Join Why There Are Words on March 14, 2019, at Studio 333 in Sausalito and bear witness to another spectacular evening of readings, as six acclaimed authors read on the theme of “Witness.” Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10 entry fee at the door. Cash bar.
Tim Fitts is the author of two collections of short stories, Hypothermia (MadHat Press, 2017) and Go Home and Cry for Yourselves (Xavier Review Press, 2017), and his work has been published by Granta, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, Fugue, CutBank, among many others. He lives and works in Philadelphia. He teaches in the Liberal Arts Department of the Curtis Institute of Music, serves on the editorial board of the Painted Bride Quarterly, and is the founder of the Philly Homebrew Reading Series.
Soma Mei Sheng Frazier is an East Coast native living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she recently served as a San Francisco Library Laureate. Her third prose chapbook, Don’t Give Up on Alan Greenspan (Cutbank, 2019), was selected as the winner of CutBank’s 2018 contest. Frazier’s previous chapbooks — Salve (Nomadic Press, 2016) and Collateral Damage: A Triptych (RopeWalk Press, 2013) — earned praise from Nikki Giovanni, Daniel Handler, Antonya Nelson, Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, Molly Giles, Michelle Tea, and others. Her writing has placed in literary competitions offered by HBO, Zoetrope: All-Story, Glimmer Train, the Mississippi Review, and more. As a professor, she has taught in environments ranging from a New York prison to an Oakland, California charter school. She is nose-to-grindstone on novel revisions.
Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author of The Mexican Man in His Backyard, Stories & Essays (Roan Press, 2014), and Elements, Live from Fresno y Los (Bear Star Press, 2009), which won an American Book Award. He is widely published in magazines and anthologies, including Fiction, ZYZZYVA, Catamaran Literary Reader, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, New California Writing (Heyday) and Sudden Fiction Latino (Norton, 2010). He is currently a Pushcart nominee for recent work that appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review and The Nasiona. For the last twenty-seven years he has taught at California State University East Bay, and nears retirement. He is originally from City of Commerce in Los Angeles County, the big L.A. area.
Susan Hayden is a poet, playwright, novelist & essayist. She is the author of the novel, Cat Stevens Saved My Life, which was a finalist in the inaugural Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with Penguin Press (Top 100 of 5000). Most recently, her poetry has been featured in TribeLA Magazine, Cultural Weekly, and in the bestselling anthology, Los Angeles in the 1970s (Rare Bird Lit, 2016). Her stories and plays have been published in I Might Be The Person You Are Talking To: Short Plays From The Los Angeles Underground (Padua Playwrights Press, 2015); the Rome-based journal, Storie: All Write; and The Black Body, an anthology edited by Nana-Ama Danquah (Seven Stories Press, 2009). Her work, in its many forms, explores identity, belonging, the search for home and life after loss. She is perhaps best known as the Creator/Producer of the monthly, mixed-genre literary series, Library Girl, now in its 10th year at the Ruskin Group Theatre in Santa Monica, CA. In 2015, she was presented with the Bruria Finkel/Artist In The Community Award for Volunteerism by the Santa Monica Arts Commission for her “significant contributions to the energetic discourse within Santa Monica’s arts community.” She is currently at work on a multi-disciplinary theatre piece about emerging from grief after the sudden loss of her longtime husband and creative partner. She lives near the beach in Santa Monica and is the proud mother of singer-songwriter, Mason Summit.
Keenan Norris’ chapbook By the Lemon Tree was recently published by Nomadic Press in September of 2018. His novel Brother and the Dancer (Heyday, 2013) won the 2012 James D. Houston award. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books as well as Boom: a journal of California.
Tracy Winn earned an MFA from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers. She is the author of Mrs. Somebody Somebody (2010) from SMU Press and Random House, which won the Sherwood Anderson Foundation award and was a finalist for several other prizes including the Massachusetts Book Award. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from DeWitt Wallace, the MacDowell Colony, the Blue Mountain Center, and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, among many others. Her most recent stories can be found in the Harvard Review and Waxwing Magazine, and have been honored with nominations for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prizes.
Why There Are Words (#WTAW) is an award-winning national reading series founded in Sausalito in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, now expanded to seven additional major cities in the U.S. The series draws a full house of Bay Area residents every second Thursday to Studio 333, located at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965. The series is a program of the 501(c)3 non-profit WTAW Press, a publisher of exceptional literary books.
