Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents “Underneath”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme Underneath August 9 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Join us for an extraordinary night as seven authors reveal worlds underneath words.
Melissa Cistaro
Melissa Cistaro’s stories have been published in the New Ohio Review, Brevity, Anderbo.com, Sparkle and Blink, the KQED Perspectives series, and in the anthology Cherished: 21 Writers on Animals They Have Loved and Lost. Her essay “The Undertow” was a semi-finalist in Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland’s Notes & Words essay contest.
David Corbett
David Corbett is the author of four novels: The Devil’s Redhead, Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book), Blood of Paradise (nominated for numerous awards, including the Edgar), and Do They Know I’m Running (Spinetingler Award, Best Novel Rising Star Category 2011). His short fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, with two stories selected for Best American Mystery Stories (2009 and 2011). In May 2012, Mysterious Press/Open Road Media re-issued his first two novels plus a story collection in ebook format, and Penguin will publish his textbook on the craft of characterization The Art of Character in January 2013.
Jennifer duBois
Jennifer duBois is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and recently completed a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University. Her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Playboy, The Missouri Review, The Kenyon Review, ZYZZYVA, The Northwest Review, and elsewhere. Her first novel, A Partial History of Lost Causes, was published by The Dial Press in March 2012.
C.J. Hribal is the author of the novel The Company Car, which received the Anne Powers Book Award, and the novel American Beauty. He’s also the author of the short fiction collections Matty’s Heart and The Clouds in Memphis, which won the AWP Award for Short Fiction, and he edited The Boundaries of Twilight: Czecho-Slovak Writing from the New World. He has held Fellowships from the NEA, the Bush, and from the Guggenheim Foundations, and has twice won the Sternig Award for Short Fiction. He is the Louise Edna Goeden Professor of English at Marquette University, and is a member of the fiction faculty at the Warren Wilson College MFA Program for Writers.
Kara Levy
Kara Levy’s fiction appears in Alaska Quarterly Review, Mississippi Review Prize Issue 2009, TriQuarterly, Zen Monster, Drunken Boat, the Huffington Post, and Narrative, where she was a winner of the 30Below Prize for writers under 30. A graduate of the MFA program at Columbia University, she was a recent Steinbeck Fellow in Fiction at the Center for Steinbeck Studies in San Jose. She lives in San Francisco.
Wendy Merrill
Wendy Merrill’s memoir, Falling into Manholes: The Memoir of a Bad/Good Girl (Putnam 2008), was sold at the Maui Writers Conference in 2006. Her personal essays also appear in the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age (Inner Ocean, 2006) and, Single State of the Union (Seal Press, 2007). She is described by Anne Lamott as “a wonderful new voice — smart, funny, and wildly real.” She founded WAM Marketing Group, a unique marketing communications company based in Sausalito, where she currently lives above ground and beyond her means.
Frances Stroh
Frances Stroh is an installation artist turned writer who lived and worked in London for two years on a Fulbright Grant. She is writing a memoir entitled “Fire-Brewed: The Fall of the Stroh’s Beer Family” about her family who made beer in Detroit for a hundred and fifty years. Her work has appeared in Rosebud and on her blog, Irritable Brain Syndrome. She struggles mightily to employ Twitter in creative ways but enjoys the process.
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents “After All”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme After All July 12 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Join us as seven authors share stories big and small. It’s why there are words after all!
Lauren Becker
Lauren Becker is editor of Corium Magazine. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Opium, Hobart, Juked and some other nice places. Her collection of short fiction is included in the anthology Shut Up/Look Pretty (Tiny Hardcore Press, 2012). She lives in Oakland, where she hosts the reading series, East Bay on the Brain. She has never been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
Joe Clifford
Joe Clifford’s work has appeared in Big Bridge, the Connecticut Review, Drunken Boat, Fringe, Opium, Thuglit, Word Riot, and Underground Voices, among others. A collection of short stories, Choice Cuts, and his noir novel Wake the Undertaker will be published by Snubnose Press this year. He is the producer of Lip Service West, a “gritty, real, raw” reading series in Oakland. He has been to jail but never prison.
Sere Prince Halverson
Sere Prince Halverson is the author of The Underside of Joy (Dutton, January 2012), translated into fifteen languages. She worked as a copywriter and creative director for 20 years while she wrote fiction and raised kids. She and her husband have four children, and live in Northern California.
Joy Lanzendorfer
Joy Lanzendorfer’s work has appeared in Hotel Amerika, Necessary Fiction, Word Riot, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, Entrepreneur, Bust, and others. She completed an MA in Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, where she served on the editorial board for Fourteen Hills. Her chapbook The End of the World as I Know It won runner-up for the Michael Rubin Chapbook Award at SFSU. For the last five years, she has been a judge in the Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. She just completed her first novel.
Ericka Lutz
Ericka Lutz is the author of the recently published novel The Edge of Maybe. Her seven non-fiction books include On the Go with Baby and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Stepparenting, and her short fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in numerous books, anthologies, and journals, including Literary Mama, Because I Love Her, Paris: A Love Story, and Green Mountains Review. She won the Boston Fiction Festival in 2006 with her story “Deer Story,” and was a two-time fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her full-length solo show “A Widow’s To-Do List” is in development. She teaches writing at U.C. Berkeley. She is currently writing a second novel based in Oakland about family ties… but this one has ghosts.
Aimee Phan
Aimee Phan is the author of The Reeducation of Cherry Truong (St. Martin’s Press, March 2012). Her first book, We Should Never Meet, was awarded the Association for Asian American Studies Book Award in Prose, a Notable Book by the Kiryama Prize in fiction, and a finalist for the Asian American Literary Awards. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, and The Oregonian, among others. A 2010 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, she received her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she won a Maytag Fellowship. She teaches in the MFA Program in Writing and Writing and Literature Program at California College of the Arts.
Eric Sasson
Eric Sasson’s story collection Margins of Tolerance (Livingston Press, May 2012) was the 2011 Tartt First Fiction Award runner-up. His story “Floating” was a finalist for the Robert Olen Butler prize. Other publication credits include Explosion Proof, BLOOM, Nashville Review, The Puritan, Liquid Imagination, Alligator Juniper, Trans, The Ledge, MARY magazine, and THE2NDHAND, among others. He’s taught fiction writing at the Sackett Street Writers Workshop and lives in Brooklyn.
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents “Animal”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme Animal June 14 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Animalis. Latin for “having breath.” Join us for a night of readings that will surely take your breath away!
Tami Anderson
Tami Anderson’s fiction has been published in Other Voices, Passages North, and Soundings East. Her work was selected for a stand-alone performance of The New Short Fiction Series, Los Angeles’s longest running spoken word series. She was a 2006 recipient of the Barbara Jackson Fellowship to the Tomales Bay Writer’s Conference.
Dani Burlison
Dani Burlison is a staff writer at the Pacific Sun, columnist at McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and book reviewer for The Los Angeles Review. Her writing appears in The Rumpus, Hip Mama Magazine, Rad Dad Zine, Bike Monkey, Elephant Journal, The North Bay Bohemian, and elsewhere. She has essays forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Plowshares, and two anthologies: The People’s Apocalypse and It’s All in Her Head: Women Making Peace With Troubled Minds. She is the co-founder of Petals and Bones zine and writing workshops, and lives in Sonoma County.
Carolyn Cooke
Carolyn Cooke’s Daughters of the Revolution was listed among the best novels of 2011 by the San Francisco Chronicle and The New Yorker Magazine. Her short fiction has appeared in AGNI, The Paris Review, and two volumes each of Best American Short Stories and Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards. These stories were collected in The Bostons, which won the PEN/Bingham Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway. She teaches in the MFA writing program at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco.
Bruce Genaro is a graduate of the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco, and he has the scars to prove it. His short stories, essays, profiles, and reviews have appeared in numerous obscure and hard to find literary magazines and journals, as well as more notable venues like the Huffington Post. You can read his most recent publication, “Workshopped to Death,” in the 2012 issue of The Alembic, the annual literary journal of Providence College. He is currently working on a book about The Outsiders, a group of seven Bay Area plein air painters, and a novel about the last prince of Italy.
Allison Landa
Allison Landa is a Berkeley-based fiction and memoir writer. Her work has been featured in Salon Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, Swill Magazine, Toasted Cheese, Pindeldyboz, and Defenestration, among other venues, and featured at reading series including Lip Service West, Quiet Lightning, Pints and Prose, and Porchlight SF. She has been a resident at The MacDowell Colony, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and The Julia and David White Artists’ Colony. She earned her MFA in fiction writing at St. Mary’s College of California.
Matt Runkle
Matt Runkle is a writer, cartoonist, and book artist. His work has been featured in The Collagist, Beecher’s, Monkeybicycle, and on BOMBlog. He has read at venues ranging from SOMArts and Brooklyn’s Unnameable Books to the Headlands Center for the Arts. The third issue of his zine, Runx Tales, is due out later this year. Brooklyn Arts Press will publish a collection of his short fiction in 2013, and he is looking for a publisher for his novel,”Twos”, which was a semifinalist for the Noemi Book Award.
James Tipton
James Tipton is the author of Annette Vallon, A Novel of the French Revolution, a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and a Barnes and Noble Discover Pick. Born and raised in Berkeley, he has a PhD in English from the University of California, Davis. He has been a lecturer at UC Davis and at the University of Bordeaux, France, and has taught English and creative writing at the College of Marin since 1993.
Justin Torres was raised in upstate New York. His work has appeared in Granta, Tin House, and Glimmer Train. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he was the recipient of a Rolón Fellowship in Literature from United States Artists and is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Among many other things, he has worked as a farmhand, a dog walker, a creative writing teacher, and a bookseller.
Why There Are Words May 10: “Unforgotten”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme Unforgotten May 10 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Join us as these authors create another unforgettable night. That’s Why There Are Words.
Dan Coshnear
Daniel Coshnear is the author of Jobs & Other Preoccupations (Helicon Nine 2001), winner of the Willa Cather Fiction Award. He lives in Guerneville where he works at a group home for men and women with mental illnesses and teaches at various SF Bay Area university extension programs. He hopes to publish a new collection of stories in 2012 with Kelly’s Cove Press.
Rob Davidson
Rob Davidson is the author of The Farther Shore: Stories (Bear Star Press, 2012), The Master and the Dean: The Literary Criticism of Henry James and William Dean Howells, and Field Observations: Stories. He has won the 2009 Camber Press Fiction Award, a Pushcart Prize nomination, and been twice selected as the artist-in-residence at the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony. His work has appeared in Zyzzyva, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Indiana Review, The Normal School, New Delta Review, and elsewhere. Davidson teaches creative writing and American literature at CSU Chico.
Cheryl Dumesnil
Cheryl Dumesnil’s memoir, Love Song for Baby X: How I Stayed (Almost) Sane on the Rocky Road to Parenthood, will be released by Ig Publishing in 2013. Her collection of poems In Praise of Falling won the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize. She is the editor of Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall and co-editor, with Kim Addonizio, of Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. Her poems have appeared in Nimrod, Indiana Review, Calyx, and Many Mountains Moving, among others. Her essays have appeared in Hip Mama, MamaZine, and Literary Mama. She is a regular contributor to Out and Around: Writing From the Crossroads of Suburbia, Parenthood, and Lesbian Life.
Stefanie Freele
Stefanie Freele’s newest book is the story collection Surrounded by Water (Press 53, March 2012). She is also the author of the story collection Feeding Strays. She recently won the Glimmer Train Fiction Open, and her stories are published or forthcoming in Glimmer Train, Sou’wester, Mid-American Review, Western Humanities Review, Quarterly West, The Florida Review, American Literary Review, Night Train, Edge, and Pank. She is the fiction editor of the Los Angeles Review.
Daniel Handler
Daniel Handler is the author of the novel Why We Broke Up, (Little and Brown, December 2011), awarded a Michael L. Printz Honor, as well as The Basic Eight, Watch Your Mouth , and Adverbs. He has scripted two movies, Rick and Kill The Poor, and he is working on a musical with Stephin Merritt commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company. As Lemony Snicket, he is the author of many books for children.
Leota Higgins
Leota Higgins has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is currently at work on her first novel “Still Searching,” the first chapter of which has been published by Achiote Press in their debut story collection Routes.
Julia Flynn Siler
Julia Flynn Siler is the bestselling author of two works of narrative history, Lost Kingdom: Hawaii’s Last Queen, the Sugar Kings, and America’s First Imperial Adventure and The House of Mondavi: The Rise and Fall of an American Wine Dynasty. An award-winning journalist and former foreign correspondent, she was a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and Business Week and also wrote extensively for the New York Times. Her first book, The House of Mondavi, became a New York Times bestseller and was named a finalist for a 2008 James Beard Foundation award and a 2008 Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business Reporting. Her second book, Lost Kingdom, became a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller shortly after being published in early 2012 and has won critical praise.
Lysley Tenorio
Lysley Tenorio is the author of the brand new debut collection of stories Monstress (Ecco Harper Collins, February 2012). His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, and The Best New American Voices and Pushcart Prize anthologies. A Whiting Writer’s Award winner and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the University of Wisconsin, Phillips Exeter Academy, Yaddo, The MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in the Philippines, he currently lives in San Francisco, and is an associate professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Why There Are Words April 12: “Break”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following readers on the theme: Break April 12 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Break: an interruption in continuity; a second chance. These seven authors will BREAK through what we think we know about this topic. Join us! And don’t forget to subscribe to our newsletter announcing upcoming readings each month. (We never share your email with anyone!)
Shannon Cain
Shannon Cain’s debut short story collection, The Necessity of Certain Behaviors, is the recipient of the Drue Heinz Literature Prize. Her stories have been awarded the Pushcart Prize, the O. Henry Prize, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. They have appeared or are forthcoming in Tin House, The Colorado Review, the New England Review, American Short Fiction, Mid-American Review, and Southwords: New Writing from Ireland. She is the co-editor, with Lisa Bowden, of Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, from Vietnam to Iraq (Kore Press, 2008) and co-adapter of Coming In Hot, the stage adaptation of the book. She is the Artist-in-Residence for the City of Tucson’s Ward One and the fiction editor for Kore Press. Her current creative project is Tucson, the Novel: An Experiment in Literature and Civil Discourse.
Stan Goldberg
Stan Goldberg is the author of Lessons for the Living: Stories of Forgiveness,Gratitude, and Courage at the End of Life, which received six national and international awards and was translated into Chinese, Indonesian, and Portuguese. He has published seven books, written numerous articles, and delivered more than 100 lectures and workshops throughout the United States, Latin America, Canada, and Asia on topics ranging from change, to flyfishing, to end of life issues. He is Professor Emeritus at San Francisco State University, and devotee of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and Native American Flute. In 2009 he was named Volunteer of the Year by the Hospice Volunteer Association.
Leo Litwalk
Leo Litwak’s novel Waiting for the News received the National Jewish Book Award and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award. He has published two novels and two works of nonfiction. His work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, New York Times Book Review, Esquire, Look Magazine, and Best American Short Stories. He is a recipient of John Simon Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, and first prize in the 1990 O. Henry Prize Stories collection. Professor at San Francisco State University for more than thirty years, he lives in San Francisco.
Meredith Maran
Meredith Maran is a book critic, award-winning journalist, and the author of several bestselling nonfiction books including My Lie, Class Dismissed, and What It’s Like to Live Now. A member of the National Book Critics Circle, she reviews books for People, Salon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and the Boston Globe, and writes for a number of magazines. Since publishing a poem at age six in Highlights for Kids, she’s dreamed of publishing her first novel. A Theory of Small Earthquakes is it.
Sommer Schafer
Sommer Schafer is a candidate in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. She lives in San Rafael and is currently working on two collections of stories: My Father’s Memoirs, about a family coming to terms with a father’s mental illness and subsequent death, and Hope, about the citizens of a small town in Alaska. You can read her first publication, “The Table,” forthcoming later this year in Barge Journal.
Linda Gray Sexton
Linda Gray Sexton has published several widely acclaimed novels as well as two memoirs about her life and relationship with her mother, Pulitzer Prize winning poet Anne Sexton. Her first memoir, Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey Back To My Mother, was named a New York Times Book Review Notable Book. Her recent memoir, Half in Love: Surviving the Legacy of Suicide, is about her struggle with her own mental illness and the legacy of suicide left to her by her mother, who took her own life when Sexton was twenty-one. Unlike her mother’s story though, hers is a story of triumph. She lives in Northern California.
Mary Paynter Sherwin
Mary Paynter Sherwin’s work has appeared most recently in The Midway Journal, Drash: Northwest Mosaic, and Unswept. She was also recently named one of the Northwest’s most innovative poets by Rattapallax. Mary is pursuing an MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California and lives in Oakland with her husband, David.
Why There Are Words March 8: “Unspeakable”
Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents the following authors March 8 at Studio 333 in Sausalito, 7-9pm. $5. Can the unspeakable be put into words? Come find out when these six writers take on that theme.
Chris Cole
Chris Cole’s first novel, The Speed at Which I Travel, is about an existentialist, time-traveling teenager from the Midwest. Chris Cole sits on the board of the SF literary organization Quiet Lightning, and is a co-founder of the Pints and Prose reading series. Under the name “Disembodied Poetics,” he writes a daily blog of verse and occasional prose to thousands of dedicated followers.
Timothy Crandle
Timothy Crandle’s fiction has been honored with the Jack Dyer Prize from Crab Orchard Review, the Waasmode Prize from Passages North,and second prize in the Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Contest where it was selected from over 2500 entries by Joyce Carol Oates. In autumn 2010 he was writer in residence at Ox-Bow School of the Arts. He has worked as a roofer, painter (walls only, never canvases), pizza delivery man, casting director, and electrical engineer. He holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco, and lives and writes in Oakland.
Krys Lee
Krys Lee is the author of the debut novel Drifting House. Born in Seoul, South Korea, she was raised in California, and studied in the U.S. and England. A finalist for Best New American Voices in 2006, her work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Narrative magazine, California Quarterly, Pacific Ties, the Korea Times, and Asia Weekly. She lives in Seoul.
Kate Moses
Kate Moses is the author of Cakewalk, A Memoir,nominated for a Northern California Book Award, and the internationally acclaimed, award-winning novel Wintering: A Novel of Sylvia Plath, published in fifteen languages. As a founding editor and staff writer for Salon, Kate Moses co-edited Salon’s groundbreaking daily feature Mothers Who Think and two bestselling anthologies of essays on motherhood inspired by the site, Mothers Who Think and Because I Said So. A native of San Francisco, she teaches in the creative writing programs at San Francisco State and the University of San Francisco.
Meghan Thornton
Meghan Thornton won the poetry prize at the 2010 San Francisco Writer’s Conference and was published in the Poets 11 Anthology. She is a board member of Quiet Lightning, and her poetry and short stories can be found in Sparkle & Blink. She wrote her first novel, a vampire romance, in high school. Knowing that it would never sell, she moved on to poetry. She is currently editing her novel, “The Sword in the Cellar,” the first in a middle grade fantasy series that, unfortunately, has nothing to do with vampires.
Barry Willdorf
Barry Willdorf is author of the novel, The Flight of the Sorceress. In 2001, he published a semi-autobiographical novel, Bring the War Home. His legal publishing credits include co-authoring How To Pass the LSATs,/em>, and part of the Matthew Bender series, California Forms of Jury Instructions. He was a contributing editor for Matthew Bender’s Trial Master series. Born in New York City, he grew up in Massachusetts, and claims to be the first person to have surfed on Cape Ann.
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 McFeely 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.
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