Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series presents seven award-winning writers reading from their works on the theme “Serendipity” on March 14, 2013. Get down to Studio 333 to discover what literary fortune awaits in this Chinese Year of the Snake! Doors open at 7 pm & we begin at 7:15. $10. Bring extra cash for books and booze.
Rahimeh Andalibian is the author of the memoir, The Rose Hotel, which chronicles the story of her Iranian Muslim family and their fight to strive after being uprooted from their homeland to California during the Iranian Revolution of l979. The Rose Hotel has received rave reviews and recently topped Amazon’s #1 bestseller list in the memoir category. She has worked as a licensed clinical psychologist in Laguna Beach and New York City, conducting intergenerational family therapy sessions with individuals, children, couples, and families. She employs creative expression and storytelling to support others in understanding their suffering and break through encrusted communication patterns to create positive change in themselves and the world.
Daniel Levin Becker is Reviews Editor of The Believer and a member of the Paris-based Oulipo collective. His first book, Many Subtle Channels: In Praise of Potential Literature, was published by Harvard University Press in 2012.
Beth Bosworth won the 2012 Drue Heinz Literature Prize for her short fiction collection The Source of Life and Other Stories, published by the University of Pittsburgh Press. She has taught at the New School for Social Research, CUNY’s NYC Technical College, and for many years at Saint Ann’s School in Brooklyn, where she is also founding editor of the Saint Ann’s Review. Her publications include a novel, Tunneling, and a collection of short stories, A Burden of Earth. Her stories have appeared in the Kenyon Review, the Seneca Review, Forward, IMAGE, Hanging Loose, Guernica, and elsewhere.
Laurie Ann Doyle admits to being born in Bakersfield way before it was shrouded in smog. She’s won the Alligator Juniper National Fiction Award, as well as nominations for a 2012 Pushcart Prize and Best New American Voices 2008. Her short stories, essays, and poems have appeared in over a dozen literary publications, including Arroyo Literary Review, Dogwood Journal, and Farallon Review. She teaches writing at UC Berkeley, co-hosts San Francisco’s eclectic reading series Babylon Salon, and is hard at work on a book of stories touching on love, death, and a few points in between.
Recipient of the 2004 Ferro-Grumley and Violet Quill awards for his first novel, Through It Came Bright Colors (Harrington Park Press), Trebor Healey is also the author of a collection of poems, Sweet Son of Pan, (Suspect Thoughts, 2006), as well as a short story collection, A Perfect Scar & Other Stories (Harrington Park Press, 2007). He co-edited (with Marci Blackman) Beyond Definition: New Writing from Gay and Lesbian San Francisco (Manic D Press, 1994) and co-edited (with Amie M. Evans) Queer & Catholic (Routledge, 2008). His novels Faun (Lethe Press) and A Horse Named Sorrow (University of Wisconsin Press) were released this fall.
Ron Nyren’s fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, The Missouri Review, The North American Review, Glimmer Train Stories, Mississippi Review, and elsewhere. He has an MFA in creative writing from the University of Michigan and is a former Stegner Fellow, a former editor of Furious Fictions: The Magazine of Short-Short Stories, and co-author, with Sarah Stone, of Deepening Fiction: A Practical Guide for Intermediate and Advanced Writers. He currently works as a freelance writer and teaches for Stanford Continuing Studies.
Elaine Russell’s first adult novel, Across the Mekong River (2012), developed from an interest in the Hmong community in Sacramento and a subsequent trip to Laos. The novel was a finalist in the Carolina Wren Press 2010 Doris Bawkin Award, the Maui Writer’s Conference 2003 Rupert Hughes Writing Competition, and the Focus on Writers 2001 Friends of the Sacramento Library Awards. Other published works include short stories for adults and children and the Martin McMillan middle-grade adventure series (2004 and 2012). Elaine graduated with a BA in History at UC Davis and an MA in Economics at CSU Sacramento. After working for many years as an environmental consultant, she turned to writing full time.
