It’s spring — go crazy! Join us at Studio 333 for Why There Are Words Thursday April 8, 7 pm. Hear the following authors read their work on the theme “crazy.”
Tom Barbash is the author of the novel The Last Good Chance, winner of the California Book Award and a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year, as well as the New York Times bestselling non-fiction book, On Top of the World. His short stories have appeared in Tin House, One Story, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Narrative, Story, StoryQuarterly, and other publications. He is a former Wallace Stegner Fellow, and a member of the San Francisco Writers Grotto.
Allison Landa is a Berkeley-based writer whose fiction, nonfiction and poetry have appeared in Word Riot, CherryBleeds, CleanSheets, Defenestration, and Pindeldyboz. A MacDowell Colony Fellow, she has also held artist residencies at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and the Julia and David White Artists’ Colony. She received her MFA in creative writing from St. Mary’s College of California.
Ryan Sloan received his MFA in Fiction from New York University, and lives in Berkeley. Nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Sloan’s work has appeared in LA Weekly, Nerve, Opium Magazine, The Modern Spectator, and Painted Bride Quarterly. He’s working on his first novel, titled “The Plagiarists.”
Wendy Nelson Tokunaga is the author of the novels Love in Translation and Midori by Moonlight. Japan and Japanese culture have been major influences on her life and this is reflected in much of her writing. Her novel, No Kidding, won the Literary/Mainstream Fiction category in Writer’s Digest’s Best Self-Published Book Awards in 2002. She’s also the author of two children’s non-fiction books, and has had short stories published in various literary journals. Wendy earned her MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco.
Ethan Watters is the author of, most recently, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche, a book that’s had him appear on, among other venues, The Daily Show. He’s also the author of Urban Tribes, an examination of the mores of affluent “never marrieds,” and coauthor of Making Monsters, a groundbreaking indictment of the recovered memory movement. A frequent contributor to NPR, The New York Times Magazine, Discover, Men’s Journal, Details, Wired, and PRI’s This American Life, he’s also appeared on such national media as Good Morning America, Talk of the Nation, and CNN. His work has been featured in the Best American Science and Nature Writing series. Ethan is co-founder of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto where he sometimes teaches writing classes. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.
Aggie Zivaljevic was born in Sarajevo, in the former Yugoslavia. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Warren Wilson and is the recipient of three scholarships to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her fiction has appeared in Crab Orchard Review and Speakeasy. Her story “Village at the Bottom of the Lake,” an excerpt from a novel-in-progress, was a finalist for Sherwood Anderson Short Fiction Award. She lives in San Jose and spends her days at Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park, runs the Kepler’s Writing Group, and hosts the Kepler’s blog for writers, “The Well Read Donkey.”
