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7:00pm PDT
Strong Medicine: The Poetry of Addiction
Authors and Participants 
Kim Addonizio has been called “one of our nation’s most provocative and edgy poets.” She is the author of six poetry collections, two novels, two story collections, and two books on writing poetry. She also plays blues harmonica and has two word/music CDs: Swearing, Smoking...
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Lynn Emanuel’s poetry has been described as “virtuoso,” “brimming with unfailing invention.” She is the author of five books of poetry. The most recent, The Nerve Of It : Poems New and Selected, was awarded the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets...
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Owen Lewis is the author of two collections, Marriage Map and Sometimes Full of Daylight. Recent honors include the 2016
International Hippocrates Prize for Poetry and Medicine, 2016 Jean Pendrick Chapbook Award (for best man),and finalist for the 2017 Pablo Neruda Award. A professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, he teaches medical humanities...
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Dawn McGuire is a neurologist-poet and the author of four poetry collections, most recently American Dream with Exit Wound, a 2018 Northern California Book Award finalist. Born in Appalachian Eastern Kentucky, she has received numerous poetry honors, including the 2013 Indie Book...
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sam sax is the author of Madness (Penguin, 2017) winner of The National Poetry Series and ‘Bury It’ (Wesleyan University Press, 2018) winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. He’s received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lambda...
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12:00pm PDT
Words Around the World: A Sense of Place
Moderators 
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of six novels, including A Thin Bright Line and The Evolution of Love. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination...
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Carol Bensimon was born in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, in 1982. She is the author of the story collection Pó de parede and two novels, Sinuca embaixo d’água and Todos nós adorávamos caubóis. In 2012 she was selected by Granta as one of the Best Young Brazilian...
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Ófeigur Sigurðsson was born in Reykjavík in 1975. He is a graduate of the University of Iceland with a degree in philosophy. He made his poetry debut in 2001 with Skál fyrir skammdeginu (Cheers to the Winter Darkness), and published his first novel, Áferð (Texture), in 2005...
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1:00pm PDT
David Harris: The War Over California's Redwoods
Authors and Participants 
David Harris has raised two children, has played in a lot of pick up basketball games, belongs to a local peace group, is an original member of the Global Business Network, and is a practising freelance Buddhist. He has lived in Mill Valley, California, on the edge of the Golden...
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KRISTIN KAYE is an award-winning author, ghostwriter and teacher whose work sits at the intersection of nature, narrative and spirituality. Her most recent book, Tree Dreams: A Novel, has given gave rise to a global tree tagging campaign that celebrates the myriad ways we are connected...
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1:00pm PDT
1:30pm PDT
Words Around the World: Ireland's Stinging Fly Magazine
Moderators 
Declan Meade is the publisher, editor, and co-founder of The Stinging Fly literary magazine, which focuses on showcasing new and emerging Irish and international writers.
Wendy Erskine lives in Belfast. Her debut collection of stories, Sweet Home, is forthcoming from The Stinging Fly Press.
Jessica Traynor’s debut poetry collection, Liffey Swim (Dedalus Press, 2014), was shortlisted for the Strong/Shine Award. In 2016, and was named one of the best poetry debuts of the past five years on Bustle.com. She’s currently under commission by Poetry Ireland, and has also...
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3:00pm PDT
Family Matters: Stories of Love, Courage, and Immigration
Moderators 
Mary Volmer is the author of two novels: Crown of Dust (Soho Press, 2010) and Reliance, Illinois (Soho Press, 2016). Her essays, reviews, and short stories have appeared in various publications, including Mutha Magazine, the Farallon Review, Women’s Basketball Magazine, Fiction...
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Lauren Markham is writer and educator based in Berkeley who writes fiction, essays, and literary journalism. Her book, The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, was published by Crown in 2017, and was the winner of the Ridenhour Prize, silver medal...
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Kristina McMorris is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her novels have garnered more than twenty national literary awards, and includeLetters from Home, Bridge of Scarlet Leaves, The Pieces We Keep, and The Edge of Lost, in addition to novellas featured in A Winter...
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Debbie Clarke Moderow is the author of Fast Into the Night: A Woman, Her Dogs, and their Journey North on the Iditarod Trail. The memoir recounts her experience running Alaska’s Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race and explores her deepening and inextricable bond with her team of Alaskan...
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I am the third child of Alabama sharecroppers and the first and only member of my family to finish high school. I never attended college or any writing classes. I taught myself how to write and started writing short stories around age four. I spent the first part of my life in Alabama...
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7:00pm PDT
Bodies and What to Do with Them: Virgie Tovar & Daniel Handler
Moderators 
Daniel Handler is the author of six novels, most recently All the Dirty Parts, and far too many books as Lemony Snicket, most recently The Bad Mood and the Stick. His essay on the Eurythmics album Savage is still considered definitive.
Virgie Tovar is an author, activist and one of the nation's leading experts and lecturers on fat discrimination and body image. She pens a weekly column called "Take the Cake," and is the founder of Babecamp, a four-week online course designed to help women who are ready to break...
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Saturday October 13, 2018 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Strut
7:00pm PDT
Up All Night: The Page-Turner
Moderators 
Barbara Lane has produced complex live events, interviewed cultural and political figures on-air and on-stage, managed staff and budget, and strategized marketing campaigns. She is also an experienced print journalist and copy editor.
Lucy Jane Bledsoe is the author of six novels, including A Thin Bright Line and The Evolution of Love. Her fiction has won a California Arts Council Fellowship in Literature, an American Library Association Stonewall Award, the Arts & Letters Fiction Prize, a Pushcart nomination...
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JULIA DIXON EVANS lives in San Diego. How to Set Yourself on Fire is her first novel. Her fiction has appeared in Monkeybicycle, The Fanzine, Hobart, Paper Darts, and elsewhere. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Like The Wind Magazine and Barrelhouse. She is an editor and program...
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Bonnie C Monte grew up in Brooklyn before it was the nexus of cool. After graduating from Brooklyn College, she moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she has enjoyed a long editorial career that has included a decade on the staff of a national magazine, editing gardening books...
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Kate Raphael is a San Francisco Bay Area writer, feminist and queer activist and radio journalist, who makes her living as a law firm word processor. She lived in Palestine for eighteen months as a member of the International Women’s Peace Service, documenting human rights abuses...
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8:00pm PDT
Grace Notes: Poets at Grace Cathedral
Authors and Participants 
Shauna Hannibal is the author of Hannibal (Forklift Books, 2017), her debut collection of poetry. Her work has appeared in jubilat, Big Bell, Forklift, Ohio, and other places. She lives in San Francisco.
Born in Newry in 1968 and raised in Dundalk, Conor O’Callaghan is the author of five poetry collections: Live Streaming (2017); The Sun King (2013); Fiction (2005); Seatown (1999); and The History of Rain (1993), which won the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award; all published...
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Charif Shanahan is the author of Into Each Room We Enter without Knowing (2017), which won the 2015 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, he is currently a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
Monica Sok is the author of Year Zero (Poetry Society of America, 2016) and has been awarded with fellowships from Kundiman, NEA, and a "Discovery"/ Boston Review Poetry Prize. She is a 2018-2020 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University.
12:00pm PDT
Words Around the World: Family
Moderators 
Jack Boulware is a San Francisco Library Laureate, journalist, and author of three books. He is co-founder of San Francisco's Litquake literary festival,
Emer Martin is a Dubliner who has lived in Paris, London, the Middle East, and various parts of the U.S. Her first novel, Breakfast in Babylon, won Book of the Year 1996 at the prestigious Listowel Writers’ Week. More Bread Or I’ll Appear, her second novel, was published internationally...
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Kagiso Lesego Molope was born and educated in South Africa. Her first novel, Dancing in the Dust (Mawenzi House) was on the IBBY Honour
List for 2006. Her second novel, The Mending Season, was chosen to be on the school curriculum in South Africa. This Book Betrays My Brother was awarded the Percy Fitzpatrick Prize by the English Academy of Southern Africa, where it was first published. She lives in Ottawa...
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Jaap Robben (1984) is a poet, playwright, performer and acclaimed children’s author. You Have Me to Love, his first novel for adults, has received international glowing reviews and is the winner of the 2014 Dutch Booksellers Award, the Dioraphte Prize, and the ANV Award for best...
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1:00pm PDT
Zombies in Nature: A Conversation with Matt Simon
Authors and Participants 
Susan Freinkel is a science writer whose work has appeared in a variety of national publications including: Discover, Reader’s Digest, Smithsonian, The New York Times, OnEarth, Health, and Real Simple. In 2005, she was awarded an Alicia Patterson Fellowship, which allowed her to...
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Matt Simon is a science writer at Wired magazine, where he specializes in zoology, particularly of the bizarre variety, and the author of The Wasp That Brainwashed the Caterpillar. He is one of just a handful of humans to witness the fabled mating ritual of the axolotl salamande...
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1:30pm PDT
Words Around the World: War & Espionage
Moderators 
David Corbett is the author of six critically acclaimed novels, including The Devil’s Redhead (nominated for both the Anthony and Barry Awards for Best First Novel); Done for a Dime (a New York Times Notable Book); Blood of Paradise (named one of the Top Ten Mysteries and Thrillers...
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Born in Chicago, Mary Jo McConahay is an award-winning reporter who covered the wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. She has traveled in 70 countries and has been fascinated by the history of World War II since childhood, when she listened to the stories of her...
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3:00pm PDT
Words Around the World: Belonging
Moderators 
Laura Goode is a poet, essayist, novelist, screenwriter, producer, and intersectional feminist. She writes author bios in the third person.Her collection of poems BECOME A NAME was released by Fathom Books in October 2016. "This collection," wrote the poet Harmony Holiday, "possesses...
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Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer, speaker and political analyst in issues related to race, gender and democracy. With her successful debut Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home, she has established herself as one of the most exciting new contemporary voices in...
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Kim Sagwa is the author of several novels, story collections, and works of nonfiction, and she has been shortlisted for several major South Korean awards, including the Munji Prize and the Young Writers Award. Kim contributes columns to two major Seoul newspapers, and she co-translated...
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4:00pm PDT
6:00pm PDT
Women Poets of North Beach
Moderators 
Judith Ayn Bernhard is a poet, translator and woman about town.
Jennifer Barone is an Italian-American poet and artist. She is author of three books of poetry, most recently Saporoso: Poems of Italian Food & Love (Feather Press). She is known to collaborate with artists and musicians as founder and co-host of the monthly
WordParty Poetry & ...
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Kristina Brown spent most of her childhood in Japan, but has lived most of her life in North Beach. She writes both poetry and prose. Sometimes she writes about what people will, and will not, do for love.
Sharon Doubiago is the author of 11 collections of award-winning poetry, including the recent Naked to the Earth. Psyche Drives the Coast won the Oregon Book Award for Poetry. She's a recipient of three Pushcart Prizes, two Oregon Arts Fellowships, and is a National Book Award nominee...
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Agneta Falk (Swedish born) is a poet, painter, editor and translator. She is author of four collections of poetry, and is represented in anthologies worldwide. Her poetry is translated into many languages and she frequently reads at International Poetry Festivals. Recently she was...
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Jessica Loos is a poet and performer living in North Beach. She is also an event organizer, collage artist, member of The Living Theater, former freelance writer for High Times magazine, and plays tambourine.
Rosemary Manno has lived in North Beach since 1983. She awaits release of her new and selected poems from Barncott Press in London, entitled Marseille. She lives with artist-musician Roger Strobel and their dog Blanca, and sometimes works at Galileo High School. Also a visual artist...
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7:00pm PDT
Craving: Esther Gerritsen & Alice Sebold
Authors and Participants 
Esther Gerritsen (1972) is a Dutch novelist, columnist, and scriptwriter. She made her literary debut in 2000. She is one of the most established, widely read, and highly praised authors in the Netherlands. Gerritsen had the honor of writing the Dutch Book Week gift in 2016, which...
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Alice Sebold is author of the #1 bestselling novels The Lovely Bones and The Almost Moon, and the memoir Lucky. She grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and attended Syracuse University as well as the University of Houston and U.C. Irvine. She has contributed to numerous anthologies...
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6:00pm PDT
New Native Voices: A Place of Many Nations
Authors and Participants 
Julian Talamantez Brolaski’s most recent book is Of Mongrelitude (Wave Books, 2017), which was recently shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. It is also the author of Advice for Lovers (City Lights 2012) and Gowanus Atropolis (Ugly Duckling Presse...
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Heid E. Erdrich is the author of five collections of poetry, and editor of the new anthology New Poets of Native Nations. Heid’s nonfiction work, Original Local: Indigenous Foods, Stories and Recipes from the Upper Midwest, earned a City Pages Best Food Book of 2014 designation...
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Jennifer Elise Foerster earned her PhD in English and Literary Arts from the University of Denver and her MFA from the Vermont College of the Fine Arts. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, a Lannan Foundation Writing Residency Fellowship...
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Greg Sarris received his Ph.D. in Modern Thought and Literature from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Walter Gore Award for excellence in teaching. He has published several books, including Grand Avenue (1994), an award-winning collection of short stories, which he adapted...
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7:00pm PDT
Doubling Down: A Conversation on Writing, Publishing, and Art
Authors and Participants 
Bridget Quinn is a writer, art history scholar, and educator, and author of Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order), named a “Top 10 in Memoirs and Biographies” by Publishers Weekly, and an Amazon pick for Best Art & Photography Books. She’s worked...
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Bridget Watson Payne is a writer, artist, and art book editor. She is author of the books How Art Can Make You Happy, The Secret Art of Being a Grown-Up, This is Happening: Life Through the Lens of Instagram, and New York Jackie: Pictures from Her Life in the City, all from Chronicle...
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7:00pm PDT
Unlikeable Female
Authors and Participants 
Kate Folk is a writer whose fiction and essays have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Prairie Schooner, One Story, Granta, and many other publications. She has completed a story collection, Doe Eyes, and is currently at work on a novel about artificially intelligent limbs...
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Lydia Kiesling is the editor of The Millions, where she has been writing reviews, essays, and the semi-regular Modern Library Revue since 2009. Her writing has appeared at a variety of outlets including The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, The Guardian, and Slate, and...
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Margaret Ross is the author of A Timeshare (Omnidawn, 2015). She lives in Berkeley and teaches at Stanford where she is a Jones Lecturer in Poetry.
Jenny Xie is a writer and design journalist based in Oakland, California. Her work has appeared in journals like Ninth Letter Online, PANK Online, Necessary Fiction, Adroit Journal, Phoebe, Hyphen Magazine, Gulf Coast Online, and The Offing, among others. She won the 2014 Driftless...
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C Pam Zhang’s debut novel HOW MUCH OF THESE HILLS IS GOLD is forthcoming from Riverhead Books in the US, as well as several international publishers. Her short fiction appears in places like McSweeney’s Quarterly, Kenyon Review, and The Fairy Tale Review. She’s received scholarships...
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7:30pm PDT
Straight, No Chaser: Writers at the Bar
Authors and Participants 
T.J. English is the author of eight nonfiction crime books, including Havana Nocturne, The Corporation, The Savage City, and The Westies. Four of his books have been New York Times bestsellers, and four have been nominated for an Edgar Award. His books are known for the thoroughness...
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Danny Gardner is author of the Indie and Shamus Award-nominated debut novel A Negro and an Ofay. His short story "Brother's Keeper" appears in the award-winning anthology The Obama Inheritance. Other works of crime fiction appear in the Anthony Award-nominated anthologies Killing...
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Misha Rai is the 2018-2020 Kenyon Review Fellow in Prose. Her novel-in-progress, Blood We Did Not Spill, has been awarded a 2018 MacDowell Colony Fellowship, The Dana Award in the novel category, and the Woodrow Wilson Dissertation Fellowship in Women’s Studies. She has also been...
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Rebecca Skloot is author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, which was made into an Emmy-nominated HBO film. Lacks took more than a decade to research and write, and instantly hit the New York Times bestseller list, where it has remained for...
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Alia Volz is a homegrown San Franciscan. You'll find her work in The Best American Essays 2017, Golden State 2017: Best New Writing from California, The New York Times, Tin House, Threepenny Review, River Teeth and the anthology Dig If You Will The Picture: Writers Reflect on Prince...
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7:00pm PDT
An Evening with Counterpoint Press
Moderators 
Jack Shoemaker was born in California in 1946, and came of age working as a bookseller at a time of political and literary revolution on the West Coast. He has been co-founder, editor, and publisher of three major independent imprints, North Point Press, Counterpoint, and his current...
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Sylvia Brownrigg is the author of several acclaimed works of fiction: five novels—Pages for Her, sequel to the 2001 Lambda Award winning Pages for You, The Delivery Room, winner of the Northern California Book Award, and The Metaphysical Touch—as well as a collection of stories...
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Cristina García is the author of seven novels, including Dreaming in Cuban, a finalist for the National Book Award that just celebrated its 25th anniversary; The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, A Handbook to Luck, The Lady Matador’s Hotel, and King of Cuba. Her work has been translated...
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Born and raised in New Orleans, MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. She was a recipient of the Lombard Fellowship and spent a year in the Dominican Republic working for a civil rights organization and writing. Her debut novel...
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6:30pm PDT
The City Is Already Speaking: The Sound of Calle 24
Authors and Participants 
Josiah Luis Alderete is a full-blooded Pocho indio who refries his beans and poesia in Spanglish. He was one of the founding members of outspoken word troupe The Molotov Mouths, and is also a radio insurgente whose stories have aired on KALW and KPFA. He was deported from La Misión...
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Simon Crafts is a poet and bookseller at Alley Cat Books. He shares a birthday with Walter Benjamin and Roky Erickson.
Flavia Elisa is an immigrant artivist from Mexico, raised in San Francisco. Her writing focuses on her experience as an immigrant chingonx, spiritual old soul, on her role in intersectional feminism, and the systematic oppression of POC.
E.K. Keith is a Latinx poet who calls San Francisco home and calls Texas regularly to keep in touch with her family. She organizes Poems Under the Dome, the annual open mic celebration of poetry inside San Francisco’s City Hall. Nomadic Press will release her book Ordinary Villains in...
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Born and raised in San Francisco, Thea Matthews is a queer Black and Mexican American awarded poet, spoken-word artist, activist, curator, bruja, revolutionary, collaborator, and researcher. She writes on the complexities of trauma, grief, resiliency, and ultimately, triumph over...
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Linda Noel is a Native Californian of the Koyungkowi people from the Northern Sierra. She has been included in many anthologies and is Poet Laureate Emerita of Ukiah, California.
Raul Ruiz is a poet and current participant in the experimental vocal noise group Foreignfire (
www.foreignfire.com).
Kim Shuck embraces the fool and jester qualities of being a modern poet and artist. She is a devotee of San Francisco, whose hills she wanders nearly always on foot. Her maternal grandparents met at the Polish Hall on Shotwell, and she spent many hours with her mother and grandmother...
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Denise Sullivan is an author, journalist, cultural worker, and literary organizer originally from the Ingleside District who has lived and worked in Atlanta and Los Angeles, the Mission and the Haight. A former member of the Modern Times Bookstore Collective, and co-founder of the...
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Ricardo Tavarez’s writing is influenced by culture, labor history and activism. He co-founded Pan Dulce Poets and is part of La Brigada, a collective that organizes the International Flor Y Canto Literary Festival. His writing has appeared in Acentos Review, Cipactli Journal, Occupoetry, and...
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7:00pm PDT
Word for Word: Octavio Solis
Moderators 
Oscar Villalon is the managing editor of ZYZZYVA. His reviews, essays, and interviews have been published in VQR, Zocalo, The Believer, Lit Hub, The Daily Beast, and many other publications. A former board member of the National Book Critics Circle, and past book editor of the San...
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Sheila Balter has worked at theaters in the Bay Area and beyond, and has been a member of Word for Word Performing Arts Company for over 20 years. She acts with the company and has branched out into directing several of their productions, including work by Tobias Wolff, Sandra Cisneros...
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Author of over 20 plays, Octavio Solis is considered by many to be one of the most prominent Latino playwrights in America. With works that both draw on and transcend the Mexican-American experience, he is a writer and director whose style defies formula, examining the darkness, magic...
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Thursday October 18, 2018 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
Elbo Room
7:00pm PDT
Afterwords: Short Books About Great Books
Authors and Participants 
Adam Colman is the author of New Uses for Failure: Ben Lerner’s 10:04. He has written for The Believer, KCRW's and McSweeney's Organist podcast, The Nervous Breakdown, and more. His book on the origins of the addiction aesthetic is forthcoming from Palgrave.
Alden Jones is the author of The Wanting Was a Wilderness, forthcoming from Fiction Advocate. Her story collection, Unaccompanied Minors, won of the New American Fiction Prize, the Lascaux Book Prize, and an Independent Publishers Book Award in Short Fiction. Her memoir, The Blind...
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Stephanie Reents is author of The Kissing List, a collection of stories that was an Editors Choice in The New York Times Book Review. Her short fiction has appeared in the O. Henry Prize Stories, Best of the West, and numerous other journals. She teaches in the English Department...
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Irena Yamboliev got her PhD in English literature from Stanford, and writes about ornamental style in nineteenth-century novels, the literature of love and generations, and queer ecologies. Her work has appeared or is appearing in Victorian Literature and Culture, The Boston Review...
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7:00pm PDT
Global Fiction: The Novel and the World
Authors and Participants 
Judy Juanita’s De Facto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland [EquiDistance, 2016] explores key shifts and contradictions in her own artistic development as it explores black and female empowerment. Her semi-autobiographical debut novel, Virgin Soul [Viking, 2013], features a...
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Michael David Lukas 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. Translated into more than a dozen languages, his first novel The Oracle of Stamboul was a finalist for the California...
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Nayomi Munaweera's debut novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors was long-listed for the Man Asia Literary Prize, short-listed for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature and won the Commonwealth Prize for Asia. Her second critically acclaimed novel, What Lies Between Us won the Sri...
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Ethel Rohan is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and short story writer. She won the Nautilus Award for her debut novel The Weight of Him and the Bryan MacMahon Short Story Award. She was also shortlisted for the CUIRT, Roberts, and Bristol Short Story Prizes, and longlisted for...
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Sarah Stone's new novel Hungry Ghost Theater will be published in October by WTAW Press. Her previous novel, The True Sources of the Nile was a BookSense 76 selection, has been translated into German and Dutch, and was included in Geoff Wisner’s A Basket of Leaves: 99 Books That...
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