Why There Are Words February 9: “Vision”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme: Vision February 9 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Come see for yourself what all the rave reviews for the reading series have been about.
Marcus Banks
Marcus Banks finds himself at many literary gatherings. A blogger and critic, his book reviews have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Prick of the Spindle, and Rain Taxi. He has also published personal essays in Superstition Review, and from 2005-2007 was the technology columnist for the Gotham Gazette. You can follow his jottings at http://mbanks.typepad.com/.
Kirstin Chen is a 2011-2012 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose
Kirstin Chen
State University. She has won awards from the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and Emerson College. Her stories have appeared in Hobart, Pank, Juked, The Good Men Project, and others, and have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best New American Voices anthology. She holds a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from Emerson College. She currently lives in San Francisco, where she is completing her first novel, Soy Sauce for Beginners, set in her homeland of Singapore.
Nicole McFeeley
Nicole McFeeley is the author of hundreds of bar napkin scribblings and countless other incoherent jottings. She has not written a book, won a grant, or enrolled in a graduate program but has plans to do perhaps two of these things in the next ten years. Destroyer of free time, she currently works as a bartender and freelance editor and serves as the Director of Outreach for Quiet Lightning and the Assistant Editor of Litseen.com. http://nicmcfeely.wordpress.com/
Chicken John is a Showman living in San Francisco. A contributor and instigator
Chicken John
with a long history of arranging Serendipity to accommodate Chaos when she comes to Destiny’s house for dinner. He is a documented confusionist. He is a qualified insultant. He also a mechanic and a writer. He owns a gigantic bus and an odd warehouse in San Francisco. In his spare time he enjoys longs walks off a short pier, underwater basket weaving, and writing dumb bios about himself. He would like you to buy his new book, The Book of the Is. http://chickenjohn.com/
Jacqueline Luckett
Jacqueline Luckett is the author of the new novel, Passing Love. After wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and planning.’ Prayin’ and dreamin’ . . . just like that old Dusty Springfield song urges, Jacqueline Luckett finally put pen to paper and wrote, not one, but two novels. Jacqueline considers her novels great way to get a lot off her mind and to visit her favorite city, Paris. She travels frequently in search of another city that mesmerizes her as much as Paris, and is sure that when she finds it more story ideas will come her way.
Carol Sheldon
Carol Sheldon’s first novel, Mother Lode placed in the top five percent of Amazon’s International Breakthrough Novel Contest of 2011. She’s published two books of poetry. Her poetry can also be found in Robert Bly’s Great Mother Conference Anthology, Hot Flashes and Marin Poetry Anthology. Two of her plays, Sandcastles, and Lifelines were chosen for professional productions. Several other works have won awards. She holds an MA from University of Michigan, and teaches poetry, novel, and memoir writing classes. She also enjoys directing and acting, believing her experience on stage has informed her writing. http://carolsheldon.wordpress.com/
Susanna Solomon’s fiction has appeared in the online magazine Harlot’s Sauce
Susanna Solomon
Radio, in print in Vintage Voices, West Winds Centennial, and the Point Reyes Light. Her fiction lately has been inspired by entries in the Sheriff’s Calls Section of the Point Reyes Light. She is at work on a short story collection and is polishing her first novel. In cafes all over Marin, in quiet corners, she is often visited by her characters Mildred and Fred, who not only have a lot to say about what they read in the paper, but about getting older, burglars in their backyard, and uncooperative lawn chairs.
Jon Wells
Jon Wells is a designer, writer, and filmmaker living in Mill Valley. He Died All Day Long is his first novel. His design work has been recognized in venues such as the San Francisco Show, Addy Awards, Print Magazine books, and the American Institute of Graphic Arts. His first film, At the Epicenter of the Epidemic, documenting the HIV/AIDS crisis in Honduras, was shown at the Tiburon International Film Festival. He is a member of the Tuesday Night Writers and is a Squaw Valley Community of Writers alum.
Why There Are Words January 12 “Other Voices: Come Together”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series celebrates its second anniversary! Join us January 12 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm when we present Other Voices: Come Together and find out what all the rave reviews have been about. This will be a special show with a surprise treat. The following authors’ readings are going to be anything other than ordinary!
Anne Buelteman
Anne Buelteman’s first published work is a non-fiction essay, “The Glamorous Life,” in the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. You may know her from her published commentary on Susan Boyle in Huffington Post. She is currently at work on a novel about life on the national tour of a Broadway musical tentatively titled Road Kill: Tales of a National Tour. A professional actress, her acting career spans decades. She spent eleven years on the Broadway national tour of Les Miserables in North America and Asia. Most recently she appeared as the inspired eccentric Dorothea Wesbrook in the California Conservatory Theatre’s production of Eleemosynary.
Audrey Ferber
Audrey Ferber received an MFA in Writing from Mills College. Her short stories have been anthologized in Virtually Now, Eating Our Hearts Out, and An Intricate Weave. Her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales for Women, and most recently in FRONTIERS: A Journal of Women Studies. She has written book reviews for the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle. Audrey is a book group leader and teaches writing at UC Berkeley Extension. She is at work on a memoir about aging, marriage, and dance classes.
Kathi Kamen Goldmark
Kathi Kamen Goldmark is the author of the novel And My Shoes Keep Walking Back to You. She is perhaps best known in the publishing world for founding the all-author garage band, the Rock Bottom Remainders. She is also the co-author of Write That Book Already!: the Tough Love You Need to Get Published Now (with her husband Sam Barry). She has contributed essays to many books, including Mid-Life Confidential: the Rock Bottom Remainders Tour America with Three Chords and an Attitude, and My California: Journeys by Great Writers, and others. She writes the Author Enablers advice column that offers information and encouragement to aspiring authors. A 2007 San Francisco Library Laureate, Kathi was the winner of the 2008 Women’s National Book Association Award.
Seth Harwood
Seth Harwood received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to build a large fan base for his first novel, Jack Wakes Up, by first serializing it as a free audiobook. Across iTunes and sethharwood.com, his work has been downloaded over one million times. His second novel, Young Junius, is billed as “The Wire meets Cambridge, MA in 1987″ and was picked by George Pelecanos as one of his best books of 2010. Seth currently lives in San Francisco where he teaches English and creative writing at Stanford and the City College of San Francisco.
Michael David Lukas
Michael David Lukas, author of The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins, 2011), has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, his writing has appeared in VQR, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He is also a recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Elizabeth George Foundation.
Janis Cooke Newman
Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the Bay Area bestseller, Mary, a historical novel about Mary Todd Lincoln. Mary was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist, chosen as USA Today‘s Best Historical Fiction of the Year in 2006, and a Booksense Year-End Highlight. Newman is also the author of The Russian Word for Snow, a memoir about adopting her son from a Moscow orphanage, which was published internationally. Her writing has appeared in numerous anthologies, as well as in several magazines, and newspapers including the NY Times, LA Times, and San Francisco Chronicle. She is a member of the SF Writers Grotto, where she works and teaches classes in creative writing.
Peter Orner
Peter Orner is the author of the brand new novel, Love and Shame and Love (November 2011, Little Brown); The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, finalist for the Los Angles Times Book Prize; and Esther Stories, Winner of the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Granta, Best American Stories, and twice received the Pushcart Prize. A 2006 Guggenheim Fellow, he is also the editor of the oral history, Underground America, and co-editor (with Annie Holmes) of Hope Deferred: Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives published in McSweeney’s. He teaches at San Francisco State University.
Susanne Pari
Susanne Pari is the author of The Fortune Catcher, a novel that explores bicultural and bi-religious identity during the aftermath of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, translated into six languages. Her essays and book reviews have appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, National Public Radio, and Voice of America. She was the program director for the 25 literary salons of Book Group Expo and teaches writing for the Afghan Women’s Writing Project. As a literary host, Susanne has conducted interviews, panel discussions, and conversations with authors such as Amy Tan, Khaled Hosseini, Anna Quindlen, Andre Dubus III, Po Bronson, and many more. She lives in Northern California.
Todd Zuniga
Todd Zuniga is the creator of Literary Death Match, now featured in 39 cities worldwide, the founding editor of Opium Magazine, and the president of Opium for the Arts (a 501©3 nonprofit). He is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer for his short fiction and an award-winning journalist. His fiction has recently appeared in Stymie and Gopher Illustrated, and online at Lost Magazine and McSweeney’s. Newly based in LA, and couches all over Europe, he longs for a Chicago Cubs World Series and an EU passport.
“Come Together” by The Beatles
Why There Are Words December 8: Last
It’s our last show of the year so we’ve got just the theme. That’s right: Last. Join us for the stellar line-up, at Sausalito’s Studio 333 at 7 PM, December 8, for books, beer, wine, and great stories. $5 gets you in the door.
Kate Asche
Kate Asche, poet/essayist and creative writing teacher, is a graduate of the UC Davis Creative Writing Program. She was a finalist for the 2011 Audio Contest at The Missouri Review and has poetry forthcoming in Confrontation. She has received two Elliot Gilbert Prizes in Poetry and an Academy of American Poets Award, and is a trained facilitator in the Amherst Writers and Artists (AWA) Method. She coordinates The Tomales Bay Workshops at UC Davis Extension and volunteers regularly for the Sacramento Public Library, the Sacramento Poetry Center, and 916 INK, a local youth literacy organization inspired by 826 Valencia. Follow her and get the scoop on local writing events at her blog Kate’s Miscellany (click on her name.)
David Berkeley
David Berkeley is called “a musical poet” by the San Francisco Chronicle. The singer/songwriter has recently penned a memoir entitled 140 Goats and a Guitar to accompany his fourth album, “Some Kind of Cure.” The book comprises 13 pieces that tell the stories behind the 13 songs on the album, and the concept is that a reader moves through the prose and music together. When he presents his book live, he performs the corresponding song following each excerpt. He’s been a guest on “This American Life;” has toured with artists including Don Mclean, Dido, Billy Bragg, Ben Folds, Rufus Wainwright, Nickel Creek, and Ray Lamontagne; and maintains a near-constant tour schedule performing concerts all over the country.
Lynn Freed
Lynn Freed’s books include six novels, a collection of stories, and a collection of essays. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Atlantic Monthly, Southwest Review, The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, National Geographic, Narrative Magazine, among others. She is the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Anne Porter Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a PEN/O. Henry Award, fellowships, grants and support from the National Endowment for the Arts and The Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Born in South Africa, she now lives in northern California.
Cary Groner
Cary Groner has worked as a journalist for more than two decades. In 2009, he earned his MFA from the University of Arizona, where he began writing short stories and worked on two novels. His stories have won numerous awards and appeared in venues that include Glimmer Train, American Fiction, Mississippi Review, Southern California Review, Tampa Review, and Sycamore Review. His debut novel, Exiles, won the Hackney Literary Award and was published by Spiegel & Grau / Random House this past June. Cary and his wife live in the San Francisco Bay area.
Faith Holsaert
Faith S. Holsaert was active in the civil rights movement and co-edited the nonfiction book Hands on the Freedom Plow: Personal Accounts by Women in SNCC (University of Illinois Press, 2010). She has published fiction since 1979, in Fugue, Washington Review, Phoebe, The Long Story, Antietam Review and others. She has appeared online at the kingsenglish.org and mountainechoes.com. She received her MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. For many years, she lived in West Virginia where she raised her son and daughter. She lives in Durham, NC with her partner, with whom she shares seven grandchildren. She is working on her third novel.
Nick Krieger
Nick Krieger is the author of the memoir Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender. His writing has earned several travel-writing awards, has been published in multiple travel guides, and has appeared in numerous outlets including The Rumpus, Town & Country, 365Gay, and Original Plumbing. He is passionate about activism through art, creative self-expression, and queering all that he can. He holds an MFA in Writing from the University of San Francisco.
Dean Rader
Dean Rader‘s debut collection of poems, Works & Days, won the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize. It is also a finalist for the 2010 Bob Bush Memorial First Book Award and it is the winner of the 2010 Writer’s League of Texas Poetry Prize. His poem “Ocean Beach at Twilight: 14″ was named one of the Best Poems of 2010 by Verse Daily. He is currently curating a new blog called 99 Poems for the 99 Percent. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco, where he won the 2010/2011 Distinguished Research Award.
Ian Tuttle
Ian Tuttle is the author of StretchyHead – Fictional Stories in Real Places. His toy camera photography has been exhibited internationally and he got admitted to business school by quoting Samuel Becket. He believes that you can tell a lot about a person from a short bio, and suspects most of it will be your own projection. But isn’t that the aim of literature? To hang a screen for your projections?
Why There Are Words November 10: Witness
The month of October brought all kinds of literary goodness, both in Sausalito and San Francisco as part of Litquake. Can one simultaneously be recovering and ready for more? Are you? The theme is Witness, and we’ll be in Sausalito’s Studio 333 at 7 PM, November 10, with books, beer, wine, and blame! $5 is all you need to witness.
W. Ross Ayers
W. Ross Ayers is a writer and entrepreneur. He founded and runs the San Francisco Writers Community and co-publishing studio. He likes bad beer, bad bourbon, and clove cigarettes, and lives in and loves San Francisco. His book Blood, Guns and Whores – An All American Tale of a Boy and His Dog is a “coffee table novel” of micro chapters and illustrations.
Jasmin Darznik was born in Tehran, Iran. A former attorney, she
Jasmin Darznik
received her Ph.D. from Princeton University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She is a professor of English at Washington and Lee University and has also been a visiting professor of Iranian literature at the University of Virginia. The Good Daughter is her first book and will be published in twelve countries.
Albert Flynn DeSilver
Albert Flynn DeSilver is an internationally published poet, an artist, publisher, and founder of The Visionary Writers MFA. He served as Marin County’s first poet laureate from 2008-2010. For many years he taught as a California Poet in the Schools, and currently works in the Teen and Family program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and is the CEO of a Homecare Agency in Napa and Sonoma Counties. His most recent work is a memoir titled “Beamish Boy,” which chronicles his spiritual journey, from violence and self-annihilation to self-realization, creativity, and a life in poetry and writing. He lives in Woodacre, California.
Pam Houston is the award-winning author of Cowboys Are My Weakness,
Pam Houston
Waltzing the Cat, A Little More About Me, and Sight Hound. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. Pam teaches in the graduate writing program at University of California, Davis. Her new collection of short stories, Contents May Have Shifted, is forthcoming in 2012.
Joshua Mohr
Joshua Mohr is the author of the novels Termite Parade, which was an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List; Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine‘s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a SF Chronicle bestseller; and the brand new Damascus (October 2011). He has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, 7×7, the Bay Guardian, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, among many others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.
Linda Joy Myers is the author of The Power of Memoir—How
Linda Joy Myers
to Write Your Healing Story, Becoming Whole, and the award-winning memoir Don’t Call Me Mother, which won the BAPIA Gold Medal prize. She has won prizes for fiction, memoir and poetry: First Prize, Jessamyn West Fiction Contest; Finalist, San Francisco Writing Contest for Secret Music, a novel about the Kindertransport; First Prize, poetry, East of Eden Contest, and for memoir writing First Prize Carol Landauer Life Writing Contest. Hernext book is Truth or Lie: On the Cusp of Memoir and Fiction. The founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers and co-President of the Women’s National Book Association, she is an instructor at Writers Digest and gives workshops nationally and online.
Tracy Winn
Tracy Winn’s linked story collection, Mrs. Somebody Somebody won the 2010 Sherwood Anderson Foundation Fellowship, and was a finalist for the Julia Ward Howe Award and the Massachusetts Book Awards. Her stories have appeared most recently in Alaska Quarterly Review, Hayden’s Ferry Review, and New Orleans Review. A Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers graduate, she is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, and the MacDowell and Millay Colonies.
Why There Are Words Crosses Bridges: October Readings
In honor of Litquake, Why There Are Words presents two literary events this October. The first, on Thursday, October 13, at Studio 333 in Sausalito, features selected writers from the North Bay Writers Groups. 7pm, $5. Nancy Au, Erik Cederblom, Dianne Copans, Stephanie Fuelling, Jim Lammers, Jean Mansen, Kalpana Mohan, Michèle Praeger, Rochelle Sherbert, Sandra Westin. (Bios below.)
On Saturday, October 15, it’s Litcrawl. Why There Are Words Reading Series Crosses Bridges. You should too. Featuring a few friends from far and near. Phase 3, 8:30pm, Ritual Roasters, 1026 Valencia. Aneesha Capur, Molly Giles, Pam Houston, Michael Lukas, Kate Moses, Eric Puchner.
Aneesha Capur
Aneesha Capur‘s novel, Stealing Karma, debuted at the Beijing International Literary Festival in March 2011. The novel was launched by HarperCollins India in April to critical acclaim and was listed in the Top 5 Fiction Picks in The Hindu, India’s leading national newspaper, picked as Essential Reading in the Sunday Guardian, and featured on CNN-IBN among others. Excerpts have been recognized in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Wild River Review, two Glimmer Train Press competitions, and the Writer’s Digest Literary Short Story award. Born in India, she spent most of her childhood in Africa and now lives in San Francisco.
Molly Giles
Molly Giles has published a novel, Iron Shoes, and two short story collections: Creek Walk and Other Stories, which won the Small Press Award for Short Fiction, and Rough Translations, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Her other awards include fellowships from the NEA, The McDowell Colony, and Yaddo, two Pushcart prizes, the Commonwealth Club of California Silver Medal, the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Award, and The National Book Critics Circle Award for Book Reviewing. She directs the Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.
Pam Houston
Pam Houston is the award-winning author of Cowboys Are My Weakness, Waltzing the Cat, A Little More About Me, and Sight Hound. Her stories have been selected for the Best American Short Stories, the O. Henry Awards, the Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories of the Century. Pam teaches in the graduate writing program at University of California, Davis. Her new collection of short stories, Contents May Have Shifted, is forthcoming in 2012.
Michael David Lukas
Author of The Oracle of Stamboul (HarperCollins, 2011), Michael David Lukas has been a Fulbright Scholar in Turkey, a night-shift proofreader in Tel Aviv, and a waiter at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. A graduate of Brown University and the University of Maryland, his writing has appeared in VQR, Slate, National Geographic Traveler, and Georgia Review. He is also a recipient of scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Summer Writers’ Institute, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Elizabeth George Foundation.
Kate Moses
San Francisco native Kate Moses is the author of the acclaimed memoir, Cakewalk, and Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath, published in 15 languages. She has worked as an editor at Berkeley’s acclaimed North Point Press and as literary director of Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco. In 1997 she teamed up with journalist Camille Peri to found Salon.com’s popular daily website Mothers Who Think, which in turn inspired the nationally bestselling, American Book Award-winning anthology Mothers Who Think: Tales of Real-Life Parenthood (Villard 1999, Washington Square Press 2000) and Because I Said So: 33 Mothers Write About Children, Sex, Men, Aging, Faith, Race & Themselves (HarperCollins 2005, 2006).
Eric Puchner
Eric Puchner is the author of the novel, Model Home (Scribner, 2010) and the short story collection, Music Through the Floor (Scribner, 2005), which was a finalist for the NY Public Library’s Young Lions Award. His short stories have appeared in Zoetrope: All Story, Chicago Tribune, The Sun, The Missouri Review, Best New American Voices, and many other journals and anthologies. A recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts grant, he is an assistant professor of literature at Claremont McKenna College. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, novelist Katharine Noel, and their daughter.
Selected readers from North Bay Writers Groups appearing at Studio 333 in Sausalito, Oct. 13:
Nancy Au
Nancy Au is a native of San Francisco currently residing in West Marin, and a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Anthropology. She is working on a collection of short stories and has been studying with Peg Alford Pursell since 2009. Her work is published in the Mill Valley Public Library Literary Review, and Prick of the Spindle literary journal.
Erik Cederblom
Erik Cederblom, a non-recovering, compulsive storyteller, has been a Marine helicopter pilot, bartender, salesman, fly-fisherman, photographer, sailor, company executive and headhunter. His wife, Linda, of 42 years, concedes that she has no idea what he is thinking and enables his writing in the hope that she can finally figure him out. In a former life, he was published in The Laurentian Magazine and Letters from Viet Nam. He is working on his first novel, Down the River, and writes short stories, flash fiction, and children’s stories. Some of it is good.
Dianne Copans
Dianne Copans is a native of the east coast and has resided in Marin County since 2005. Her professional writing career began with a thirty second radio station commercial. She is currently pursuing her passion for creative writing and memoir through participation in the North Bay Writers Group. While she enjoys sharing her craft with others, she is most content writing solo in the confines of her quiet studio at home, and while traveling. Dianne is currently working on a memoir and a novel.
Stephanie Fuelling
Stephanie Fuelling is a Sausalito landscape contractor. She received a BS in Art from Indiana State University and an MBA from University of Southern Indiana. Drawn by the cultural diversity and the atmosphere of tolerance for creative pursuits, she settled in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is a member of the North Bay Writers Group where she cultivates her writing skills. Her growing body of work includes short fiction and TV treatment floating about in the ether of Hollywood.
Jim Lammers
Jim Lammers’ personal reflection on Point Reyes South Beach was accepted to the Environmental Writing Institute at the University of Montana, Missoula. His story about a young interracial couple in the 1950s South won a Marin Arts Council award for fiction and a Creative Capital Award at the Headlands Institute. He is currently at work on a novel about two orphaned brothers in 1930s Montana. In previous lives as a biologist, Jim worked on live rabid animals, trapped mosquitoes in Arkansas rice fields, detonated pine trees in East Texas, studied colony formation in fire ants, and was a necropsy assistant. He was cofounder of a literacy organization for Afghan refugee women and a teacher. He lives with his wife and stepson in San Anselmo, California.
Jean Mansen
Before turning to writing, Jean Mansen worked in banking and venture capital where she swears that she was creative, but never made up stuff. An avid dog lover, she’s written for Fetch and the Tales from the Trails column for the Marin IJ. She is at work on her first novel and enjoys reading flash fiction pieces at Pints n Prose in Fairfax among other Bay Area locations.
Michele Praeger
Michèle Praeger’s three previous lives read respectively as French childhood auto-fiction, absurdist comedy, and a Henry James’s novel. In her present life, she writes in English, in San Francisco.
Rochelle Sherbert
Rochelle Sherbert is a designer, writer and California native. She spent the first few decades of her career designing for the masses. She is now enjoying her second calling and studying writing with North Bay Writers Group. She has written several short stories and has written for Marin Arts Council and Channel Ten News in Sacramento.
Sandra Westin
Sandra Westin is a Michigan native, and by way of Portland, Oregon, a Bay Area resident. She graduated with an MFA from the University of San Francisco Writing Program, was a finalist in Phoebe’s Short Fiction Contest and published a short story in San Francisco Writer’s Conference Anthology. Sandra is an attorney with an LLM in taxation. After moving to the Bay Area she took up cycling, now a passion, which led to her current novel in progress, Rolling.
Why There Are Words Literary Reading September 8: Longing
Carolina De Robertis
Join us September 8th at 7PM, Studio 333 in Sausalito for beverages, books, and readings from September’s selection of talented readers. The theme is Longing.
Carolina De Robertis’ first novel, The Invisible Mountain, was an international bestseller translated into fifteen languages, a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year, an O, The Oprah Magazine 2009 Terrific Read, and the recipient of a Rhegium Julii Prize. She grew up in a Uruguayan-Argentinean family that emigrated to England, Switzerland, and California. Her translations of Latin American fiction have appeared in Granta, Zoetrope: Allstory, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her second novel, Perla, is forthcoming from Knopf in March 2012. She is currently at work on her third novel.
Audrey Ferber
Audrey Ferber received an MFA in Writing from Mills College. Her short stories have been anthologized in Virtually Now, Eating Our Hearts Out, and An Intricate Weave. Her essays have appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Travelers’ Tales for Women, and most recently in FRONTIERS: A Journal of Women Studies. She has written book reviews for the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle. Audrey is a book group leader and teaches writing at UC Berkeley Extension. She is at work on a memoir about aging, marriage, and dance classes.
Louis B. Jones
Louis B. Jones is the author of Ordinary Money, Particles and Luck, and California’s Over, which were all named New York Times Notable Books in their respective years. An NEA fellow and a fellow of the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire, he has written several screenplays – originals and adaptations of his own work – for studios and for independents. He’s been a regular reviewer for the New York Times Book Review and has served as visiting writer at a number of colleges around the country. For some years he has acted as the fiction director for the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. He lives with his family in Nevada City.
Christina M. Meldrum
Christina M. Meldrum is the author of the recently-published novel Amaryllis in Blueberry and of Madapple, a finalist for the PEN USA Literary Award and the William C. Morris Award. She received her Bachelor of Arts in religious studies and political science from the University of Michigan. After working in grassroots development in Africa, she earned her Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. She interned with the International Commission of Jurists in Geneva, Switzerland, and worked as a litigator for the law firm of Shearman & Sterling. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.
Nina Vida
Nina Vida is the author of seven novels, including Maximilian’s Garden, The End of Marriage, and Goodbye, Saigon. In November 2010, she made her first solo foray into the world of e-books with her novel about Mexico, Children of Guerrero. Her fiction in large part deals with the cataclysmic effects of historic and social upheaval on the lives of ordinary people. She is a native Californian, and lives with her husband Marvin in Huntington Beach, California.
John Yewell
After twenty years of journalism, John Yewell decided fiction was a better guide to truth. So he switched. He has just finished his first novel. The Spanish Beauty, from which he will read, is set in the Ventura and Los Angeles counties of a hundred years ago. The writer Lynn Stegner has called John’s writing “sensuous in its rendering—the impressionistic realism characteristic of the 20th century novel that recalls writers like Steinbeck, Cather, and Houston.” John is a fourth generation Californian and a student in the MFA program at San Francisco State.
Why There Are Words Literary Reading: Hunger, August 11
What do you hunger for? Maybe the same things as our readers. Come find out. August 11, Studio 333, 7 pm. $5 gets you in the door. Bring mad money for authors’ books and drinks.
Mehri Dadgar
In 1982, Mehri Dadgar, an idealistic 22-year old, was arrested on a Tehran street for distributing pro-Democratic literature. In her memoir she tells of her narrow escape from execution and her struggle to preserve her sanity under the pressures of torture and isolation. Before immigrating to the United States in 1994, she studied art at the Art University in Tehran. Since living in America, she has exhibited her art in Canada, Sweden, England, and the United States, and received her MFA in art. She teaches at the College of Marin and Book Passage about the peaceful message common in all original scriptures including the Quran.
Alta Ifland grew up in Romania and came to the United States in 1991. She is the author of a bilingual (French-English) book of prose poems, Voice of Ice, which was awarded the 2008 French prize Louis Guillaume, and a collection of short stories, Elegy for a Fabulous World, which was nominated for the 2010 Northern California Book Awards. Her latest book of short stories, Death-in-a-Box, has just been released by Subito Press. In 2010 she was a fellow in fiction at the Wesleyan Writers’ Conference.
Andrew Lam
Andrew Lam is co-founder and editor of New America Media, an association of over 2000 ethnic media organizations in America. He has also contributed over 60 commentaries to NPR’s All Things Considered. His essays have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country, including the New York Times, The LA Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, among many others, and in magazines such as Mother Jones, The Nation, Utne Magazine, and more. His short stories are also widely anthologized and taught in many universities and colleges. His book, Perfume Dreams: Reflections on the Vietnamese Diaspora won the 2006 Pen American Beyond the Margins Award, and was short-listed for Asian American Literature Award. He was the first Vietnamese to put together an anthology of Vietnamese American writing in English called Once Upon A Dream: Vietnamese American Experience, in 1995. His 2010 book East Eats West: Writing in Two Hemispheres was listed as a top ten indie book by Shelf Unbound Magazine. His next is a collection of short stories, Birds of Paradise, and is due out in 2012. Born in Vietnam, he came to the US in 1975 when he was 11 years old, earned a Master in Fine Arts from San Francisco State University in creative writing, and a BA degree in biochemistry from UC Berkeley.
Kate Milliken
Kate Milliken grew up in the Reagan 80s, bouncing between her father’s home in Chicago, Illinois, and her mother’s home in Santa Monica, California. Unwilling to complete high school she wrote a desperate letter of application to a small liberal arts college in Boston and was granted early acceptance. Her belief in the power of the written word then wholly solidified, she has been writing ever since. Having written for television and commercial advertising, in 2006 she completed her Master of Fine Arts in fiction at Bennington College. Her short stories have since appeared in numerous publications, including the Santa Monica Review, Fiction, the New Orleans Review, Meridian, and the Southeast Review, among others. She has received fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Tin House Summer Writing Workshops and Yaddo. Her collection of stories, If I’d Known You Were Coming, has been a finalist for the OV Books Short Story Prize, the Katherine Anne Porter Award, and the Spokane Prize. In January 2011, she received her first Pushcart Prize nomination.
Paul Corman Roberts
Paul Corman Roberts is the author of three collections of poems and flash fiction, most recently Neocom(muter) (Tainted Coffee Press, 2009) and 19th St. Station (FOC Chapbook Series, 2011.) He is fiction editor for Full of Crow Online, producer of the Bitchez Brew monthly reading series, and writes a monthly column for Red Fez Magazine called Dispatches From Atlantis. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Instant City, The Rumpus, Sparkle and Blink. He is currently looking for a publisher for his first collection of short stories, and he once had coffee and donuts with Eldridge Cleaver. While ranting a poem in the shop, Eldridge got some donut spittle on Paul’s shirt. Contrary to popular belief, Paul did wash the shirt.
Ann Ryles
Ann Ryles was born in Kentucky and raised in Maryland and California. She was a finalist for the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize in 2009. Her short stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Gargoyle, Konundrum Engine Literary Review, Emprise Review, and Stirring: A Literary Collection. She is a graduate of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco and UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and in the past year has tried her hand at playwriting. She lives with her husband and two daughters in the East Bay town of Moraga.
July 14: Culpable
Last month’s reading was stunning! But summer at Why There Are Words is just warming up, and July promises to be intriguing, as the following authors read from their work on the theme of “Culpable.” We’ll be in Sausalito’s Studio 333 at 7 PM, with books, beer, wine, and blame! $5 is all you need to come join us.
Graham Gremore
Graham Gremore is a reclusive misanthrope from St. Paul. He co-produces the humor reading series LitUp Writers in San Francisco. Graham has written two stage musicals, both of which were commissioned and produced by SteppingStone Theater in St. Paul. In 2009, his play “As in Autumn” was a semi-finalist in The Source: 10 Minute Play Festival in Washington D.C. His solo show, “Private Parts,” had its world premiere at SF Playhouse in May 2011. Currently, he is an MFA candidate in Creative Writing with an emphasis in Playwriting at San Francisco State University.
Agatha Hoff
A child of World War II, Agatha Hoff describes the violent destruction of a city, a country and the culture of her native Hungary in her book, Burning Horses. She came to America in 1949 as a refugee, attended high school in Menlo Park, and college at Seattle University. When her youngest child started kindergarten, Agatha went to San Francisco Law School and earned her J.D. degree at night. She worked in poverty law where clients often abandoned her for a “real lawyer,” meaning someone they paid. When she became a real lawyer in private practice, her clients termed her personal injury practice “the armpit of the law.” When she was appointed a court commissioner at San Francisco Superior Court, her favorite moniker written by a disgruntled litigant pronounced her to be a “fascist terrorist cross-dressed in the cloak of justice.” When at last a British tourist who came to traffic court called her “Your Worship,” she thought she’d retire before it went to her head. Agatha is spending her retirement writing and long distance cycling. Her column, “Tales From The Bench”, has appeared regularly in San Francisco Attorney Magazine.
Evan Karp
Evan Karp covers literary culture as a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and is a regular contributor to SF Weekly‘s Exhibitionist blog. He is the founder and editor of Litseen and creator and host of Quiet Lightning, a monthly submission-based reading series that publishes each show as a book called sparkle & blink, which he also edits. He is a contributing editor of Instant City and the official blogger of Litquake.
K. M. Soehnlein
K.M. Soehnlein is the author of three novels: Robin and Ruby, The World of Normal Boys, and You Can Say You Knew Me When, plus essays and reviews in many publications. He was born in New York, grew up in New Jersey, and has lived in San Francisco since the early ’90s. He teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco. His wish list includes learning to play the piano, becoming fluent in Italian, and finishing the New York Times Sunday Crossword puzzle in under 45 minutes.
Kristen Tracy
Kristen Tracy is a poet who has also written several teen and middle-grade novels, including Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus, Lost It, Sharks & Boys, and A Field Guide for Heartbreakers. She lives in San Francisco where she volunteers as a gardener on Alcatraz. Along with Nina LaCour she teaches Bay Area writing classes.
James Warner
James Warner is the author of All Her Father’s Guns, a novel published in 2011 by Numina Press. His short fiction has appeared most recently on KGB Bar Lit Magazine, Narrative, and Night Train. He writes an almost-monthly literary column, “Standing Perpendicular,” for opendemocracy.net, and is also a fiction editor for Identity Theory.
Background: June 9
Cyndi Cady
Cyndi Cady‘s fiction has appeared in Potpourri, Dark Recesses Press, the West Marin Review, and the anthology Zebulon Nights. Her story “Dooley” was a finalist in the New Southerner Magazine’s 2010 fiction contest.
Aneesha Capur
Aneesha Capur’s novel, Stealing Karma, debuted at the Beijing International Literary Festival in March 2011. Stealing Karma was launched by HarperCollins India in April to critical acclaim and was listed in the Top 5 Fiction Picks in The Hindu, India’s leading national newspaper, picked as Essential Reading in the Sunday Guardian and featured on CNN-IBN among others. Excerpts have been recognized in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award, Wild River Review, two Glimmer Train Press competitions, and the Writer’s Digest Literary Short Story award. Aneesha has an MBA from Wharton and an MFA in fiction from Warren Wilson. Aneesha has attended the Vermont Studio Center, The Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Squaw Valley Community of Writers Fiction Program, The Iowa Writers’ Summer Workshop, and the Fine Arts Work Center. Her professional career spans private, non-profit, and academic sectors. She was born in India and spent most of her childhood in Africa. She now lives in San Francisco.
Molly Giles
Molly Giles has published a novel, Iron Shoes, and two short story collections: Creek Walk and Other Stories, which won the Small Press Award for Short Fiction, and Rough Translations, which won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Her other awards include fellowships from the NEA, The McDowell Colony, and Yaddo, two Pushcart prizes, the Commonwealth Club of California Silver Medal, the Bay Area Book Reviewers’ Award, and The National Book Critics Circle Award for Book Reviewing. She directs the Programs in Creative Writing at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and was previously a professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University, as well as having also taught at the University of San Francisco and at countless summer workshops, including The Squaw Valley Community of Writers, The Napa Valley Writers Conference, and the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
Jeremy Hatch
Jeremy Hatch is a writer, musician, and professional bookseller leading a cheerful, aimless life in San Francisco. He is the Junior Literary Editor of The Rumpus and he has a blog.
Alison Luterman
Alison Luterman is the author of two books of poetry, The Largest Possible Life and See How We Almost Fly. She has also written several plays, “Saying Kaddish With My Sister,” “A Night in Jail,” “Glitter and Spew,” “Hot Water,” and “The Recruiter.” She has been an artist in residence at many elementary and high schools through the California Poets in the Schools program, as well as Poetry Inside Out and Poetry Out Loud. She has mentored incarcerated youth in playwriting through Each One Teach One. She performs with the improvisation dance theatre troupe Wing It! She lives in Oakland, California.
Beverly Parayno
Beverly Parayno grew up in San Jose. Her story “House Cleaning” will be featured online as Story of the Week in Narrative Magazine in August 2011. Her fiction is also forthcoming online in Southword and her author interviews appear on The Rumpus. She has an MA from University College Cork, Ireland, and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she received a Lynda Hull scholarship. She has participated in the Tin House Writers Workshop and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Festival, and is a regular participant of the San Francisco Writers Workshop. She lives in Pacifica, where she is working on a collection of stories.
Escape! May 12
Join us May 12 at 7 PM — Studio 333 — when the following authors will read from their work on the theme of Escape. You need $5 to get in and some extra cash for authors’ books, which they’ll gladly sign for you, and beverages of your choice. See you there.
Andrew Altschul
Andrew Altschul is the author of the novels Deus Ex Machina, which NPR describes as “brilliant — one of the best novel’s about American culture in years,” and Lady Lazarus, finalist for the Northern California Book Award. His short fiction and essays have appeared in Esquire, Ploughshares, McSweeney’s, Fence, One Story, and anthologies such as Best New American Voices and O. Henry Prize Stories. He is the director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State University and books editor of The Rumpus.
Meg Waite Clayton
Meg Waite Clayton‘s most recent novel is The Four Ms. Bradwells (March 2011). Her second, the national bestseller The Wednesday Sisters, was a book club favorite throughout the country, and her first, The Language of Light, was a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. Her novels have been translated into languages from German to Chinese, and her shorter works have appeared in commercial and literary magazines including Runner’s World, Writer’s Digest, and The Literary Review, in addition to being read on public radio and anthologized. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Michigan Law School, and lives in Northern California.
Sherril Jaffe
Sherril Jaffe’s novel Expiration Date is new this April from the Permanent Press. She is also the author of six works of fiction from Black Sparrow Press: Scars Make Your Body More Interesting & Other Stories; This Flower Only Blooms Every Hundred Years; The Unexamined Wife; The Faces Reappear; House Tours; and Interior Design; as well as two works from Kodansha: Ground Rules: What I Learned My Daughter’s Fifteenth Year, (a memoir); and the spiritual “autobiography” One God Clapping (with Alan Lew), winner of the 2000 PEN Josephine Miles Award for literary excellence. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of magazines, including Zyzzyva, Epoch, Alaska Quarterly Review, Superstition Review, and Volt, and she supports this writing habit by being a Professor of Creative Writing at Sonoma State University. She lives in San Francisco and walks in Golden Gate Park every day.
Kirsten Menger Anderson
Kirsten Menger-Anderson is the author of Doctor Olaf van Schuler’s Brain, a collection of linked short stories concerning a family of doctors. The book was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and one of Chicago Time Out’s top 10 books of 2008. Her short stories have appeared in the Southwest Review, Ploughshares, Maryland Review, Post Road, and Wascana Review, among other publications. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, daughter, son, and cat.
Janice Shapiro
Janice Shapiro studied film at UCLA where she won first prize in The Samuel Goldwyn Screenwriting Competition. The short films she directed were screened widely at film festivals around the world and she was a recipient of an AFI Filmmakers’ Grant. She has written scripts for numerous studios and independent producers including the cult film, Dead Beat that she co-wrote with her husband, Adam Dubov. Her short stories have been published in The North American Review and The Santa Monica Review. A graphic memoir of hers was included in the anthology What Were We Thinking? (St. Martin’s). Another graphic memoir appeared in The Seattle Review. Bummer and Other Stories is her first book. She is currently working on a novel, Bad Baseball, a second collection of short stories, a collection of food essays entitled, Eat Like Me, and a book length graphic memoir, Crushable – My Life In Crushes From Ricky Nelson to Viggo Mortensen. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and dog.
Salvatore Zoida
Salvatore Zoida was born in Brooklyn, New York. He majored in Comparative Literature at Columbia University, graduating magna cum laude and receiving the Helen and Howard R. Marraro Prize for high academic distinction and promise in the study of Italian culture. His fiction has appeared in Rutgers University’s Writers’ Bloc, Ravenna Press’s The Anemone Sidecar, The Catalonian Review, Foundling Review, and Wigleaf. He recently finished writing his first novel, Bucolic Apologia.
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