Come out and join us for this year’s Lit Crawl!
SMC MFA @ Lit Crawl 2014 features Joshua Braff, Lily Brown, Robert Andrew Perez, Susan Sasson and yours truly. Save the date for Saturday, 18 October, 6pm, location TBA.
Re-capping The Hazel Reading Series as a Newly Initiated Hazeler
2014 has already begun with some sweet honors. The second weekend of January not only included a visit from my cousin Evan Napala of the DC-based band Cigarette, who’s music you should give a listen to here. That Saturday, yours truly gave a quick and dirty Composition presentation at a faculty development workshop for Saint Mary’s College, and the weekend was wrapped up with a reading on Market Street in San Francisco at the Hazel Reading Series.
Set in a gallery where artists paint, run a printing press, and fashion clothes, a uniquely SF space that invites the city to joins in full force, The Hazel readers included the below, each invited by last reading’s previous writers, also listed.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses invited by Allison Landa
Sarah Frisch invited by Miriam Bird Greenberg
Mei Li Ooi
Carolyn Cooke invited by Ahmunet Jessica Jordan
Monique Wentzel invited by Lydia Fitzpatrick David
Hazelers are asked to introduce themselves and talk a bit about the piece they’ve chosen to read, which may be something they consider experimental.
Fiction writer and former Stegner fellow, Sarah Frisch posed a speculative piece also about giving birth but played with the idea that men do the deed while their women partners can only stand by and watch.
Mei Li Ooi was most inspiring with a performative piece utilizing the whole space at the front, assuming the role of each of her characters to capture both the audience by emphasizing tone, mood, and the urgency of her story.
Professor and Department Chair of Writing, Consciousness and Creative Inquiry in the MFA Programs at California Institute of Integral Studies, Carolyn Cooke grabbed our attention immediately with a story about San Franciscan insomniacs.
And last but certainly not least, current Stegner Fellow Monique Wentzel read a most intriguing short story about a hole that opened up in the south of U.S. endangering a whole town and all the living.
Each of the writers were phenomenal, and as the organizers had introduced at the beginning, organic themes and threads surfaced with each work. The audience was treated to surprising commonalities such as male protagonists and the theme of birth. The next Hazel Reading Series is 5-7pm, Sunday, February 9, 1154 Market. Its a true literary gem in the Bay Area. Many thanks to Erica Eller, Sara Marinelli, Shruti Swamy, and Mei Le Ooi.
All photos courtesy of PJS.
Please spread the word and mark your calendars: 19 October, 3-4pm “Writing Our Way Home: Shaping Tradition, History and Culture”
Excited to be a part of this upcoming October weekend event. Yours truly will be moderating the panel “Writing Our Way Home: Shaping Tradition, History and Culture” with Luisa Igloria, Jon Pineda, Lysley Tenorio. Hope to see you there! For more info, click here.
Filipino American International Book Festival (Filbookfest 2)
Likhâ ng Lahi. Writing Our Way Home: Shaping Tradition, History and Culture
October 18–20, 2013 • San Francisco Public Library, Main Branch • 100 Larkin Street, San Francisco, CA 94102
Save the Date: “Life After the MFA Panel” @ SMC 11/20/13
Interested in writing fellowships and residencies? Yours truly has been booked in advance to talk about recent fellowships at The MacDowell Colony and the International Retreat for Writers at Hawthornden Castle in Scotland UK for Saint Mary’s College of California’s MFA Creative Writing Program Panel: “Life After the MFA” Wednesday, 20 November, 2:35pm, location on campus TBA.
Hope to see you there!
1928 Saint Mary’s Road, Moraga, CA 94556 (925) 631-4000
Invited for LitCrawl this Fall
Fall calendering is well underway, in addition to speaking on artists’ residencies at Saint Mary’s College “Life After the MFA Panel” on 20 November this autumn, you can also catch some storytelling from yours truly at Babylon Salon’s LitCrawl 2013 event with the theme, “Razor’s Edge” on Saturday 13 October, 19, 6-9pm location TBD.
Keep On Keeping On with Generation X & Y: Monday 4 March, 6-8pm at Saint Mary’s College of California
It’s been said there’s no rest for the wicked, and I must be especially wicked because this Monday, March 4 after reeling from the warm fuzzy glow of literary love shared at SF Cantina’s Babylon Salon, I’ll be moderating a panel discussion with six stellar agents of change who each have something to say about Generation X & Y and the commitment to public service.
Monday, March 4, 2013
6:00pm to 8:00pm
Soda Activity Center,
Saint Mary’s College of California,
1928 St. Mary’s Rd., Moraga
The voices of tomorrow are here now. The College is thrilled to welcome six high-achieving guest panelists — all representing Generation X and Y — who will address the key questions regarding the legacies they’ve inherited from the Baby Boom generation:
— What are Generation X and Y interested in and committed to in the world around them?
— Why have they chosen a career path of service to their communities?
The evening’s conversation — part of the sesquicentennial series of “Great(est) Conversation(s)” — will include a question and answer session designed to stimulate multi-generational discourse and underscore a core Saint Mary’s College idea: Enter to Learn, Leave to Serve.
Panelists: Malia Cohen, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors; Evan Low, member of the City Council and former mayor of Campbell, Calif.; Laura Martinez, mayor of East Palo Alto, Calif.; Jahmese Myres, research and policy associate, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, Oakland, Calif.; Felicia Phillips, principal, Bella Vista Elementary School, Oakland, Calif.; and Jeremy Yamaguchi, mayor of Placentia, Calif.
Sponsored by the Liberal & Civic Studies Program and co-sponsored by the Communication and History Department, the Leadership & Organizational Studies Program and the Catholic Institute for Lasallian Social Action.
For more info click here.
Revving Engine for Babylon Salon: 2 March 2013, 7pm
If you’re in the city this weekend, please consider stopping by Cantina SF for some literary love and libations.
Free Admission — Cash Bar Exotica
Doors at 7, Reading at 7:30
Doors at 7, Reading at 7:30
Cantina SF – 580 Sutter St, San Francisco
Babylon Salon
presents:
Our Spring Reading
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 7:00 PM at Cantina SF (basement)
featuring
Hugo & Nebula award-winning author Terry Bisson
& acclaimed author of West of Kabul, East of New York Tamim Ansary
Also presenting transmedia artist Kate Durbin, novelist Renee Thompson, author of The Plume Hunter, and essayist and short story writer Rashaan Alexis Meneses.
Terry Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories. Several of his works, including “Bears Discover Fire”, have won top awards in the science fiction community, such as the Hugo and the Nebula.
Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic
Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Edutopia, Parade, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the U.S. in 1964. He lives in San Francisco, where he is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
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San Francisco Wins @ Cantina SF, 2 March 2013, 7:30pm
Let’s not be sad about Sunday’s outcome. San Francisco is still a city to be proud of because it’s home to winning readers & writers, some of whom will be reading their work, myself included, Saturday, March 2, 7:30pm at Cantina SF. Aside from a stellar roster, Cantina SF serves some tasty cocktails. Below are the details. Please consider marking your calendar and forwarding to all interested parties.
Our Spring Reading
Saturday, March 2, 2013, 7:00 PM at Cantina SF (basement)
featuring
Hugo & Nebula award-winning author Terry Bisson
& Afghan-American author Tamim Ansary
Also presenting transmedia artist Kate Durbin, novelist and screenwriter Louis B. Jones, author of California’s Over and Radiance, novelist Renee Thompson, author of The Plume Hunter, and essayist and short story writer Rashaan Alexis Meneses.
Terry Bisson is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his short stories. Several of his works, including “Bears Discover Fire”, have won top awards in the science fiction community, such as the Hugo and the Nebula.
Tamim Ansary is the author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World through Islamic Eyes and West of Kabul, East of New York, among other books. For ten years he wrote a monthly column for Encarta.com, and has published essays and commentary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Edutopia, Parade, Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. Born in Afghanistan in 1948, he moved to the U.S. in 1964. He lives in San Francisco, where he is director of the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Excerpt on the Re-Cap of Mills College Workshop: Geography as the Body
From Ruelle Electrique’s “Geography as the Body & Inherited Landscapes: A Shamefully Overdue Re-cap on the Mills College Workshop, November 18, 2012”:
Absolutely and positively late in re-capping but still here it is, an overview of the Mills workshop that your salonniere was invited to as a guest speaker hosted and organized by the gracious and talented writer and publisher melissa r. sipin , sponsored by ANAKBAYAN East Bay, TAYO Literary Magazine, Philippine American Writers & Artists and Mills College. The Political Content & Engagement Writing Workshop was a series of five free writing workshops where participants from all age ranges and from across the Bay Area also performed at a reading gala and had their work published in the “i am ND” anthology…
…When it came time for writing, yours truly created prompts to play with ideas on memory and/or cultural amnesia regarding native land, family, culture and tradition. The students wrote about body and space, concerning their hometowns of Vallejo, Toulumne, Los Angeles, and my neck of the woods, Paradise Hills in East County San Diego. The slides below are from the presentation on “Love & Labour: Geography and the Body” where writers explored their childhood neighborhoods and were challenged to describe their homes as a lover or an old friend.
Read the entire excerpt here.
Excerpt on Lysley Tenorio’s Reading at San Francisco Philippine Consulate
On Wednesday November 28, after a wet and windy day, yours truly had the pleasure and honor of introducing my grad school mentor and thesis advisor fiction writer and Professor Lysley Tenorio, who’s new book, Monstress, a short story collection, was recently published by Ecco. Organized by PAWA Inc and hosted by the San Francisco Philippine Consulate, the literary event was started off with a welcome from the Consul General.
The introduction went something like this:
A former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, Lysley Tenorio has received a Whiting Writer’s
Award, fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and the National Endowment for the Arts. His stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story, Ploughshares, Manoa, The Chicago Tribune, and The Best New American Voices along with Pushcart Prize anthologies.
His latest book, Monstress published by Ecco/HarperCollins was reviewed in the New York Times where ANDREW HAIG MARTIN called his collection “a refreshingly off-kilter approach to the lives of Filipinos in America.”
Katy Waldman from SLATE.com wrote “it is the unassuming pitch of these stories that makes them so exquisitely deadly.”
And Dan Lopez in Lambda Literary described the collection saying: Hard lives and hard choices take center stage in Monstress, but this is no bleak landscape that Tenorio limns. Woven throughout the collection is a wry narrative of ambition. These characters whether they are gay or straight, American or Filipino, all share an abiding desire to succeed, their shared identity of otherness paradoxically empowering as it appears to disenfranchise. In that sense, they belong to a larger project of outsider fiction.”
To read more about the event, click here.
Rashaan Alexis Meneses 