rockers are a nationally touring kid-focused hip hop group out of Oakland. Core members Kaitlin McGaw and Tommy Shepherd address complex issues around identity and social justice through their hip hop music. Their new album Rise Shine #Woke offers a set of songs to get... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Make-Out Room 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

"20 Minutes of Action": JUST ART: Stanford Artist/Activist Collective

Race, rape and social justice. Stanford writers of color respond to Brock Turner's "20 minutes of action," Donald Trump's "locker room talk," and rape culture. 20minutesofaction.weebly.com

Participants

Afroz Zain Algiers

PhD Student, JUST ART: Stanford Artist/Activist Collective

Afroz is a community organizer, actor & improviser. Her past theatre projects have been on South Asian gender struggles and Islamophobia.

Kari Barclay

PhD Student, Stanford University

Kari Barclay is a theater director, researcher, and community organizer from Washington, DC and Durham, NC, currently based at Stanford University. Directing credits include THE BULL CITY DIGNITY PROJECT, ME TOO MONOLOGUES, BULLY BOY, and the THE MAN WHO. He continues to work around... Read More →

Jenny Hong

Storyteller, JUST ART: Stanford Artist/Activist Collective

Jenny is a PhD candidate and storyteller at Stanford University.

Sage Isabella

Symbolic Systems Masters Student, Stanford University

Sage has too many passions to ever be incredible at any of them. She loves too hard and cares too much. She is currently completing a master's degree in Symbolic Systems on the ethical responsibility of tech companies to assist in poverty alleviation while designing an application... Read More →

Thao P. Nguyen

Thao is a solo performer, writer, and producer. They make art about whatever pisses them off — racism, sexual violence, white power, hetero/cis-sexism, and people who don't say "please" and "thank you." thaosolo.com

Luz Minerva Jimenez Ruvalcaba

Luz is a VONA Alumna and a PhD Candidate at Stanford University.

Amber Walker

Teacher/ Poet/ Activist

Amber Walker identifies first as a black queer woman and second as a spoken word poet. She has been practicing her craft for 7 years. Originally from New Jersey, she graduated from Stanford in June, with a M.A. in education. She now teaches high school math in San Francisco. Her... Read More →

Hope G. Yi

Artist

Hope G. Yi studies racial representation in media at Stanford University. By centering neurodivergent and QTPoC experiences, they endeavor to make art that is uncomfortable and real to the point of absurdity.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Noisebridge 2169 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

1st Tuesday's Spoken Word

Showcased at Radio Africa & Kitchen, 1st Tuesday's Spoken Word is a artist showcase providing a creative space for expression in the underserved community of Bayview Hunters Point.

Participants

Tyson Amir

Tyson combines his experience surviving America as a black man with hip hop prose, and original analysis to shape what is arguably the most revolutionary statement of the 21st century.

Lyrical Comp

As the product of both a Christian and Muslim family, Lanre A. Gamu Jr., also known as L.C. or Lyrical Comp, has been writing ever since his 7th grade teacher, told him he had a natural talent for it. Drawing from great minds such as W.E.B. Dubois, el Hajj Malik el Shabazz, Thomas... Read More →

Joy Elan

Joy Elan is an award winning author and spoken word artist from Oakland and Berkeley, CA. She uses her writing to advocate for civil rights for Blacks/people of color, women, and people with disabilities. With her poetry and novels, she speaks about social issues that affect people... Read More →

CWho on FB

Venus Jones

Venus earned her MFA in poetry from Mills College and her BA in business communications from The University of Akron. She’s a board member for Poetry Center San Jose, volunteers for Santa Clara Read and promotes literacy. This accomplished actress opened for Def Poetry on Broadway... Read More →

Javier Reyes

Kwesi Wilkerson

Poet, Kwesi The Dreamer

Terron “Kwesi” Wilkerson is a published author, spoken wordsmith and emerging poet. He is also an alumnus of the Emerging Arts Professionals SF/BA 2016-17 Fellowship. Kwesi began writing poetry to chronicle a deeply introspective journey while traveling abroad in Ghana, West Africa... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Clarion Alley (main stage) Between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

7x7 presents: Joan Didion Power Hour

Joan Didion Power Hour Landslide: Scenes from Californian's Edge. Stories of contemporary Californian culture honoring the 50th Anniversary of Joan Didion's seminal Summer of Love essay, Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Participants

Alex DiSclafani

Alex DiSclafani hails from Florida and now calls San Francisco home. In her day job, she works in tech, where she helps prevent real-world harm to children. On her long commutes she writes.She published work in Dying Dahlia Review and The Ginger Collect. Her favorite show is Golden... Read More →

Nada Djordjevich

Nada Djordjevich is a writer and consultant. She attended the screenwriting program at UCLA and has degrees from Harvard University and UC Berkeley. Her screenplays and fiction have received recognition from Vermont Studio Center, the Squaw Valley Writers Conference, American Zoetrope... Read More →

Kris Malone Grossman

Kris Malone Grossman earned a BA in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College, and is currently at work on a PhD in Women’s Spirituality. Her work has been anthologized in Dirt is Good for You and The Maternal Is Political: Women Writers at the Intersection... Read More →

Kate Haug

Kate Haug is a San Francisco based artist. Haug's reading is the outcome of a recent San Francisco Arts Commission project on the Summer of Love, which lead to her obsession with Joan Didion’s essay "Slouching Towards Bethlehem." Her piece, "Santa Cruz," investigates California's... Read More →

Allison Muir

Owner, Allison Muir Design

Allison Muir is a San Franciscan born writer, artist, and interior designer. During her varied career she has designed D.I.Y. projects for ReadyMade magazine, coordinated postproduction for clients such as Industrial Light and Magic, Dreamworks and Pixar, and produced and written... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Elbo Room (upstairs) 647 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

826 Valencia

826 Valencia will release a fifteenth anniversary publication about the weird, wonderful experience of being fifteen, featuring writers of all ages. Cookies and milk to follow.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
826 Valencia 826 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

A Poetry Bestiary

Five California poets read recent work that explores our complex relationship to our animal relatives—crows, bears, lizards, and a host of other beasts.

(Please note that this event appears in the print program and map as a phase 3 venue but has had to be shifted to phase 2. Sorry for any inconvenience.)

Participants

Molly Bendall

Molly Bendall is the author of five collections of poems, most recently WATCHFUL from Omnidawn Press. She is interested in Human & Animal relation and ecopoetics. She teaches at the University of Southern California.

Aja Couchois Duncan

Aja Couchois Duncan is a Bay Area educator, writer and coach of Ojibwe, French and Scottish descent. Her writinghas been anthologized in Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (Coach House Press,) Bay Poetics (Faux Press)and Love Shook My Heart 2 (Alyson Press). Her debut collection... Read More →

Evan Kennedy

Evan Kennedy is a poet and bicyclist who lives in San Francisco. He is the author of Terra Firmament (Krupskaya), Us Them Poems (BookThug), and The Sissies (Future Poem).

Sarah Rosenthal

Sarah Rosenthal is the author of Lizard (Chax, 2016), Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil, 2009), and several chapbooks, including The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow, a collaboration with Valerie Witte engaging the work of dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (Operating... Read More →

Meredith Stricker

Meredith Stricker is a visual artist and poet. She is the author of Our Animal, (Omnidawn); Tenderness Shore (National Poetry Series Award); Alphabet Theater, mixed-media performance poetry (Wesleyan), and Mistake (Caketrain Press). She works in visual poetry collaborative, a studio... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
1-2-3-4 Go! Records 1038 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

A Wiggle & A Prayer: True Stories

A celebration of the latest anthology from the Community Memoir Project, featuring new writers from a 6-week memoir workshop held at the Berkeley Public Library this spring.

Curators

Frances Lefkowitz

Author of the memoir To Have Not, about growing up poor in 1970s San Francisco, I am also founder of the Community Memoir Project, bringing free memoir-writing workshops to public libraries. My stories & essays appear in Tin House, The Sun, Glimmer Train, Catamaran, SFChronicle... Read More →

Participants

Gloria Delgado

Gloria Delgado: Native of San Francisco, raised in the City's Haight-Ashbury and Parkside Districts, oldest child of a Mexican father and Puerto Rican mother. Graduate of San Francisco College for Women (Lone Mountain), long -time resident of Albany, CA.

Judy Gussmann

I started writing in my retirement, for my own pleasure. I am an Israeli-Palestinian peace advocate, a retired ESL teacher currently volunteering at Oakland International High School for students in the USA three years or less, and the parent of two beautiful adult children. I was... Read More →

Judy Kim

When I was a child, I travelled into books to escape. Words were like a protective shield. Now I'm sharing true stories of traumatized love that survived intergenerational grief.

Lisa Kleinbub

A Queens NY native living in the Bay for 30 years. Self-described as a dork whose disparate interests occasionally result in soliloquies on why some love cilantro and other random topics

Ann Rowland

Ann lives in Berkeley and works in the field of Oncology drug development. She commutes to work via boat. This is her first foray into creative writing.

Sarita Sarvate

Sarita Sarvate writes a monthly column for India Currents. She has also written commentaries for the Oakland Tribune, KQED FM, Los Angeles Times, New America Media, and San Jose Mercury News.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Benny Gold 968 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

An Evening with The Rumpus

Come feel the literary love, Rumpus style! Featuring readings from some of our favorite writers and comedian Nato Green. Hosted by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee.

Participants

Nato Green

San Francisco native Nato Green is the country's only semi-functional hybrid of comedian, writer, and union organizer. In 2018, Nato Green released his second comedy album The Whiteness Album on Blonde Medicine Records, appeared in the film Sorry to Bother You, and lived in Cuba... Read More →

Randa Jarrar

Author, HIM, ME, MUHAMMAD ALI

Randa Jarrar is the author of three books, the latest of which will be out with Catapult in 2020. She lives in Los Angeles.

Jen Palmares Meadows

Jen Palmares Meadows’ essays have appeared in The Rumpus, Brevity, Fourth Genre, Denver Quarterly, Hobart, The Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. Her work has also been performed for Kearney Street Workshop, Intersection for the Arts, and Mr. Bear's Violet Hour Saloon. She writes... Read More →

Alexandra Naughton

Founder/Editor in Chief, Be About It Press

Alexandra Naughton isn't a household name. Yet. The stylish, mostly self-made 31-year-old founded the literary arts imprint, Be About It Press, in 2010 because she wanted to make zines. She has since published 14 zines, 8 chapbooks, and 2 full-length poetry collections through Be... Read More →

Christine No

Christine No is a Korean American poet, essayist and producer. She is a Sundance Alum, VONA Fellow, two time Pushcart Prize nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee. You can find her work in: The Rumpus, sPARKLE+bLINK, Columbia Journal, Story Online, Apogee, Atlas and Alice, and various... Read More →

Shanthi Sekaran

Shanthi Sekaran teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and is a member of the Portuguese Artists Colony and the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. Her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at ZYZZYVA and Mutha Magazine. Her first novel... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Laundry Gallery and Cafe (upstairs) 3359 26th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

BentBoyBooks

BentBoyBooks, home to experimental writing that transgresses expectations, delights in sensation and awakens language anew, presents innovative new work.

Participants

Drew Cushing

Founder, BentBoyBooks

Not since New Narrative shook up the city and gave voice to a particular San Francisco style has writing been this much fun. Home of the brave and ever so slightly depraved, BentBoyBooks are where language meets pleasure and pleasure becomes an artful purpose all its own. BentBoyBooks... Read More →

Jan Johnson Drantell

I published my first story at age 8, using my father's LC Smith typewriter and carbon paper, about a brother and sister who ran away to Paris and lived across the street from the Eiffel Tower. I was a founding member of Women Poets of the Twin Cities (Mpls/St. Pau) in 1972 and my... Read More →

Pam Martin

Pam Martin is a facilitator at NIAD Art Center in Richmond,CA. Her recent work has been exhibited at Shadow Office Oakland; CTRL+SHFT with Cranium Corporation Oakland; Rocksbox Contemporary Fine Art Portland, OR. Recent publications include REVERSE REHEARSALS, Southern Exposure... Read More →

Ronald Palmer

Prick Queasy, Manikin

Ronald Palmer is the author of Prick Queasy (Publication Studio) and Logicalogics (Soft Skull Press). His new novel is titled Manikin and is about the next silent virus waiting on the horizon. He lives in San Francisco with his husband Kevin Rolston near Golden Gate Park. He's excited... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
The Green Arcade 1680 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94102

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Brown People Don't Read

This event pushes boundaries and dispels the myth that brown people don't value the written word. We bring you voices of humor, rage, wonder and introspection.

Participants

Scott Russell Duncan

Assistant Editor, Somos en escrito

Lisa D. Gray

Lisa reads, writes, and rants about the things that tick her off and amuse her. She follows trends and looks back at how the past affects our present. She lives and writes in the Bay Area. Her writing focuses on intersections of blackness, womanhood, and Americaness. She earned her... Read More →

Jenny Irizary

Jenny Irizary is working on a memoir about growing up along the Russian River. Her work is published in Sick Lit, Squalorly, Snapping Twig, Communion, Atticus Review, and other journals.

Casandra Lopez

Casandra Lopez is a Chicana and California Indian writer who has received fellowships from CantoMundo and Jackstraw. She’s been selected for residencies with SFAI, SAR, and Hedgbrook. Her chapbook Where Bullet Breaks was published by the Sequoyah National Research Center, and... Read More →

Roger Porter

Roger Porter is a writer and educator from Oakland, CA USA whose first book, “The Souls of Hood Folk,” is available at lulu.com. He has a degree in English from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. He describes himself as “An average everyday man from... Read More →

April Sinclair

April Sinclair is author of three novels, including the critically acclaimed bestseller Coffee Will Make You Black (named a 1994 Book of the Year by the American Library Association), Ain’t Gonna Be the Same Fool Twice, and I Left My Back Door Open. Sinclair received the Carl... Read More →

Blanca Torres

Blanca Torres earned a Masters of Fine Arts in fiction from Mills College and is a founding member of Sunday Stories. She is finishing a short story collection and a memoir about her mother’s childhood in Mexico.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Beauty Bar 2299 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Chronicle Books Book Bike

San Francisco-born publisher Chronicle Books turned 50 this year! Come browse their latest creations and say hello to their new book bike, Specs.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Clarion Alley (Valencia Street side) just off Valencia Street between 17th and 18th Streets

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Dog Eared Books presents: Prose Before Bros

Innovative, honest nonfiction from some of the Bay Area's most talented writers.

Participants

Amy Berkowitz

I'm the author of Tender Points (Timeless, Infinite Light, 2015) and the editor of Mondo Bummer Books. I helped organize Sick Fest. I'm still writing about sick women, rape culture, and related activism, and I recently made a zine called Mad About Mad About You, which uses the '90s... Read More →

Meagan Day

Meagan Day is a freelance writer who focuses on politics, social movements, labor, law and history. Her book Maximum Sunlight, a journalistic portrait of a remote town in Nevada's Great Basin, is available from E.M. Wolfman and will be excerpted in the Best American Nonrequired... Read More →

Jordan Karnes

Jordan Karnes is the author of It Hasn't Stopped Being California Here (Carville Annex Press) and More Silver Than Gold (Finishing Line Press), a collaboration with artist Heather Watson. Her work has appeared at 2016's Place Talks series, as well as in ElevenEleven Journal, The 2015... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Dog Eared Books 900 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

FORUM Magazine Showcase

Contributors to City College of San Francisco's FORUM magazine will read works published within its pages during its 80 year history.

Curators

Jen Sullivan Brych

Advisor, Forum magazine, City College of San Francisco

Jen Sullivan Brych has published most recently in Fourteen Hills and sPARKLE + bLINK. Past publications include The Rumpus, The Los Angeles Times and Wired. Her plays have also been read and performed in various Bay Area theaters. She’s currently working on a novel.

Participants

Brianna Allen

Brianna Allen is a poetry and short story writer based in Oakland, CA. She has appeared at various slams, the National Black Arts Conference, and other public appearances. She is currently studying creative writing at City College of San Francisco and working on a chapbook.

Kevin Cosby

Word-haver. Train-thief. Lives in San Francisco.

Zachariah Greer Hauptman

Zach Hauptman is a Reference Librarian with the South San Francisco Public Library by day, a CCSF student at night, and a gigantic genderqueer nerd at all times (they/them pronouns, pls!).With their group, Truth Sans Justice, they run panels on popular culture, misogyny and the queer... Read More →

John Isles

Instructor, Forum Magazine at CCCSF

John Isles is the author of Ark and Inverse Sky (University of Iowa Press, 2003 and 2008) and has published widely in magazines, including American Letters and Commentary, Boston Review, and Zyzzyva. He was co-editor of the Baltics section of Contemporary European Poetry (Graywolf... Read More →

William Petersen

William Petersen has had work in The North American Review, The New England Review, The Sunday Magazine of The Washington Post, and the anthology Fathering Daughters, edited by DeWitt Henry and James Alan McPherson. He has worked as a musician, a cook, and video producer for... Read More →

Bryce Riegel

Bryce Riegel was the fiction editor of Forum Magazine's Spring 2017 issue. He makes money building houses and is currently working on a collection of short stories.

Lucretia Samuel

I am a poem-writer and a zine-maker residing in the Richmond District of San Francisco. I currently study Creative Writing and Visual Media Design at CCSF, work at the San Francisco SPCA, and spend too many hours hogging the xerox machine at the public library publishing my own z... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Adobe Books 3130 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Fourteen Hills

Fourteen Hills: The SFSU Review embraces the endless challenge of balancing continuity and reinvention across genres. Join us for readings by contributors and community members.

Participants

Fisayo Adeyeye

Fisayo Adeyeye is the author of Cradles (Nomadic Press 2017), the current Poetry Editor of Fourteen Hills, a Co-Curator of the VelRo Graduate Reading Series, and he has works published in The Collapsar, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and The Wildness.

Nicole Jost

Nicole Jost is a playwright and educator. Her plays have been staged and read at SF Playhouse, Z Below, PlayGround, ReproRights! Theater, and the SF Olympians Festival here in San Francisco; at Gadfly Theatre Productions in Minneapolis; and at Rorschach Theatre, The Inkwell, and the... Read More →

Bradley Penner

Bradley Penner is a William Dickey Fellow at San Francisco State University.

Robert Andrew Perez

editor, author, alum respectively, speCt! books, Omnidawn, Saint Mary's College of California

poet, filmmaker, adjunctivitis-free as of 2014

Kimberly Reyes

Kimberly Reyes has received fellowships from the Poetry Foundation, Columbia University and San Francisco State University. Her chapbook Warning Coloration is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Temo's Coffee 3000 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Good Vibrations: Facets of the Erotic

There's no single sexuality, no one erotic experience. Give us an hour – we'll prove it! Bonus points if we can tell a story you've never heard before.

Participants

Jennifer Cross

Jen Cross is the founder and facilitator of Writing Ourselves Whole, which has offered transformative writing groups to trauma survivors and others since 2003.

Dorothy Freed

Dorothy Freed is the pseudonym of a SF Bay Area writer. Her stories have appeared in numerous anthologies including, Dirty Dates, Best Women’s Erotica of the Year Vol 1, For The Men And The Women Who Love Them, Dirty Old Women: Erotica By Women Of Experience and Dirty Thirty Anthology... Read More →

Zoe Kat

Zoe Kat is a longtime resident of San Fransisco. Zoe has written and performed in the Bay Area focusing around issues of disability and sexuality for 16 years. She likes to travel and has the ability to make any hotel an erotic wonderland or a writing retreat.

Carol Queen

Staff Sexologist, Good Vibrations

All things sex & culture!

Simon Sheppard

smutsmith

Simon is author and editor of a dozen books, including the Lambda-Award-winning Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica; Hotter Than Hell, which won the Erotic Authors Association Award; and Man on Man: The Best of Simon Sheppard. His work has also appeared in hundreds of anthologies... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Good Vibrations 603 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Great Jones Street

Great Jones Street is an app that promises 1000 stories in your pocket, by authors of all genres. Tonight: some of GJS's best work, live!

Curators

Kelly Abbott

Kelly Abbott is CEO and co-founder of Great Jones Street. He’s helped launch and grow social media, dating, and publishing products purchased by Match.com, Adobe, and Oprah. Now his mission is to meld his literary roots and tech chops to transform the world of short fiction for readers and authors alike. He plays soccer, roots for C... Read More →

Participants

Sean Craven

Sean Craven is like Richard Corey from the waist up, Bartleby the Scrivener from the waist down.Many people to expect him to burst into stardom at any moment. Suckers.

Daphne Gottlieb

Daphne Gottlieb is a San Francisco-based performance poet.She is the winner of the Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant-Garde, the Audre Lorde Award for Poetry, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, and a five-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award... Read More →

Scott Laughlin

Scott Laughlin’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in Great Jones Street, Post Road, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Night Owl, and other publications. He’s also contributed essays to the books A Manner of Being: Writers on Their Mentors and Such Conjunctions: Robert... Read More →

Jason Ridler

Jay Ridler is a writer, historian, and improv actor. His latest novel HEX-RATED, the first installment of THE BRIMSTONE FILES fantasy series for Night Shade Books, as received strong reviews from Kirkus, Publisher's Weekly, and NPR. He teaches and designs courses for Johns Hopkins... Read More →

Andrew Roe

Andrew Roe's most recent book is Where You Live, a short story collection. His debut novel, The Miracle Girl, was a finalist for the LA Times Book Prize. His fiction has been published in Tin House, One Story, The Sun, Glimmer Train, Slice, The Cincinnati Review, and other... Read More →

Ethel Rohan

Ethel Rohan is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She won the Nautilus Award for her debut novel The Weight of Him and the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award. She was also shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes, and longlisted... Read More →

Geeta Tewari

Geeta Tewari grew up in Massachusetts and writes in New York. She recently graduated from Columbia University's MFA program. Her work has appeared in and/or is forthcoming from Granta, Narrative Magazine, Tyrant Books, Caustic Frolic, and Great Jones Street. She has three daughte... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Holy Mountain 680 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Hapa Writers present: Real Asian Fusion

Mixed-race Asian writers will take you beyond Korean tacos and Bacon Mochi. San Francisco, be prepared to be properly fed some authentic Asian fusion and intersectionality.

Participants

Lindsey Adams

Vallejo raised and Oakland rooted, Lindsey Adams is a Black-Korean writer and zinemaker. Her growing collection of poetry, short stories and two personal zines weave together her reflections and shifts in relation to home, history, and identity. She comes from storytelling traditions... Read More →

Maria T Allocco

Maria T Allocco is a South Korean and Italian Voices of Our Nation alum and was an Academy of American Poets Prize winner by age twenty. Her pieces have been featured on KPFA and Mutiny Radio, and performed for SOMArts, LitQuake, Kearny Street Workshop, The Intersection For The Arts... Read More →

Celeste Chan

Celeste Chan moved to SF in search of community in 2004. Since that time, she founded and directed Queer Rebels (a queer and trans people of color arts project), created and screened experimental films, joined Foglifter as an editor and now board member, created a one-woman show titled... Read More →

Chino Scott-Chung

Chino Scott-Chung is a Chinese Mexican American writer. His father is Chinese and a "paper son," who came to America using documents that said he was four years older that he really is. His mother is mixed-race Chinese/Mexican, born and raised in Mexico, and her first language is... Read More →

Willy Wilkinson

Writer and Public Health Consultant, LGBTQ ACCESS

Willy Wilkinson, MPH is an award-winning writer, public health consultant, cultural competency trainer, public speaker, and spoken word performer. He is the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning book Born on the Edge of Race and Gender: A Voice for Cultural Competency, which... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
The Marsh Theater 1074 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Hippos, Heroines, and Spaceships!

This awesome selection of authors explores alternate history, superheroines in San Francisco, and spaceships galore.

Participants

Sarah Gailey

Sarah Gailey is an internationally published author of fiction and nonfiction, and a regular contributor for Tor.com and Barnes & Noble. She tweets @gaileyfrey. Learn more at www.sarahgailey.com... Read More →

Sarah Kuhn

Sarah Kuhn is the author of the Heroine Complex series—starring Asian American superheroines—and assorted comics about love, geeks, aliens, and Barbie.

Loren Rhoads

Loren Rhoads zips from space operas called The Dangerous Type and No More Heroes to nonfiction about the 199 Cemeteries to See Before You Die.

Carter Scholz

Carter Scholz is a Bay Area writer, composer, and pianist. His recent novella, Gypsy, was nominated for the Sturgeon Award.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Borderlands Books 866 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Kearny Street Workshop

Kearny Street Workshop, in partnership with Asian Art Museum, present Interdisciplinary Writers Lab. This reading features alumni from their three month summer program for POC writers.

Participants

michele carlson

Associate Professor, Visual and Critical Studies, California College of the Arts

Michele Carlson is a practicing artist, writer and educator in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her visual works have been exhibited nationally and her critical writings on art and culture can be found in numerous publications including KQED, Art in America, Hyphen, and Afterimage. She... Read More →

Kayan Cheung-Miaw

As a cartoonist, Kayan Cheung-Miaw aims to humanize those who have been dehumanized by sharing the stories of marginalized communities. As an organizer, Kayan work on the Yank Sing restaurant workers’ campaign resulted in a historic $4 million settlement for 280 workers. As an educator... Read More →

stephen guai-wu

stephen guai-wu is a san francisco-based writer. his interests include monsters, experimental media, queerness, sex, and long walks on the beach. say hello at stephenguaiwu.com

Janine Mogannam

Janine Mogannam is a writer and librarian, born and raised in San Francisco. She is a fellow of the VONA and Interdisciplinary Writers' Lab workshops. Her work has been featured in several journals and anthologies, including Kweli, 580 Split, and Writing the Walls Down.

Lauren Wheeler

Lauren Wheeler writes poetry, really short fiction, and pop-culture editorials. A recovering slam poet, she twice competed at the National Poetry Slam and has featured at Cornell University, where she studied English Literature, as well as in Los Angeles, Miami, and throughout the... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Five and Diamond 510 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Literary Speakeasy presents

Martinis & Poetry. Join us for a perfect pairing — an evening of spirits and poetry from Bay Area talent. No password required for this speakeasy.

Participants

Kress Cole

Kress Cole is a femme queer 26-time WCS Award-Winning lyricist and performing songstress. She is touring with her 2017 album, "The Alchemy Show."

Tracey Knapp

Tracey Knapp's first full-length collection of poems, Mouth, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award and was published in 2015. Tracey has received awards and scholarships from La Romita School of Art in Terni, Italy, the Tin House Writers’ Workshop, and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg... Read More →

Randall Mann

Randall Mann is the author of four poetry collections, most recently Proprietary (Persea Books, 2017). A new collection, A Better Life, is forthcoming in April 2021. He lives in San Francisco.

Matthew Siegel

Matthew Siegel is the author of Blood Work, which received the Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry and was a finalist for the Felix Dennis Prize for Best First Collection from the Forward Arts Foundation in the UK. Siegel’s poems and essays have appeared in the Academy of American Poets... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Martuni's 4 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Manic D Press: Kapow! Cultural resistance for the masses!

Comix & writing minizine anthology, featuring editor Juliette Torrez, James Tracy, Jon Longhi, Tarin Towers, Cas McGee, et al. Hosted by publisher Jennifer Joseph.

Participants

Jon Longhi

Jon Longhi has published four books of hilarious fiction with Manic D, all having to do with the absurdities of life in San Francisco.

Cas McGee

Cas McGee is a New Orleans-born, SF Bay Area-residing writer, with a history of Poetry Slam wins and spoken word performance happiness.

Juliette Torrez

Juliette Torrez co-founded Albuquerque’s Poetry Slam and co-organized the 1994 Lollapalooza Festival‘s poetry side stage. The author of three books, her poetry was read by Garrison Keillor on NPR’s Writers Almanac. She lives in Oakland.

Tarin Towers

Tarin Towers has lived in the Mission District since 1995, although post-eviction, she technically doesn’t live anywhere. Poetry book: “Sorry, We’re Close."

James Tracy

James Tracy is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times (Melville House) and the author of Dispatches Against Displacement: Notes From San Francisco's Housing Wars (AK Press). He has edited numerous books for... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Harrington Galleries 599 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Mission Comics

A reading of original comics' works while cartoonists stand semi-awkwardly in front of a screen projection of said works.

Participants

Elizabeth Beier

Elizabeth Beier is an Oakland-based cartoonist who makes comics about online dating, bisexuality, the perils of obsessive crushes, and queer cultural happenings.

Ric Carrasquillo

I'm a cartoonist, animator and conceptual illustrator that works traditionally with ink, gouache (also digitally). I've worked with Teknion, Vanderbyl Design, Adidas Skateboarding, Park Group and The Mina Group.

Christine Villanueva

Christine Villanueva is an illustrator and visual artist from San Francisco, California. She studied Art History at University of California, Berkeley while cartooning for The Daily Californian Newspaper. After beginning her career as a gallery worker, she moved her interests towards... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Mission Comics 2250 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Moxie Road Productions

Moments of Failed Bravery. We came, we saw, we thought about conquering but drank wine instead.

Curators

Janine Kovac

co-founder, Moxie Road Productions

Janine Kovac is the author of SPINNING: Choreography for Coming Home, a memoir about the death of a career but the birth of miracle twins and a 2017 semifinalist for Publisher Weekly's BookLife Prize and the 2019 memoir winner of the National Indie Excellence Awards. A former ballet... Read More →

Participants

Cyndi Cady

I'm a writer and a rider, a goat-wrangler and a chicken-herder; I keep ducks for entertainment and there is something illegal brewing in my basement. I write about the hilarity of disastrous relationships, badgers, drug addicts, pizza, basketball, water buffalo and the joy of killing... Read More →

Michelle Cruz Gonzales

English Professor, Las Positas College

Michelle Cruz Gonzales is the author of The Spitboy Rule: Tales of a Xicana in a Female Punk Band. Gonzales has published in Longreads, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Latino Rebels. She has work in two upcoming anthologies Hexing the Patriarchy (Seal) and All Of Me: Love Anger... Read More →

Tarja Parssinen

Tarja Parssinen is a writer, performer, producer, and director. Her written work has appeared in places like The Washington Post, Salon, The Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, and her own blog, The Flying Chalupa. Tarja also does frequent performances and readings at places like the... Read More →

Suzanne Russo

Suzanne's writing has appeared in CNN Travel, GOOD, CBS Watch!, National Geographic, MarieClaire.com, and offMetro, among others. In 2008, she founded Lit Crawl New York; and in 2015, she returned to San Francisco to oversee Litquake's Lit Crawl Global network. She lives in Oakland... Read More →

Angelisa Russo

Angelisa Russo has recently returned back to the bay area after living in Portland, OR for the last 4 years. While in the PNW, she completed an M.F.A. in Creative Writing at Goddard College with a focus in Creative Non-fiction/Memoir. Her MFA thesis is a memoir called "10 Days,”about... Read More →

Jane Vandenburgh

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Alite Outpost 3376 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

MUTHA Magazine: MUTHA UP

Stories about the joy and heartbreak and madness of keeping it real with kids — including fiction, memoir, and comics (projected on screen for live reading!).

Curators

Tyler Cohen

Cartoonist, Tyler Cohen

Tyler Cohen is a cartoonist who uses autobiography and surrealism to explore gender, parenthood, race, and female experience in her book Primahood: Magenta. Her work has appeared in the Ignatz Award-winning anthology, Qu33r, Alphabet, The Feminist Utopia Project, What’s Your Sign... Read More →

Participants

Rina Ayuyang

Rina Ayuyang is a cartoonist based in Oakland, CA. Her comics have been nominated for the Ignatz and Eisner awards, and she has been honored with a Society of Illustrators Silver Medal for her online comics. Her upcoming book, Blame This on the Boogie, set to debut next Spring through... Read More →

Sharline Chiang

Sharline Chiang, a Berkeley-based writer, editor and book coach, has written for Mutha, BuzzFeed and OZY.

Allegra Hirschman

Allegra Hirschman is a social researcher, outspoken bisexual, and line dance enthusiast who lives in San Francisco with her wife and little ones. She recently completed a Masters in Women’s and Gender Studies while becoming a mom which meant a whole lot of feminist thought during... Read More →

Renee Macalino Rutledge

Renee's debut novel, The Hour of Daydreams, has been dubbed "essential reading" by Literary Mama and a "captivating story of love and loss" by Foreword Reviews. Her essays and stories can be found in Mutha Magazine, The Margins, Ford City Anthology, Literary Hub, Red Earth Review... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Paxton's Gate's Curiosities for Kids 766 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

My first time: SF Chronicle writers and editors recount their earliest bylines

Join the voices of the San Francisco Chronicle as they take us back in time to recount excerpts from their earliest bylines and share stories of their first time.

Curators

Peter Hartlaub

Peter Hartlaub is a Bay Area native who has worked at the San Francisco Chronicle since 2000. He was also a Chronicle paperboy from 1982 to 1984. As pop culture critic, he reviews movies, covers local entertainment and writes the Our SF archive history column. He also hosts the... Read More →

Participants

Tony Bravo

Tony Bravo is a Style reporter and frequent contributor to Datebook and Green State. He writes Style's Connectivity column and is the primary stylist for the section's Bay Area fashion shoots. Tony has been the New York Fashion Week correspondent since 2013 and specializes in stories... Read More →

Otis R Taylor Jr

Otis is the East Bay columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, focusing on the people who make the region a fascinating place to live and work. A South Carolina transplant, Otis spent more than a decade at The (Columbia, S.C.) State newspaper, writing about arts, culture and... Read More →

Heather Knight

Heather Knight has worked for the San Francisco Chronicle since 1999 and has covered the San Francisco political scene out of The Chronicle's City Hall bureau since 2006. She writes the paper's On San Francisco column, covering everything from politics to homelessness to family... Read More →

Justin Phillips

Justin Phillips joined the San Francisco Chronicle in November 2016 as a food writer. He previously served as the City, Industry, and Gaming reporter for the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Justin also served as a columnist for the American Press where he won a Louisiana-Mississippi... Read More →

Jill Tucker

Jill Tucker has covered education in California for 18 years, writing stories that range from issues facing Bay Area schools districts to broader national policy debates. Her work has generated changes to state law and spurred political and community action to address local ne... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Amnesia 853 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Nepotism Night

Nepotism Night is a variety show featuring Bay Area talent from disciplines including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, songwriting and comedy.

Curators

Dawn Oberg

Dawn Oberg is a songwriter and recording artist who inflicts her taste on people with the variety show, Nepotism Night. She is very excited about this year's Litquake and about Nepotism Night, Lit Crawl Edition in particular.

Participants

Juba Kalamka

Bisexual artist/activist Juba Kalamka is most recognized for his work with performance troupes Sins Invalid and Mangos With Chili, as a member of Rainbow Flava as co-founder/producer of the queer hip hop group Deep Dickollective (D/DC). His essays and creative writing appear in numerous... Read More →

Ira Marlowe

Ira Marlowe's songs have been described as "four-minute movies", known for a rare combination of lyrical wit and emotional impact. Marlowe grew up listening to his parents' jazz and show tunes, begged for guitar lessons at eight, finally got them at thirteen, experienced a high... Read More →

Allison Mick

Allison Mick is an Oakland-based comedian and writer originally from Rochester, NY. She draws from her upbringing and personal experiences to address topics like race, gender, and serial killers. She’s performed in festivals in Northern California (SF Sketchfest), New York (Hudson... Read More →

Shobha Rao

Shobha Rao moved to the US from India at the age of seven. She is the winner of the 2014 Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Fiction, awarded by Nimrod International Journal. She has been a resident at Hedgebrook and is the recipient of the Elizabeth George Foundation fellowship. Her story... Read More →

Teresa Tuan

Teresa Tuan is a pop-soul singer-songwriter from San Francisco. Armed with a rich alto voice channeling artists such as Sara Bareilles, Sam Smith, and the Temptations, her music is a contemporary take on the sounds of classic Motown, southern soul, and ‘90s R&B. She performs as... Read More →

Nina Weijers

Niña Weijers studied literary theory in Amsterdam and Dublin. She has published short stories, essays and articles in various literary magazines, such as Das Magazin, De Gids and De Revisor. In 2010 she won the writing competition Write Now!. She is a regular contributor to the weekly... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Incline Gallery 766 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

6:30pm

Night Righters of Outer Bohemia

Night Righters of Outer Bohemia will be reading selections from their prose and poetry. NROB is a new group of writers of diverse genres.

Participants

Kimberly Kaufman

Kimberly Kaufman is a Bay Area native. She primarily writes science fiction and memoirs about growing up in the 90’s.

Natalie Mulford

Natalie Mulford was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has studied writing at Hampshire College and at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop Summer Program. She currently works at Ten Speed Press and lives at the base of Wildcat Canyon in the East Bay.

Howard Isaac Williams

Marta Zumwalt

City College of San Francisco

Marta is an instructor at City College of San Francisco who is moonlighting as a writer of short (very short) stories. She is new to this writer's world and is excited/terrified to be reading in her first Lit Crawl event!

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Serendipity 803 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Odd Salon

Join Odd Salon for an evening of stories from the odd corners of history, science, art, and adventure with authors Varla Ventura and Nancy Caciola.

Participants

Nancy Caciola

History Professor, UC San Diego

Varla Ventura

Varla Ventura is the author of Fairies, Pookas and Changelings: A Complete Guide to the Wild and Wicked Enchanted Realm; Banshees, Werewolves, Vampires, and Other Creatures of the Night: Facts, Fictions and First Hand Accounts; Among the Mermaids: Facts, Myths & Enchantments o... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Laundry Gallery and Cafe (downstairs) 3359 26th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Perfectly Queer

Perfectly Queer presents Bay Area queer-identified writers at bookstores in San Francisco and Oakland. We want to support our local, independent bookstores and authors!

Curators

Wayne Goodman

Co-host, Perfectly Queer

Since January 2016, Perfectly Queer has brought queer-identified authors into local, independent bookstores. Our goal is to support both our queer authors and our local, independent bookstores.

Richard May

Richard May's short fiction has been published in his collections Inhuman Beings and Ginger Snaps: Photos & Stories (with photographer David Sweet), his series Gay All Year on Amazon Kindle, in anthologies like Never Too Late, Best Gay Erotica, and the Lambda Literary nominated Outer... Read More →

Participants

Katie Gilmartin

Katie Gilmartin’s checkered past includes stints as a buoyant union organizer, bona fide sex researcher, and engaged college professor. She now teaches printmaking classes and runs the Queer Ancestors Project, devoted to forging sturdy relationships between Queer young artists... Read More →

Jewelle Gomez

Jewelle Gomez is a writer and activist, and author of the double Lambda Award-winning novel, The Gilda Stories whose 25th anniversary edition was published this year by City Lights Books. Her adaptation of the book for the stage, Bones & Ash: A Gilda Story, was performed by the... Read More →

Larry-Bob Roberts

Larry-Bob Roberts has a goal of being a pointer to queer cultural expressions. He is author of The International Homosexual Conspiracy (Manic D), maintainer of the Queer Things to Do in San Francisco events website, and the co-host of Smack Dab Open Mic at Dog Eared Books Castr... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
The Balm 788 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Public Access Poetry

Back by popular demand, Public Access Poetry features the poets and writers from San Francisco Public Library staff broadcasting their poems and spoken word to Lit Crawl attendees.

Participants

Claire Bain

Person. Talk to me about being a person on this earth.

Lynne Barnes

Lynne Barnes was born in Georgia and moved to New York City in 1968 with a front row ticket to Hair, before migrating to San Francisco in 1969, two years after the Summer of Love. She has worked as a nurse on psych emergency units and oncology wards, and as a librarian in San Francisco's... Read More →

Lyn Davidson

I work in children's programming at the SF Public Library. I'm also an award-winning journalist and was editor of the Heritage Florida Jewish News in Orlando before I moved to SF six years ago. I'm working on a collection of poems about the Tenderloin neighborhood, and other thin... Read More →

Natalie Enright

N/A, SAN FRANCISCO PUBLIC LIBRARY

Natalie Enright is a poet in San Francisco, originally from Kenya, Africa. She writes and has published poetry in English, French, and Swahili. She is finishing her Master of Library and Information Science degree at San Jose State University with the goal of becoming a public children's... Read More →

Stewart Shaw

Moazzam Sheikh

Moazzam Sheikh is an SF resident for the last three decades, he has written and translated fiction; librarian by profession, he has authored two fiction titles.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
SFPL Bookmobile, outside Elbo Room during Phase 2 647 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

6:30pm

Rolling Writers Parting The Veil

Rolling Writers part the veil dividing image from reality, clarity from confusion, life from death, dreaming from wakefulness, person from person, this from that.

Participants

Peter Bullen

Somewhere sandwiched between a novella about a fella, a fleshy bit of flash fiction and a prose poem colliding with a short story lies the work of Peter Bullen. His first book of short fiction, Wallflower , came out a couple of years ago from Nomadic Press.

Michael Crabtree

Michael Crabtree is a multi-instrumentalists, a singer-songwriter, and the steady rolling musical soul of Rolling Writers.

Stephen D. Gutierrez

Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author of three books of stories and essays and hybrid pieces, and winner of an American Book Award and numerous other honors. He teaches at California State University East Bay.

L.J. Moore

LJ Moore lives and writes in San Francisco. Her most recent book of illustrated flash fiction, small, fierce things, is available from AchiotePress.com. LJ has sailed around the Arctic Circle on a tall ship, and trained rats to spin in circles on command. In her spare time, LJ pilots... Read More →

Jon Sindell

Jon Sindell, the curator of Rolling Writers, wrote the story collections The Roadkill Collection and Family Happiness (both from Big Table Publishing). His humor has appeared dozens of times in lit mags and before barnyard animals in petting zoos everywhere. Much of his writing... Read More →

Genanne Walsh

Genanne Walsh is the author of Twister, awarded the Big Moose Prize for the Novel from Black Lawrence Press. Twister was also shortlisted for the 2016 Housatonic Book Award in Fiction and the Sarton Women’s Book Award. She lives in San Francisco with her wife and dogs.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Faye's Video & Espresso Bar 3614 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Tell No One: A Conversation in Poems by Copper Canyon Poets

An interactive round-robin reading where four award-winning poets play poetic Telephone. Topic one is "confessions." The rest will be chosen by the audience.

Participants

Victoria Chang

Victoria Chang's fourth book of poems, "Barbie Chang" is forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press in the fall of 2017. The Boss (McSweeney's) won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017. She lives in Southern California... Read More →

Dean Rader

Dean Rader has published widely in the fields of poetry, American Indian studies, and visual culture. His debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial Award for a First Book of Poems, and won the 201... Read More →

Melissa Stein

Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collection Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize; her second book, Terrible Blooms, will be published by Copper Canyon Press in spring 2018 . She's a freelance editor in San Francisco.

Javier Zamora

Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador in 1990. His father fled El Salvador when he was a year old; and his mother when he was about to turn five. Both parents' migrations were caused by the US-funded Salvadoran Civil War (1980-1992). In 1999, Javier migrated through... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Craftsman and Wolves 746 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

The Coop’s Literary Relay Race!

The Castro Writers’ Cooperative presents “1984, Part II,” an original tale of Trumpian Newspeak, with writers handing off portions of the tale to one another. http://www.castrowriterscoop.com

Participants

Alison Bing

Write/ edit/ curate content on travel/ food/ drink/ art/ design for Lonely Planet, Airbnb, BBC, Time Inc mags, sundry others.

Karen Bjorneby

Karen Bjorneby is the author of Hurricane Season. Her fiction and poetry has appeared in such places as The Threepenny Review, New Letters, The Sun, North American Review, StoryQuarterly, New Orleans Review, and anthologized online at Poetry Daily. She’s received a Pushcart Special... Read More →

Jeanne Carstensen

Jeanne Carstensen is a journalist based in San Francisco. Her coverage of the refugee crisis in Europe ran in The Nation, PRI’s The World, Foreign Policy and other publications. She’s working on a book about the deadliest day of the crisis on the Greek island of Lesvos, told... Read More →

Joshua Citrak

Joshua Citrak - author and podcaster, host of Do Better and Hangin’ with Old Lew available on iTunes, Stitcher and Google Store.

Andrea Coombes

Andrea Coombes is a staff writer at NerdWallet. Her personal-finance stories have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Miami Herald and elsewhere. In other news, she's working on a book about unreliable mothers. She walks her dog every day, almost. Sometimes... Read More →

Susie Hara

Susie Hara is the author of Finder of Lost Objects, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist and winner of a first-place International Latino Book Award. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies, including Stirring up a Storm and Best American Erotica. Her play Lost and Found... Read More →

Scott James

Scott James is the co-founder of the Castro Writers' Cooperative, a co-working space for writers in San Francisco. He's a contributor to The New York Times and has three Emmy Awards for his work in TV news. He's also the author of two bestselling novels, "SoMa" and "The Sower," published... Read More →

Lee Jenkins

Mercilee Jenkins is an award winning playwright/performance artist, published poet and fiction writer. Her poetry was recently published in a new online magazine, Reinventing Home (www.reinventinghome.org). Her 10-minute play, Armistice At Home received a staged reading in March... Read More →

Lee Daniel Kravetz

Lee Daniel Kravetz is the author of Strange Contagion (Harpercollins), as well as 2014’s international bestseller, Supersurvivors. He has written for The New York Times, Psychology Today, and The San Francisco Chronicle, as well as PBS’s Frontline. He is a proud member of the... Read More →

Kathryn Lefroy

Kathryn writes novels, screenplays and articles. She has a PhD in marketing, several screenwriting credits, and her stories have appeared in magazines, journals and online. Her debut novel, Alex and the Alpacas Save the World, was published by Fremantle Press in May 2019. She spends... Read More →

Jenelle Lindsay

Born and bred in the SF Bay Area, Jenelle left for Chicago where she received a Master's Degree in Film/English before moving to New York which began a career writing for soap operas (Guiding Light, Port Charles and The Young and the Restless) and a teen drama (South of Nowhere... Read More →

Shana Mahaffey

Co-Founder, Castro Writers Cooperative

Shana Mahaffey is the author of the novel, Sounds Like Crazy, a San Francisco Chronicle notable book for Fall 2009.

Tina LeCount Myers

author

Tina LeCount Myers is a writer, artist, independent historian, and surfer. Born in Mexico to expat-bohemian parents, she grew up on Southern California tennis courts with a prophecy hanging over her head; her parents hoped she'd one day be an author. Tina lives in San Francisco with... Read More →

Janis Cooke Newman

I'm the author of a memoir and two novels--all currently in print. I'm also the founder of the Lit Camp writers conference, which will be held at Esalen this upcoming May.

Elizeya Quate

Bid Ops

Edmund Zagorin is founder of Bid Ops, an acquisitions platform that drives savings on total cost of ownership. He is a LEED AG and co-author of Sustainable Procurement Playbook for Cities.

Natacha Ruck

Do you remember an embarrassing moment? Let's talk about it. I am a storyteller and a storymonger. There is power in telling stories, event the embarrassing ones, and I strive to harness this power through video, audio, prose and live performance. I teach multimedia storytelling... Read More →

Melina Selverston-Scher

Courage Seeker, The Castro Writers Coop

Writer, editor, journalist, political science professor, environmental non-profit director, global warrior for indigenous peoples and the environment, feminist, ally, musician with San Francisco's first and foremost industrial ragtime band: Parlor Tricks. What Would Judith Do?

Cameron Tuttle

Cameron Tuttle is an American author. She began her career as a writer for an advertising agency before writing her first book, "The Paranoid's Pocket Guide," which landed her on Oprah. Inspired by the movie Thelma and Louise, Tuttle went on the lam in 1996, doing research for what would become the Bad Girl's... Read More →

Anna Volpicelli

Art /Design/ lifestyle Journalist San Francisco Bay Area.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Fellow Barber 696 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

The Insider's Guide to Soul-Making

Contest director and judges for the national Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition read prize-winning fiction, nonfiction, and poems and offer tips/guidelines for successful entries. www.soulmakingcontest.us

Participants

Mary Kennedy Eastham

Writer, Self-employed

My first book The Shadow of A Dog I Can't Forget - Poems & Prose was a 2017 Wild Card Runner-Up Winner in the Amsterdam Book Festival. My second book Squinting Over Water - Stories is a 2019 First place Winner in the Florida Book Festival and a 2013 Wild-Card Runner-Up Winner in the... Read More →

Sue Granzella

teacher

I'm a later-in-life writer who's found great fulfillment in the richness of the Bay Area writing community. My writing has been recognized as Notable in Best American Essays, I've won two contests, and have won the Naomi Rodden Essay Award. I've been widely published in literary journals... Read More →

Li Miao Lovett

Li Miao Lovett is an award-winning writer telling stories of cultural and environmental change. Her debut novel, In the Lap of the Gods, is a tale of the dammed and displaced in China’s Three Gorges.

Eileen Malone

Founder/Director, Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition

Resume: www.eileenmalone.usWhat screeners check for when logging literary contest entries.

Kathleen McClung

I am the author of two poetry collections, The Typists Play Monopoly (2018) and Almost the Rowboat (2013). I teach at Skyline College and The Writing Salon and am associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition, a national writing contest based in the Bay Area.

Rita Williams

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Scarlet Sage 1193 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

The Magic of Memoir (She Writes Press)

Writers of memoir explore the struggle, compulsion, desire, resistance, and of course the magic — all part of the journey of writing a memoir.

Curators

Linda Joy Myers

Linda Joy Myers is the president and founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers. She is the author of The Power of Memoir—How to Write Your Healing Story, Becoming Whole, and the award-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, which won the BAPIA Gold Medal prize. Her workbook Journey of Memoir was published by She Writes Press in 2013... Read More →

Brooke Warner

Publisher, She Writes Press

Brooke Warner is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What's Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (Write-minded with co-host Grant Faulkner... Read More →

Participants

Bob Finertie

Robert W. Finertie loves the evocative power of words to touch the heart. A former pastor and psychotherapist, he has worked on being a wordsmith for many seasons and writes every day. Recently enchanted with the magic of memoir, he describes himself as “crazy about that genre... Read More →

Rita M. Gardner

Writer, self

Rita M. Gardner grew up as an expatriate in the Dominican Republic during a repressive dictatorship. Her award-winning memoir The Coconut Latitudes chronicles that experience. She is also a contributor to two other recently published books: The Magic of Memoir is a collection of stories... Read More →

Jing Li

Jing Li is originally from China, where she was a high school English teacher before she came to the United States in 1989 and earned her Master's degree/ Education in 1990. After twenty years as a public high school teacher of Mandarin Chinese in San Francisco, Jing Li is now... Read More →

Irene Sardanis

writer, creative soul

I am from New York. I've been published five times in the Sun Literary Magazine and many anthologies, the most recent one The Magic of Memoir. I attend Elizabeth Fishel and Mark Greenside's writing classes. I live in Oakland with my wonderful husband, John. I'm writing my memoir... Read More →

Rosie Sorenson

Freelance writer

Rosie Sorenson is a recovering psychotherapist, now living and writing humor in the San Francisco Bay area. She writes political satire for The Progressive Populist (www.populist.com). She is also a frequent contributor to the Erma Bombeck Writing Contest site as well as The Foolish... Read More →

Paula Wagner

Lifelong poet, memoir writer and metaphor maven; professional career coach, identical twin, mother and grandmother, I began life in London, UK but grew up in the US. I'm currently finishing a coming-of-age memoir about searching for self and home while living in Israel and France... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Mission Pie 2901 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

The Republic of Sin: An Expedition to the Coast of Sin

Readings, music, and projected images will recreate an episode of "The Republic of Sin" podcast, about a lost colony of pirates, spies, and mercenaries. Pataphysical analysis included.

Participants

Guy Benjamin Brookshire

Commissioner, The McCune Collection Writers' Workshop

Like a book of common prayer opened to reveal a flask of Scotch, Guy Benjamin Brookshire is full of surprises. Please visit Wordsea, his paracosm, and The Republic of Sin: a Post-Colonial Horror Fantasy almost as strange, terrible, and beautiful as the world we live in.

Daniel Groves

Daniel Groves is the author of The Lost Boys (University of Georgia Press, 2010). His poems have appeared in Paris Review, Yale Review, Poetry, and elsewhere.

Andrew Kuo

Andrew Kuo lives with his wife in the East Bay. His hobbies include tennis and bouldering. He poetry has been published online; one such site is Neologism Poetry Journal.

Thia Markson

Thia Markson is a Rugby goddess who enjoys photography, writing her rugby memoir and reading aloud.

Andy Moody

Andy Moody is a writer, editor, and musician. His first book, a survey of New Zealand indie rock circa 1978-1993, is expected sometime before 2022. He lives in San Francisco, where he also plays guitar and sings in the Laughs, an avant garage rock band.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Red Poppy Art House 2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

The Unlimits of our Language: Santa Monica Review versus the World!

Readings by contributors to the West Coast lit mag: Louis B. Jones (Innocence), Ryan Ridge (American Homes), Janice Shapiro (Bummer) and editor Andrew Tonkovich.

Participants

Louis B Jones

Louis B. Jones is the author of five novels – "Ordinary Money," "Particles and Luck," and "California’s Over," all three named as New York Times Notable Books of their respective years; and most recently, "Radiance" and "Innocence." He is an NEA fellow and a fellow of the MacDowell... Read More →

Ryan Ridge

Ryan Ridge is the author of the story collection Hunters & Gamblers (Dark Sky Books), the poetry collection Ox (BatCat Press), as well as the chapbooks Hey, it’s America (Rust Belt Bindery) and 22nd Century Man (Sixth Finch Books). His novella, American Homes, is forthcoming... Read More →

Janice Shapiro

Janice Shapiro is the author of Bummer and Other Stories (Soft Skull Press). Her stories and comics have been published in Catapult, The North American Review, 52 Stories, The Santa Monica Review, Everyday Genius, Real Pants and other places. She lives in Berkeley, California... Read More →

Andrew Tonkovich

Editor, Santa Monica Review

Andrew Tonkovich edits the West Coast literary journal Santa Monica Review and hosts Bibliocracy, a books show on Pacifica Radio KPFK in Southern California. He is author of a novella collection, The Dairy of Anne Frank, and co-edited the first-ever anthology of literary Orange County... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Wildhawk 3464 19th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Writers Without Borders (presented by the Stanford Continuing Studies' Online Writing Certificate program)

Six authors from the Stanford Continuing Studies' Online Writing Certificate program read from their newly finished books.

Participants

Susan Bockus

Susan Bockus spent years masquerading as a high-tech marketer; at heart she’s a fiction writer. She lives in California and is finishing her first novel.

H. J. Brennan

Jim’s diverse background as a garbage collector, laborer and creative director are elemental to his unique voice and perspective. He’s completed two unpublished novels.

Debbie Feit

Debbie Feit is the author of the novel-in-progress, Moving Pictures. Her articles and essays have appeared in national publications as well as on her mother’s bulletin board.

Phil Laird

Phil Laird lives and writes in San Francisco after retiring from a career in teaching and research. He recently completed the Online Certificate Program in Novel Writing. Nightlife is his first novel.

Michelle Li

Writer, Self

A published scholar of classical and medieval Japanese literature, Michelle Osterfeld Li returned to her passion for writing fiction after a twenty-five year hiatus.

Kirsten Lind

Kirsten Lind was born and raised in Washington State and now resides in Germany. She is a graduate student at the University of Munich.

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Elbo Room (downstairs) 647 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Writing for Young Adults

Trichinosis or Mad Cow lurk in uncooked meat. Unfinished manuscripts may be just as dangerous. YA authors expose funny moments in their books in progress.

Participants

Laura Atkins

Laura Atkins is an author, teacher and children's book editor with over twenty years in the children's book world. She worked at Children's Book Press, Orchard Books, and Lee & Low Books, and taught creative writing at the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature (NCRCL... Read More →

Dean Gloster

Dean Gloster is a former stand-up comic and former clerk at the U.S. Supreme Court, but he's now worked his way up to YA author. His debut novel, Dessert First, mixes humor with heartache. He graduates from Vermont College of Fine Arts in July 2017 with an MFA. His hobbies include... Read More →

Kim Green

Author, YA + Adult Fiction, Kim Green

Kim Green is the author of Rivals, first book of the upcoming YA science fiction trilogy The Last Extinction (Crown Books for Young Readers), and the adult novels Live a Little (5 Spot), Paging Aphrodite (Delta) and Is That a Moose in Your Pocket? (Delta). A longtime advertising... Read More →

Heather Hughes

Heather Hughes has taught, counseled, guided raft trips for and researched teens. Now, she writes realistic young adult and middle grade fiction to amuse them. Heather has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Lianna McSwain

Lianna McSwain writes fiction, non-fiction and poetry for all ages. A Michigan native, and a survivor of Catholic high school, she remorselessly plunders the hi-jinks and misadventures of her two teenage progeny for her own purposes. She has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Scholar Match 849 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

6:30pm

Writings about Music

Critics and journalists based in Oakland and San Francisco read writings about music of the past and present from the Bay Area at Stranded.

Participants

Erika Delgado

Writer, LMSFN/The Bay Bridged

First generation Mexican American, born in SF raised in SSF. Got my BA in Writing and Literature at California College of the Arts. Always had been obsessed with music, in a more hectic way than my friends, so while I worked at Rasputin, not too long ago, I started writing for their... Read More →

Sam Lefebvre

Sam Lefebvre is a freelance journalist in Oakland whose byline has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, the Guardian, and Pitchfork. He also covers local music regularly for the East Bay Express.

Mosi Reeves

Writer

Mosi Reeves is a writer based in Oakland. He currently writes for Rolling Stone, the East Bay Express, NPR.org, and other publications.

Chris Zaldua

Chris Zaldua is a writer, event producer, DJ, and music obsessive based in San Francisco, CA. Chris co-founded the SURFACE TENSION party/event series, coming up on its fourth anniversary, and launched a record label with his Surface Tension partner Nihar Bhatt called LEFT HAND PATH... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 6:30pm - 7:30pm
Stranded 1055 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 2

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

16th and Mission Poets

For fourteen years, around ten in the evening, poetry and music have lived at the corner of 16th and mission every Thursday night. Come relive that experience on a different block, on a different night, at a different time.

Participants

Clyde Always

Clyde Always, for the promotion of bliss, writes and recites his own blend of tall tales and clever verses.

Charlie Getter

Charlie is loud.

Brandon Loburg

Born kicking and screaming, he'd like to think he's outgrown such recalcitrance. These days, he raises his voice only at you, and hopes you're entertained.

Miguel Periera

Miguel Pereira is a Puerto Rican poet from a military family. He moved to San Francisco in the mid 1990s. A proud founding father of the 16th and Mission Word Gathering, his work has been described as "passionate" and "aware".

Jeff Sammarco

Jeff Sammarco is a 26 and works in the production industry as a lighting technician. He was born in North Carolina and has spent the last few years travelling around with work until he landed in the City. If hes not working with loghts or relaxing at home with his headphones... Read More →

Tom Stolmar

Stolmar in three sentences is an inexplicable enigma; to read him is to lose track of reality and enjoy it. He has no Facebook page, he went to... attended something and published x-y-z. The third sentence is way beyond the scope of semiotic expression.

Jason Whitacre

Jason Whitacre is a poet and performance artist hailing from at least three different places in California. He has been an active member of the San Francisco literary community for the past 9 years and has occasionally been seen in bits of theater frivolity. He can be found... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Deepistan National Parklet 937 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

8:00pm

48 Hills and The Stud present: Hush Hush Drag Reads

48Hills.org teams up with legendary queer nightclub The Stud's Hush Hush literary parlor for an evening of drag readings and performances fit for a queen.

What is Hush Hush? A monthly literary parlor at the Stud, a floaty evening for all beyond-it-all babettes! HUSH-HUSH is a show where experimental music meets experimental performance meets experimental literature. A party for introverts. Free-form femme f*ckery. GENRE? Hardly KNOW her! Behold, drag and her discontents.

What is the Stud? The Stud is a 52-year-old queer bar and hub of the city's nightlife scene that was recently reinvigorated by a collective of 18 drag queens, artists, DJs, performers and nightlife professionals. Join us after LitCrawl for drag and dancing until 3am!

What is 48 Hills? 48Hills.org is the progressive daily news and culture site started by the former editors and publishers of the Bay Guardian, which has supported LitQuake from the very beginning!

Curators

Brittany Smearz

Silk Worm

Silk Worm is an independent artist working in drag, dance, and performance. A 2017 Danceweb Europe Scholar at Impustanz Vienna, Silk is currently at work on a solo called Bottom Bride and a workshop called Bad Acting, With Brittany Newell she leads and organizes Hush-Hush.

Participants

Clark Alexander

Gabriel Christian

James Fleming

VivvyAnne ForeverMore

Mica Sigourney

Davia Amerasu Spain

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Lone Palm 3394 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

7.13 Books Indie Debut Celebration

Celebrate the acclaimed debuts of indie presses 7.13 Books, Willow Books, and Bywater Books with readings from Alex Behr, Hilary Zaid, and more.

Participants

Alex Behr

Freelance Writer, Editor, Teacher

My debut story collection, Planet Grim, is out on 7.13 Books (10-12-17). It's a vivid, unsettling portrait of the gritty fringes of San Francisco and Portland, where complicated characters long for connection just out of reach.

Leland Cheuk

Founder, 7.13 Books

Leland Cheuk is the author of three books of fiction, including the novels THE MISADVENTURES OF SULLIVER PONG and most recently, NO GOOD VERY BAD ASIAN, forthcoming from C&R Press in October 2019. His work has appeared in Salon, Catapult, Joyland Magazine, Literary Hub, among other... Read More →

Vincent Chu

Vincent Chu was born in Oakland, California. His fiction has appeared in PANK Magazine, East Bay Review, Pithead Chapel, Fjords Review, Cooper Street, Stockholm Review, Chicago Literati, Forth Magazine, The Collapsar, WhiskeyPaper and elsewhere. He has been nominated for the Pushcart... Read More →

Paul Cohen

Paul Cohen’s debut novel, THE GLAMSHACK, was published June 2017 by 7.13 Books. Nominated for a Pushcart Press Editor’s Book Award and listed by B&N Reads as a top ten debut novel to read this fall (2017), THE GLAMSHACK, says Kirkus Reviews, pulls off the "impressive feat of memorably... Read More →

Josh Denslow

The characters that populate my stories are linked by lassitude, bad luck, poor decision-making skills, and a dash of charm. Lately, I've become drawn to the idea of creating an air-tight believable world, exactly like our life as we know it, and then injecting a hint of the mag... Read More →

Kim Magowan

My short story collection, UNDOING, is winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award and forthcoming 2018. My novel THE LIGHT SOURCE is forthcoming from 7.13 Books in 2019.

Joe Ponepinto

Joe Ponepinto is the founding publisher and fiction editor of Tahoma Literary Review. His novel, Mr. Neutron, will be published by 7.13 Books in spring 2018. He has had stories published in dozens of other literary journals in the U.S. and abroad. A New Yorker by birth, he has lived... Read More →

Jenn Stroud Rossmann

Jenn Rossmann writes the essay series "An Engineer Reads a Novel" for Public Books. Her stories appear in failbetter, Literary Orphans, Cheap Pop, & other places. Her novel The Place You're Supposed to Laugh, coming in fall 2018 from 7.13 Books, takes on class, race, and identity... Read More →

Hilary Zaid

A 2017 Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference, Hilary Zaid is also an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers and the Tin House Writers' Workshop. Her short fiction has appeared in print and online venues including Lilith Magazine, The Southwest Review... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Ritual Roasters 1026 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

AFAR magazine presents

Tales of adventure, discovery, and other magical things that happen when we leave home.

Participants

Leslie Buck

Leslie Buck's New York Time's reviewed garden memoir, Cutting Back-My Apprenticeship in the Gardens of Kyoto, has been written about in the Washington Post, SF Chronicle along with blogs and podcasts. Leslie continues to have adventures while designing gardens throughout the Bay Area... Read More →

Aislyn Greene

After a few years spent tracking the dizzying rise of technology for a Seattle tech and business journal, Aislyn headed south (as in California) to return to her first love: travel and magazines. She spent two years digging into all things Washington and Oregon as the NW travel editor... Read More →

Emma John

Emma John is an award-winning author and a contributing writer at Afar. Her first book, Following On: A Memoir of Teenage Obsession and Terrible Cricket, was named the 2017 Wisden Book of the Year. For the next six months, Emma will be travelling around the USA as Foggy Mountain Gal... Read More →

Serena Renner

Serena Renner is a journalist and former AFAR editor whose work focuses on nature, culture, and social change as well as creative people and their obsessions. Recent assignments have taken her digging in to the traditional roots of Milanese panettone for AFAR; tracking the August... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Noisebridge 2169 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Airships, Magic, and More

Join an eclectic mix of authors who, for your delight, will explore alternate history, secret history, plain old secrets and surprises!

Participants

Robyn Bennis

Robyn Bennis works in biotech but dreams of airships. She lives in Mountain View and THE GUNS ABOVE is her debut novel.

Dana Fredsti

Dana Fredsti is the author of the Ashley Parker series, touted as Buffy meets The Walking Dead, and the dark fantasy series Spawn of Lilith.

Ayize Jama-Everett

Harlem NYC, 1974, Ayize Jama-Everett was born. His books are The Liminal People, The Liminal War, and The Entropy of Bones. He was told to keep this brief.

Ellen Klages

Award-winning genre-bending author Ellen Klages (PASSING STRANGE) lives in San Francisco in a small house full of strange and wondrous things.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Borderlands Cafe 870 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Babar in Exile

This event features original participants to recreate an open mic from San Francisco's notorious and ground-breaking Café Babar reading series from the 1980-90s.

Participants

Steve Arntson

Steve Arntson was born on the east coast but moved west early. Although he was trained as a pianist, he discovered spoken word in SF around 1985 and has been writing and performing poetry ever since.

Deborah Fruchey

sole proprietor, Last Laugh Productions

Deborah is the author of 1 volume of poetry (Armadillo by Cyborg Press, 2015), 1 (new) flash fiction collection, and several other books. She has just finished editing a collection of Vampyre Mike Kassel's unpublished work, and an anthology in tribute to Julia Vinograd.She has been... Read More →

David Gollub

David Gollub was born in 1951, the son of an opera singer and a trial lawyer. He got a BA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He met David Lerner in Palo Alto in 1973. Lerner got him his first poetry publication. He has been on the Bay Area poetry scene since April 7, 1983, when... Read More →

QR Hand

Q. R. Hand, Jr. moved to the SF Bay Area from NYC about forty years ago. Originally published in the 1968 classic, Black Fire: An Anthology of Afro American Writing, edited by Amiri Baraka (Leroy Jones) and Larry Neal, which has recently been reproduced by Black Classics Press, h... Read More →

Bruce Isaacson

Zeitgeist Press

Bruce Isaacson was an early scheduler at Cafe Babar, a mid-'80s spoken word free-for-all. David Lerner rightly called it Gladiator School for Poets. Since, he was read at Poetry in Motion readings at Hollywood's Helena's and Largo, and was a finalist in the first Nuyorican Poetry... Read More →

Julia Vinograd

Julia Vinograd was born a native of Taurus w/Pisces rising in the coal and corn bread heart of West Virginia, in 1943. She writes, "I left school to pursue a career of vagrancy, experimental mysticism and small villainies. I've been around the block and tackled; got a million miles... Read More →

David West

An old school friend of Homer and Sappho, David West lives in SF by the River Styx with a great view of what used to be San Francisco.

Kathleen Wood

Kathleen Wood was born in MO and currently resides in San Francisco. She was a constant habitué of the Cafe Babar reading series though most of its run. She’s had three chapbooks published by Zeitgeist Press, The Wino, the Junkie, and the Lord, Tenderloin Rose, and recently Tenderloin... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Gents Barber Club 3041 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Birds of Paradise

Birds of Paradise is a reading series hosted by Feather Press, an independent, literary press dedicated to printing poetry and prose by female writers. Featherpress.org (Please note the lineup has changed due to the fires in the North Bay.)

Participants

Jackie Davis-Martin

Bronwyn Emery

Saeeda Hafiz

Saeeda Hafiz is the author of the award-winning book, The Healing: One Woman's Journey from Poverty to Inner Riches, which was re-released by Parallax Press on July 17, 2018. She has appeared on various radio and television programs and has been featured in several national and... Read More →

Hollie Hardy

Hollie Hardy is the author of How to Take a Bullet, And Other Survival Poems, winner of the 2016 annual Poetry Center Book Award. She teaches writing classes at the SF Creative Writing Institute and Berkeley City College, hosts Saturday Night Special, An East Bay Open Mic and produces... Read More →

EK Keith

E.K. Keith shouts her poems on the street corner and takes the mic at bars, coffee shops, and radio stations. She makes her home in San Francisco, but an early life in urban Texas still influences her worldview. Print and online publications feature her work including, Meniscus, Haight... Read More →

Josey Rose

Laura Zink

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Mission Yoga #200, 2390 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

California Institute of Integral Studies: Love, Death and Annihilation!

Writers from the MFA Program at California Institute of Integral Studies/San Francisco share works for page, stage and screen.

Curators

Carolyn Cooke

Carolyn Cooke is the author of The Bostons, Daughters of the Revolution, and Amor & Psycho. She teaches in the MFA Program at CIIS.

Participants

Margaret Hayertz

Tarot Reader for Writers and Artists, Meg's Tarot Readings

M. Hayertz is a novelist and the founder of Creative Momentum. She holds an MFA in Writing and Consciousness from California Institute of Integral Studies.

Andrea Lynn

Andrea Lynn's writing explores judgment and its effects. Her applied journalism seeks to shine light on social injustice and chronicle a disappearing nature.

Diana Penman

Diana Penman is a writer and military veteran exploring the different layers of identity pre and post military via the secret lives of objects.

Adrienne Reiter

Writer, Editor, and Content Creator, Vinformant and Eratos Enterprises

Adrienne Reiter is a contributing writer to Bay Area News Group and novelist. She has an MFA in Writing from California Institute of Integral Studies. She lives in San Francisco where her dog, Peaches, does bad things.

Lili Weckler

Lili Weckler is the artistic director of Unhinge, a dance-theater company sponsored by Intersection for the Arts. She was nominated for a 2010 Pushcart Prize.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Make-Out Room 3225 22nd Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Cleave: Bay Area Women Writers, Saint Mary's College of California, Ó Bhéal (Cork City, Ireland), and the Cork Arts Council

San Francisco is sister to many cities, including Cork. In this event, writers from "sister cities" and beyond will share how they write the world.

(Please note that this event has moved from the venue shown in the print program and on the Crawl map.)

Participants

Kathy D'Arcy

I'm an Irish poet, feminist activist and creative writing teacher. I'm currently doing a Creative Writing PhD in University College Cork on the theme of reimagining Irish women's history using long, experimental poetic forms. My collections are Encounter (2010) and The Wild Pupil... Read More →

Rosemary Graham

Professor of English, Saint Mary's College of California

Rosemary Graham teaches literature and creative writing at Saint Mary's College of California. She has published three YA novels with Viking. Stalker Girl is the most recent. She is working on a historical novel called Simple Lessons in Irish.

Avotcja Jiltonilro

Avotcja has been published in English & Spanish in the USA, Mexico & Europe. She’s an award winning Poet & multi-instrumentalist. She’s a popular Bay Area DJ & Radio Personality & leader of the group “Avotcja & Modúpue” (The Bay Area Blues Society’s Jazz Group Of The Year... Read More →

Florencia Milito

Born in Argentina, Florencia Milito spent her early childhood in Venezuela and has lived in the U.S. since she was nine. She is a bilingual poet, essayist, and translator whose work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in ZYZZYVA; Indiana Review; Catamaran; Entremares; Digging through... Read More →

Sabrina Nguyen

Cintia Santana

Cintia Santana’s poetry, fiction, and translations have appeared in Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, Narrative, Pleiades, RHINO, Spillway, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. The recipient of Djerassi and CantoMundo Fellowships. Santana... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Beloved Natural Cafe 3338 24th Street, San Francisco CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Cocoa Fly

CocoaFly.com presents Let Her Tell It!, an exciting group of Black women writers from diverse backgrounds share their experiences as Black women in today's society.

Participants

Jeneé Darden

Founder, Cocoa Fly

Jeneé Darden is an award-winning journalist, public speaker, mental health advocate, and proud Oakland native. She is the author of When a Purple Rose Blooms, a collection of essays and poetry about her experience as a Black woman. Jeneé has reported for NPR, Time, Ebony, the Los... Read More →

Natalie Devora

Natalie Devora is a writer and Albinism advocate, and author of the memoir Black Girl White Skin: A Life In Stories.

Lyndsey Ellis

Lyndsey Ellis is a fiction writer, essayist and editor who's passionate about exploring intergenerational struggles and resiliency in the Midwest. She's a 2018 recipient of a grant from the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund and 2016 recipient of the San Francisco Foundation's Joseph Henry... Read More →

Kelechi Ubozoh

Kelechi Ubozoh is a Nigerian-American mental health advocate, writer, and SF Bay Area poet. In summer of 2019, her book with co-editor Liz Green, We’ve Been Too Patient will be released from North Atlantic Books and distributed by Penguin Random House. We’ve Been Too Patient... Read More →

Yodassa Williams

Yodassa, a writer and award winning performing storyteller, creates from her intense life experiences and wild imagination. She is an alumnae of VONA's travel workshop and recently launched a wilderness writing retreat for women of color. Her debut YA fantasy, The Goddess Twins, will... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Onecommons 3019 Mission Street, San Francisco CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Language and Resistance

Suggestions on how citizens can reclaim their power, and how language can help us resist individually and envision a collective future.

Participants

Sylvia Arthur

Sylvia Arthur is a writer from London, England, whose essays and plays examine the intersection of race, gender, and class through the prism of popular culture. She's currently at work on her first book, African, & Other Curse Words, a collection of interconnected essays about identity... Read More →

Alex Ivey

Alex Ivey is a New York City native currently sunning himself on the California coast. Los Angeles is currently his home but who the hell knows what tomorrow will bring. He writes short stories, poems, essays about 90s pop icons, plays and novels. His writing has appeared in the Harpoon... Read More →

Roberto Lovato

Writer, SF Writers Grotto

Roberto Lovato is a San Francisco-born & bred journalist and writer working out of the Grotto. Prior to joining the Grotto, he was a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berkeley's Center for Latino Policy Research. Roberto is also the recipient of a crisis reporting grant from the Pulitzer Center... Read More →

Miri Nakamura

Miri Nakamura is a scholar of Japanese literature and film. She was formerly Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University, where she taught feminist literature and horror films. She is the author of Monstrous Bodies: The Rise of the Uncanny in Modern Japan... Read More →

Christina Robinson

Christina Robinson lives in Oakland, where she also teaches in order to foster tomorrow's leaders and to support her dog collection (3!) and her writing habit (mostly her dystopian quest novel). She is an active member in SURJ Bay Area, where she acts for and thinks critically about... Read More →

Pireeni Sundaralingam

Associate Professor, California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS)

Born in Sri Lanka, Pireeni Sundaralingam is co-editor of Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. Her poetry has been published in American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, and others, and translated into 5 languages. A cognitive-neuroscientist, she is currently... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Little Paper Planes 855 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Paloma Press presents

Paloma Press presents a literary reading by Eileen Tabios, John Moore Williams, Melinda Luisa de Jesus, Paul Cassinetto, Steve Warner, Wesley St. Jo and Veronica Montes.

(Please note that this event has been relocated from the venue shown in the print program and Crawl map.)

Participants

Paul Cassinetto

Paul Cassinetto actively worked on Shakespeare in the Park productions in Sacramento in the 90s. Favorite credits include A Comedy of Errors, Othello and Romeo & Juliet. He has also performed stand up at The Cannery in San Francisco. These days, he works as an IT Director and plays... Read More →

Melinda Luisa de Jesús

I was born and educated in Pennsylvania; my parents were emigrants from the Philippines. Growing up brown in a predominantly white steel town has shaped me in ways I'm constantly exploring in my writing. I identify primarily as a feminist of color. Professionally I teach and write... Read More →

Wesley St Jo

Wesley St. Jo is the illustrator and co-author of the poetry collection, "BLUE," published by Paloma Press in 2017. She also co-edits the Mi-Go Zine Project, a DIY periodical devoted to exploring the connections between popular culture and politics. The real Wesley St. Jo is an adorable... Read More →

Veronica Montes

Veronica Montes was born in San Francisco and came of age in the fog and mist of Daly City. Her short fiction has appeared in many print journals and online spaces. Her collection, Benedicta Takes Wing and Other Stories, was published by Philippine American Literary House in 2018... Read More →

Eileen Tabios

Eileen R. Tabios loves books and has released about 50 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in nine countries and cyberspace. Inventor of the poetry form “hay(na)ku,” she has been translated into eight languages. She also has edited... Read More →

Steve Warner

Steve Warner is a screenwriter, actor, film director and producer. He participates every year in Write Out Loud's Twain Fest, Storybox Theatre, and Reading For Seniors. His most recent project, "Jasmine," won the Board Choice Award at the 2014 Eugene International Film Festival... Read More →

John Moore Williams

A 2009 &Now Award winner, John Moore Williams has written four chapbooks: The Milo choir sings Wild Boys in Trumplandia (Locofo Chaps, 2017), I discover i is an android (Trainwreck Press, 2008), writ10 (VUGG Books, 2008) and, with Matina L. Stamatakis, Xenomorphoia (Wheelhouse... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Dovre Club 1498 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

Tags Venue: 21+, Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Poets on Parnassus presents

Join the Poets on Parnassus as they give poetic and narrative voice to myth, trauma, immigration, death, the bizarre and the search for truth.

Participants

Dawn Gross

Attending Physician, UCSF

Dawn M. Gross, MD, PhD is dedicated to transforming the taboo around talking about death. Earning her BA from USC and a combined MD and PhD from Tufts University School of Medicine and the Sackler School of Biomedical Science, Dr. Gross completed her residency in Internal Medicine... Read More →

Terri Mason

Terri is a writer who likes to eat, walk her dog, and remember her Angelino roots. She writes to find out what she thinks about things.

Sarah Paris

Sarah Paris is a Swiss-American writer and poet. Last year, she published a short novel, "The Traveler," under the name of her alter ego Chris Solano. Subtitled "a shaggy dog chasing ghosts story," it is a classic road trip that takes a surreal turn. Sarah is currently working... Read More →

Jenny Qi

Poet, writer, medical editor. Co-host @BoneLabRadio. Former cancer researcher @UCSF... Read More →

William Vlach

William Vlach’s poetry has been published in the United States and the United Kingdom. Both his playwriting and parody have won writing awards. William's debut novel, The Golden Chalice of Hunahpú, won the 2015 BAIPA Book Award for Fiction. He was invited to present the novel... Read More →

David Watts

David Watts, voted one of Americas Top Physicians, is also an award winning poet/writer, an NPR Commentator, a celebrated television producer, a classically trained musician, and a teacher.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Coffee Mission 3325 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

8:00pm

Trans-Cendental

A smorgasbord of trans and gender non-conforming Bay Area writers serve up sample dishes of their latest literary fare for your enjoyment.

Curators

Natasha Dennerstein

Natasha Dennerstein was born in Melbourne, Australia. She spent many years working as a psychiatric nurse which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. She has an MFA from San Francisco State University. Natasha has had poetry published in many journals including... Read More →

Participants

Sam Dylan Finch

Sam Dylan Finch is an LGBTQA+ and mental health educator based in the San Francisco Bay Area. As a transgender person with mental illness, Sam draws from his lived experience to defy the stigmas that surround his identity, as well as teaching others about the challenges that are faced... Read More →

Kay Nilsson

Kay Nilsson is a Miami raised poet currently attending the University of San Francisco, where he attempts to cure diasporic Blues through family recipes. Kay has featured at slams and shows across the Bay Area from "Donde Esta Mi Gente" the Latino poetry and literature festival... Read More →

Julia Serano

Julia Serano is the author of three books, Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive, and Outspoken: A Decade of Transgender Activism and Trans Feminism. Her work has also appeared in media outlets such as TIME, The Guardian, Salon, The Daily Beast, Alternet.org, Ms., Out, and The Advocate, and her writings have been used as teaching materials in college courses across North America... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Alamo Drafthouse Cinema (mezzanine) 2550 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3

8:00pm

Flor y Canto presents: Sugar, Spice, and Everything Contra

The Flor y Canto Brigade proudly presents poetas with an uncensored take on all matters of life, however resistant, however defiant.

Curators

Josiah Flores

Jessica Mejia

Graduate Student, San Francisco State University

Jessica Mejia is a scholar and poet based in San Francisco. She is finishing her MA in comparative literature at San Francisco State University with a focus on 20th Century Literature of the Americas, and was selected by the California Pre-Doctoral Program as a Sally Casanova Pre-Doctoral... Read More →

Participants

Saron Ayala

Saron Q. Ayala is a Latinx major at San Francisco State University from the hood of Santa Ana, CA. Her family origins are in Mexico and Central America. Roller skate or die.

Xochitl Frausto

My name is Xochitl Frausto. I identify as a queer non binary femme Xicanx, my preferred pronouns are she/they. I am a creative writing major, ethnic studies minor at SFSU. I grew up in South Central LA and moved to the bay for school, and have been involved in social justice movements... Read More →

Lilia Montesinos

Lilia Sanchez Montesinos is an Illustrator from México currently living in San Francisco. Her illustrations are based in the poetry she writes. She draws and writes memories from places and nature.

Flavia Elisa Mora

Flavia Elisa is an immigrant artivist from Mexico, raised in San Francisco. Her writing focuses on her experience as an immigrant chingonx, spiritual old soul, and her role in intersectional feminism, and the healing of systematic oppression in unrepresented communities.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
La Reyna Bakery 3114 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Hazel Reading Series All-Stars

Hazel celebrates the diversity of Bay Area women writers. Join us for an evening of some the very best readers from our four-year history.

Participants

Anita Amirrezvani

Anita Amirrezvani, born in Tehran, is the author of the novel Equal of the Sun, which was published by Scribner. Her first novel, The Blood of Flowers, has appeared in more than 25 languages and was long-listed for the 2008 Orange Prize for Fiction. A recipient of an MFA in Creative... Read More →

Yalitza Ferreras

Yalitza Ferreras was recently a Steinbeck Fellow in Creative Writing at San Jose State University. Her writing is forthcoming in Best American Short Stories 2016 and appears in Colorado Review, and the anthologies: Wise Latinas: Writers on Higher Education and Daring to Write... Read More →

Toni Mirosevich

Toni Mirosevich is the author of six books of poetry and prose, including The Takeaway Bin (poetry) and Pink Harvest, a book of nonfiction stories and winner of the First Series in Creative Nonfiction Award. She is the recipient of fellowships with the MacDowell Colony, Djerassi Resident... Read More →

Shruti Swamy

The winner of two O. Henry Awards, Shruti Swamy's work has appeared in Agni, the Kenyon Review Online, the Boston Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. She is a Kundiman fiction fellow, and a 2017-2018 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University.

Esme Weijun Wang

Esmé Weijun Wang is a novelist and essayist. Her debut novel, The Border of Paradise, was called a Best Book of 2016 by NPR and one of the 25 Best Novels of 2016 by Electric Literature. She was named by Granta as one of the “Best of Young American Novelists” in 2017, and is... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Mission Cultural Center 2868 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Heard/Space: Shattering Neutrality

"What can I do about it?" is a sentiment often felt in the age of misinformation. Poets share their truths, intersecting social issues and selfhood.

Curators

Ricardo Tavarez

Ricardo Tavarez is a writer, educator and aspiring baker.

Participants

Norm Mattox

Educator

I have been an educator in SFUSD for, almost, 30 years. It has always been a struggle to be the conscious, critical participant in a system that is working 'just fine', maintaining the status quo of incremental achievement gap closure. The challenge of achieving equitable outcomes... Read More →

Norma Smith

author, Nomadic Press

Oakland writer. HOME REMEDY book of poems from Nomadic Press. Active at the Liminal Center, feminist/womanist writing space in East Oakland.

Harold Terezon

Harold Terezón is a poet and educator from Pacoima, CA, and is working on his first collection of poetry, Hunting Izotes.

Truong Tran

Truong Tran is a poet, teacher, and visual artist, author of Four Letter Words (Apogee Press, 2008).

Norma Liliana Valdez

Norma Liliana Valdez is an alumna of the VONA/Voices Workshop, the Writing Program at UC Berkeley Extension, and a 2014 Hedgebrook writer-in-residence. A member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, her poems have appeared in Calyx, As It Ought To Be, Dismantle, and elsewhere. She lives... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Alley Cat Books 3036 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

KQED presents: Bad Immigrants

Border transcending literary performances from writers on the strength, hilarity, and humanity of being an immigrant. Presented by ¿Donde Esta Mi Gente? and KQED.

Curators

Baruch Porras-Hernandez

Baruch Porras-Hernandez is the author of two chapbooks from Sibling Rivalry Press. He is a two time winner of Literary Death Match, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry, and Playwriting, has been part of the legendary Sister Spit Tour with Radar Productions, and regularly hosts shows... Read More →

Participants

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto is an artist of mixed Pakistani and Lebanese descent. He has performed with Radar Productions, The Stud, throughout the U.S, Colombia, Pakistan and Dubai.

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is author of the novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree, a silver medal winner in First Fiction at the California Book Awards and a New York Times editor's choice. She was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New... Read More →

Amanda Muniz

Amanda Muniz is a Mexican writer born in Puebla and raised in Oakland, California. She majored in English Literature from San Francisco State. Her work has been published by Pochino press, and she has been a featured reader in various shows in the Bay Area including the electrifying... Read More →

Camilo Villa

Camilo Villa is a Colombian artist and poet based in Oakland, California. He has performed in venues, such as The Queer Open Mic and Donde esta mí gente. Camilo holds a Fine Arts Degree with a minor in Social Action & Public Forms from the California College of the Arts.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Laundry Gallery and Cafe (downstairs) 3359 26th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Library Laureates Go Beast-mode

2017 San Francisco Library Laureates share their wildest work. From poetry to prose to illustration, it'll grab and shake you. It may never let go.

Curators

Marie Ciepiela

Marie Ciepiela, Executive Director of Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, is a life-long social sector leader in community change and advocacy. For over 25 years, she has worked exclusively in nonprofit agencies in the Bay Area dedicated to education, youth, and families... Read More →

Participants

Tamim Ansary

Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet... Read More →

Lisa Brown

Lisa Brown draws things like illustration and comics, writes things like books and book reviews, and teaches things to kids and college students. Her debut picture book, How to Be, was one of the Thirteen Best Children’s Books for Family Literacy. Since then she has published... Read More →

Lucha Corpi

Born in México, Lucha Corpi came to Berkeley as a student wife in 1964. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Palabras de mediodía/Noon Words and Variaciones sobre una tempestad/Variations on a Storm (Spanish with English translations by Catherine Rodríguez Nieto); two bi... Read More →

Judy Juanita

Judy Juanita's DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland (EQUIDISTANCE) looks at black and female empowerment. Her novel, Virgin Soul [Viking, 2013] is now in paperback.I'm honored to serve as a 2017 San Francisco Library Laureate. Big up to ZYZZYVA and Glimmer Train... Read More →

Sarah Manyika

Sarah Manyika is a writer, academic and overall lover of stories. She was raised in Nigeria and has lived in Kenya, France, Zimbabwe and England. Her best-selling debut novel, In Dependence (with sales of 3 million and a brand new edition coming out in the US and UK later this year... Read More →

Joel Selvin

Joel Selvin began covering pop music for the San Francisco Chronicle shortly after the Civil War. Find his work in newspapers, magazines and nine books.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
San Francisco Public Library, Mission Branch 300 Bartlett Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

LibroMobile

Writing from home, fighting for our spaces! Latinx writers share works about their hometowns, in protest against gentrification, and in search of their own self.

Participants

Cathy Arellano

Just another Mission-raised poet whose family was evicted from their beautiful flat, Cathy Arellano wrote the family memoir SALVATION ON MISSION STREET (2016), in poems and stories set in SF from the 1960s to the 2000s, won the 2017 Golden Crown Literary Society’s Debut Author Award... Read More →

Sarah Rafael García

Founder/Project Director, LibroMobile

Sarah Rafael Garcia is a writer, community educator and traveler. Since publishing Las Niñas (Floricanto Press 2008), she founded Barrio Writers, LibroMobile and Crear Studio. In 2016, Sarah Rafael was awarded for SanTana’s Fairy Tales (Raspa Magazine 2017), which was supported... Read More →

Javier O. Huerta

Javier O. Huerta's debut collection Some Clarifications y otros poemas (Arte Publico 2007) received the 31st Chicano/Latino Literary Prize from UC Irvine. He is also the author of American Copia (2012). A graduate of the Bilingual MFA Program at UT El Paso, Huerta is currently a PhD... Read More →

Marilynn Montaño

Marilynn Montaño is a Chicana writer, poet, and proud daughter of migrant parents from Puebla, Mexico. Since the age of fifteen, she has been active in Santa Ana through creative writing, community organizing and documenting life by any medium necessary. Her writing highlights the... Read More →

Maceo Montoya

Maceo Montoya’s first novel, The Scoundrel and the Optimist (Bilingual Review, 2010), was awarded the 2011 International Latino Book Award for “Best First Book” and Latino Stories named him one of its "Top Ten New Latino Writers to Watch." In 2014, University of New Mexico... Read More →

Joseph Rios

Joseph Rios is the author of Shadowboxing: Poems and Impersonations (Omnidawn). He is from Fresno`s San Joaquin Valley. He`s been a gardener, a janitor, a packinghouse supervisor, and a handyman. He is a recipient of scholarships from the Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley and CantoMundo. He is a VONA alumnus and a Macondo Fellow. In 2015, he received the John K. Walsh residency fellowship from the University of Notre Dame. In 2016, his debut poetry collection was chosen by Claudia Rankine as a finalist for Omnidawn`s first book prize. He was named one of the notable Debut Poets by Poets & Writers Magazine for 2017 and was a finalist for a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent fellowship. He is a graduate of Fresno City College and the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Los Angeles.

Joseph Rios is the author of Shadowboxing: Poema and Impersonations (Omnidawn). He is from Fresno's San Joaquin Valley. He's been a gardener, a janitor, a packinghouse supervisor, and a handyman. He is a recipient of scholarships from the Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Casa Bonampak 1051 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Muni Diaries Live Haiku Battle

Anything can happen on Muni, so let's blow up the party talk! Poets compete in the Muni Haiku Battle to see whose 5-7-5 reigns supreme.

Curators

Eugenia Chien

Co-founder, Muni Diaries

One of the co-founders of Muni Diaries and San Francisco Diaries, Eugenia spends her days and nights exploring the nooks and crannies of the internet for companies big and small. In a previous life, she had been a reporter and editor at New America Media and a some-time commentator... Read More →

Tara Ramroop

Editor, Event Producer & Emcee, Muni Diaries

Tara is a writer, editor, and content marketing type who took her first breaths of life in San Francisco [REDACTED] years ago at the old Mount Zion on Divis. An early member of the Muni Diaries team, she's been engaging with this amazing community from the start. Twice a year, she... Read More →

Participants

Chris Collision

Co-Host, I Don't Even Own a Television

Collision is a writer, bike rider, HEAVY TUNES enthusiast, and worker in Oakland, California. He likes his girlfriend Noodles, coffee, beer, bikes, cities, mezcal, loud music, Star Trek, (doing) the Jumble, (using) the text editor VIM, the politics of liberation, hockey, basketball... Read More →

Dominique Gelin

Comedian

Dominique Gelin is a comedian in Oakland, CA who offers strong opinions on stupid things, -isms, and assholes. It’s all very fascinating. She has performed at SF Sketchfest, Boston’s Women in Comedy Festival, and was a finalist for the Ultimate Miami Comedian. She has also touched... Read More →

Jesse James

Twitter Goblin, @loudgayamerica

Jesse James was voted "Most Extraordinarily Unique Male Senior class of 2000" (they didn't have a "campus homo" category) and has been more or less running with that ever since. Jesse has appeared on the Muni Diaries Live stage more times than reasonably appropriate, held the Haiku... Read More →

Tirumari Jothi

Producer, Komedio Comedy

Tirumari has been performing comedy for six years, with stand-up as his first love, but he also loves improv and sketch acting so please don't ask him to choose. You can find him either performing with the geeky comedy group he co-founded, Komedio Comedy; hosting videogame drinking... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Clarion Alley (main stage) Between Mission and Valencia Streets and 17th and 18th Streets

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Poetry: the Hows and Whys

Two masters of the genre, Matthew Zapruder and Robert Hass, will converse on stage about why poetry matters, and how to excel at the form.

Participants

Robert Hass

Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Hass is the former United States poet laureate (1995-97) and Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets. His most recent book is 2017's A Little Book on Form: An Exploration into the Formal Imagination of Poetry. His books of poetry include The... Read More →

Matthew Zapruder

Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, including Come On All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; The Pajamaist, which won the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America; American Linden and Sun Bear. His new release... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Laundry Gallery and Cafe (upstairs) 3359 26th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Rare Bird Books: Fear and Loathing in the Bay Area

Bay Area authors read about murder, mayhem, and natural and personal disasters. A unique reading by a few of Rare Bird Books' new, exciting voices.

Participants

Lucy Bledsoe

Lucy Jane Bledsoe’s newest novel, A THIN BRIGHT LINE, is an American love story with Cold War complications, and the New York Times says it "triumphs as an intimate and humane evocation of day-to-day life under inhumane circumstances." She’s won a Yaddo Fellowship, the Saturday... Read More →

Jon Rankin

Jon Rankin has a degree in Political Science from UCLA and a Juris Doctorate from Southwestern Law School. He's been a general practice lawyer for over thirty years. Running from the Sunrise is his first novel. He lives in Tiburon, CA.

Kevin Smokler

Kevin Smokler is the author of "Brat Pack America, A Love Letter to 80s Teen Movies" out now. His writing on pop culture has appeared in Salon, Buzzfeed, The San Francisco Chronicle and on NPR. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, cat and most of MTV's first year on vinyl

Zach Wyner

Zach Wyner earned his MFA in Creative Writing from University of San Francisco in 2009. He currently works as a writing coach, teaches for Take My Word For It – Creative Writing for Kids, facilitates writing workshops at the Alameda Juvenile Detention Center for The Beat Within... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Philz Coffee 3101 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

San Francisco Buddhist Center

Transgressions: Remembered, Relished, Amended, Avenged

Participants

Giovanna Capone

Giovanna Capone is a poet, fiction writer, and playwright. She was raised in an Italian American neighborhood in New York, whose strong immigrant influence still resonates in her life. She lives in California, but will always be a New York Italian. Giovanna’s first book, published... Read More →

Ethan Davidson

Ethan Davidson is the child of two fantasy and speculative fiction writers. He has lived in Hawaii, Tennessee, and Japan, and has travelled the world, but has alway come back to the San Francisco Bay Area. He has lived in San Francisco consistently since 1981. He has been an activist... Read More →

Lisa Kee-Hamasaki

I've read my work in the finest cafes, court house restrooms, cheese shops, bingo games and zendos in North America. My first honor as a writer was winning an award in the 2nd grade for a story about a family of tap dancing hamburgers. More recently, I host sporatic, creative brunches... Read More →

Freeman Ng

I'm a former Google software engineer who now spends most of my time writing and making digital art. I'm the author of Joan, a novel of Joan of Arc, Who Am I?, a personalizable picture book, and Haiku Diem 1, a collection of the best haiku from the first of five years I spent posting... Read More →

Tony Acarasiddhi Press

Tony Acarasiddhi Press tries to pay attention and sometimes he does. His poetry e-chapbook EQUINOX AND SOLSTICE can be seen at Right Hand Pointing. His short story collection - CROSSING THE LINES - (published by Big Table), is available via some indy bookstores, from that Amazon... Read More →

Mary Salome

Queer Arab- and Irish-American Buddhist, writer, media activist, independent radio producer, & nerd. I write across genres about impostors, and the little nooks where we can be naked in our happiness and in each other’s company. I also write about the spaces where our happiness... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
San Francisco Buddhist Center 37 Bartlett Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

San Francisco Writers Workshop

San Francisco Writers Workshop The oldest continually-running writing critique group in the world presents an evening of wonder and catharsis.

Participants

Ishita Arora

Ishita Arora writes investigative non-fiction, magical realism, and science fiction. She enjoys writing in peculiar spaces like museum exit corridors, gardens belonging to strangers, and planetariums. She's currently working on a surrealist novel about an all-female guerilla group... Read More →

Eric Fain

Eric Fain is a voracious, omnivorous, and retentive reader of almost all genres of fiction and non-fiction. A retired immigration attorney and tax law specialist, he's now working on memoirs of his childhood on a farm in the Ozarks, his 47 years in San Francisco, and his adventures... Read More →

Tim Floreen

Author of YA Fiction

Tim Floreen writes young adult fiction. The New York Public Library named his first novel, Willful Machines, one of the best teen books of 2015, and in a starred review, Kirkus called it "gothic, gadgety, and gay," which is an accurate assessment. Booklist called his second novel... Read More →

Sam Gong

Sam Gong is an entrepreneur and aspiring writer of speculative fiction. He strives to bridge history and futurism with creative storytelling, and to portray a vision of the future that provokes reaction and discussion. His professional career spans government work in Washington DC, ex... Read More →

Beverly Parayno

Beverly Parayno is from East San Jose. Her fiction, memoir, essays and author interviews have appeared in Narrative Magazine, Bellingham Review, World Literature, The Rumpus, Warscapes and Huizache, among others. Her work has been translated into Mandarin by the Chinese Academy of... Read More →

Caroline Smadja

Caroline (pronounced Ca-ro-le-ne) Smadja is a French-born author of North African heritage. Her poems, fiction and essays have appeared in literary magazines in South Africa, Canada, France and the United States, notably in CA Quarterly and in two anthologies published by Seal... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Cafe La Boheme 3318 24th St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Sanctuary City

Sanctuary City is a poetry/art anthology focused on immigrant voices from the Bay Area. Translations will be provided of poetry read in languages besides English.

Participants

Jyoti Bachani

Leadership is Listening, Strategy Making in Nonprofit Organizations, Rainwater Harvesting in Indian tribal regions are some of my scholarly publications along with two self-published (& seeking publishers) books of contemporary Hindi poetry translated into English, Simply Said, and... Read More →

Saswati Das

Saswati Das, an engineer by profession and a poet by heart lives in Milpitas, California and writes poems and fiction in both English and Hindi. She publishes her poetry in local magazines and also recites her verses in local cultural events. She has published a poetry book in English... Read More →

Rose Heredia

Rose Heredia is Dominican-American and from Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of San Francisco. She is a VONA/Voices alum, has read at the InsideStoryTime series, The Racket at Adobe Books, Lit Crawl 2016, Lit Crawl 2017, and... Read More →

Alka Roy

Born in Ranchi, India, Alka Roy has a degree in engineering and an MFA in creative writing. Her poetry, fiction and interviews have appeared in various journals and magazines. Her translations related works have been published in, Modern Poetry of Pakistan (Dalkey Archive... Read More →

Pranjali Sirasao

Pranjali is passionate about learning and teaching languages from the Indian sub-continent. Besides being fluent in English and Hindi, she is also well versed in various Indian languages like Marathi, Sanskrit, Urdu, Guajarati, and Chhattisgarhi. She also has a diploma in German language... Read More →

Kenneth Wong

Kenneth Wong is Chinese-American, born and raised in Rangoon, Burma. He immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1989. His essays, articles, and short stories have appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle, Myanmar Times, Irrawaddy, and Boston University’s AGNI magazines, among others... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Artillery Apparel Gallery 2751 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Seventeen Syllables: Islands of Dreams and Illusions

Islands can represent pleasure and escape, or loneliness and confinement. These Asian-Pacific American writers explore the tension between belonging and wanting to break free.

Participants

Brian Komei Dempster

Brian Komei Dempster’s debut book of poetry, Topaz (Four Way Books, 2013) received the 15 Bytes 2014 Book Award in Poetry. His second poetry collection, Seize, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in fall 2020. He is the editor of From Our Side of the Fence: Growing Up in America’s... Read More →

Lillian Howan

Lillian Howan spent her early childhood in Tahiti and later graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. Her writings have been published in Asian American Literary Review, Café Irreal, Calyx, NewEngland Review, Vice-Versa, and the anthologies Ms. Aligned... Read More →

Caroline Kim-Brown

Caroline Kim-Brown graduated with an MFA in Poetry from The University of Michigan where she won a Hopwood Award, and was a Michener Fellow in Fiction at The University of Texas at Austin. She has been published or has work forthcoming in The Michigan Quarterly Review, The Green Mountains... Read More →

Grace Loh Prasad

Grace Loh Prasad was born in Taiwan and raised in New Jersey and Hong Kong before settling in the SF Bay Area. Grace received her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and she is an alumna of the VONA workshop for writers of color along with residencies at Hedgebrook and the... Read More →

Brynn Saito

Brynn Saito is author of The Palace of Contemplating Departure, a finalist for 2013 Northern California Book Award, Power Made Us Swoon, both from Red Hen Press.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Praxis 3047 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Small Press Distribution: The Nearness of Us

Our event showcases the diverse voices that move us and reach out to be inclusive for the Bay area, aspiring to innovate and expand the community.

Participants

Shiloh Jines

Shiloh Jines is a poet & visual artist based in Oakland, California. She is the co-author of the hand-bound letterpress chapbook SITE OF IMPACT (Eucalyptus Press 2016) & her book Poetics of the Ampersand is forthcoming from Wolfman Editions. She is currently working on her... Read More →

Andrea Marina

Andrea Marina is an indigenous seawitch from the swamps of the Florida Everglades. She mostly writes about toxic relationships, trauma, and the south. Andrea cohosts Words of Resistance with Andrea Wolf, a poetry night for QTPOC, queer, and genderqueer writers. Her hobbies include... Read More →

Denise Newman

Denise Newman is the author of four poetry collections; the most recent is Future People (Apogee Press). She is also a translator, and she received an NEA grant to complete her translation of the short story collection Baboon by the Danish writer, Naja Marie Aidt, for which... Read More →

Laura Walker

Laura Walker is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Story from Apogee Press. She lives in Berkeley, California, where she teaches creative writing.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Carousel Consignment 2391 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

The City Under the City: Speculative San Francisco

Dystopia, utopia and magic fill these stories that open the imagination to another world underneath the familiar foggy streets of San Francisco.

Participants

Jenny Bitner

Rachel Chalmers

Rachel Chalmers is an Australian writer living in San Francisco. Her work has appeared in Salon, Painted Bride Quarterly, The Marlboro Review, The Southern California Review and elsewhere.

Lael Gold

As a fiction writer and Ph.D. in comparative literature, Lael Gold knows how to craft narratives that draw readers in and can magnetically tell the story of a business or a brand. She also interprets dreams and performs standup comedy.

Rin Kelly

Rin Kelly is a writer, reporter, and too-proud native of Denver whose work has turned up all over, from newspapers in New York, L.A., the Bay Area, and D.C. to Salon and Kenyon Review Online. She is a culture contributor and film editor at Los Angeles magazine L.A. RECORD and a freelance... Read More →

Eryk Salvaggio

Artist in Chief, Owl Collectors Club

Eryk Salvaggio is a collage artist, researcher and writer living in San Francisco. Eryk is the author of the book and website "This Japanese Life," and currently maintains the nextrends website for swissnex San Francisco. From 2000-2003, he was the editor in chief of 1000 Ridiculous... Read More →

Josh Wilson

Publisher, The Fabulist Words & Art

Liz Worthy

Liz Worthy hails from Montana. She has shown her art at Intersection for the Arts, The Roxie, 826 Valencia, Ruby’s Clay Studio, Sanbao Ceramic Art Institute, and the Pacific Ocean (where messages in bottles bob towards Japan). Her writing has appeared in McSweeney's Internet Tendency... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Secession Gallery 3235 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

The Escapery: The Animal Radical

Why do we Human the dog, Story the cat, Elephant the myth? Our writers explore the ebullient linguistic space of animals, stories, and translation.

Participants

Ai

Ai is a Japanese-born playwright, poet and translator, who is currently an MFA candidate in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. She is a member of the Writers Pool for Berkeley Rep Theatre's PlayGround and a winner of the Austin International Poetry Festival.

Nancy Au

Co-founder/Educator, www.TheEscapery.org

NANCY AU is the co-founder of The Escapery, an Oakland-based writing and arts un-school. She teaches creative writing (to biology majors!) at California State University Stanislaus. Her stories and essays are published in many journals including, Redivider, Gulf Coast, Foglifter... Read More →

Carson Ash Beker

Carson Ash Beker is a writer, playwright, storyteller, and experience creator, co-founder of the Pirate Art School The Escapery, and co-founder of Queer Cat Productions, an immersive theater company recipient of a 3Girls Innovation in Theatre Grant and PlayGround Theater Innovation... Read More →

Nara Dahlbacka

Nara Dahlbacka is an Oakland native, currently living in Alameda. A playwright and director, she holds an MFA from SFSU. Her work has been in the GreenHouse Festival, The Exit Theatre, SF Olympians (2018), and (this) SF Lit Crawl. She is also in the SF Playground Writers Pool... Read More →

Flavia Stefani

Sasha Wright

Sasha Wright is a fiction writer and social justice activist from Oakland CA. She is an MFA candidate at San Francisco State University, where she is working on her novel about time traveling lesbians.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Red Poppy Art House 2698 Folsom St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

The Racket : DISASTERS

We've gathered up a host of our favorite Bay Area writers to wax poetically on the subject of DISASTERS. We're not just talking earthquakes and hurricanes and whatever Earth-based malady is roiling our world right now. We're talking dating disasters, family reunion disasters, space disasters, underwater disasters, shitty disaster movies - you know, all the many disasters that add up to what we call life.

Participants

Sarah Bardeen

Sarah Bardeen is a Bay Area writer whose work includes fiction, non-fiction, poetry and music criticism. She's a recipient of the Audre Lorde Prize for Poetry, and her work has appeared in various print and online publications. She's currently working on her first novel.

Matt Carney

Matt Carney is a Latinx human type residing in San Francisco. He holds an MA and MFA from SFSU. His work has appeared in A cappella Zoo, Inkwell, Red Light Lit, Writing Without Walls, sPARKLE & bLINK, Entropy, and in readings at eclectic or seedy bars. His short story 'On Becoming... Read More →

Wesley Cohen

Wesley Cohen is a writer and editor living in Davis, California. Her fiction has been featured by Quiet Lightning, Potluck Magazine, Mad Scientist Journal, Here Comes Everyone, and others. She was a 2017 Writing By Writers Newberry Fellow, and serves as prose editor of Foglifter... Read More →

D.B. Finnegan

DB is a writer in Marin working on a novel in progress about rodeo.

Jared Roehrig

Jared Roehrig holds an MFA in Creative Writing and an MA in English from SF State. His work has appeared in Transfer Magazine, Fourteen Hills, The Tusk, and University of Colorado's Timber Journal. In 2014 he received the Mark Linenthal Award for Poetry. He enjoys horror films, smoothies... Read More →

Elizabeth Stix

Stories by Elizabeth Stix have appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly, Tin House, Eleven Eleven, The Southampton Review and the Los Angeles Times Sunday Magazine. Her short story, "Alice," won the Bay Guardian Fiction Contest and was optioned by Sneaky Little Sister Films. She is finishing... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Adobe Books 3130 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Throughout the Wide World: Traveling Writers Reveal Encounters with People, Places, and Cultures

Through their explorations, these writers bring back lessons that are profoundly moving and universal, and teach us how to be better citizens of the world.

Participants

Faith Adiele

Assoc Professor, California College of the Arts

Faith Adiele’s work includes the audio/ebook The Nigerian Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems; Meeting Faith, a memoir about becoming Thailand’s first Black Buddhist nun that won the PEN Open Book Award; My Journey Home, a PBS documentary about finding her family in Nigeria... Read More →

Christina Ammon

Christina Ammon has penned stories for BBC, Orion Magazine, Hemispheres, The San Francisco Chronicle, Conde Nast and numerous travel anthologies, including the 2015 Best Travel Writing (Travelers' Tales) and the Irresponsible Traveler: Tales of Scrapes and Narrow Escapes (Bradt Guides... Read More →

Tania Amochaev

Tania Romanov Amochaev was born in Belgrade, Serbia of two displaced émigrés—a White Russian father and a Croatian mother—and spent her childhood in San Sabba, a refugee camp in Trieste. She is the author of tales of travel to lands as diverse as Russia, India, Japan... Read More →

James Dorsey

James Michael Dorsey is an award winning author, and explorer, who has traveled in 48 countries to visit remote cultures before they vanish. He has written for LONELY PLANET, BBC TRAVEL, BBC WILDLIFE, GEOGRAPHIC EXPEDITIONS, CHICKEN SOUP FOR THE SOUL, and is a frequent contributor... Read More →

Larry Habegger

Executive Editor, Travelers' Tales

Larry Habegger is a writer and editor who has been covering the world since his international travels began in the 1970s. As a freelance writer for more than three decades, his work has appeared in many major newspapers and magazines, including the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune... Read More →

Bill Zarchy

Bill Zarchy is a writer, teacher, and recently retired director of photography who has shot film and video projects in 30 countries and 40 states. His first book, Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil, chronicles his work and travels around the world. Bill's... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Haus Coffee 3086 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Ursa Minor: Dark Matter

Contributors to UC Berkeley Extension's literary journal, Ursa Minor, take on undeniable yet immeasurable building blocks of the universe in the current edition, Dark Matter.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Pyramid Records 3174 24th Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

Why There Are Words: Behind the Scenes

Showcasing the working writers who make the magic of the reading series happen: come hear their own magic.

Curators

Peg Alford Pursell

Participants

Haldane King

Haldane King is the founder, curator, emcee, and coordinator of Terra Incognita, a new literary reading series hosted in Oakland's fabulous Octopus Literary Salon, which is partnered with The Escapery. He is an instructor with The Escapery. He earned his Master of the Fine Arts... Read More →

Kim Marcellino

Wild forager, writer, and boat dweller. Instagram: @kim.marcellino

Linda Michel-Cassidy

Small press outreach, Interviews, Why There Are Words

Writing in the Rumpus, Electric Literature, Tahoma Review, Eleven Eleven, Museum of Americana, and others. Contributing Editor for Entropy Magazine (podcast reviews, Trumpwatch). Interviewer for the Mill Valley Library podcast, The Great Eight. Writer, teacher, critic, reader. Talk... Read More →

Lois Smith

Lois holds an MFA in creative writing from California Institute of Integral Studies. Her work has appeared in journals including We Still Like and Susurrus and has been featured in the Barely Published Authors Litquake event.

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Needles and Pens 1173 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible

8:00pm

ZYZZYVA Fall All-Stars

Featuring readings of poetry and prose by past, recent, and forthcoming contributors to "one of the country's finest literary journals" (Washington Post).

Participants

Michael Jaime Becerra

Michael Jaime-Becerra grew up in El Monte, California, a working-class suburb of Los Angeles. He received his MFA from the University of California, Irvine, and currently teaches creative writing at University of California, Riverside. His short-story collection, Every Night Is... Read More →

Kelly Cressio-Moeller

Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s poetry can be found at Boxcar Poetry Review, burntdistrict, Crab Orchard Review, Gargoyle, Poet Lore, Radar Poetry, Southern Humanities Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Valparaiso Poetry Review, Verse Daily, and ZYZZYVA among others... Read More →

W.S. Di Piero

W.S. Di Piero is author of 11 books of poetry. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, and Threepenny Review, and he has written for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, and The New Republic.

Suzanne Rivecca

Suzanne Rivecca's debut story collection, "Death is Not an Option," (WW Norton, 2010) won the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy in Rome. It was also a finalist for national and international awards, including The Frank... Read More →

Greg Sarris

Greg Sarris received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Walter Gore Award for excellence in teaching. He has published several books, including Grand Avenue (1994), an award-winning collection of short stories, which he adapted... Read More →

Saturday October 14, 2017 8:00pm - 9:00pm
Dog Eared Books 900 Valencia Street, San Francisco, CA 94110

Phase 3 Venue: Wheelchair Accessible