Mark your calendar for SPC's annual event at the home of Mimi and Burnett Miller! Head to 1224 40th Street in Sacramento.
This annual event runs from 6-8 p.m. and will feature poetry by Theresa Vinciguerra and Danyen Powell and music by the American River College Vocal Jazz Quartet.
Your donation or purchase of a membership will help SPC to continue the great work it has been doing for 30 years now. RSVP to SPC president (and Sacramento Poet Laureate!) Bob Stanley at bobstanley@sbcglobal.net or by phone at 979-9706--or just show up at the door!
Munchies and libations provided. Come join the fun--I'll see you there!
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Pam Houston to read at Poetry Night at Bistro 33 *tomorrow*!
Come out to Bistro 33 in Davis tomorrow night (Weds, 11/18) and hear work by Pam Houston, award-winning fiction writer and director of the UC Davis Creative Writing Program.
I'll see you there!
I'll see you there!
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Friday, 11/13: poetry/dance/music at Guild Theater--and I'm reading!
Hello writers,
If you're looking for some great words and performing arts, come to the Guild Theater in Sacramento this Friday night, 11/13, from 6 to 11 PM.
Here's the lineup I was given. Come by and say hi--I'll be reading between 6 and 7 PM!
(for questions, contact Terry Moore at fromtheheart@hotmail.com)
6 to 7 pm
Jim Nolt
Emmanuel Sigauke
Bari Kennedy
Kate Asche
Danny Romero
Anna Marie
7 to 8 pm
Frank Withrow
Lawrence Dinkins
Sam Pierstorff
Quinton Duval
8 to 9pm – Music by LSB, and vocalist Carla Fleming, Dance by Justice
9 to 10pm
Kathleen Lynch
Brad Buchanan
Terry Moore
Supanova
10 to 11pm
Phoenix Reign
TBA
Bob Stanley
If you're looking for some great words and performing arts, come to the Guild Theater in Sacramento this Friday night, 11/13, from 6 to 11 PM.
Here's the lineup I was given. Come by and say hi--I'll be reading between 6 and 7 PM!
(for questions, contact Terry Moore at fromtheheart@hotmail.com)
6 to 7 pm
Jim Nolt
Emmanuel Sigauke
Bari Kennedy
Kate Asche
Danny Romero
Anna Marie
7 to 8 pm
Frank Withrow
Lawrence Dinkins
Sam Pierstorff
Quinton Duval
8 to 9pm – Music by LSB, and vocalist Carla Fleming, Dance by Justice
9 to 10pm
Kathleen Lynch
Brad Buchanan
Terry Moore
Supanova
10 to 11pm
Phoenix Reign
TBA
Bob Stanley
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Contest! Fiction and Nonfiction Writing
Just got this from a friend...
"Nominations for the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing will be accepted through January 31, 2010. This award, given by Stanford University Libraries in partnership with the William Saroyan Foundation, recognizes newly published works of fiction and non-fiction with a $5,000 award for the winner in each category. The prize is designed to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan literary legacy of originality, vitality and stylistic innovation.
For official entry forms, contest rules, and other information on the prize, visit the Saroyan Prize website: http://library.stanford.edu/saroyan/."
Good luck!
"Nominations for the 2010 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing will be accepted through January 31, 2010. This award, given by Stanford University Libraries in partnership with the William Saroyan Foundation, recognizes newly published works of fiction and non-fiction with a $5,000 award for the winner in each category. The prize is designed to encourage new or emerging writers and honor the Saroyan literary legacy of originality, vitality and stylistic innovation.
For official entry forms, contest rules, and other information on the prize, visit the Saroyan Prize website: http://library.stanford.edu/saroyan/."
Good luck!
Catching up: stuff THIS week!
Friends,
I have more fun photos and quotes from The Tomales Bay Workshops--I am already back in the thick of it here, and so will post these soon.
For now, things to do THIS WEEK in Davis and Sacramento:
Weds night, Bistro 33 Poetry Series in Davis: Rae Gouirand (a UC Davis Extension instructor!) and Melissa Stein, starting at 9 PM. I plan to be there (barring flat tires, crushing headaches, etc.), and I would love to see you!
Thurs night, Writers Who Wine in Sacramento: at Iron Steaks, 2422 13th St (off Broadway). Start there and then head to John Irving in conversation with Pam Houston at California Lectures.
And now, for something fun, go here.
Enjoy, and happy writing and reading this week!
I have more fun photos and quotes from The Tomales Bay Workshops--I am already back in the thick of it here, and so will post these soon.
For now, things to do THIS WEEK in Davis and Sacramento:
Weds night, Bistro 33 Poetry Series in Davis: Rae Gouirand (a UC Davis Extension instructor!) and Melissa Stein, starting at 9 PM. I plan to be there (barring flat tires, crushing headaches, etc.), and I would love to see you!
Thurs night, Writers Who Wine in Sacramento: at Iron Steaks, 2422 13th St (off Broadway). Start there and then head to John Irving in conversation with Pam Houston at California Lectures.
And now, for something fun, go here.
Enjoy, and happy writing and reading this week!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Tomales Bay Workshops Faculty Readings (Part 2)
Friday night's readings were phenomenal. We heard work from Dana Levin's forthcoming Sky Burial, portions of the title story of Mary Gaitskill's Don't Cry, and finished with the hilarious Financial Lives of the Poets by Jess Walter.
The highlight of Levin's reading, for me, was the poem that considers, through images and questions, the title of her book, which is a Bhuddist practice: the sky burial. The function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. In much of Tibet the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and with fuel and timber scarce, a sky burial is often more practical than cremation. In a sky burial, the dead body is ritually dismembered, beaten to a pulp, mixed with grains and formed into small cakes, which are then fed to the elements and the birds (often vultures). Levin's poem considers this practice in light of the deaths of three of her family members in close succession. Levin's poetry is generous and evocative and she gives a great reading. Catch her, if you can!
In Don't Cry, we found ourselves with two women in Ethiopia. One of the women, single, is in the process of adopting an Ethiopian boy, and the other woman--the main character, Janic--has gone on the trip for moral support. They arrive in Addis Ababa during an election, and the political situation becomes instantly unstable; all the shops close down and violence breaks out. In additiona, Janice has recently lost her beloved husband to Alzheimer's. There is a moment in the story in which Janice comes unglued: she wears their wedding rings around her neck, and there are suddenly stolen from her. She is bereft; yet, through the unexplanable kindness of an old man, she is forced (or given the opportunity?) to move out of her personal greif and to see the world beyond. "Don't cry," the old man tells her.
The night concluded with Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, which is deadly funny. The passage Walter read chronicles protagonist Matt Prior on an night of intentional milk-buying and accidental (?) pot-smoking. The novel is set now, in the United States, and Matt Prior is jobless and about to lose everything else: upside down in his mortgage, with his wife chatting some guy up online, Matt Prior is looking for a way out of ruin. Walter crafts that pathway out with vivid dialogue and deatils that create a searing hilarity. This book is a heartfelt look at our current national (and international) situation that will make you ache less from looking at your bank account and instead from laughing so hard!
The highlight of Levin's reading, for me, was the poem that considers, through images and questions, the title of her book, which is a Bhuddist practice: the sky burial. The function of the sky burial is simply the disposal of the remains. In much of Tibet the ground is too hard and rocky to dig a grave, and with fuel and timber scarce, a sky burial is often more practical than cremation. In a sky burial, the dead body is ritually dismembered, beaten to a pulp, mixed with grains and formed into small cakes, which are then fed to the elements and the birds (often vultures). Levin's poem considers this practice in light of the deaths of three of her family members in close succession. Levin's poetry is generous and evocative and she gives a great reading. Catch her, if you can!
In Don't Cry, we found ourselves with two women in Ethiopia. One of the women, single, is in the process of adopting an Ethiopian boy, and the other woman--the main character, Janic--has gone on the trip for moral support. They arrive in Addis Ababa during an election, and the political situation becomes instantly unstable; all the shops close down and violence breaks out. In additiona, Janice has recently lost her beloved husband to Alzheimer's. There is a moment in the story in which Janice comes unglued: she wears their wedding rings around her neck, and there are suddenly stolen from her. She is bereft; yet, through the unexplanable kindness of an old man, she is forced (or given the opportunity?) to move out of her personal greif and to see the world beyond. "Don't cry," the old man tells her.
The night concluded with Jess Walter's The Financial Lives of the Poets, which is deadly funny. The passage Walter read chronicles protagonist Matt Prior on an night of intentional milk-buying and accidental (?) pot-smoking. The novel is set now, in the United States, and Matt Prior is jobless and about to lose everything else: upside down in his mortgage, with his wife chatting some guy up online, Matt Prior is looking for a way out of ruin. Walter crafts that pathway out with vivid dialogue and deatils that create a searing hilarity. This book is a heartfelt look at our current national (and international) situation that will make you ache less from looking at your bank account and instead from laughing so hard!
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Tomales Bay Workshops Faculty Readings
For the last two nights, we have enjoyed phenomenal readings by this year's Workshops faculty.
On Thursday night, Fenton Johnson read from his forthcoming two books. The first was a book he's calling Desire in Solitude about artists and writers who choose, in one way or another, the single life. The passages he read from this in-progress book shimmered with honesty and lyric spiritual and emotional insight. Johnson also read from his forthcoming novel, and the passage was a gripping scene in which the main character is led out into a field and shot in the name of crimes for which he has been reprimanded but had no trial. The scene moves beautifully from the present tense of the moment to the memories our "criminal" has of his past loves, and the mirror through which the reader passes back and forth between these two worlds is that of the geography of the place in Kentucky where the scene occurs, with its hills and meadows and rivers. It was a stunning scene.
We also enjoyed Robin Romm's reading of a story from her first book, The Mother Garden. She read a piece in which ghosts of deceased family members crash into the female narrator's physical room, flashing in and out of her mind but leaving corporeal traces of their visitations. The story is poignant and humorous as it moves from the narrator's "real" world to the perhaps more real world of her emotions, which appears in the form of the "Musical Interludes." Romm's performance of this story was just that--a true performance--and it took us into the strange and wonderful place of this narrator's life.
Greg Glazner rounded out Thursday evening with selections from his current project, a multi-genre novel called Zeno's Cure. Galzner read powerful sections in which the narrator, Len, recounts his struggles, in his adolescent years, against his father, who is controlling to the point of violence (Len and his brother receive whippings when they disobey or make "bad" choices). What makes Glazner's piece so energetic is the power of the language as the narrative swoops bewtween sonincally intense prose to imagistically associative lineated poetry. I can't wait to see this novel when it's done!
More on last night's readings to come!
On Thursday night, Fenton Johnson read from his forthcoming two books. The first was a book he's calling Desire in Solitude about artists and writers who choose, in one way or another, the single life. The passages he read from this in-progress book shimmered with honesty and lyric spiritual and emotional insight. Johnson also read from his forthcoming novel, and the passage was a gripping scene in which the main character is led out into a field and shot in the name of crimes for which he has been reprimanded but had no trial. The scene moves beautifully from the present tense of the moment to the memories our "criminal" has of his past loves, and the mirror through which the reader passes back and forth between these two worlds is that of the geography of the place in Kentucky where the scene occurs, with its hills and meadows and rivers. It was a stunning scene.
We also enjoyed Robin Romm's reading of a story from her first book, The Mother Garden. She read a piece in which ghosts of deceased family members crash into the female narrator's physical room, flashing in and out of her mind but leaving corporeal traces of their visitations. The story is poignant and humorous as it moves from the narrator's "real" world to the perhaps more real world of her emotions, which appears in the form of the "Musical Interludes." Romm's performance of this story was just that--a true performance--and it took us into the strange and wonderful place of this narrator's life.
Greg Glazner rounded out Thursday evening with selections from his current project, a multi-genre novel called Zeno's Cure. Galzner read powerful sections in which the narrator, Len, recounts his struggles, in his adolescent years, against his father, who is controlling to the point of violence (Len and his brother receive whippings when they disobey or make "bad" choices). What makes Glazner's piece so energetic is the power of the language as the narrative swoops bewtween sonincally intense prose to imagistically associative lineated poetry. I can't wait to see this novel when it's done!
More on last night's readings to come!
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