Why There Are Words presents the following authors reading from their works on the theme of “Reach.” Join us August 13, 2015, at Studio 333 in Sausalito. Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10. It’s no stretch to say you’ll be glad you did!
Born and raised in Western Massachusetts, Jon Boilard has been living in Northern California since 1986. His second novel, The Castaway Lounge (Dzanc Books), was published in the summer of 2015, and his debut novel, A River Closely Watched (MacAdam Cage 2012), was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award in the fall of 2012. He is currently putting together a collection of his short stories, many of which have been published in literary journals in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia.
Melissa Cistaro’s stories have been published in numerous literary journals, including the New Ohio Review, Anderbo.com, and Brevity as well as the anthologies Cherished and Love and Profanity. She works as a bookseller and event coordinator at Book Passage in Northern California. She graduated with honors from UCLA and followed her literary pursuits through the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in Portland. Between the years of raising her children, writing, bookselling, teaching horseback riding, and curating a business in equestrian antiques she completed her first memoir, Pieces of My Mother (Sourcebooks, May 2015).
M. Allen Cunningham‘s newest book, Partisans: A Lost Work by Geoffrey Peerson Leed, a found manuscript by the vanished writer, appeared in spring 2015. Partisans was one of six titles shortlisted for the 2014 Flann O’Brien Award. Cunningham is the author of the illustrated limited edition short story collection Date of Disappearance, the novels The Green Age of Asher Witherow and Lost Son, and two volumes of nonfiction, The Flickering Page: The Reading Experience in Digital Times and The Honorable Obscurity Handbook, which Cynthia Ozick has called “ingenious, variegated, touching, important, wholly absorbing, inspiring and inspiriting.” He is the recipient of grants from the Whiting Foundation, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Regional Arts & Culture Council, fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission (2007 and 2013) and Literary Arts (2012), and residencies at Yaddo (2010 and 2014). His work has appeared in The Kenyon Review, Glimmer Train, Alaska Quarterly Review, Tin House, Epoch, and other distinguished literary magazines, and his short stories have been featured in live performance by the New Short Fiction Series of Beverly Hills. Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler calls Cunningham “a lushly talented young writer,” ForeWord Magazine has named him “one of America’s most promising voices,” and he was cited in the Dzanc Books list of 20 Writers to Watch. He lives in Portland, Oregon, where he writes occasional book reviews and cultural commentary, leads public discussions for the Oregon Humanities council, and is at work on two new books. He is the founder and publisher of Atelier26 Books.
Carol Harada is a somatic healing practitioner at The Fluent Body and a proud member of Laguna Writers community in San Francisco. She incorporates awareness of healing and creative processes into her short stories and novel-in-progress. She has been published in Bryant Literary Review; Flash Flood Journal; Lake: a Collection of Voices, volumes 4, 5, and 6; and Birdland Journal. She co-edits Birdland Journal, an online bimonthly showcasing Laguna Writers and Birdland Retreats writers.
Joshua Mohr is the author of four novels, including Damascus, which the New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Fight Song and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice on the New York Times Best Seller List. His novel All This Life was just published by Counterpoint/Soft Skull. He teaches in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco.
Bonnie ZoBell‘s new linked collection from Press 53, What Happened Here, is centered on the site PSA Flight 182 crashed into at North Park, San Diego, in 1978 and features the imaginary characters who live there now. Her fiction chapbook The Whack-Job Girls was published in March 2013. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, the Capricorn Novel Award, and a PEN Syndicated Fiction Award. She received an MFA from Columbia University, currently teaches at San Diego Mesa College, and is working on a novel.
Why There Are Words takes place every second Thursday of the month, when people come from San Francisco, the North Bay, the East Bay, the South Bay–everywhere–to crowd the house. The brainchild of Peg Alford Pursell, this literary goodness has been going strong for five years.
