Join us for our last event of the year on November 14 when the following readers will read their works on the theme of “Purpose.” We’ll be in Studio 333 in Sausalito, and doors will open at 7 pm. Readings start at 7:15. Bring extra cash for books and booze.
AND help us choose our readers for our special anniversary event on January 9, 2014, when we celebrate 4 years of fabulousness. Go to this page for all the details. We’ll take your selections up until November 15.
Harriet Scott Chessman is a fiction writer and poet living in Palo Alto. Her new novel The Beauty of Ordinary Things is forthcoming this November from Atelier26. Her earlier novels include Lydia Cassatt Reading the Morning Paper (#1 on BookSense), Someone Not Really Her Mother (a San Francisco Chronicle Best Book and a Good Morning America book club choice), and her first novel, Ohio Angels.
Jasmin Darznik is the author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother’s Hidden Life (Grand Central 2011). A New York Times bestseller, the memoir has been published in twelve countries, was shortlisted for the 2012 Saroyan International Prize, and chosen as a finalist for the 2011 Reader’s Choice Award from the Library of Virginia. Jasmin was born in Tehran, Iran, and received her PhD from Princeton University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and other publications.
Khanisha Foster is a mixed race actress, writer, teaching artist, the Associate Artistic Director of 2nd Story, and an ensemble member of Teatro Vista. She was chosen for the Theatre Communication Groups’ Young Leaders of Color 2009 and an artist exchange with the Citizen’s Theatre of Scotland in Glasgow. She is a Sarah Siddon’s Society Scholarship recipient and a two time finalist for the PEN Emerging Voices Fellowship. Her teaching artist work has been honored by the White House. Her writing has been published with CellStories and podcast through 2nd Story, and will be published in the November 2013 release of the anthology Briefly Knocked Unconscious By a Low Flying Duck. She has performed with Teatro Vista, the Goodman Theatre, Steep Theater, and Collaboraction, among others. She can be seen in the film “Chicago Boricua,” official selection the Tribeca Film Festival, the Chicago Latino Film Festivals, and closing night selection for the New York Latino International Film Festival. Currently Khanisha is working on her memoir “Heroin(e)” and several screenplays.
Anne Germanacos lives with her husband in San Francisco and on Crete, where together they ran Ithaka Cultural Studies on the islands of Kalymnos and Crete. She is President of the Germanacos Foundation, supporting educational programs that utilize a broad range of perspectives to foster a critical scrutiny of society. Her work has appeared in over a hundred literary journals and anthologies.Her collection of short stories, In the Time of the Girls, was published by BOA Editions. Her novel, Tribute, will be published by Rescue Press in 2014.
Daniel A. Hoyt‘s first short story collection, Then We Saw the Flames, won the Juniper Prize for Fiction and was published by UMass Press. Dan is an assistant professor at Kansas State University, where he currently directs the creative writing program. Dan’s fiction is forthcoming or has appeared in The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, Gettysburg Review, and other literary magazines, and he’s at work on a new story collection, about 21st century fame, and a nonfiction book about college football.
Tung-Hui Hu is the author of three collections of poetry, most recently Greenhouses, Lighthouses (Copper Canyon, 2013). His poems have appeared in places such as Boston Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Gastronomica, and Martha Stewart Living Radio, and he has been a resident at Yaddo and MacDowell Colony. Formerly a computer scientist and political consultant, he now teaches at the University of Michigan, where he is an assistant professor of English.
Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fourteen books, the latest of which was her 2013 novel, Traveling with Spirits. Other novels include After Eden, Range of Light, A Walking Fire, Winter’s Edge, Blood Sisters, All Good Women, Movement: A Novel in Stories, and Murder in the English Department. Her short fiction books include Abundant Light, The Night Singers, and Trespassing. Her collection of essays is Rumors from the Cauldron: Selected Essays, Reviews and Reportage. In 2002, The Low Road: A Scottish Family Memoir was a finalist for the PEN USA Creative Non-Fiction Award. Abundant Light was a 2005 fiction finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The T.L.S., The Women’s Review of Books, The Nation, and other journals. Her stories and essays are published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into several languages, and she has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India, and Indonesia. Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University.
Toni Piccinini’s writing path has meandered from the scholarly examination (or scary horror story) of antibiotic use in The Journal of Clinical Pathology to her personal essay “House Affair,” a Narrative magazine Story of the Week. Along the way she opened a San Francisco “Top 100” restaurant and published recipes and cookbook reviews in local and national newspapers, magazines, and cookbooks. The Goodbye Year (Seal Press 2013) is her first book.
When Mildred Rhinehart, 82, shoved her way into Susanna Solomon’s heart and moved into her mind she realized it was time for her to sit down and listen. Mildred’s long-suffering husband Fred was next. Awkward Alice, Mildred’s granddaughter, came for tea and was soon followed by new cop on the block, Linda. Thomas, a sixteen-year-old kid in love with driving and girls, came too. With these characters Susanna writes stories inspired by Sheriff’s Calls entries in the Point Reyes Light. Her stories have been published in the Point Reyes Light, Harlot’s Sauce Radio, the Mill Valley Literary Review, and more. Her short story collection Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls is coming out this November from HD Media Press.
Why There Are Words takes place every second Thursday of the month, when people come from San Francisco, the North Bay, the East Bay — everywhere — to crowd the house. The brainchild of Peg Alford Pursell, this literary goodness has been going strong for three years.
