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’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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axb2sHpGwHQ]
“Come Together” by The Beatles
