Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series always provides a magical night with its award-winning writers. Join us August 8, 2013 at Studio 333 to find out what the following fine writers have up their sleeves when they read their works on the theme “Magic.” Doors open at 7 pm & readings begin at 7:15. $10. Bring extra cash for books and booze.
Nan Cuba is the author of Body and Bread (Engine Books), one of “Ten Titles to Pick Up Now” in O, Oprah’s Magazine and a “Summer Books” choice from Huffington Post. She also co-edited Art at our Doorstep: San Antonio Writers and Artists (Trinity University Press) and published other work in such places as Quarterly West, Columbia, Antioch Review, Harvard Review, storySouth, and Connotation Press. As an investigative journalist, she reported on the causes of extraordinary violence in LIFE, Third Coast, and D Magazine. She is founder and executive director emeritus of the nonprofit literary center, Gemini Ink, and an associate professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio.
Julie DeBondt-Barker is the author of The Mourning After. Since the book’s release, she was invited to become an Ambassador for Beyondblue (an independent, not-for-profit organization), for which she is speaking on the national circuit. She assisted Bishop Gene Robinson’s tour of Australia, “Straight Talk About Gay Marriage.” Born and raised in Oregon she has called Melbourne, Australia, home for the past 28 years.
Katie Hafner is the author of most recently the memoir Mother Daughter Me. She was on staff at The New York Times for ten years, where she remains a frequent contributor, writing on healthcare and technology. She has also worked at Newsweek and BusinessWeek, and has written for The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, The New Republic, The Huffington Post, and O, The Oprah Magazine. She is the author of five previous works of nonfiction covering a diverse range of topics, including the origins of the Internet, computer hackers, German reunification, and the pianist Glenn Gould.
Alan Kaufman is a Bronx-born son of a Holocaust survivor and an Israeli army veteran. One of the founders of the Spoken Word/Slam poetry movement, he is a critically-acclaimed novelist, memoirist, and poet. He is the author of the memoirs Jew Boy (which has recently been optioned for a feature film) and Drunken Angel, the novel Matches, and a volume of poetry entitled, Who Are We?. In his writings, he speaks from the visceral perspective of the modern Jewish experience. The San Francisco based author is also the editor of The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. His anthology, TheOutlaw Bible of American Literature, was reviewed on the cover of the New York Times Book Review. He’s taught at the Academy of Art University and is currently the Dean of the Free University of San Francisco.
Natalie Serber is the author of the story collection Shout Her Lovely Name (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012), a New York Times 100 “Notable Books” of 2012 and a summer reading pick from O, the Oprah Magazine, and an Oregonian Top 10 Books of the Pacific Northwest. Her fiction has appeared in The Bellingham Review, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Inkwell, Hunger Mountain. Essays and reviews have appeared at, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Oregonian, and Hunger Mountain. Awards and grants include the Barbara Deming Grant for Women Artists, Tobias Wolff Award, H.E. Francis Award, John Steinbeck Award, all for fiction, and finalist mentions for the Annie Dillard Creative Nonfiction Award, and The Third Coast Fiction Award. She received an MFA from Warren Wilson College and teaches writing at Marylhurst University in Portland, Oregon. She’s currently working on a novel set in Boring, Oregon.
Ryan Sloan is the author of the forthcoming novel The Plagiarists. His work has appeared in LA Weekly, Nerve, Opium Magazine, and Painted Bride Quarterly. He teaches writing at UC Berkeley, where he also serves as the Program Coordinator for the UC Berkeley Summer Creative Writing Program.
Jane Vandenburgh‘s latest book is The Wrong Dog Dream. She is the award-winning author of two novels, Failure to Zigzag and The Physics of Sunset, as well as the nonfiction works, Architecture of the Novel, A Writer’s Handbook, and The Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century, A Memoir. She has taught writing and literature at U. C. Davis, the George Washington University, and, most recently, at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga, Callfornia. A native of Berkeley, she has returned to live with her family in the West, and with Wayne Thiebaud, her new dog.
Why There Are Words celebrated its third year in January 2013, takes place every second Thursday of the month, and is the brainchild of curator Peg Alford Pursell.
