Join Why There Are Words on August 9, 2018, at Studio 333 in Sausalito when the following seven acclaimed authors read from their works to welcome us “Back from Vacation!” Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15, $10 entry fee at the door. Cash bar.
Mathieu Cailler’s poetry and prose have been widely featured in numerous national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Saturday Evening Post. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, he is the recipient of a Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction and a Shakespeare Award for Poetry. He is the author of Clotheslines (Red Bird Press, 2014), Shhh (ELJ Publications, 2014), and Loss Angeles (Short Story America Press, 2015), which has been honored by the Hollywood, New York, London, Paris, Best Book, and International Book Awards. His newest book, May I Have This Dance? (About Editions, 2017), was recently named poetry winner of the New England Book Festival.
Geraldine Connolly is the author of a chapbook and four poetry collections, including the recently published Aileron (Terrapin Books, March 2018). Her work has appeared in Poetry, Shenandoah, The Gettysburg Review, and The Cortland Review. She has taught at the Writers Center in Bethesda, Maryland, The Chautauqua Institution, and the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland Arts Council, the Breadloaf Writers Conference, and the Cafritz Foundation. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Yang Huang grew up in China’s Jiangsu province and participated in the 1989 student uprisings. Her linked family story collection, My Old Faithful (University of Massachusetts Press, February 2018), won the Juniper Prize for Fiction. Her debut novel, Living Treasures (Harvard Square Editions, 2014), won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal in fiction. Her essays and short stories have appeared in Poets & Writers, The Margins, Eleven Eleven, Asian Pacific American Journal, the Evansville Review, and others. She lives in the Bay Area and works for the University of California, Berkeley.
Audrey Kalman writes literary fiction with a dark edge, often about what goes awry when human connection is missing from our lives. She is the author of two novels—What Remains Unsaid (Sand Hill Review Press 2017) and Dance of Souls (CreateSpace, 2011)—and a book of short stories, Tiny Shoes Dancing (Terrella Media, August 2018). She lives in northern California and is working on another novel.
Susanna Solomon is the author of Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls, (HD Media Press Inc., 2013) and More Point Reyes Sheriff’s Calls (Lucky Bat Books, 2016). Her stories have been published in the Literary Review, the Point Reyes Light, and online in the Mill Valley Literary Review and Harlot’s Sauce Radio. She’s run her own an electrical engineering business for eighteen years. Her latest book, Montana Rhapsody (She Writes Press, July 2018), is about a pole dancer, a farmer, and a river.
Valerie Wallace’s debut poetry collection House of McQueen (Four Way Books, March 2018) was chosen by Vievee Francis for the Four Way Books Intro Prize in Poetry. In their starred review Publishers Weekly said that Wallace created “…a literary seance…serving as a scholar of and medium for the late iconic fashion designer Alexander McQueen….” Her work was chosen by Margaret Atwood for the 2012 Atty Award, and she has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award and the San Miguel de Allende Writers Conference Award in Poetry. Earning her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she is Associate Director of Communications for the project Virtue, Happiness, & the Meaning of Life at the University of Chicago, and teaches courses and workshops throughout the Chicago area.
Maw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet and educator who lives and works in the Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in many journals and several anthologies, including Cimarron Review, Poetry International, Fanzine, The Fabulist, and others. Her poetry chapbook Score and Bone (2016) was published by Nomadic Press, and her full-length collection Invisible Gifts: Poems (May 2018) was recently published by Manic D Press. She is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito. She often collaborates with visual artists, musicians, and other writers, and a collaborative book with paintings by artist Mark Dutcher, Ruins of a glittering palace, was published by SPA/Commonwealth Projects in 2013. Along with composer and musician, Amanda Chaudhary, she is part of musical duo Pitta of the Mind that combines poetry with abstract electronic music.
Why There Are Words (WTAW) is an award-winning national reading series founded in Sausalito in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, now expanded to six additional major cities in the U.S., with more planned in the future. The series draws a full house of Bay Area residents every second Thursday to Studio 333, located at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965. The series is a program of the 501(c)3 non-profit WTAW Press, publisher of award-winning exceptional literary books.
