LitRave

Special Event: Babylon Series with Ayelet Waldman and Juliet S. Kono

2010-08-02T20:35:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, September 11, Babylon Salon presents authors Ayelet Waldman and Juliet S. Kono. Waldman is the author of the recently-released Red Hook Road and the bestseller Bad Mother: A Chronicle of Maternal Crimes, Minor Calamities, and Occasional Moments of Grace. Kono is the author of the new novel Anshu; two poetry collections, Hilo Rains and Tsunami Years; and in 2006 won the Hawaii Award for Literature. Also featuring performances by Cynthia Robinson, Evan Karp, and Cheston Knapp, editor of Tin House. Cantina SF (580 Sutter Street), 7 PM. See http://www.babylonsalon.com/.

Anne Lamott and the Writing Mamas

2009-11-16T23:20:00.000-08:00

The Writing Mamas of Marin hosted a wonderful literary evening with author Anne Lamott on Saturday, Nov. 14, 2009 in Sausalito at the gorgeous Christ Church. It was another quarterly installation of the Mama Monologues, a charity event run by Dawn Yun in which a few of the "writing mamas" plus a special guest "writing mama" -- in this case, Anne Lamott -- face the audience to read (or perform) their tall tales on motherhood... like it really is.

These tales from the trenches of mommydom, as told by eight of the writing mamas, made up the opening act in the first hour. Each reader told a quick three to four-minute story that ripped giggles through the audience, yet delivered a satisfying depth or intelligence beyond the humor. Subjects included PMS, birthing, marriage, meditation, pubic hair, jealousy-riddled Google searching and the misinterpretation of a child's drawing (are those boobs or buttons?). Sorry, guys. This was definitely ladies night -- although the men that did show up, I'm sure, learned a useful thing or two.

Although the readers delivered natural, easy performances that entertained, it was all just the warm up. The cream of the evening was the second hour, driven entirely by the raw honesty, remarkable talent and delightful wit of author Anne Lamott. She is such a charismatic and natural story-teller. Standing before us and sharing her life story in this intimate setting gave the feeling that we were sitting around a campfire, warming our insides with wine, while listening, enthralled, to Lamott unfold the stories of her life growing up and as a writer. She does speak like her books read! Showing us pain we could laugh to.

At one point Lamott asked us if we wanted to hear her read a chapter (and she was poised with book open, ready to do that) or hear her life story. We voted for the latter. So she gave it to us. I can't remember all she said, of course, as she spoke about her now 20-year-old son Sam becoming a father a few months ago, and growing up in Marin, and drugs, and getting drunk, and becoming sober, and becoming a writer, and sending dreadful stories to her father's agent, and so on. But I did manage to jot down a few quotes that made me laugh or think:

"You don't really know how damaged you are until you're a parent."

"I'm counting every day to get less done... because you don't want to wake up realizing that you spent 40 years multi-tasking."

"I'm a black-belt co-dependent."

"You have the ability to write, so you sit down and do it." (Lamott said she NEVER feels like writing but she has trained herself to sit down at the same time every day and do it.)

About writing "Bird by Bird," Lamott said that she was so easily overwhelmed. So much so she didn't think she could write a novel, but realized "you could write a novel if you write a small piece at a time. ...and then weave [the pieces] together."

Sorry I didn't capture more for you, or something perhaps more salient. Frankly, I was enjoying the wine and the stories too much to pause and actually write something down. So take note: If you have the opportunity to see Anne Lamott speak, especially so candidly and authentically as she did on this evening with us, I recommend you jump at it. You will feel either at the campfire or alone on your couch propped up by an elbow, reading one of her marvelous books.

Also look out for future Mama Monologues (info at www.writingmamas.com), because they're almost always an intimate, behind the scenes affair with the guest author.

Photo credit: AP Photo/ Nati Harnik

Kemble Scott on Non-Traditional Publishing

2009-09-11T10:23:00.000-07:00

by Cindy Bailey 9.11.09

I went to see Kemble Scott read from his second novel, The Sower, at Kepler's in Menlo Park the other night, and it was a treat. Kemble Scott is a pioneer in - how do I put it - discovering nontraditional, cutting edge methods of publishing and succeeding tremendously with them. He's also a skilled novelist of course (his first novel, SoMa, became a best-seller and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award), an Internet Marketing guru, and just a really nice, approachable guy. He's hugely supportive of fellow writers and graciously, generously shares his marketing/publishing secrets.

On the night of his reading, he shared the story of how his second novel came to be, and that may have been just as intriguing to fellow writers as the actual story in the novel (which is a kind of thriller!). Let me see if I can encapsulate it accurately: after the success of his first novel (and he's got some great stories about that), he decided to team up with a company called Scribd to bring out his second novel as a DIGITAL book! Scrbd was/is getting 60 million unique users a month, mostly college students (Kemble defined them as the "YouTube" of the written word.)

As one of the first official authors to do this with Scribd, he got a ton of media attention - just explosive. The idea behind the PR was "democratization of the media;" that writers no longer have to put up with waiting 18 months to see their book in print after acceptance to the publisher (or even have to be accepted by a publisher!!), and then have to wait another year or so to even know how many books they've sold (because pubs are not required to tell, he says), and then wait even longer to get paid from those sales! No, readers could have their books in hand (or on their screen or printer) right away. Scribd lets you know the second you make a sale, so you can adjust your marketing tactics--and even change your book jacket copy!--instantaneously to attract better sales. You don't have to wait years to get paid, either!

But do people read e-books? According to Kemble, everyone is different and has their own choice about how they read: someone only reads e-books, another won't touch them, another will read e-books on his/her iPhone while commuting, but a paper version at bedtime. There is a market and it is growing.

This story doesn't end there, however, for Kemble's second novel. After all the media attention, within a month (I believe; I have to verify timing), Kemble got offers from traditional publishers to print his digital book as a regular hardback book. What did he do? Something once again nontraditional. In Kemble's novel, he creates an alternative present day (it's today, but George Bush has been elected to a third term for example), and Kemble makes many references to modern day icons, such as Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent. Those icons might be forgotten by the time his book is published in hardback 18 months down the line. So he picked a small publisher who cranked out those books in a record 29 days!! Isn't that amazing? And to show support for independent bookstores, for this first edition hardback, you can only find it at independent stores, which is where he's making his reading/speaking engagements too.

That is just such a neat story. Love it! Looking forward to reading the other story (his novel).

Some links:

Some press on this: NYT, East Bay
The book: The Sower
About Kemble Scott.

Come visit us sometime at LitRave.

Author Ethan Watters Delivers

2009-03-31T11:44:00.000-07:00

by Cindy Bailey, 3.31.09

As you may know, I belong to a vibrant writing salon called the Writing Mamas (www.writingmamas.com), which meets at Book Passage in Corte Madera. We have guest speakers every month and our most recent one was author and San Francisco Grotto co-founder, Ethan Watters.

I come to the talk filled with preconceptions and expectations. In my intimate circle of writers, he’s famous—not only as an author and magazine writer, but as an accessible, patient, nurturing teacher and mentor. Writer friends rave about him, and finally I get to meet him!

There he was on deadline for a book (due in 10 days!), yet he took time off to come talk to us. And not just to rip thoughts off the top of his head, either. Oh, no! He came prepared, with a stack of detailed notes, a gorgeous sample query (by Todd Oppenheimer for his first ever piece in The New Yorker), and a genius, witty sample book proposal (by Mary Roach for her now famous book, Spook).

In his casual, approachable manner, he engaged us with insider information and tips on the business of writing magazine articles and books, asking us targeted questions, answering our own questions, and reading from the aforementioned samples along the way.

Here’s just a smidgen of the hot stuff he gave up:

The four main goals of a query letter (to a magazine) are:

· Get the magazine to say “Yes”

· Show that you’re the one to write it

· Sell the editor on your writing skills

· Develop a relationship with the editor

I can honestly say, I don’t often think of the fourth item because I’m so focused on the first, and I can see what a mistake that is! The ultimate goal, Ethan says, is to develop a long-term relationship with the editor.

Another hot tip: when you call the editor to check on the status of your query, if the editor says “No,” be ready to pitch him or her something else.

Another: editors almost never get back to you. You have to call them, and Ethan suggests calling about 10 days later.

I took down pages of insider notes. If you want in, I highly recommend taking Ethan’s nonfiction writing class, which he teaches at the SF Writers’ Grotto. One of my writer friends has taken his class three times, she loves it that much. Click here for more info: http://www.sfgrotto.org/classes.html. Classes start soon! April 13, 2009.

Ethan’s bio (from the SF Writers' Grotto site):Ethan Watters is a co-founder of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. His most recent book is Urban Tribes: Are Friends the New Family? He's written for many of national magazines including New York Times Magazine, Spin, Discover, Details, Men Journal, Mother Jones, GQ, and Esquire. He has written two previous books about recovered memory therapy and the mental health profession. The movie rights for Urban Tribes have been optioned by Ira Glass and are in development for a feature film at Warner Bros. Currently, he is working on a book about evolutionary medicine.

A Girlfriend's Best Weekend Retreat

2008-07-03T09:11:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 4.18.08

At the start of the year, I set some ambitious writing goals and got a good head start on them. Then February happened. My whole family got sick, and all that could go wrong did. Needless to say, the writing didn't get done.

Lucky for me, I had planned to spend the first weekend in March at a women's writing retreat in South Lake Tahoe. Created and run by Jennifer Basye Sander—author, book packager, and publishing consultant extraordinaire—Write By The Lake, her intimate, four-person retreat, turned out to be the oasis of calm I desperately needed.

It was all Jennifer had promised, and more. Late night chats by the fire with a bottle of red wine? Yep, that happened. Walks by the side of the lake? Yep, we did that. A quiet room of ones own to focus and write? Definitely! Access to a publishing guru who can give feedback, advice, and answer questions? Most definitely! Delicious meals? Absolutely! I'm talking lobster ravioli one night, roasted chicken another, fresh split-pea soup and sandwiches for lunch, homemade bread, plus a trip to the local café for Sunday breakfast.

But what made this retreat supremely successful in my view was a combination of the setting, the company, and the way the retreat was run.

Jennifer's gorgeous, comfortable three-bedroom cabin just a couple blocks from the lake provided the setting. Each woman got her own bedroom with either a double or single bed and a basic, clutter-free desk at which to write. (This is huge .) The atmosphere was peaceful, quiet, and inspirational.

Perfect. But what really blew me away was the company. I got to spend the weekend with three talented, accomplished women—women who wrote magazine articles, produced Emmy-award winning television, and authored numerous books among them.

Together, we told stories, personal and professional; cheered and supported each other; and exchanged tips on career and craft. We shared this collective, creative energy that I found both intoxicating and empowering.

A lot of this success was due to Jennifer and the way she ran the retreat, with a perfect balance of structure and flexibility; encouraging discipline, while also accommodating play time.

From the start, Jennifer, a self-described happy, chatty person, got us talking about our backgrounds and holding us to task. This is how the retreat ran:

We met near Sacramento to carpool with Jennifer. Upon arriving at the cabin, we unpacked, had a snack, and went for a walk. Before dinner, Jennifer had invited a guest and neighbor, Barbara Curtis, a former book representative, to share her experiences about the book business while we sat by the fire with wine.

After a tasty dinner, Jennifer handed out packets, and we agreed as a group to get up around seven the next morning and start writing by nine.

After an informal breakfast the following day, we gathered in the living room with our packets. First Jennifer had us pull out a one-page contract on which we had to write what we promised to complete by the end of the retreat, and sign it.

Our packets also included a number of “writing prompts,” a sentence or two that starts a story we would complete as a timed writing exercise. We did two of these, and then (voluntarily) read what we had written. What we came up with on the spot impressed us all, and you could really hear the differences in our styles.

After that, we each disappeared into our rooms. Complete silence descended and we wrote for three hours until we naturally convened in the kitchen for lunch, around noon.

After lunch, we chatted and told more stories. We took a walk to a local store, and then returned to the cabin for another three-hour writing session before dinner, wine, and more gabbing by the fire.

All of us accomplished our writing goal by Saturday evening, and so we decided to use Sunday morning to share our work and get each other's feedback, which proved very productive.

After lunch, we packed and left.

It was such a fabulous, energizing retreat. I would do it every weekend if I could get away with it. I'd get more work done and have more fun doing it than at home with all the distractions screaming at me.

On the car ride back, I felt what one of the writers expressed: “I'm sad that it's ending because I know with the kids and job and everything else, I won't have time to do this again for a while.”

We all exchanged contact information, and parted. I left with fantastic, new friends and enough uplifting, creative energy to keep me persevering on my writing goals—despite whatever awaited me at home.

Mama Monologues and Truth Telling

2008-07-02T23:16:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 3.26.08
Photo by Dilyara Breyer

If you want to hear essays that are raw, edgy, touching, hilarious, outrageous, and truly alive , then you have got to get yourself to one of these Mama Monologues put on by the Writing Mamas Salon. Motherhood never sounded like this before! These talented writers—who also happen to be moms ranging in age from their twenties to their seventies—are telling it like it is, and the result will blow you away, I swear.

Last Saturday evening, March 15, the Writing Mamas Salon presented their latest installment of Mama Monologues, entitled, “Motherhood and Mindfulness,” with special guest, Sylvia Boornstein , co-founder of Spirit Rock and best-selling author of Happiness Is an Inside Job . Book Passage and Spirit Rock also supported the event, which was a fundraiser for spiritual guides, Stephen and Ondrea Levine, who are struggling with medical challenges. Suggested entry donation was $20.

More than 60 people (including men!) packed the gorgeous hall of the Christ Episcopal Church in the hills of Sausalito to hear 20 writers and the guest speaker read from their work.

I was captivated not only by the content of the stories, but also by the variety of voices and styles, and the performance-like delivery these women gave. The evening was electric—and I'm not just saying this because I also happen to be a member of the Writing Mamas. Others in the audience felt it too. My only criticism is that, at three hours, the event ran a little too long.

Dawn Yun , founder of the Writing Mamas and an accomplished author herself, emceed the event. Here are some highlights:

In the story, “My Indiscretions,” Mindy Uhrlaub —a filmmaker who used to be in a rock band that opened for the Smashing Pumpkins—bemoans the loss of her sex life against the overwhelming duties of childcare, which she refers to as “slavery.” Uhrlaub admits that at the end of the day, “the bed is more appealing than what [her and her husband] might do in it.” Because she's horny at noon when her husband's at work, she begins an affair with a cowboy, meeting him at a local motel in the middle of the day. We're enthralled and uncomfortable until we learn that the cowboy is her husband.

Jennifer Gunter had us laughing out loud at her outrageous story, “Designer Vagina.” As an OB doctor, she's seen it all. Her hilarious essay reports on something that apparently is all the rage: injecting collagen in—and having plastic surgery on—your vagina. “There are two ways you can react to this: the first is, What the fuck?” Gunter goes on to say she understands plastic surgery if, say, “your labia has to be rolled up like Dumbo ears and tucked into your underwear.” She has less sympathy for younger women who are looking for a new aesthetic.

Not only was the material side-splitting, but Gunter's delivery was punch line perfect.

Lorrie Golden , a psychotherapist whose essays have been heard on NPR, opened her humorous essay, “Gratitude,” with the following: “This gratitude craze bugs the shit out of me.” What followed was not a rant, but an intelligent, honest look at what it means to have to be grateful all the time. “Life without cynicism and darkness is depressing,” Golden quipped. We laughed hysterically, but also found depth and meaning in her words.

Avvy Mar , a psychologist who's completing a memoir, read her incredibly moving story, “Impermanence,” which was about her realizing in a flashing moment that the life she had before was gone. That moment came to Mar in the hospital while waiting for her newborn to be checked out, and realizing it was taking too long, that something was wrong. Mar's beautiful, lyrical writing never fails to touch deeply. Wow!

After the readers, guest speaker, Sylvia Boornstein , took to the stage and enlightened us with her knowledge and spirituality. She told a classic Buddhist story, read from her book, and had us join her in a short, beautiful meditation. A peaceful ending to a lively evening.

Here were the evening's other readers:

• Jennifer O'Shaughnessy read “Smooth Satisfaction,” a story about her husband's idea of a romantic weekend being to sand the deck

• Shannon Matus-Takaoka read “You Know What Really Annoys Me About Toothpaste?” a smart, humorous piece about indecision

• Lianna McSwain read “Jellyfish,” which was about her husband's insight of his son as a jellyfish

• Kristy Lund read “Breathing Room,” which was about needing some!

• Pru Starr read “Cheap Party,” a tale about a creative birthday party

• Gloria Saltzman read “Still Life with Teenager,” a touching piece about life with teenagers

• Laura-Lynne Powell read “Motherhood After Abortion,” which was about just that

• Svetlana Nikitina read “Zen Bird,” a beautiful story about her child teaching her the meaning of Zen.

• Anjie Reynolds read “Tree,” a poetic piece about what a tree has to offer

• Rachelle Averback read “Be the Lighthouse,” which was about learning to let her teenager go

• Kate McDonald read “Resurrection,” about her father's death

• Kathleen Buckstaff performed “Mama, You're Rich,” a sweet tale of her love for her children

• Li Miao Lovett read “Doubting Damn Doula,” a labor story about her misguided doula

• Andrea Passman Candell read “The Mixing Bowl,” a piece about the idea of nurturing kids' interests into careers

• Kimberly Kwok read “Young Moms,” which was about advising younger moms and the loss of one of her children

• Dawn Yun read “Remarkable Moments,” an essay about incredible life-after-death moments

Dark Readings, All Lit Up

2008-07-02T23:15:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey

I attended a book reading at Borderlands on Valencia this last Saturday. The genre was horror. Not my thing. But one of the readers, Maria Alexander, is an old writer friend from L.A., one I hadn’t seen in years. We used to work together at Warner Bros., crafting business documentation for them, while discussing our various creative writing projects on the side. Eventually, I moved to San Francisco and she started with another company, and life went on.

Now here she was, just down the street from me, reading one of her stories. So I had to go. (We writers have to support each other.)

Now, I’m very naïve about horror. When I think of it, I imagine blood and killings and body parts flying. I think of Halloween and Night of the Living Dead. I don’t, necessarily, think of good, quality writing. Yet that’s what I heard from the two women who read at Borderlands.

Maria and Loren Rhoads read stories from Sins of the Sirens: Fourteen Tales of Dark Desire, an anthology of dark stories from four female authors. I found Loren’s story moving—it created an eerie atmosphere that was palpable, complete with a solid sex scene. Maria’s story expressed intrigue and imagination; it was about a journal that writes back to it’s owner, advising him to kill the woman he writes bitterly about.

During the follow-up Q&A, I learned a little something more about my friend. Apparently, what turned her on to all things ghouly is having seen a horror movie on TV at the age of three. It blew her mind. In her words, she didn’t know that was not OK; her parents allowed it. The experience proved liberating for her. As a parent myself it made me think, hmm… maybe I should be careful to allow my son more freedoms...

Unfortunately, my life is such that I had to dash from the reading as soon as it was over, hoping to catch up with Maria later. But I appreciate what I gained from the reading by accident: a new found respect for the genre.

Way to go, Maria!

Getting to Know the Local Literati: A Round-up of Five Lit Journals

2008-07-02T23:08:00.000-07:00

By K.O. Brozek 3.1.07

The east coast/west coast literary divide may still exist but it isn't the deeply cut chasm it once was. The literary community has morphed into a tangled web of relationships as writers and editors move around the country. More literary journals are now based on the west coast and the San Francisco Bay Area is home to several. Following is a round-up of five Bay Area journals, providing writers with information to help with submissions.

Driftwood: a literary journal of voices from afar was first published in October, 2005 by founder and editor Michael Colonna. Its tag line succinctly explains the journal's premise. Colonna's passion for the written word and his inability to find pieces about the foreign experience in American journals prompted him to start Driftwood . “I wanted pieces written in English that talk about the U.S. in terms of immigration or alienation (as well as) experiences that take place abroad,” he said. Colonna brings to his work his own international perspective; he is a native of Italy who has lived in the U.S. for 23 years, the last three in San Francisco.

When asked about how the journal has changed since its inception, he noted that his affiliation with the Abroad Writers Conference has been fruitful. Winners of its annual writing competition get published in the journal along with the unsolicited submissions. Where does Colonna see Driftwood in five years? He sees the journal being a point of reference for the international perspective. “A platform for the next Salman Rushdie!”

Writers' Tip: From writers, Colonna looks for pieces that “possess originality in approach and compelling characters…touch on the human side of the story and the struggles of humanity.”

In 2003 author Dave Eggers expanded McSweeneys, his independent publishing house, with the literary magazine, The Believer . Managing editor Andrew Leland came on board with the second issue; he said Eggers designed the first issue, which is still used as the magazine's template. Leland said it began as a “forum for longer, stranger things that ought to have been published but would be truncated or cramped in another venue.” The intention was to create a place that would support literary endeavors and creativity. Since its inception, it has expanded on a number of fronts: more art coverage, book reviews, and “theme” issues, which entail producing CD's and DVD's. A book imprint has now emerged from this multi-faceted venture.

Where does Leland see The Believer in five years? “We'll be publishing more journalism and we'll have more of a budget to send journalists on assignment...more theme issues and more interactive madness on our website.”

Writers' Tip: Leland said, “We're looking for energy, originality and intelligence in the submissions. The best pieces are marked by a seriousness without fussiness, and humor.”

Wendy Lesser started The Threepenny Review in 1980 because she saw a public need. “There were many writers and readers with no publications at their level on the west coast; they were all on the east coast,” she said. Lesser created the journal to serve the west coast audience. Not surprisingly, a disproportionate number of nonfiction and poetry writers she publishes still come from the west coast; the fiction writers come from across the country. Lesser laments that she receives far fewer nonfiction submissions, especially shorter essays for the journal's diverse “Table Talk” section.

Lesser realizes she has found a formula that works; the journal's content and overall format has changed very little over the 27 years. These days she is increasingly impressed with translation pieces and acknowledged that her new advisory relationship with Hunter College may spark a new source of submissions. Where does Lesser see The Threepenny Review in five years? “Where it is now…hope to stay the same.” In five years, it will be in its fourth decade of publication.

Writers' Tip: “For fiction, I look for a sense of voice that is coherent and is really speaking to me. There's no attempt to be objective in the selection process,” Lesser said. For non-fiction, Lesser looks for interesting pieces that also have a personal voice.

Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola moved his literary journal, Zoetrope: All-Story, from New York to San Francisco in 2002, five years after its inception and following recognition by the east coast literary community. It is a financially self-sustaining journal currently breaking-even, which is made possible by the many volunteers working with the small paid staff. The current editor, Michael Ray, joined Zoetrope: All-Story in 2001. He says that Coppola has a fundamental interest in storytelling and created the journal to support new fiction writers. It started out as a newsprint broadsheet similar to a small newspaper. It was hard to distribute and display so they switched to its current bound journal format in 2003.

Though unsolicited submissions are the primary source, some published pieces come from Zoetrope's Virtual Studio. This is a collaborative online tool allowing writers to receive feedback from others in the studio. Stories receiving very high ratings from this workshop process get noticed by Ray. Where does Ray see Zoetrope: All-Story in five years? “It will be doing great story-telling in a way that I can not anticipate. Maybe a new form of publication, a different manifestation but same high quality.”

Writers' Tip: Ray does not look for stories with broad appeal but rather searches for interesting, compelling ideas. “Ideally, half the readers (of any piece) would love it and half would hate it. This is better than everyone being ambivalent.”

ZYZZYVA may be considered the embodiment of the west coast mindset, if defined in purely geographical terms. Writers published in the journal must reside in one of the five states bordering, or actually in—as in Hawaii's case—the Pacific Ocean. Howard Junker, founding editor, started the journal in 1985 because “the west coast did not have a great literary magazine, except for Wendy's ( The Threepenny Review ) and that was more scholarly. West coast writers were under-represented.” He added that on a personal level, he needed something to do since he was not working at the time. Previously, he worked in communications for a large local company and starting a literary journal seemed like a good next step.

When asked how the journal has changed since its inception, Junker said in the early days he wanted famous writers. Now, he does not solicit writers and depends entirely on the slush pile for the pieces published. Where does Junker see ZYZZYVA in five years? “I'll be gone!” He says that he and ZYZZYVA 's board are not sure of its fate at this point. “It's remarkable that it has been able to continue for so long…so many people want to get published.”

Writers' Tip: Junker says that he does not look for anything specific when selecting pieces to be published. “I just want to see what the writer is saying.”

Submission information:

Driftwood: a literary journal of voices from afar
www.driftwoodpress.com
Fiction, non-fiction, travel essays, literary translations, photography, art
8000 words maximum; no email submissions
Mail to: Driftwood Press
4329 California Street
San Francisco, CA 94118

The Believer
www.believermag.com
Non-fiction, poetry
No length restrictions; email submissions only
Send non-fiction to: meehan@believermag.com
Send poetry to: poetry@believermag.com

The Threepenny Review
www.threepennyreview.com
Fiction (stories), non-fiction (critical articles of books, theater, etc., “Table Talk” essays), poetry
Stories and memoirs 4000 words or less; critical articles 1500-3000 words; Table Talk 500-1000 words; poetry 100 lines or less; exceptions are possible; no email submissions
Mail to: The Editors
The Threepenny Review
PO Box 9131
Berkeley, CA 94709

Zoetrope: All-Story
www.all-story.com
Fiction (stories and one-act plays)
7000 words maximum; no email submissions
Mail to: Zoetrope: All-Story
Attn: Fiction Editor
916 Kearny Street
San Francisco, CA 94133
Zoetrope Virtual Studio: www.zoetrope.com

ZYZZYVA
www.zyzzyva.org
Publishes writers currently living in CA, AK, HI, WA, OR
Fiction, non-fiction essays, poetry, photography, graphic art
Material can be of any length; no email submissions
Mail to: Editor
P.O. Box 5900069
San Francisco, CA 94159-0069

Kimball at Kepler's

2008-07-02T22:51:00.000-07:00

By George Powell 11.16.06
Photo by Antonia Kao

Christopher Kimball looks like what you would get if your recipe
ingredients were 1980s popcorn commercial star Orville Redenbacher
folded together with columnist/pundit George Will. It would come popping from the oven as a smart, no-nonsense, down-home master of giving his loyal following what they want: understanding what works in the kitchen and what does not.

That's precisely what he did during his appearance November 16 at the open-again Kepler's Books in Menlo Park, where Kimball was promoting the revised version of The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook .

The initial 2005 edition of the cookbook (which this writer has purchased) had a little bit of everything assembled in a loose-leaf three-ring binder, which had to be assembled by the buyer. The revised 2006 version is printed on heavier paper, has new front and back inside covers, five rings instead of three, and only needs the buyer to put the section dividers in the proper place. From my standpoint, it would be great if there was some lesser-priced upgrade path, but that's not an option.

Christopher Kimball has a New Englander's love of utility and simplicity (he lives in Boston and Vermont), and the clear and unrelenting focus he had when he founded Cook's Magazine in 1980 has remained a key to his huge success. After an early advertising-supported format was ditched, the magazine became Cook's Illustrated, and with 36 basic black and white pages every issue, circulation began to increase exponentially.

In between reading some of his e-mail to the overflow audience of more than 150 at Kepler's, for proof of that torrid circulation growth, Kimball revealed that Cook's Illustrated magazine was set to welcome its one millionth subscriber in January 2007. That's stunning growth from a subscriber base of just 25,000 in 1993.

Kimball, dressed the same way he is on his top-rated PBS cooking show, America's Test Kitchen , had on his usual bow tie and suspenders, and without any ado at all launched into sharing e-mail with the audience, then took questions, then signed his books. That was all there was. Before Kimball appeared, the audience was offered some appetizers prepared from recipes in the revised cookbook Kimball was promoting. But once Kimball stepped to the podium, it was obvious he was appearing not as much to promote a single cookbook as to enhance and reinforce the unique mojo that keeps Kimball at the top of an ever-expanding cooking show field.
Kimball also attributed his recent success to the increasing popularizing of cooking by the Food Channel on cable TV, as well as the added circulation brought to the magazine by America's Test Kitchen , now in its sixth year on PBS.

Then came questions aplenty that included convection ovens, baking, special diets, shallots, oven temperatures (calibrate your oven every few months), substituting in recipes and pie crust (“I could talk about that for hours,” Kimball said).

Keeping close to the subject at hand, Kimball revealed only a little about himself, stating that he started Cook's because “food magazines in the 1970s were a crock.” That insight has taken his company, Boston Common Press, founded with an investment of $500,000 to a publishing house with $20 million in revenue in 2002 and profits that year of more than $4 million. Kepler's had several cookbooks published by Kimball's company on hand for purchase and autographing in addition to the Family Cookbook Revised Edition , and the line for autographs after his half hour of answering questions was suitably long.

Also on this Western tour was Kimball's wife, Adrienne, who first met Kimball, she said, when she was employed as one of his assistants in the 1980s. Kimball also mentioned that his daughter, one of four children, was an excellent baker in her own right.

But that was as far as Kimball went into his private life. Some quick Internet research revealed a bit more, like the first album he owned was Meet the Beatles , his favorite movie is Murder, My Sweet , that he liked Grateful Dead music, and that his favorite sports team is the Boston Red Sox.

His range of interests besides cooking was best revealed in an answer he gave in 2005 to the question, “What four people (alive or dead) would you invite to dinner?” and Kimball's reply was “Calvin Coolidge, John Mortimer, Mark Twain and Billie Holiday.”

For his Kepler's appearance, Kimball, although a man of eclectic cultural tastes, chose to stick with what his audience came for and what he was best at doing, explaining what works and what doesn't when it comes to cooking. That has proven to be a most successful recipe.

Litquake 2006: Women Writing—Generations of Stories

2008-07-02T22:47:00.000-07:00

By K.O. Brozek 10.13.06

As I walked through the Bubble Lounge in San Francisco's North Beach, I had to navigate around everyone who spilled from the chairs, ottomans, and couches, as well as those sitting cross-legged on the floor. This Litquake event featured ten local women writers whose ages spanned from the 20's through the 70's, each sharing a story from their life. The following are highlights from this event.

Sera Beak, who was the youngest in the group, read from her recently published first book, The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Divine Spark. She described how mainstream culture has a knack for trivializing aspects of spirituality; yet, she sees that people have a real hunger for and curiosity about spirituality. Ironically, pop culture has at times broadened the knowledge and interest in spirituality. She pointed out that it was Madonna who brought much attention to the writings of the Kabala. Beak also considers humor to be extremely important in life because it keeps us from taking ourselves and our beliefs so seriously. “Humor is the necessary tool for igniting your own divine spark,” she read with a smile.

Beth Lisick, co-organizer of the monthly Porch Light storytelling series in San Francisco, read from her fourth book, which will be released in February 2007. The book focuses on her humorous quest to answer the question, “Can I improve my life by going to gurus?” She wanted to experience first hand the fitness and self-actualization movements in the U.S. She relayed how she often felt intimidated “ by the twin lions of Pilates and yoga… as strength-filled cores mocked me on the streets of Berkeley.” Lisick commented on the creative new terms to describe exercise, such as body sculpting and boot camp. The plaque on her high school's wall not only commemorates her record-breaking long-jump track record but also the last time she did any cardio exercise—19 years ago. “I thought that having sex and chasing buses were the only reasons to exercise,” she said. Lisick wrapped up the reading with her realization that she was ready for striped dolphin shorts. She had signed up for a weeklong aerobic fitness cruise with exercise guru, Richard Simmons, who happens to wear the aforementioned shorts.

Bharati Mukherjee emanated a regal air as she read from what she called her “accidental autobiography,” Days and Nights in Calcutta . She is a professor of English at U.C. Berkeley and the author of seven novels. This passage was about her visit back to her homeland, Calcutta, decades ago while she was in her thirties. (The book was written at that time.) It was an entertaining reading that evoked Indian culture from days past. She was the wife of a western man with two American-born young sons, and this trip was about reconnecting with her family, whose lives were steeped in another era. The excerpt was about the byzantine series of locks on the home's cupboards, with hidden keys, that her mother had arranged in order to store and protect valuables from possibly dishonest servants. Even the simplest daily tasks required the locking and unlocking of the cupboards. “Locking (cupboards) was a way of locking in a belief about karma that assumes a disaster would occur,” she read. Mukherjee felt that her mother, in her own way, had wanted to create a sense of security for her geographically distant family. Yet, it was her mother who had struggled hard to ensure that she and her two sisters were educated in America.

Jane Ganahl, co-founder of Litquake, is an author and a newspaper columnist who wrote for San Francisco newspapers for 24 years. She read from her book, Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife , which will be released in February 2007. She read about the transitional time in her life where three things started to happen: she was about to turn 50, she was changing careers, and she started to become invisible to men. Having had a life filled with brilliant men, she talked about the difficulty of dating an “average” man. Ganahl spoke of her friends' well-intentioned efforts to match-make on her behalf. One man, whom she refers to as “Elmer Fudd,” was a museum curator and considered a good prospect by her married friends. She agreed to attend a dinner party where he declared surprise upon realizing that she wrote a column about being single and dating, because he thought she was “a serious reporter.” But what really unnerved her was that he had an ironed crease in his jeans and wore shoes with tassels, just like her father's shoes. She seems to know that she will find a brilliant man and “not a man who wears creased jeans.”

The evening provided an entertaining variety of voices and generational perspectives that were laced with grace, humor, and wisdom.

Stephen Elliott Rises Above It All

2008-07-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 10.9.06
Photo by Lydia Lunch

Considering his upbringing, Stephen Elliott should be hooked on drugs. Or selling his body for money. Or maybe even dead. That's what one might imagine of someone who left home at 13 to live on the street, and a year later become a ward of the court, spending the rest of his youth in various group homes, surrounded by chaos and violence, shooting heroin and practicing sadomasochism, among other misadventures.

But instead, Elliott rose above his circumstances. Inspite of everything, he earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Illinois and a Master of Arts from Northwestern University. He wrote his first novel, Jones Inn , when he was just 21 years old, and followed that with A Life Without Consequences and What It Means to Love You , all while working mostly odd jobs. Around the same time, Elliott beat out approximately 1,100 other writers to earn the prestigious Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, from 2001 to 2003, where he taught creative writing and wrote his critically acclaimed novel, Happy Baby .

He went on to write a book on politics called, Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process , to edit the Politically Inspired anthologies, of which there are two, and to create the popular Progressive Reading Series, which takes place at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco every month, as well as in other select cities. His most recent book is My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up .

Now that's impressive.

I met Elliott at the Atlas Café in the Mission District. He had just biked there from his office at the Writer's Grotto, and was thankful the area had no hills. I started by explaining that I had seen him on a panel of memoirists a few years back and was impressed with the way he answered questions, saying, for example, “No, I didn't really have any trouble getting published.” He seemed not to be making himself out to be the victim writer who must struggle and suffer to make it. Instead, he was just sitting down and doing the work, and his efforts were paying off.

I found this perspective refreshing. This is what he had to say in response:

I think there is definitely too much focus on the publishing side and not enough focus on the writing side. …The most important thing to being published is to write a book. People are so worried about who they know, and who their agent is, and they haven't written a book yet. So first write the book, and then worry about the publishing.

If you write a good book, it's not hard to get it published. … There's a million people out there looking to publish a good book. That's the easy part.

I'm so glad you say that. I think there are a lot of writers out there, but there are not a lot of good ones.

And even ones that are good, a lot of times they're indistinguishable. What is it about the story you're telling that's different from the story everybody else is telling? It's competently written, but is it different enough? Do we need it? …

I think that's really important. In my first couple novels, I really focused on the group homes that I grew up in. There are very few people that come out of those places and write books about them. … It's something I know that a lot of people don't know about. I can talk about that. …

The last couple books deal heavily with S&M [Sadism and Masochism, or sadomasochism]. I approach S&M in an open and interesting way, an honest way. People rarely do that, and so it's different. I feel that for people who want to read interesting literary books about S&M, there's not that many books on the shelf, so I can contribute to that.

I read that you started writing at 10. How is it that you came to write? Did you want to be a writer?

I started writing when I was 10, and I had no intention of being a writer. But I was a very sad kid. My mother was dying. She had multiple sclerosis, and she just laid on the couch all day, dying. My father was not around very much; I didn't like him anyway. There was a lot of screaming in my house, and I started writing these poems. What I was really trying to do is communicate. I had things to say and I didn't know how to say them.

I actually believe there are two types of writers… those that love literature and the kind that like to communicate. I like to read, but that's not why I was writing.

So what I would do is tape these poems all over my wall. The walls of my bedroom were covered in poems, like wallpaper. Until one day my father tore them down, and that was the end of that. But I used to go to my friend's house and read my poems to his mom, and she made copies of them and sent me them recently, so I have a lot of these old poems I wrote when I was 12 years old. … Terrible. The worst poetry you've ever seen.

That's OK. That's how you start.

I have other friends, like my friend Mike, who says he has tons of writing that I wrote when I was 16, boxes of it. So I was writing compulsively, continually writing in these notebooks because I didn't know how else to communicate. I would be embarrassed to be so effeminate, to be so sensitive as to tell people how sad I was, so I just had to write it all the time. That's my theory. I don't really know.

When did “just writing” and compulsive writing turn into actual stories and craft?

Somewhere in college I started writing short stories. Basically, the poems just got longer. But I always rewrote them, a lot. … It's with these stories in college that I really fell in love with rewriting, and that became what I liked more. I really wanted to get something on the page so I could start messing with it.

I went to Amsterdam. I ended up staying and missing a semester of school and working in a live sex show in Amsterdam.

Yeah, I read that chapter [in Happy Baby ].

That chapter is pretty much all true. … So I write this story about that when I get back, and I enter it in the school contest at the University of Illinois, and I win. I win like $1,000. It's a big contest, right? All of a sudden I'm in with all the creative writing people, and English majors want to be my friend. But they're all thinking this is what they want to do. They want to get MFAs. They want to be writers. That's not what I was thinking at all. …At some point I started thinking maybe I would write advertising. I was thinking of what I could do to make money. I never thought I could write novels.

Then I wrote a novel. Basically, I was doing heroin and documenting this, writing about doing heroin with my friends, and then I would come in and read these pages I'd written the day before, and we'd have a good laugh. It would be interesting, and this became my first novel, Jones Inn .

So you just wrote a novel.

I wrote a novel, but really it's just a journal, just me writing, and it was not very good. I was 21 years old, and I was working as a stripper and shooting heroin and writing these notes. It's raw, but it's not a good novel, and it should never have been published.

Did you do a lot of rewriting?

I did, but it's still not of the skill level that would be required to write a good novel. I was just not there yet, you know? I had a lot of belief, like I believed I had written something new and original, and it was better than [anything] anybody else had ever written. I thought that I had written the first book ever about heroin. So that was ground-breaking.

But actually it was this awful, 100-page… It was very clumsy. Fortunately a very small publisher that I met at a poetry reading published my book, and they misspelled my name, which at the time really bothered me, but later it was great, because I never told anybody about [that book]. It wasn't until Happy Baby came out that I admitted I had this novel.

… But still, that didn't make me think I was going to be a writer. I didn't get paid anything for that [he was paid in copies]. …

Did you start to think of yourself as a writer with your next book, A Life Without Consequences ?

No. I thought that maybe I would publish it. Once you write something, you try to publish it. There's something very organic about that. … I'd send my poetry to magazines, and they'd get published, but it wasn't anything I thought I'd make a living doing. I saw the books that people were making a living writing, and I wasn't writing that kind of a book. I didn't think there was a big enough audience for my writing. [And] I was only capable of writing what I wanted to write and nothing else. …

What was different about writing [your third book], What It Means to Love You ?

It came right out [in three months]. I spent a year or two rewriting it, but the book just came right out, every day. It's the only book I've written in the third person. … It's got a really great plot. [But] people hated this book. It never came out in paperback. It got a couple of reviews and they were awful. It's very poetic. It takes a lot of liberties with the language. It's repetitive often. A Life Without Consequences is not that poetic. It's more what you'd normally read.

With Happy Baby, did you choose your writing style or voice consciously, or did you come into it organically?

I came to some decisions about writing. I got a Stegner Fellowship at this time. I sent these two books, A Life Without Consequences and What It Means to Love You , to the slush pile at MacAdam/Cage [publisher]. They bought both of them. About a month later, I had also applied for a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford and forgotten about it. It was one of those moments in which I didn't think it was that big of a deal. I never thought I'd get it. The next thing you know, I've got two books coming out and thirty thousand dollars a year to write. Now I'm a writer.

All that happened just before Happy Baby came out.

Oh, yeah. The Stegner enabled me to write Happy Baby , which was a very deliberate book. It's my best book. I'm very proud of Happy Baby . I think it's the best thing that I'm capable of writing. I don't know that I'll ever write anything better than Happy Baby . I said some things I wanted to say in that book, and I paid a lot of attention to language. What I did in that book is decide I wasn't going to be poetic. I was going to be minimal.

I got really into minimalism. I was reading all this Raymond Carver and Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson. I hated Raymond Carver when I was in college, and now I was reading [him] and thinking that is exactly what I'm trying to do. I was loving it. I was loving Jesus' Son , in which [the author] tells so much in one word. I started asking, can I do that in one sentence?... Really, every sentence in [ Happy Baby ] I was thinking about, obsessing over. …People [would ask] why, and I wasn't going to answer. It was all show don't tell.

Which I really appreciated.

…There's another thing, too. There are two rails. One was what I was trying to do … with the language, and the other is that I was trying to write about sex for the first time, which entirely changed my life in every way. …People seem to get one or the other. If you like the book, you like it because you relate to what's going on with the language, or you like it because somebody is speaking honestly about S&M—the desire and the good and the bad of that.

You handle very charged material so eloquently. … No matter how you feel about S&M, you really feel for these characters, or at least I did.

I hope so.

On the subject of voice, you've written a political book, and you said somewhere that people wouldn't recognize you as the writer behind this book, and I wanted to ask why.

It's a totally different style.

Were you deliberately writing—

Yes, and now I'm reacting to Happy Baby , which is totally minimal and very successful, I feel. People always relate to minimalism; minimalism will always work. But as a writer, as an artist, you always want to keep messing around. You want to play with language. So now [with Looking Forward to It: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the American Electoral Process , his political book] I'm going in the entire other direction. It's maximalism. … It's a continual exploration of every possible idea into its umpteenth conclusion. …

I read that you didn't dream you could make money at writing. So what aim or goal did your writing have for you, then?

It was just this thing I did, this hobby. I enjoyed sharing it with my friends. My last girlfriend said that writers are disclosure junkies, which I thought was really funny. I think what she really meant was [I'm] a disclosure junky. … But the urge to purge yourself and tell everything—it's just this grasping need, this desire for attention and affection. It's show and tell at school. It's dancing around. So that's what I did in my free time. It's fun to make a living as a writer because I'm getting paid for doing what I do in my free time, but it also puts a weird pressure on as well. I should probably be pursuing some career where I can actually buy a house or something, you know, have a family.

You can do that with writing.

Not at this rate.

It's hard work. That's one of my questions coming up. You told me your history a little. So when did you see yourself as a writer professionally? When did you say “I am a writer?”

When I sold those two novels to MacAdam/Cage was probably the beginning of it. And when I got the Stegner Fellowship at Stanford, which was an anointment or—not anointment. Or this vindication or verification?

Validation, maybe?

Validation, yeah. You're now a writer. And I knew from that point on that if nothing else, I could always get a job teaching creative writing.

You've already answered this: “Why do you write?” You're just compelled to do it, right?

Right. Except that now, I'm trying to pay bills with it. As a Stegner writing Happy Baby , I probably worked on it eight hours a day, every day, and when I was done, it was like coming out of a cave. Now, I write about three hours, maybe four, as long as the coffee is good, and then I do other things. That's basically how much I was writing before when I had a job. I'm pretty sure that if I had a job, I wouldn't write less than I'm writing right now, unless it was a job that took all my head space.

So when would you say you started “making a living as a writer?”

When I got the book advance on those two novels, then I was making a living as a writer. They gave me $36,000 for the two, so $18,000 each, which was enough to last me two years or so. [The Stegner stipend would come nine months later.]

Wow, you can make money last; that's impressive in San Francisco.

You can, you know.

That's true. There's a way you can do it.
I mean, I'm not particularly frugal, I just don't buy anything. I don't worry about who's buying the drinks, I don't worry about my coffee or donuts or whatever, I just don't buy furniture. Things like that. I try to keep the rent low.

Before you were making a living as a writer, how did you support yourself? I read that you had a variety of jobs.

A lot of jobs. Yeah, I was a bartender, I was a ski bum. I was bartending up in the mountains and skiing all the time. That's when I wrote A Life Without Consequences . I was a stripper for a year. I was a barker for a live sex show. I did a lot of waiting tables. I worked in a youth hostel when I first got to San Francisco, and I temped a lot. I tutored on the law school admissions test and the business school admissions test, the GMAT. I taught logic classes, which I loved. If I could just teach logic I think maybe then I would like teaching.

When you were doing all these jobs how did you discipline to do your writing?
I tell my students a lot that writing is a great hobby. People say how do you find time to write. You know, everybody has a job when they write their first book. Every first book is written while doing something else. I don't know why you'd write a novel ever thinking you'd make a living at it. I really don't think that should ever be the point. Very few novelists I know do it. Jim Shepard teaches. … Bharati Mukherjee teaches at Berkeley. These are writers who have won awards. John L'Heureux, who wrote 30 books or something has been teaching at Stanford for the last 50 years or god knows, a hundred years, maybe. He's probably 180 years old. I mean, even Tobias Wolff is teaching at Stanford. You think they're just writing, but they're not. They have jobs.

So what would you consider to be your first break as a writer? Would it be publishing the books or the Stegner Fellowship?

The Stegner Fellowship is probably more important than publishing the books because it enabled me to write Happy Baby , which I wouldn't have written without meeting people like Tobias Wolff and mentoring. Just these talents, and these workshops with the best emerging writers in the country, like Tom McNeely, Tom Kealey, Andrew Altschul, Elizabeth Tallent. When these people critique your work it's really helpful, you know? I don't know that I'd ever want to be in a workshop ever again, but two years of it is really good.

I hear they're really brutal.

You can get your head around it. … Any great writer has to be able to accept criticism, take what they can use, not take what they can't use. If you can't do that, then you're incapable of taking criticism. You either take all of it and then your writing is destroyed, or you take none of it and then you can't grow. … [If you're offended by criticism] in a workshop, no matter how awful, …then there's something wrong with your filter, and if you don't fix that filter, you'll never be a great writer.

That's true. It's very important to be able to know which criticism will make your work stronger and which won't work for your piece.

It's a big distraction. You really shouldn't expect more than ten percent of the criticism to be relevant, but you have to go through one hundred percent to find that ten percent.

How would you describe your work process? Do you write every day?

I write every day. I also have a project. Starting is always the hardest thing. I just sit down and try. Recently, I've been doing a lot of writing in these smaller books [he shows me a small notebook with tiny scripted print in it]. I write a lot of it by hand, and then I get on the computer and transcribe what I've written in my pad. And then I start expanding it.

Recently, I've been using a live journal. …

Do you choose decidedly what topics you're going to write about or do you organically let something come up and then see what you want to build on?

I don't know the difference between those two things, right?

OK. Well, I'll come up with ten ideas, and I may choose one to write about. Or other times I may be just writing in my journal and something will just ring with me and I'll decide to expand that.

I do both of those, too. Sure. Usually I'm working on a couple of things at once, and I never really know which one's going to go.

When you write about these very charged scenes from your life, are you able to-– well, you obviously are because you've written and published on them-–take sufficient distance to be artistic about them?

I hope so.

Sometimes, does it get too close? For example, do you write a scene and then walk out of your house all depressed because of it and think, oh-my-god I've just relived this, why am I doing this?

Yeah, that happens all the time. It can be very depressing. I needed therapy with Happy Baby . There were times when I was writing Happy Baby I got in really dangerous situations because all my sexual urges, all my masochistic urges, were sitting on the surface. Before, I had buried them, and they would come out every couple of years, when I would do something dangerous. When I was writing Happy Baby , it was every day. … My last girlfriend carved possession on my side and she misspelled it. That was for me the metaphor. That said everything about that relationship and what I was doing and what was going on.

…[But] I never forget the reader. … I'm not writing for somebody that's so curious about me that they want to know everything about my day. You know, Bukowski said that. Bukowski, who did nothing but write about himself, was totally aware that the reader did not give a shit about Charles Bukowski.

So he made himself interesting.

So he fictionalized it enough to make his life interesting. He was an artist, but the only paint that he knew how to use was the paint of his life. And I'm that way too. I don't really know how to write fiction. But I do recognize that I have to make my own story interesting enough so that others would want to read it. I think that's important for a writer. Your mother's not reading this.

What have been your biggest challenges or obstacles in your career and/or writing process?

Well, I don't know. Probably when I finished Looking Forward to It. I just went into this massive depression. I didn't even recognize it. Total writer's block. I couldn't write for a long time. I was just written out.

…I felt that I had basically written a masterpiece in Happy Baby ; it had gotten some very good acclaim. But had it done enough for me? Was I happy? … And then I had written this book on politics, which I think is also very good. I don't like all my books. I like three, and I don't like three. Those are not bad odds. But I was running out of money. Not only had I written on this election, but I created a whole foundation to help John Kerry win. I put together this operation in Ohio. I got all these writers to go to Ohio and do voter registration readings at colleges, and—

That is really cool.

It was really cool, but then we lost the election. And the book was done, and I had written my story. I was out of the closet. There was nothing more to say about my sexuality. It was just over, and I was blocked. I didn't care. I didn't want to write about politics, I didn't want to write about myself. I had to figure out a way to make a living.

I was in a really bad place. I couldn't write. I really didn't want to teach classes anymore. I asked myself, what do I want to do? And I couldn't really come up with an answer to that.

Now I have some answers. It didn't really seem like it was going to go away. I have an ability to get very sad. I think that millions of people suffer from that, but it can be totally paralyzing. I kept losing weight, and I couldn't eat. I didn't know how to talk to my friends about it. Basically, what happened is that I got in a very intense relationship which inspired me. I started writing about that. That's basically the new book, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up .

…And now I've got a lot of things I'm working on, and they're going pretty OK.

Do you ever feel overwhelmed?

Yeah, sure. Mostly I just worry about who's going to pay me so I can keep writing these books; who's going to allow me to write what I want to write and give me a monthly stipend for the next five years.

That's a great perspective, because as you know, many are looking to publish something, to get the money first, and see how they can fit their writing into something that's needed.

If you're in your twenties, you should be working. You should be working and writing on the side. That's what most every writer does. At some point, if you need extra time, go do an MFA, as long as you don't have to pay for it. That'll give you two years to focus. Pat Walsh, my old editor at MacAdam/Cage, used that. He wrote a book about writing, something like 83 reasons why a book won't be published [ 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might ]. The very first point on why you won't be published is because you haven't written a book yet. This is the truest thing anybody has written about publishing and writing. Just go work and go write your book.

What advice would you give a writer who wants to follow in your footsteps?
Don't follow in my footsteps. [Laughing . ] You don't want to do that. You'll end up overdosing on heroin and having a bunch of meaningless relationships. I don't think you want to do that.

Maybe not so specifically, but you said some things already, like write the book first.

Write the book. Keep writing. The terrible thing is how many people are published and they're unhappy with it. It's really a tragedy. …There's no way you should be less happy after you publish. Publishing should be this positive thing in your life. So I just think you should always keep in mind why you're writing, why you wanted to write.

…Write the book you want to write, and keep writing as long as you want to write and it's fun. As long as it's a positive thing in your life and helping you grow, then keep doing it. And when it's not don't do it anymore.

That's great advice. So, what does the future hold for you?

I'm working on three different things. I'm working on a screenplay of Happy Baby . (I've always been interested in film.) I'm working on this very long, personal essay about suicide and depression and my generation, and the intersection of Britney Spears and someone who only dates sex workers, and all these other things.

Probably the largest project I'm working on right now is an oral history of myself. Because I grew up in group homes, I know a lot more people than average. You had friends growing up, but we only had friends. We didn't go home for dinner. It's only us and there were a lot of us. We were … much more dependent on each other than is normal for a group of kids.

… So with the oral history, it's partly about learning about myself and partly about getting their stories. I'm asking them about me, but it's always their stories that come through, and their stories are fascinating. …

That sounds like another book.

And that's the book I'm working on. It's my memoir, but it's told in the voices of other people.

Gary Hart Calls Upon Democrats at the Stanford Bookstore

2008-07-02T22:38:00.000-07:00

By George Powell 9.27.06
Photo by George Powell

For a person who has never been president, or even his party's nominee, Gary Hart projects a presidential aura. Approachable, personable, but with a touch of “Hail to the Chief.” For those who are still a bit unfamiliar with Hart and his background, sitting in the audience of about 50 at the Stanford Bookstore Sept. 27 would have made you want to remember more, know more.

The man (who will be 70 in November) has been a U.S. Senator from Colorado (1975-1987), written 17 books, is a professor at the University of Colorado, and finished a strong second to Walter Mondale for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984.

The book he's currently promoting, The Courage of Our Convictions: A Manifesto for Democrats , is passionate, erudite, and liberal in the very best sense of the word, reflecting the traits of its author.

Hart left both lectern and microphone unused as he stood before the audience to deliver a pithy summary of the book's thesis.

Hart's book, by his own admission, was written to answer a question he was constantly having to answer, “When are the Democrats going to say something? What do the Democrats stand for?”

In the book's introduction, Hart says: “What do we stand for indeed? It has become painfully apparent that the great Democratic Party, the dominant party of the 20th century, the party that led America through two world wars and much of the Cold War, has become mute. The best Democrats lack all conviction, or at least all courage to state what those convictions are, while the worst conservatives, those full of passionate intensity, fill the vacuum in governance.”

The answer, according to Hart, is to return to the tried and true principles of four great Democratic presidents—Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson—and not to shy away from their considerable accomplishments.

Hart says early in the book: “Franklin Roosevelt established a national community based on social justice. Harry Truman created international networks that repaired the damage of World War II and defeated communism. John Kennedy recaptured the ideal of the republic and the sense of civic duty. Lyndon Johnson recognized that all citizens are entitled to equality before the law. To expect to enter this pantheon, the next Democratic leader must now undertake all these tasks.”

Given the near total moral bankruptcy of the Bush administration, the task should be easy. But Hart finds a big challenge in the articulation by Democrats.

In 2006, it's now apparent that during a political campaign, the only way to cut through the cacophony of competing voices in today's infinite information space is to adopt a single, easily repeated, unified message. The Republicans, thanks in no small part to campaign guru Karl Rove, have such a strategy down pat. The Democrats, according to Hart, do not.

Hart theorizes that swing voters will not listen to any specific plans of a political party until they know where that party stands and what it stands for.

According to Hart, the current Republican stance is “every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost.” Democrats, Hart says, once had “purpose, integrity and honor,” but support of civil rights in the 1960s along with the Vietnam war shattered the “heyday” of the Democratic Party.

Hart himself is in a good position now to push the Democrats into forging a unified statement of principles. But he also was in a somewhat better position in 1987, and he faltered. The early front-runner that year, Hart was derailed by the Donna Rice affair, involving allegations of infidelity which forced him to drop out of the presidential race. By the time he returned in time for the New Hampshire primary in early 1988, he garnered only a smattering of votes and Michael Dukakis became the Democratic choice.

This smashup in Hart's career was not mentioned in his bookstore appearance. It's as far away in time, nearly 20 years, as President Bush's alleged drinking and coke-snorting, and Bush was selected president in 2000.

If Hart had been president, things might be different for the Democrats. However, circumstances have led to a different outcome, and whatever happened in Hart's past does not change the fact that he has something important and necessary to say today. The Democratic Party would be doing itself a favor to heed his cry.

Voices from 9/11

2008-07-02T22:34:00.000-07:00

By K.O. Brozek 9.11.06

I could not think of a better way to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 than to hear from voices not usually heard in mainstream media. This month's Progressive Reading Series at the Make-Out Room in San Francisco's Mission District featured five local authors who read essays or book excerpts about their personal experience with 9/11. The evening was also interspersed with readings of much shorter essays selected from website submissions for this event. It was a grim reminder that the rippling effect of 9/11 has forever altered the collective (and individual) consciousness.

The first reader, Laura Fraser, an author and member of the Writers' Grotto, read a story about a man who she had briefly dated prior to 9/11. He ended their courtship at their last meeting and was set to leave for New York in a few days to attend a business meeting at The Windows of the World on the morning of 9/11. He perished that day. The story took a surprising turn when the man's former girlfriend, and executor of his will, contacted her to discuss his death as well as another secret life that he had led unbeknownst to Laura. Though Laura knew little of this man, 9/11 made his story broader, albeit darker.

Caroline Paul, a former San Francisco firefighter, an author, and a Writers' Grotto member, read of her encounter with another firefighter, Andy, from Brooklyn. Andy's strong dedication to firefighting prompted him to spend one day of his family's vacation in San Francisco riding the fire engine on Paul's shift, an unusual request. Andy and the San Francisco firefighters respectfully exchanged stories in the hopes of one-upping each other. Despite his easy-going demeanor, it was clear he was in another league as his stories confirmed New York's reputation as having the most dangerous, severe fires in the country. His ride on the engine happened weeks before 9/11. Paul did not share whether she knew of his fate, but for her, he was the face for all New York firefighters.

Joyce Maynard, a local author, was the only featured reader who actually was in New York on 9/11. Arriving in New York September 10 to visit her son at NYU, she stayed on afterwards. “Wait for a story to come,” she said, which is her advice for writing students. Her story came to her when she stumbled upon a flyer about a 13 year-old girl who was looking for her mother. Maynard wrote a fictionalized account of this girl and her family; the reading took us to the girl's classroom on 9/11 morning with images before, during, and after the news was announced in the school. She read about the girl's longing to see her mother again and her imagining of her impending move to California to be with her father. This heartfelt, fictionalized account of 9/11's impact on one young girl's life felt very real.

After the break, Tom Barbash read from his non-fiction book about 9/11. His friendship with the Chairman of Cantor Fitzgerald, the investment-banking firm located in the WTC that lost the vast majority of its employees, provided him with a unique window. Barbash interviewed the Chairman's driver, who spoke of standing with the Chairman on the sidewalk in the shadows of the WTC ready to enter the building when the first plane hit. Both the driver and the Chairman survived. Barbash quoted another survivor of the firm who said, “I can't look at my wedding pictures anymore because most of my wedding party has died.” At a meeting at the firm, management decided to read the number of survivors per department, rather than deaths. The list started like this: 1/36, 4/86, 16/140, 2/36. Barbash captured the depth and breadth of 9/11 through the tragic losses of this one firm.

Geoffrey Nunberg, local author and linguist, read from his writings about the language used in the media and government after 9/11. He noted how different media outlets chose specific words and discussed its effect on framing 9/11 in the national consciousness. Nunberg said that the San Francisco Examiner called the terrorists “Bastards” while other newspapers used words evoking an earlier era with words like “dastardly” and “nefarious.” President Bush became extremely fond of the word “evil” soon after 9/11. Nunberg noted how the political right in this country co-opted, very effectively, the word “patriotic” even though most liberals are patriotic too. According to Nunberg, the lapel pin of the American flag later embodied this newly found patriotism, initially a symbol of agreement with the Bush Administration agenda.

It's likely that the majority of those attending the reading were not in New York on 9/11. But these readings reminded us that the sense of loss would never go away, no matter where you were that day.

Jason Leopold Delivers the Truth at Book Passage

2008-07-02T22:31:00.000-07:00

By George Powell 8.24.06
Photo by George Powell

Journalist Jason Leopold has been dogged by controversy and excess much of his relatively short career in the national spotlight. In fact, he has by his own admission had a rather adversarial relationship with his own life. And that's precisely why he makes such a good reporter in the old-fashioned sense of the word.

Leopold came to Book Passage in Corte Madera the evening of Aug. 24 to promote his new book, News Junkie . I for one was surprised at Leopold's youth and the small size (about 25) of the audience. Given the author's proclivity for being in the forefront of two of the biggest stories so far of the 21st century—Enron's corporate criminality and the investigation surrounding the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame—I had expected a bigger crowd.

Leopold is still covering the Plame affair for TruthOut.org, and a still-sealed indictment by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald of a person or persons unknown has left Leopold dangling, since Leopold wrote that the person was (according to his sources) presidential advisor Karl Rove.

But Leopold is not shy about going mano a mano with the Bush Administration and the attempts to sandbag his reputation that have come with it. The visceral thrill a reporter gets from nailing down a big story, no matter what the odds, has never been demonstrated better than Leopold does in News Junkie . In fact, the rough equivalence between the powerful rush of a cocaine high and getting a front page bylined story in a major newspaper is a main theme in the book.

Leopold showed the same “let-it-all-hang-out" attitude in reading an excerpt and answering questions about his career and his many scoops, holding back nothing and including the most sordid details.

He read from Chapter 9. “White Lies.” By his own admission, it was the first time he had read that part of his book before an audience, and the narrative pulls no punches:

“He [Jason's father] doesn't get it. Never did. He thinks I can just flick a switch and turn off those images of his fist punching my face or dragging me by my ear through the snow. I couldn't. I thought about it every day. Part of me wanted to take the train to his office on 30th Street, wait for him to walk out and beat him senseless with a crowbar. The other part of me wanted to see him and give him a hug.

“… I hadn't spoken to my family for nearly three years. They didn't know I went back to rehab or that my marriage nearly fell apart or that I nearly killed myself again.

“… The only thing I knew about electricity when I started working at Dow Jones Newswires in April 2000 was that AC/DC didn't mean Antichrist/Devil's Child. But the great thing about working in journalism, particularly for a wire service where every second counts, is that you're forced to figure it all out while you're writing a story. The hands-on experience is more valuable than a college degree.”

While sitting listening to Leopold read all this and more, I thought the excerpt he picked was a bit too long and so personal it nearly made my head ache the way it can when you eat something too cold too fast.

But after reading the entire book, laying open his personal and professional life as he did, made the entire saga more compelling. A reader can see how, behind his mild-mannered exterior, resides a real bulldog of a reporter who would and had done almost anything to get a story and get it first. It's a tradition as old as journalism, a living cliché straight out of The Front Page and His Girl Friday .

Unfortunately in the corporate-controlled major media today, “If anyone tries to report the truth, they're going to come down on you,” Leopold told the audience.

That's because the mainstream media is “timid,” he said, and, never being one to take the word of an authority figure unconditionally, he dug beneath the public relations gloss in pursuit of the truth.

But after both personal and professional knocks, Leopold now recognizes that at the same time he was trying to pursue the truth at all costs professionally, he was running away from it in his personal life. This book attempts to rectify that attitude with a warts-and-all account of his professional and personal life and let the truth reveal itself. News Junkie goes a long way toward capping that lifetime adversarial relationship Leopold has had with himself.

Progressive Readings Rock

2008-07-02T22:23:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 8.14.06

Wow. What an electric evening at the Progressive Reading Series Monday night at the Make-Out Room. Hosted by local author, Stephen Elliott , this monthly series is a literary fundraiser to help support Democratic house candidates running in 2006. And it is popular!

You can see why. For a contribution of between $10 and $20, you get to see five or six outstanding authors—local and national—read from their work in an intimate nightclub setting, complete with cocktails from the bar and a disco ball overhead. Past series have featured the likes of Pam Houston, Jonathan Franzen, and Jane Smiley, to name just a few.

This month's reading, the eighth one in the series, lit the packed house. Featured authors included Ann Packer, Bucky Sinister, Susan Steinberg, Justin Chin, and Glen David Gold, with special guest, comedian Will Durst. Not only did they read, at turns, entertaining, interesting, funny, rich, absorbing prose, but most had commanding stage presence. Everyone at the bar—even those in the back—kept hushed and quiet throughout, trying to capture it all.

After much hanging out and cocktailing, Stephen Elliott took to the stage to make some announcements before introducing the first reader. He let us know that the opponents of two of the congressmen they had been supporting dropped out. Cheers from all!

First reader up was Ann Packer , author of The Dive from Clausen Pier , who read a personal essay on politics. Following the presidents from the time of her birth to the present, she shared how her attitude transformed from a-political to involved. It was Reagan, she said, “who cured me of any indifference I had.”

Bucky Sinister , author of Whiskey and Robots, jumped on the stage in his usual energetic way. His readings are typically lively, all-out performances, and this one proved to be no less. He first read about his hilarious “date with Wonder woman,” cautioning us that craigslist is great for a lot of things, but not for dating. Apparently, he would soon learn, the plane this woman owned was invisible except to her. “There had to be something,” he said.

He read a second piece about a donut shop in the Mission that no longer exists, and kept us in stitches throughout.

How appropriate, then, to follow-up with Will Durst , the political comedian, who kept our laughter going. He gave us a few famous stupid Bush quotes, such as, “… they will stop at nothing to harm America, and neither will we.” If Bush doesn't read, he joked, “then what? Do they use puppets to teach him about foreign dignitaries?”

During the break, author and co-host, Andrew Altschul , introduced Stephen Elliott's latest book, My Girlfriend Comes to the City and Beats Me Up , of which advanced copies were available to us for a donation to the event's cause. Other authors also donated books to sell for donations.

Altschul then introduced Susan Steinberg , author of Hydroplane and co-chair of the Department of English at USF. Apparently admired by her students, one of them in the audience shouted, “We love Susan!”

“This is not political in any way,” she warned of the piece she chose to read, an excerpt from a novel in progress. She then proceeded to mesmerize the audience with powerful language and full characters. And what a provocative story! I felt as though I were swirling in the main character's head, dizzy right along with her.

Poet and author of Gutted , Justin Chin , explained that he cut and pastes his poems to create new ones, “So this one is for this reading.” Out poured thick, rich language and imagery that continued for pages. We leaned in to catch every word, trying to absorb the onslaught of images and ideas before the next ones came. Just beautiful.

Last, but certainly not least, author of Carter Beats the Devil , Glen David Gold , started by telling a humorous anecdote about L.A., where he had been living just before moving back to the Bay Area. He then read a fun, humorous essay about, well, let's just call it being a little obsessed with his standing as a writer. With perfect expression and humorous timing, he announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, [pause] I Google myself.” He went on to talk about his obsession with a website that reviews books in sandwiches. “Did I get five sandwiches?” he wondered. About his Google recovery, he reported, “Oh, it's one day at a time.”

Stephen Elliott closed by announcing the special 9/11 show that will happen next month, encouraging us to come. “It's a patriotic thing to do.”

Wild Women Writing: A Treasure of Tips from Travelers' Tales' Larry Habegger

2008-07-02T22:16:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 5.1.06 (for 3.1.06)

The first Wednesday of every month, the Wild Writing Women host a free literary salon with a featured speaker at the Monticello Inn in San Francisco, and – as with so many other events – I kept meaning to go but didn't.

And then finally, after a year, I did. On March 1 st . That month, the Wild Writing Women featured Larry Habegger to speak on the art and craft of the personal travel story. Famous for starting up the award-winning Travelers' Tales series ( www.travelerstales.com ) along with James and Tim O'Reilly, Habegger is also an accomplished travel writer. I had heard him speak at San Francisco's LitQuake, and I remembered I liked him. I really liked the Travelers' Tales books, too.

The salon would start at 5:30. I had just enough time to make it. There was only one problem. What would I do with the three-month old baby sitting on my lap? (This, by the way, is the reason I'm only getting to a write-up of the event now. Who knew having a baby would consume so much time you'd be lucky to sneak in a shower, let alone find a moment to write?) Either Julien came with me, or I didn't get to go. I had no choice.

I strapped Julien to my chest and ran out the door. At the Monticello Inn, it was easy to locate the salon by the 30 or so writers (both men and women) mingling in a cozy section of the lobby. The room had cushy couches and chairs, warm rugs, and a fire place. Wine was being served. Julien had fallen asleep, and so I sort of pretended he wasn't there, grabbed a glass of wine, and took a seat near the back.

Julien, however, did attract attention. Pamela Michael, one of the Wild Writing Women and the host of that night's event, asked me if this was the baby's first salon (bless her), and Larry Habegger approached to ask about Julien and chat about traveling with young children, which we agreed is doable.

After socializing ended, Michael took to the microphone and made some announcements. She then introduced her guest, telling how she had interviewed Habegger for the travel show she hosts on KPFA radio here in San Francisco.

Habegger opened with a colorful story, the details of which are a blur to me now. I believe it began with how he knew Michael, and how he was on his way to the interview when one of Berkeley's crazy people harassed him, truly frightening him for his life. Interestingly, the topic of his radio interview was safety while traveling, and the point of his story now was that safety is relative. You might just as likely be killed in some sketchy, foreign land as you would walking down the street here at home.

His story served as an opening for, and a perfect illustration of, his first writing tip, which was that a travel story should be part essay (the point you want to make), part memoir (the telling details about your experience), and part conversation (which I took to mean, making the story relevant to your audience). I had never heard it put that way before, and found this to be a clear and fresh perspective on an age-old art.

Other writing tips he shared:

• Write for yourself always, and then (afterwards) change the form to meet requirements.

• Apply fictional techniques to your stories.

• Write to your life message; in other words, consider what you want others to get from your writing.

For when you're just starting out, Habegger had these tips:

• Be the best writer you can be.

• Be as professional as possible when dealing with editors. (Know what they want and have your contact information.)

• Get to know as many people as you can in business (because access is just as important).

• Read.

After his talk, he read from the latest Travelers' Tales book, doing what one of his contributors did at LitQuake: he read only part of a story, leaving you to salivate for the rest. So of course, you had to buy the book!

During the follow-up Q&A, Habegger shared more tips in the form of common mistakes writers make: overwriting, becoming too personal so that it's all about you (it has to be about something bigger), weak language, weak story, and a few others.

His talk was both practical and engaging. A treasure of valuable tips. I sensed – from our conversation earlier and from his talk – that Habegger is a warm, generous person and teacher.

Just as the event wrapped up, I felt a stirring on my chest. Amazingly, Julien had slept through the entire talk. He must have known how desperately I needed the escape.

When I got home, I realized that the question I should have asked Habegger is how in the heck do you write with small children. That did not seem doable. I'm sure he would have had some sage advice for me on this, too.

For the next monthly salon, check out www.wildwritingwomen.com . If you want more of Habegger's pearls, consider taking one of his classes. See www.larryhabegger.com .

Cafe Prague

2008-07-02T21:55:00.000-07:00

By Wayman Barnes

I have been to a lot of poetry open mics in my day, but never one like the one at Café Prague. This reading is … different. There is no stage. No microphone. No sign up sheet. Nothing to tell you that something is happening.

The host sits at a table in the middle of this restaurant. He speaks in a loud, bombastic voice, so there is no way to ignore him. People who are there just to eat the goulash find themselves in the middle of a show whether they want to be or not.

As I walk in, there is a thin, timid man with a long beard begging to be allowed to read. The host is being obstinate, but, finally, after much negotiation, lets him perform. As the bearded man performs his poem, the host makes comments, jokes, asides, and grunts of approval or disapproval for each line of the poem. I keep expecting someone to tell him to shut up, but no one ever does. It soon becomes apparent that he does this all the time. Each poet gets heckled in turn, and it is all just part of the show.

Café Prague is a restaurant/coffeehouse in North Beach near the City Lights bookstore. The interior is dark and the staff friendly (and cute). The menu is filled with a variety of Czechoslovakian dishes. I order the apple strudel, but make note to return sometime for some dumplings or goulash. Both look very yummy. During the poetry reading, the place is very full. I can't tell who is there for the reading and who is there just to eat. Whenever one poet finishes reading another poet stands up and asks to read. If the host says it is all right, the poet performs at their table. I wonder what the nonpoetry people make of all this. Is it just taken as being part of the San Francisco experience?

Which, I must say, is part of its charm. It feels like what I'd imagine the readings to have been like back in the days of the beatniks. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a similar type of reading taking place in this exact same coffeehouse. There may have even been a loud, opinionated host critiquing each poem's worth, heckling the poet, and spouting off on the politics of the day. All while people are sitting around trying to enjoy their dinner. I can't imagine a reading being any more Beat than this one. (Maybe, if there were berets, bongos, and finger-snapping happening, but as far as I know, that was just the Hollywood version).

If you were around back when North Beach was the center of the Beat universe, please go to this reading and tell me if it is anything like the readings back then. For those people like me, who have spent lots of time reading about the Beats and wishing you could have been around back then, go to Café Prague. It might be as close as you'll get to be a part of that history.

And the apple strudel is good, too.

The Ever Prolific Michelle Tea

2008-06-02T10:11:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 11.22.05
Photo by Lydia Daniller

Michelle Tea is a burst of positive energy. Vibrant as the colorful tattoos that run the length of her arms. Alive, impatient, and prolific. Her writing is rich with story and brutally honest. And as a literary leader, she's helped define and shape a local underground subculture of queer women writers and artists.

When I say prolific, I mean: she's written four memoirs, including the award-winning Valencia and her latest, Rent Girl , an illustrated graphic novel she created with illustrator Laurenn McCubbin that details her former life as a sex worker. She's published one book of poetry, The Beautiful , and was editor of two anthologies, plus a guest editor of a third. She contributes regularly to numerous anthologies and publications, such as On Our Backs , Girlfriends , The Believer, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian , and her first novel, Rose to No Man's Land, will be coming out in February, 2006.

In addition, she also writes horoscopes, along with Jessica Lanyadoo, for The San Francisco Bay Guardian and other publications.

She's won numerous awards for her writing, and yet she's sometimes more known for her literary shows than she is for her writing. Tea currently runs the popular monthly Radar Reading series at the San Francisco Public Library, and she is also the creator, along with Sini Anderson, of Sister Spit, a girls-only open mic event that ran from 1994 to 1996, and then hit the road on tour across the country from 1997 to 1999. Winning The San Francisco Bay Guardian's Best of Bay award for “the best place to hear sliver-toungued she-devils,” Sister Spit helped cultivate the talents of many women writers and performers, such as Beth Lisick and Tara Jepsen.

Tea has also gone on tour with the Sex Workers Art Show and The Wasted Motel Tour, among others. “I do other tours mainly when I have a book coming out,” she told me. “I don't drive, so I have to curate this whole show, and then find people to drive.”

I sat with Tea (and her cat) in her apartment in North Beach to chat about her writing life.

I read you always wanted to be a writer. How did you get started? And when?

I got started when I moved to San Francisco in '93. I had just come out of this really screwed up relationship, and I needed something to devote myself to. I just decided I'm going to go to San Francisco and I'm going to write.

So when I came here, I started going to open mics. There was one every night of the week, and there were people there who had a sensibility I could relate to. They weren't coming out of universities. It was a really working class sensibility, a punk-informed sensibility. They were happening in places [where] I felt really accepted and comfortable, like bars and coffee shops. As intimidating as it always is to get up on stage, especially when you haven't done it before, it was the least intimidating way to do it [get my writing out].

So you chose the open mic scene as opposed to staying in your room and writing.

Yeah. I never wanted to do that. That would have felt very futile to me. I'm a really sociable person, and I didn't want my writing to just sit. I didn't want to write for no reason. I wanted to have an audience or have my writing be out in the world, but I had no idea how to do it. It was so wonderful that I didn't have to think about it for too long. I came, I found this scene, and I thought great, this is totally what I want to do. I didn't even know what I was looking for, but this was totally what I was looking for.

How did you choose San Francisco?

I flipped a coin. It was between here and a lesbian separatist land in Arizona. My girlfriend and I broke up, and I had been kind of obsessed with this really bad relationship. I was really young, and I didn't know what to do with myself when we broke up. My best friend from when I was younger lived out here, so I flipped a coin and came and stayed with them.

Did you start with poetry?

I did.

And you took those to open mics?

Yes.

How did you decide on a genre, like poetry?

I didn't. It's just kind of what came out of me right then. I wanted to tell stories about my own experiences, and poems were the way they came out. Little, fired-up emotional blurts was kind of where I was at and how I was able to get a handle on what my material would be. They were pieces that I could write at work, or in between working and not working. They could just occur to me when I was walking down the street. I could stop and jot them down.

I was so overwhelmed by my life at that time. I had just moved here, I didn't know what I was going to do, and I was contending with both this brand new present and my past, which I felt I really needed to look at and understand. There was a lot of mental activity, and poems were a really good way to get the burst out.

How is it that you also became a performer, and which came first: writing or performing? Or did they go together?

Writing came first because you have to write the thing before you get on stage. Performing was just a way to release my writing, a way for me to be a part of a writing community, to let people know that I exist, to hear what the work sounded like, to give it a certain life. I was also selling my chapbooks, so there was a written page aspect to it too.

How much did your home/family life influence you as a writer and how?

I write memoir, so the activity of home and family life have influenced my material.

Did your home or family life push you to become a writer?

I think I was just born a writer. I really do. I always felt the urge to be writing and documenting. I remember being six years old and just having had an operation, and trying to write a book about a girl who just had an operation. I think whatever family I was born into would have wound up fodder for my writing. It's so mysterious. We never really know, you know? Maybe if I had different genes, I wouldn't be a writer.

But being a writer is just like, so out there. … I wasn't encouraged to do that, but it was more because it just seemed like encouraging someone to go and be a movie star. Who gets to do that?

Why did you move from poetry to prose?

I felt like the form of poetry couldn't contain the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to shine a wider light on people and incidents that I had been touching in my poems.

Do you still write poetry sometimes?

I don't. I don't have the mental space to let a poem in. I feel like life the way that it was… I just had a lot of open space to dream, and I think that's what you need for poetry.

You do so much. How do you choose projects to take on? You write books, edit anthologies, run events. How do you choose?

Sometimes I choose me a little. I've always been curating shows. I like curating shows as much as I like writing, so I have to be doing that to be happy, and to feel like I'm doing something I'm supposed to do. So, doing Radar [Reading series] is perfect because it's once a month. I couldn't do a once a week thing anymore.

And I need to be working towards a new book at all times. What I'm working on now is a script for a comic book that I'm doing with Laurenn McCubbin, who illustrated Rent Girl . We went on three regional tours for Rent Girl . … We got great responses and felt really buoyed by that. So, we felt we've got to do another project together. So we're doing this. That's what I'm working on, and I'm taking notes for other possible things.

But I have to be working on a book, and I have to be working on a series. For other stuff, people ask me to do things and I either do them or I don't.

How do you manage your time among the many different projects?

I do manage my time. I have to designate some days working days and some days off. On most of my days off, I end up doing some work – it's inevitable. But on my work days, I definitely don't lounge about. … What I work on is dependent on whether or not I have a deadline for one of my paid writing things. If I don't, then I will work on creative stuff. But I don't do as much creative writing as I would like to.

On my days off I don't let myself return any phone calls or check emails. I still end up doing that sometimes, but it's OK if I don't. I just have to make peace with the fact that I can't keep up with the emails. [Otherwise,] that's all I'd be doing.

When I first started writing I was such a devout slacker. I was against the idea of having a career. I just wanted to be an artist in the world and experience the world and write. So it's funny now to just feel like I have all these responsibilities. Sometimes I have to realize, ‘No, remember how you were?'

What is your writing process? Does it depend on the type of writing project?

I think so. It really does. My process for writing all my memoirs was really different than my writing process now. I would have a running list of various things I wanted to explore, either a person or an incident, anything that got my inner narrator running. …I'd have a list inside my notebooks, and I would go to bars and cafes after work and write until they closed.

I didn't set out to write a certain book. I was just amassing all these stories. Because they had a consistent narrator, they ended up becoming books. I would just have to look at it and say, ‘OK, all I have to do is fill in these gaps, and that's a complete book.'

But now, writing fiction… I don't drink anymore, so I don't write at bars anymore, so that's really changed my writing process.

I think writing fiction is hard.

Yeah. It was. Writing Rose of No Man's Land was crazy because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any faith that I could actually do it. I was really preoccupied with whether this character is believable, is this realistic?, all this stuff that now, I don't even care. It's fiction, it's OK to write a character that wouldn't really exist in the world. But I am just so into this authenticity mode from writing memoir that I'm like, is she real?

I didn't have an outline. I'd just sit down in stark terror and make them [the characters] do things. It's a really manic book... And now, I feel like, oh-my-god, I will not write fiction without some sort of chapter outline or chronology or something to work off of.

I mean, I could do it like that again. At the end of it all, I really like the book. It works. But I think it would be easier on me psychically to have something to work from.

So when I started working on the script for the comic book, I ended up spending three months just really getting back story, developing characters, putting together a timeline of activities, and that's what I'm working from now.

… And it's not like you can't go off of your plans. But it's very comforting to have a structure.

Do you write every day?

No I don't. I could probably benefit from some more discipline in that, but I just kind of get up on a work day and try to figure out what I feel like doing, what I've neglected, what deadlines I have. Today so far, I read some stories for the anthology and invited some more people to participate in those. I checked some emails, made some phone calls. I have some deadlines tomorrow. I'll probably do non-creative writing today.

But oh, I also have a writing duo, in which once a week I meet with a friend who's a writer who's also working on science fiction – very fantastical, creative writing, and that's what the comic book is, fantastical. So we meet once a week and write. I just did that last night, and I feel I got a lot of really good creative writing in.

Do you set goals for yourself? How do you motivate to write?

I have to write at this point because if I don't I will have no money. Before that I felt I had to write or I'd have no life. I was just working these crappy jobs, and I just knew that if my life was going to have any sort of meaning or if there was an opportunity for it to ever get interesting, it was going to happen via my writing. I just really wanted to participate in the world, and it seemed to me my only in. So I was really motivated that way.

So now, OK, I'm in. I've got to keep it going. I know that I have to keep producing; it's the only way to stay in the game.

… Deadlines imposed by other people are great. I can't impose them on myself.

What inspires you and keeps you writing? Is it this idea of being a participant in the world?

Yeah, that's the base motivation for it. And then there's what inspires actual stories. Those are two different kinds of things.

What was your first break as a writer?

Hhm. I think probably starting the Sister Spit open mic because it gave me an audience. Even though it was a local audience, it was an enthusiastic and devoted audience. It let me know there was a way I could be a writer even though I hadn't been published, which seemed like so out there for me. But I kind of gave that to myself in a way. Getting my first book published, that was a really big deal. That I suddenly had a published work was crazy.

And then there was another break: Valencia winning the Lambda award, and getting published under MacAdam/Cage Publishing with my next book feels like a really big break.

They're all so intertwined, it's hard to pick which one is the big one.

What have been your biggest challenges or obstacles, either in your career or writing process?

I think the biggest challenge is to challenge yourself and not rest in stories or themes or ideas that you know, that have worked for you in the past. I felt I really had to write fiction, even though a lot of the ideas and themes in the fiction are present in my memoir. I had to do something different, because I could get trapped in the talking Michelle Tea puppet, writing about my own life again and again and again.

How did you fall into writing for the various anthologies and publications that you do, in general? Do people come to you with them?

Yeah. Entirely. That's how it's happened. I'm asked to write one thing, and then I just ask, can I keep doing this? Can I write more?

I did go to Girlfriends and ask them because I was asked by this other, competing lesbian magazine to write a weird soap box essay. I ended up writing this really weird essay about how – and granted I was out of my mind at this time – I decided not to wear a pad or a tampon for a period and just bleed all over everything and make the world deal with women's menstrual blood. … They wanted to take all these parts out. I said, come on, you're a lesbian magazine. So, I got really upset and contacted their competitor, which is Girlfriends magazine. Will you publish this? And they said yeah, and I've been writing for them ever since.

But all the other ones I was contacted by them, and once I had that contact, I just kept using it.

How about making a living as a writer. Do you feel you've been able to do that?

Yeah, amazingly. I'm completely doing that, and I've been doing it since 2003, which is when I quit my day job, which kept getting pared down. I was terrified to let go of it (working at a bookstore, which I had been doing for about five years). I was getting invited to speak at different colleges, and there was this one month where I realized if I kept the bookstore job, I wouldn't be able to do all these other readings and I'd actually be losing all this money. It just kind of happened like that. Things kind of converged. I went on the Sex Worker Art Show tour, which I got paid to be on, and then I got an advance to do the Without a Net anthology, and suddenly I had the little safety net to be able to freelance. Because your check takes a while to come in, you need to have a little egg to live off of while you're waiting, and I never had that. Then I did.

All the things that I do together support me, but any one of them on their own would not. The books alone don't support me. The horoscopes and articles don't support me. The going to speak at colleges and doing paid readings don't. But all of them together do. For Radar [Reading series], I've gotten a couple of grants, last year and this year, and that's made a huge difference.

What advice would you give a writer who wants to follow in your footsteps?

In my footsteps? They're very specific footsteps. There's a lot of different footsteps you could follow in. I think it's really important to not be goal-oriented, to not have expectations, and to really focus on your writing. Of course you want to get published. Of course you want success. But that can't be the focus. I just know people who get wigged out over their writing careers, and I think if you get into that state, no matter how many good things happen to you, you're just in that state.

I just feel you need to keep your feet on the ground, and you need to know you're just another writer in the world, and you've got your thing to say, and you're going to figure out how to say it and do it. If you don't see a space in the world for you and your writing, then create it. Start a reading series if you feel you can't get in on other people's reading series. If you feel alienated, do something. If you feel you don't have publishing connections, publish your own book and get it out. Every little thing you do like that is a step, and you can build on it. It's not like that's all what you have to do for the rest of your life. I just feel if you can take it into your own hands and be more do-it-yourself about it, the more empowered you're going to feel, and the more you'll be able to devote yourself to the actual writing and not get hung up on rejection letters and stuff like that.

What does the future hold for you? Do you have an ultimate goal?

Well, there's things I'd like to do, I just try not to get too attached to them. Yeah, there's a lot. What's coming up is that I'm going to do this Sex Workers Art Show tour in the winter, and my book, Rose to No Man's Land , is going to come out while I'm on that tour, so when I'm done I'm going to be doing a book tour. Hopefully by then I'll be done with the comic book, for which we have an agent who's working on selling it for us, and then I'll be able to write either another novel or I'll try a memoir again.

But also, Laurenn [McCubbin] and I have optioned the rights to Rent Girl to the executive producer of Queer As Folk , so we're really hoping that we're able to meet all the right people and have it all come together so that we can have that made into a cable TV show – that we would participate in and write for. He's having a hard time right now finding people who are open to the idea of a TV show that's all about prostitutes because the media idea is that it's … really sad and pathetic and depressing.

I think it would be fascinating for people who have no exposure to it.

Totally! It would be so great. It would be an incredible and revolutionary show, and I totally believe it's going to happen. I just hope it's going to happen soon. I am trying to kind of weasel my way into television in Los Angeles. I pitched to one production company a bunch of ideas, and my sister and I wrote a really thorough outline for a TV show.

How do you keep track of all these projects?

It's hard. It helps that there's so much going on because things in L.A. take forever. It's so slow. So it's good that I've got a lot to do here or else I'd be wigging out and neurotic.

Yeah, they have a lot of people get involved in the decision making process down there.

Yeah, and you're relying on other people. It's really good to have things that I don't have to rely on anyone for, that I'm in control of, and I know that I can make things happen.

The Kitchen Sisters

2008-05-07T21:07:00.000-07:00

By K.O. Brozek 11.21.05

There were clues early on that this may not be the typical book reading at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books on this Monday night in San Francisco. The small space was transformed - the podium possessed not one, but three microphones and ample-sized speakers stared down at the audience. Easels with montages of glossy posters flanked the podium. Off to one side, platters of tasty finger-food and bottles of wine stood waiting. I overheard light-hearted apologies for the food: “Well, it's not from the stove in the kitchen.”

People started streaming in. The local celebrity vs. average book buyer ratio was climbing by the minute, unusual for this casual, cozy venue. Armistead Maupin, Alice Waters, and Don Novello were among the group. This was a reading to celebrate the release of Davia Nelson's and Nikki Silva's book, Hidden Kitchens, and the two warmly greeted the attendees they knew, which seemed like half the crowd. It had the feel of a reunion of close-knit friends. My thoughts echoed the palpable sentiment: Nelson and Silva, both Bay Area residents, are beloved and admired in this community.

Nelson and Silva, known as The Kitchen Sisters, have been a story-telling team for radio productions since 1979. They created the Hidden Kitchen radio series for NPR's Morning Edition, the basis for their book. They kicked off the event by reading a passage about the inception of the Hidden Kitchen radio series. The passage recounted how, in San Francisco, Nelson happened to keep riding in taxis with drivers who came from a Brazilian town called Goiana. Conversations eventually led to discovering the hidden kitchen of a Brazilian woman who would stake out her tent-kitchen near the taxi company's office late each night. Nelson and Silva conducted interviews amidst the Brazilian music and Portuguese banter, and then broadcast the story. This led to a request for other hidden kitchens, resulting in 2,079 messages. A radio series was born.

We then heard the taped voice of George Foreman, heavyweight boxing world champion, boom from the speakers. He said, “I dreamed of having enough to eat.” This childhood memory morphed into the production of the very popular George Foreman Grill. We listened to taped testimonials from people living in SRO (Single Room Occupancy) hotels or living on the streets, passionately describing how the grill is a safe and affordable way to cook. Another type of hidden kitchen.

The authors injected spontaneity by surprising a few of the local celebrities with requests to read. Don Novello, the former Saturday Night Live's character Father Guido Sarducci, read the passage about a man who spoke lovingly about his memories of his “Big Grandma” and “Little Grandma.” Novello, who has a deep voice and rich accent, described how the grandmothers' styles of cooking reflected how they lived their lives and ultimately, how they died.

“Lou the Glue” Marcelli, an imposing 77 year old with a sturdy build, captivated the group with his own hidden kitchen story. As the custodian for the Dolphin Club, a San Francisco Bay swimming and rowing club founded in 1897, he frequently cooks his legendary calamari pasta with tomato sauce, among other dishes, for the old-time members who want to tell their stories, drink wine, and eat his food after a swim in the bay. Affectionately referred to as an “old stove,” he's been cooking for the community for decades. Marcelli swims in the bay four days a week without a wetsuit, regardless of the weather. He said, “You just look it [the water] in the eye and go.”

Armistead Maupin, writer and author of the book series Tales of the City , was asked to read message #341 from a woman living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As a lesbian, she had felt isolated until she heard of local potluck dinners. Maupin then quipped, “I wonder why I was chosen to read this one.”

We next listened to a taped story from their broadcast. While listening, wine was served to the audience. This was no ordinary wine. It was homemade by “Angelo” who is also featured in the book. Nelson and Silva serve his wine at all their readings, no matter how cumbersome to transport. His hidden kitchen is in his wrought-iron forging studio in an industrial part of San Francisco where he cooks food inspired by his Sicilian upbringing.

Alice Waters, owner of the Chez Panisse restaurant and founder of the organic and local-grown food movement, was last to read. (Waters wrote the foreword for the book.) She read a story about a woman who fondly remembered a Long Island fisherman selling fresh fish from his cart.

Nelson and Silva took questions before signing books and closing the reading. The authors' knack for engaging radio listeners transformed a rather predictable literary format to a much larger experience. Heartfelt cooking and feeding others has a unique power and magic to soothe and create community where it doesn't exist. The authors showed us that connection.

Poetry & Pizza

2008-05-06T11:09:00.000-07:00

By Wayman Barnes 11.4.05

Maybe I should have been paying closer attention to what was happening, but when the poet said he would be doing his “zone out pieces” he wasn't kidding. My mind was somewhere else entirely when I noticed most of the audience was walking out the door. Had I missed something? The host was still at the microphone introducing the next poet. She was standing over to the side with chapbook in hand ready to go on. The show was clearly not over. Yet, all these people were being extremely rude. Had the previous poet been bad enough to have caused this mass exodus? I couldn't bring myself to look over at him. What must it feel like to know your poetry has cleared a room? I can't imagine (and I hope I never have to find out).

Although I had not been listening to the poetry, I had been enjoying myself. The reading was called Poetry & Pizza, and, in my humble opinion, names don't get any better than that. As soon as I saw the ad I knew where I was going to be on Friday night. I figured if someone was going to go to the trouble of combining my two favorite things together, the least I could do was show up.

For some reason I imagined the reading would be at a hard-to-get-to, greasy, mom and pop pizza joint filled with finger-snapping teens doing wannabe hip-hop or “imsoanguished” diary-style poetry, but it was neither. To my surprise, it was slightly upscale. The venue was an Escape from New York pizza restaurant (nicer than all the other ones around town) in the Financial District. There was even a poem by Galway Kinnell written across one wall (“If one day it happens …”) and a jazz guitarist playing. Some of the audience members were dressed in the obligatory black and I must admit I started feeling a bit intimidated. I was afraid that I might have to actually use my brain.

The restaurant had been closed at 6 and reopened for us at 7. The admission is a five-dollar donation, which includes the reading plus all the pizza, salad, and coke you want. I later found out that all the money would be going to a charity of the Featured Poet's choice – on this night it was going to the Zen Hospice. After several servings of gourmet pizza (Potato, Pesto, and Garlic – crazy!) this reading was already an A+ in my book.

Unfortunately, the poets weren't as good as the pizza. By their own admission, they were not performers. This was evident, not so much in how they read, but in how they used the microphone. They would either hold it too close or too far away which made their voices garbled and hard to understand – never a good thing when listening to poetry.

Every reading has an off night, and, judging by the size of the crowd (the place was packed at the beginning), I am assuming this had to be one. I will certainly be going again. The fact that it is being done for charity is reason enough for me. I think it is important to support a show like that. Besides, with a reading called “Poetry & Pizza” there is always a 50/50 chance that you will like at least half of it.

*The reading on December 2nd will be an Open Mic.

Litquake 2005: Humor at the Purple Onion

2008-05-06T10:56:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 10.11.05

What better place to host a gaggle of humorous readings than at the Purple Onion, San Francisco's landmark comedy club in North Beach? I'm talking legends have performed here: Lenny Bruce, Woody Allen, The Smothers Brothers – all at this original location. Today, the place still has that intimate feel, with low ceilings, dim lighting, cozy booths, small tables, and the periodic, comforting sound of the martini shaker coming from the bar. The perfect setting for Litquake's Humor Me event (Litquake being San Francisco's annual, week-long extravaganza of literary events).

While we waited for the room to fill and the show to start, Purple Onion's regular maestro, Geoff Foster, played (and sang) beautiful ballads on the piano. Once we were huddled cozily and well into our two drink minimum, Jane Ganahl, co-founder of Litquake, took the stage. She talked about Litquake, thanked the sponsors, and introduced the emcee, Bucky Sinister . And the show began.

Sinister, in his T-shirt and tattoos, holding the microphone in his fist and bursting all over the stage, opened the evening with – of course – a few jokes, saying he could just hear Lenny Bruce tying off in the bathroom (Lenny was a heroine addict). Sinister also wondered why if Hunter S. Thompson “was going to off himself anyway, he didn't do it by taking a shot at G.W.” He speculated that “that would make being Republican dangerous again.”

And then on with the readings.

Firoozeh Dumas , author of Funny in Farsi , read a hilarious story of finding a potato in the shape of a cross and deciding to sell it on Ebay. Her family knew it was worth $60,000, but also knew that “large starting bids were the death on Ebay, and so we started the bidding at $5.”

The suave-looking Ian Lendler took the stage next, appropriately dressed in cocktail lounge attire to read from his book, Alcoholica Esoterica , the subtitle of which is “A collection of useful and useless information as it relates to the history and consumption of all manner of booze.” He chose to read about champagne, and how it came to be. We're not talking boring facts and historical dates, here. We're talking about a fascinating tale with a lot of humor interwoven throughout.

“Hipster humorist” Mal Sharpe said he's been pulling pranks since the early 1960's. He took us along with him on one of those long ago pranks and got the biggest laughs of the night out of me. First, he showed us the soft briefcase he used to hide the tape recorder and mic, and then he told us how he and his prankster-buddy walked into a pharmacy and asked the pharmacist for some sterilizing products because he (prankster-buddy) was going to operate on his friend's (Mal's) heart. He read the books, doesn't look so hard, it's doable. The reaction of the pharmacist, who voiced genuine concern and restrained outrage, was hilarious.

At intermission, Sinister entertained us by reading from his latest book, Whisky and Robots , telling us the difference between rednecks and hicks and the paradoxes of Nascar.

Jack Boulware , co-founder of Litquake , read a story about shopping for his mother's coffin, saying that he was continuing the redneck theme. There were taxidermy animals lining the walls of the funeral home, because this is southwest Montana after all. Loved one of his character's names: Butt-Crack Todd.

Writer and performer Merle Kessler (aka Ian Shoales) read a number of funny short pieces: one about an outbreak of politeness in San Francisco, and another in which he takes on the role of a 27-year-old applying for a job as a radio talk show host to replace Howard Stern.

Finally, Beth Lisick , author of Everybody Into the Pool , read a hilarious selection from her book, one about visiting her in-laws. She read that her parents and her husband Eli's parents do have something in common in that “they both live in a house with a roof on top” – and you get that similarities end there. On their visit, Mom Penny took her girlfriend Caroline to a “fisting” workshop (as in how to place a fist into a vagina) while gay Dad complained about not being told there would be boys at this fair. Beth gave us her usual high-energy reading.

In closing, Sinister, full of expression, read another comical selection from his book. In fact, all the readings were animated, and very entertaining.

Litquake 2005: The Hip Revisit of Howl

2008-05-03T22:55:00.000-07:00

By Vené Franco 10.7.05
Original Photo by Derek Powazek

In the words of our emcee, Jack Boulware, “Is it hot in here or is it me?” Well, it was both as nearly 1,000 literary fans packed Herbst Theatre for the opening night of Litquake and its Howl Redux presentation.

The event kicked off the Litquake 2005 schedule and marked the 50 th anniversary of the debut of Allen Ginsberg's epic poem “Howl”—a literary milestone credited as giving birth to the Beat movement. With a crowd somewhere between 150 and 200, the original reading—hosted by poet Kenneth Rexroth—took place across town at a small space known as Six Gallery. That location, 3119 Fillmore Street, is now home to a furniture store but has a new plaque marking its place in SF's literary history. According to the original promotional postcard, the reading was titled 6 Poets at 6 Gallery. Featured poets included Philip Lamantia, Mike McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Phil Whalen. And among those attending were Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. The postcard read, “…remarkable collection of angels on one stage reading their poetry. No charge, small collection for wine and postcards. Charming event.”

Litquake's Howl Redux proved itself as far more than just homage to Ginsberg and “Howl.” It was a celebration of several other revolutionary Bay Area authors, including Mark Twain, Dashiell Hammett, John Steinbeck, Jack London, Jack Kerouac, Gertrude Stein, Ambrose Bierce, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Randy Shilts, Ken Kesey, and Iris Chang. The lineup of celebrity readers was equally impressive and included Oakland mayor Jerry Brown, Armistead Maupin, Amy Tan, Michael McClure, James Dalessandro, Daniel Handler, Peter Coyote, Cintra Wilson, Andrew Sean Greer, Eddie Muller, and devorah major.

An admitted literary groupie, I was waiting for the doors to open promptly at 7 p.m. After a good hour of people watching, I stopped counting black berets after the first dozen and noted several people walking in with their own copies of “Howl.” The crowd included a few senior hipsters, and I wished there could have been a show of hands to see how many, if any, were in attendance on that night in '55. Was it really as magical as they say? And, to be honest, did anyone go home with Kerouac? How about McClure?

The evening consisted of nearly 20 readings, one right after the other, with an intermission halfway through – all in all, three hours. “Howl” tribute or not, you might expect a little shifting in the chairs, a little text messaging, maybe some early departures. But, no. Each reading was given its due respect and the pieces were so thoughtfully selected and moving that the audience seemed rewarded for its good behavior with one gem after another. As each reader spoke, photographs of the featured author were projected onto a screen behind them.

Some highlights:

New York writer Cintra Wilson, formerly of San Francisco, got things off to a saucy start, walking on stage in a figure-hugging, two-piece skirt and jacket ensemble. Hair up, retro cat eye glasses atop a well-powdered nose (think sexy librarian). Her enunciation was perfection as she delivered some amusing word definitions, taken from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary .

Armistead Maupin, who followed Cintra Wilson, began, “Sitting on the side, looking at Cintra Wilson's ass is enough to turn a gay boy straight.” This joke took on a life of its own as several readers throughout tweaked it to best describe the derriere of the reader that preceded them. The Tales of the City author proceeded to read a Mark Twain piece on the 1865 earthquake, “back when it was still known as The Big One.”

Jerry Brown, dressed in a dark suit and silver tie, read from Jack London's The People of the Abyss, a moving commentary on poverty and the conditions of paupers and children in ghettos. The Oakland Mayor finished, adding, “It's pretty heavy, but it's still going on.” Jack London was also an Oakland mayoral candidate.

Daniel Handler, creator of the Lemony Snicket series, read from Gertrude Stein. He told the audience that on her deathbed, Stein reportedly asked, “What was the question?” He also announced, as he first stepped up to the microphone, that “looking backstage at the ass of Jerry Brown, it's enough to turn a straight boy gay.”

Eddie Muller, nicknamed the “Czar of Noir,” read from Dashiell Hammett, doing a fine impersonation of The Fatman as he purred the famous opening line, “Ah, Mister Spade…”

And so on and so forth…like I said, each reader presented a gem.

Michael McClure, now 73, still lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Handsome in black jeans and blazer, his silver white hair tousled back, he came out and bowed to the audience. The youngest of the original poets from the Six Gallery reading, McClure read four of the same poems he read that evening in 1955, including “For the Death of a 100 Whales.” Intense and dramatic, hands gesturing, McClure read with focus and passion. Of that historic evening, he said, “We knew it instantly…that we had created a spark.” Of “Howl,” he said, “It was a poem about the nature of a new society in America.” And of the night's celebration, he joked, “There are more people here tonight.”

I was surprised and saddened that the entire audience did not give McClure a standing ovation. I mean, I know San Francisco audiences are subdued but, People, C'mon! It's one of the original six. It's 50 years later. He's reading the same damn poems. What's it gonna take?

Realizing that no one could read Ginsberg better than Ginsberg, the organizers arranged for the final reader to be the man himself (on video) reading from “Howl.” The footage was from 1992, for the documentary The Life and Times of Allen Ginsberg by Jerry Aronson. The filmmaker put together this short excerpt especially for the Howl Redux reading.

The Litquake evening may not have brought about revolution as it did 50 years ago, but it gracefully ushered in a week devoted to celebrating the city's current literary renaissance. Jack Boulware, Litquake's co-director, announced during the show that the mayor's office had declared October 7–15 Litquake Week. So now it's official. Litquake will, no doubt, continue to energize the city's literary scene, showcasing new works by contemporary writers, and providing a space for those who still remember how to, you know, howl.

Beth Lisick - a Star on the Rise

2008-04-28T15:37:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 9.20.05
Original author photo by Winni Wintermeyer

The main question that comes up when talking about Bay Area writer, performer, and rising literary star, Beth Lisick, is how does she do it all? This past July saw the release of her third book, Everybody into the Pool: True Tales (Regan Books), as well as the third anniversary of the popular Porch Light storytelling series, which she runs along with Arline Katte. She and her musician husband, Eli Crews, started back up their cabaret-style novelty band, The Loins, and not so long ago, she released a hilarious art film, “Diving for Pearls,” which she co-created and starred in with regular performance partner, Tara Jepsen.

Tired yet?

This is on top of already having published two other books (with Manic D Press), writing the Buzz Town column for SFGate.com for eight years, contributing to NPR's This American Life , and having her (now defunct) spoken-word/music band, The Beth Lisick Ordeal, featured at Lollapalooza in 1994. Among other ventures.

So how does she do it? After meeting with her at her writing office in Oakland and talking about all things writerly, I'm starting to know. It has something to do with following her muse, putting herself out there, and having a whole lot of fun along the way. Of course, it doesn't hurt that she's talented, wickedly funny, as Dave Eggers called her, and seems to have boundless energy. For more, you'll just have to read the interview.

I understand you got started performing and writing by reading at poetry open mics. How long ago was that? And how long did you do that before getting involved in other projects?

I think it was 1994, when I did Lollapalooza. Yeah, I would just go to open mics like the Chameleon Monday nights and Paradise Lounge Sunday nights, which were the two big readings in San Francisco for a long time. So basically, I was doing readings, and then featured readings. A lot of people were coming and Jen [Jennifer Joseph, who ran the poetry readings at Paradise Lounge and is the publisher of Manic D Press] just stepped up and said why don't we collect what you've been reading and put them in a book. So when I had written them, I had never intentionally thought they were ever going to be in a book. …I was just writing stuff – “Oh, here's about three minutes of reading.” So this first book is just a collection of performance monologues and poetry.

How long after doing readings did the book come out?

The book came out in 1997, so I was probably doing stuff for about two years.

How did that start you on the career path to where you are today, in general? You've done so many projects; how did one thing lead to another?

When the book came out, I went on a big tour in which I piled all my books in the back of my dad's pickup truck and drove around the country by myself to about 30 cities. There was a scene through the poetry slams – because I did that for a couple of years – and so I had met people in all these different cities. So, mostly I did featured readings at poetry fests around the country. I sold a ton of books out of the back my truck, about 500 books.

I had never believed in a career or anything. It's really only been with the publishing of this latest book that I thought I need to get serious about something. Or, how am I ever going to pay the bills, if I just keep doing all the things that sound fun? So I'm trying to figure that out right now.

But my first book tour did show me that, oh, I can be a writer. I didn't call myself a writer until just a few years ago, really.

Did you think of yourself as a performer?

No, I don't know what I thought of myself. I would say what I was doing by saying, oh, I write this column [Buzz Town for SFGate.com] because I was making some money doing that. But I was never one of those people that say oh, I have to write, people have to hear what I have to say. So that's why I didn't think of myself as a writer. I really thought you had to have something sensitive and important to say.

With the first book, Monkey Girl , I really thought, oh, all right, I can write stuff, and wouldn't that be great to write a book knowing from the beginning that it was going to be published. One of the pieces in Monkey Girl was published in The Best American Poetry , and that was my first published poem ever. I never even thought of that piece as a poem. That really showed me something, that the higher world is completely open, and there are no rules. You can do everything in your own way.

Did you choose projects by what inspired you in the moment?

Yeah, and I still have a hard time trying to focus. But yeah, I always just did what seemed interesting. I've always enjoyed the process of making stuff and working with other people and doing things, and not done much worrying about what happened after it was out there.

I just kept saying yes to everything. Will you do this reading? Will you do this performance? Do you want to work on this together? Opportunities just keep coming if you keep saying yes and putting yourself out there. I've never been concerned that my output has to be perfect. … On this last book, I worked on it harder than I've worked on anything in my life because I did want it to be really good, I really wanted to be happy with it. But before that, I thought, it's just fun to get stuff out there.

Yes, because that holds up a lot of people: perfectionism.

Yeah. I'm not just going to put stuff out there, which is why I never will have a blog. (I don't think there's anything wrong with blogs or bloggers; it's just something I would never do.) But at the same time, I'm not overly concerned.

What do you consider to be your first break as a writer?

Well, definitely The Best American Poetry thing.

When did that happen?

That was 1997. What happened was that Jennifer Joseph was pregnant and couldn't go to this writer's conference in Birmingham, Alabama, so she sent me and two other authors from Manic D. My book hadn't come out yet. So we went to this conference and there was a cocktail party with all these fancy poets and writers. We were the cocktail entertainment; it was me, Jeff McDaniel, and Bucky Sinister. People were eating appetizers and drinking cocktails and then it was, “Oh the kids are going to read their poetry.” I read one poem and James Tate, who is an incredibly well-established, famous poet and who was in the audience, said that was an incredible poem. I was like, oh, really, that's a poem? James Tate is telling me that something is a poem. He asked if it was published anywhere, and I said no. To get in The Best American Poetry anthology, the poem has to be published somewhere first, in literary journals. So he referred me to a guy who publishes the Clockwatch Review . [This person] said, why don't you send it to me and I'll publish it in Clockwatch . So I did that, and then James Tate pulled it from Clockwatch to put in the anthology.

You know, I've never once in my life submitted anything to a journal. The thing I liked to do was read stuff out loud. I thought, why try to get into these things that I don't even read? What would I be trying to prove by sending my poems to some journal I've never even bought, whose poets I don't know? Reading my poem out loud is how I got into this.

Had you always wanted to write or perform? I read that you were a “frustrated writer” and that's what motivated you to get up and perform.

I was and still am a very practical person. I didn't know any artists, I didn't know any writers. I didn't grow up with that, so I didn't really understand. I thought you had to have a huge, gigantic ego to be an artist. I thought, why would you do something and think that anybody even cares? Not in a bad way. But like, god, it takes a lot of balls to express yourself and think someone else cares.

When I was in college, I started writing down overheard conversations and things like that. It wasn't until a couple years after college that I was at an open mic having a beer and thought, oh, OK, so people can just get up for three minutes and say their thing, and they get off the stage and whatever. Some of it's good and some of it's bad. So I'll just go write something and bring it back, and I can read it.

That's when I found out some things, like I'm not afraid of public speaking. Supposedly that's a lot of people's morbid fear – and so I've got that going for me. I'm not afraid of looking stupid. I've gotten up and read things that weren't so great, but it's never bothered me. I never thought that somebody was going to not like me based on what I read.

Do you prefer performing or writing? Or do you see them as together?

When I started out, I was writing just to perform. The performance that I do now … is more about the performance and less about the writing. They were close. I would memorize everything. I would write a 40-minute set and completely memorize it. Now, I'm concentrating on my writing and just reading it, and the performance is separate.

How do you balance among all your obligations?

Now Gus [her son] is in pre-school. It's great, because now I can drop him off and come over here, and I don't pick him up until six o'clock. Before I would be up until three, four in the morning writing. Now it's great because I can be more on a schedule.

It's hard figuring out [where to focus]. The stuff I do with Tara [Jepsen, her collaborator on “Diving for Pearls”] is super fun and we have such a blast doing it, but we don't make any money off it. And right now it's really hard because I'm supposed to be writing a short story for an anthology. It was due last week, and it actually pays money. I'm trying hard to finish it, but at the same time I have the stuff with Tara, which I really want to do.

A lot of it [balancing] is really financially based. … I need to actually improve my quality of life.

Do you set goals for yourself? How do you motivate yourself for your projects?

Most of [my decisions were] based on if a project looked interesting and fun to me. I never really thought, I'm going to make a movie today. But then Tara and I start talking about it. Well, yeah, let's do it!

And then, yeah, I do set goals. I don't have any master list or agenda or anything like that. When I was doing a reading two years ago, there was an agent in the audience from this New York agency. She approached me afterwards and said, I would really like to represent you. That was definitely a time in my life when I said, OK, I need to take this really seriously, I need to write a really good book, I need to come up with a good idea. I said, here's a chance where I can work really hard and try to make this happen.

How would you describe your work process?

Hhm. I don't know.

Do you just do whatever is needed to be done in the moment?

Yeah. I'm really deadline-oriented. I like having a deadline a lot. It really helps me. I just sit there and try to write. I don't know what my process is.

Do you sit down at your desk at the same time every day?

Yeah, pretty much during the day.

What inspires you to keep writing?

Other writers definitely inspire me, writers that I know. Seeing Michelle [Tea], and reading Michelle's work, and Mary [Roach] and Lisa [Margonelli] and Joe [Loya]. And Porch Light, hearing people's stories. That's really helped me in my own writing, hearing all the different ways that a story can be told, and seeing what's interesting to me and what works. So yeah, other artists and writers inspire me.

What have been your biggest challenges in your career and/or writing process?

Having a kid was hard, a challenge. It really was. I tried to pretend that it wasn't for a while. A certain part of my personality was like, oh, everybody makes such a big deal about it. Everybody has kids. What's the big deal? And then it was, oh, it is a big deal. It takes up a lot of time and energy, it's hard work, and so that was definitely a challenge.

Another big challenge is just that insecurity of, “is this even good?” Trying to get past those little voices that creep up and say, why are you even doing this? Why would anybody even care? Is this an acceptable way to write a story, because it's weird or whatever? So that's always a challenge.

How have you made ends meet as a writer? I know you've said you've never really had a regular day job.

I have not had a day job in five years. I was working at SFGate as an editor doing pages (pulling stories together from the Chronicle), and I was writing a column at the same time. And then I left and just was writing my column. It wasn't a lot of money, but I was paid weekly for the column. Besides that I would do a lot of things. It's really funny but when I start talking about it I can't remember how it happened.

I'm looking at my calendar to see what I have. This Saturday, I'm going to spend all day at a celebrity chef cooking event that I'm managing. … I have a lot in October. The Headlands Center for the Arts has a mystery ball, and I'm going to do the art auction at that. I get asked to do a lot of benefits. In November, Marin Country Day School is having a big book fair, and they're paying me to give a talk and a reading.

It really is week to week. I wrote something for the back of the Chronicle magazine a couple of weeks ago, and this anthology that I'm doing a story for now pays some money. I've done some magazine writing. I'm starting to get a little work that way. But a lot of it is a combination of freelance writing and art auctioneering.

What advice would you give a writer who wants to follow in your footsteps, either as writer or performer or combination thereof?

For me it's been really important to not stress out about making sure that everything is perfect. I think it's really important to just keep writing and performing and putting things out there, because you learn every time you do it. You shouldn't be paralyzed by the thought that what you're doing isn't absolutely perfect.

Maybe people think, oh, she puts out all this mediocre stuff in all these different genres. But for me, I'm learning something every time I do that. There's mediocre music and there are mediocre TV shows and there are things that have redeeming qualities. I was reading something someone wrote about me that said, just because you're good with a mic and Ira Glass let you go on American Life doesn't mean you can write a book. And I'm like, really, why not? So to write a book it all of a sudden has to be this… That's the thing about Porch Light and stories, it shows that everybody has stories to tell. So yeah, maybe a few people aren't going to want to hear your story, and maybe they are.

What does the future hold for you?

I have two different book proposals right now. So I'm definitely going to write more books.

And you have a screenplay out, right?

Tara and I wrote a screenplay, and yeah, it almost got made. We have one of those stories. So that's out there. My literary agent got me a TV and film writing agent, and so I have a couple TV show ideas.

So the two book proposals you have out, are they creative nonfiction or…?

One of them is creative nonfiction; it's an idea I have that I'm really excited about. There are people all over that teach workshops and classes out of their homes, so what I'm going to do is go around the country and take classes at people's houses and write about them. Like there's this lady in Fort Wayne, Indiana who teaches witchcraft out of her apartment, and there's this lady in Las Vegas who has a stripper pole in her living room. There's also mundane stuff, like scrap booking and weird cooking classes and money management classes. I just love the idea that you would maybe or maybe not be an expert at something, and would put up an ad, invite strangers into your house, and teach them how to do something. It's kind of about making friends and making money, and it's so weird to me. I'm really excited about doing that.

The other one is something I never thought I'd do. A couple of young adult editors asked me if I wanted to try a young adult novel. … And so I got this idea. I thought, what kind of book would I have liked to have read? So I'm going to write a young adult novel.

Porch Light Storytelling Series

2008-04-20T10:43:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 9.19.05

With a theme of “Utilities Included: The Roommate Show,” I expected to hear a lot of roommate bashing on Monday night at the monthly Porch Light storytelling series held at the Swedish American Hall (upstairs to Café du Nord). But it wasn't like that at all. Sure, there were a couple of crazy, abusive roommates in the tellings, but mostly what showed up on the stage was a lively, diverse mix of stories, from prison roommates to traveling-across-the-country-in-a-van roommates to finding the perfect roommate only to have it end sadly.

That's what local literary divas Beth Lisick and Arline Klatte , founders and hosts of this monthly event, are so good at: putting together an eclectic mix of storytellers for an evening of fresh entertainment. Here's what I mean by eclectic: Monday night's line-up included a book store manager/author, a bus-driver, an ex-bank robber/writer, an assistant sommelier, a comedian, and an oral historian. Each had ten minutes to tell a tale without notes or memorization, and damn if every one of them wasn't so natural behind the mic that you felt as if they were at a casual cocktail party, just telling you their wild story.

Porch Light recently celebrated its third anniversary (in July) and was filmed by KRON TV last month, which may have explained why the house was packed – as opposed to just full. A rough count put my estimate around 170, but it could have been more. I even spotted travel writer Jeff Greenwald in the audience, possibly scoping the event for next month when he'll be telling a tale of his own for Porch Light.

The evening began as it usually does, with soothing ballads from the musical guest of the month. Twenty-four-year-old singer/songwriter Ryan Auffenberg from St. Louis, Missouri provided that for us, lending us his beautiful voice and soulful lyrics, playing on both piano and guitar.
Beth and Arline then hit the stage and introduced Marc Capelle , Porch Light's piano man (if he's playing while you're telling a story, it means you better wrap it up). After a short introduction, the readings began.

Here's a roundup:

Bookstore manager/author Alvin Orloff started us off with a story (in fast-paced delivery) about his now ex-roommate of 16 years, Tyler, the trust-fund artist/circuit queen wannabe who complained about everything, forcing Alvin to develop a permanent Pollyanna voice inside his head to counter.

Comedian Kevin Avery ragged on his recent ex-roommate. His anger still fresh, he enthusiastically recounted her various shortcomings and admitted to us, “Ah, this feels really good.”

Freddie Brooks , the sommelier, told the most moving story of the evening. In careful detail, he recounted his search for and finding of the perfect roommate, someone who satisfied all his fussy requirements, only to have that roommate mysteriously and sadly pass away. His delivery, filled with emotional pauses, was powerful.

Then came intermission, time to buy drinks at the bar in the back and, if you're brave, put your name in the hat so you can tell your own story on stage after the break.

The name drawn was Greg Gaston , who told his three-minute story of getting mugged and then going back home to find his muggers using his money to buy drugs from his roommates. A good one!

Oral historian Lani Silver used the roommate theme only as a hook into a whole other story, one in which she humorously described her startling transformation from a bridge-playing, bridesmaid dress-picking, Vietnam-war supporting Republican into a radical activist after witnessing the conditions in apartheid-era townships in South Africa.

Bus driver and Porch Light regular, Kelly Beardsley , who comes off to me as the most natural storyteller of the bunch, told an animated tale about getting stopped by cops in Alabama while driving cross country in a van with her roommate. “We bought some American flag stickers so we'd blend in.”

Joe Loya , writer and, oh yes, ex-bank robber, talked about a very violent prison cell roommate who also happened to be “really sentimental and sweet,” posting a picture of multi-cultural babies on the wall (his “little peoples”) and building a shrine to the Virgin Mary out of candy only to have that turn into a vibrating mound of ants.

All in all, a fabulous, lively night.

Out at the RADAR Reading

2008-04-20T10:34:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 9.6.05

I've been meaning to get over to the Main San Francisco Public Library for one of Michelle Tea's monthly RADAR readings for some time now, and finally I made it. Billed as “a showcase of underground and emerging literature and art,” I had to admit, I didn't know what to expect, if there would be ten people or 80, if the readings would be lively or somber.

As it turned out, there were over 100 people. More chairs had to be retrieved, and still, people sat on the floor and stood in the back, all eager to hear that evening's line-up of fantastic readers: Jessica Arndt, Stanya Kahn, Beth Lisick, and Harry Dodge. Google any of these folks, and you'll see what all the fuss was about.

Even so, I was assured by regulars that seats usually fill for this event, which puts average attendance around 60 (if I count the chairs). Impressive.

So what's the draw? Is it the diverse cast of readers Ms. Tea manages to line-up, the charismatic and energetic presence of the famed Ms. Tea herself, or the home-baked cookies she brings to these readings? Well, I think it's all of that.

The Readings

Jim Van Buskirk, the Program Manager of the Gay/Lesbian Center for the Public Library, introduced Michelle Tea , creator and host of the event, among loud “woo-woo's” and boisterous clapping. Tea wasted no time getting right to the readings, but not without first apologizing for the raisins in the oatmeal raisin cookies, in case anyone didn't like them.

First up was Jessica (“Jess”) Arndt , who has published in the anthology, Bottoms Up , among other publications. Jess read a sailor story that infused her own telling right into the famous text of Moby Dick, blending elements of past and present (such as, well, circuit parties, for one). The result was a telling rich in atmosphere and detail.

Next up was Stanya Kahn , an established performer, dancer, and writer, who drove up from Los Angeles for the reading (with fellow reader, Harry Dodge). She also brought her cute, amazingly quiet nine and a half month old baby.

Kahn read “Hell,” which described in rich, colorful, and rapidly-paced detail, her version of hell on earth. She covered a lot of territory – from Bush the Devil to reality TV, keeping us laughing all the way through. One sequence involved working at Macy's and having to help the models dress, models with “veins like Vietnamese spring roles.” Her 12 or so years as a performance artist came through as she mocked the voices and accents of the models.

Up next: Beth Lisick , who has published three books, most recently the hilarious account of her growing up, Everybody into the Pool. She also runs the monthly Porch Light Storytelling series, and has recently released a film, “Diving for Pearls.”

After telling us an amusing anecdote about her brother (and wanting to play his message for us from her cell phone), she moved on to reading from her latest book. As always, in front of an audience, she was energetic and full of expression. Her reading was filled with over-the-top descriptions about her high school years. Expressing the need to be more focused by doing something in which she “had shown some aptitude,” for example, she takes on Extreme Tanning, telling us about the marathon television watching she had to give to do it. Hilarious, all.

Last, but certainly not least was Harry Dodge , writer, director, and performer. She co-wrote and directed the film, “By Hook or By Crook,” and created the award-winning coffeehouse/cabaret, The Bearded Lady right here in San Francisco.

Although she claimed to be panicked for not being in front of a mic for a while, there were no signs of it in this seasoned performer. She read an imaginative and humorous tale that was peppered with funny characters named mostly after musicians or bands, such as Air Supply, Neal Sedaka, Chuck Mangione, and Barbara Streisand. I got this quote down: “I was strapped to a potty seat for 2 years… until workers found me…”, which may give you a glimpse of the story's flavor.

The Q&A

After an hour of readings, the writers were asked to take seats behind mics at the front of the room for the Q&A session that makes up the second hour. That was when I understood about the cookies. It seems when you ask a question, Michelle brings you a cookie. What a treat!

In all, a lively event. Check it out next month.

Indie Mag All-stars Party

2008-04-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 1.29.05

I had to attend the Indie Mag All-Stars party Saturday night at the Make-Out Room. Sponsored by Kitchen Sink , Clamor , Bitch , and LiP magazines – let me interrupt here to say that with names like that, how could you not be curious and go? – the event was the closing party for the Independent Press Conference, which took place here in San Francisco the week prior. But it was also a reading, open to the public and free (and we all like “free”). It had two main appeals to me. One, it offered the chance to check out the words behind kick-ass independent publications (in addition to the sponsors, there was Watchword Press , Instant City , and other magazine). Two, it was at the Make-Out Room. (I just love those plush, red-velvet curtains, the low lighting, and full bar.)

I arrived at 8 for the 8:30 readings, which was perfect. The place was full, but not yet packed. There was still a chance of finding a seat. At the end of the bar, closest to the stage, I spotted two barstools. One had a jacket draped over it, so I sat on the other. I hadn't been there long before a middle-aged man with glasses and what appeared to be cream cheese on his face walked swiftly toward me.

“That's my seat,” he said.

“OK, no problem,” I said and stood up.

I looked around for another. The man watched me looking around for another and then pulled his jacket off the other barstool and said, “You can sit here.”

Uh, OK, whatever.

“But you have to buy me a drink,” he said.

And moments later: “No, not really.”

So that's how my evening started. But it got better. This man, John Smith (not his real name, but the one he gave me when he learned I was writing a review of the event), told me about “Writers with Drinks,” the popular, invitation-only reading series put on by Charlie Anders, who is also the publisher of other magazine. Mr. Smith pointed her out to me, over by the pool table where the magazines were on display: “It's the guy in the black dress and red purse. Can't miss him,” he said.

I spoke with Charlie briefly. She told me a little about her event, gave me a copy of other , and told me she had just finished a novel. Where do people find the time, I wondered. She then pointed me to Antonia Blue, publisher of Kitchen Sink magazine and the one in charge of the evening. Antonia readily admitted that running an independent publication was fun but a whole lot of work. Many involved in Kitchen Sink , for example, also have day jobs, which is really impressive when you consider the quality of their publication (KS was nominated for an Utne award in 2004).

But anyway, let's get on with the show –

Emcee for the evening was Erik Rehill of the band, Conspiracy of Beards, and also a writer. When he jumped on stage in his trendy suit, Mr. Smith said to me, “Oh, look, it's Kramer,” referring to Erik's hair, which yes, did have a Kramer-like quality.

Erik did a fab job of emceeing. He was comfortable in front of the mic, spoke clearly, and kept his intros short and meaningful. He had no problems with crowd control either, especially when the alcohol had been flowing a while and folks around the bar were getting obnoxious. “Hey, Shut Up!” he told them, and mostly, they did.

In all there were nine readers. All had interesting ideas to share. Some were thoughtful, some analytical, some poignant, some humorous. Some were fiction, but most were nonfiction. I could sense that the pieces would make really good reads over a cup of Joe at Maxfield's. But on stage, unfortunately, the energy often fell flat. I blame the bar noise for some of that. But also, I understood that this was not some flashy hip-hop poetry spoken word performance thingy, after all. It was a reading of some fresh, independent voices – if you listened very carefully.

Some highlights for me included Lynn Rapoport's rich, colorful descriptions of the street, the scenes, and the characters that make up the neighborhood she loves: the Mission District. Her piece (from Instant City ) was a personal response to the independent film, “Mission Movie,” made by Lise Swenson last year, and spoke poignantly and in detail about the neighborhood. She talked about “the midnight artist who built an igloo under the freeway” and how she moved here “before the boom… when you could still say with a straight face, ‘I can't pay more than $300 a month.' ”

Lee Skirball, one of only two males in the line-up, humored us with his piece, “Dying on a Budget,” from Kitchen Sink , opening by revealing he worked as a writer for the funeral page (not to be confused with the more glamorous obituaries) of a major newspaper. It was recession-proof, he said.

At this point (fourth reader in), my “primo” seat at the bar was no longer. The crowd had grown restless and thirsty. The best place to get the bartender's attention, apparently, was directly in front of me, blocking my view.

By the time I returned focus on Lee, he was talking about Cosco and the size of toilet paper and being an animal, and I knew it all related somehow, but obviously I missed some key segue. But hey, the story became more enigmatic this way.

After Lee, Carla Costa got up to read her Kitchen Sink piece and that was it. The noise from the back of the bar had pushed all the way forward and swallowed the stage. All I heard was, “The media is bad.” Then, an amazing thing happened. People in the back started “shooshing” loudly, and the folks around the bar actually shut up and listened. Just in time for Carla's closing sentences. (I learned later that Charlie started the “shooshing.” Way to go!)

The last reading I wanted to highlight was Suzanne Kleid's. She read her first published fiction, “Yours for the Taking,” from other magazine, and as she described it: “It's about drunk people fucking and solving problems with violence.” Her story made you sit up and strain against the bar din to hear it. It didn't hurt, either, that Suzanne had a charming presence on stage, to which a mild cold and a slight stutter only added. At one point she read, “…teach breast-feeding to women whose babies continue to die,” and paused and then said, “Sorry,” as if to apologize for her story's character's lack of sensitivity. We let out a brief laugh, and then she said lightly, “Hey, don't laugh at that,” and continued her story.

A couple more readers and then sha-bang. It was done. Erik got on stage and told us to “take off our clothes and stay a while,” and so we did. Stay a while, that is. Here was the evening's line-up.

Check out these writers!
• Rachel Fudge reading her work from Bitch
• Liv Leader reading her work from Clamor
• Lynn Rapoport reading her work from Instant City
• Lee Skirball reading his work from Kitchen Sink
• Carla Costa reading her work from Kitchen Sink
• Brian Awehali reading his work from LiP
• Suzanne Kleid reading her work from other
• Claire Light reading her work from other
• Lisa K. Strom reading her work from Watchword Press

Fray Day 8

2008-04-19T06:41:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 11.13.04

Photos by Charlene Wright

I first heard about Fray Day ( http://www.fray.com/) through our own Wayman Barnes, who featured at the annual event just last month in Los Angeles. When I learned there would be a Fray Day in San Francisco on Saturday, November 13 at the Swedish American Hall (above the popular Café du Nord), and in fact that was the original one, I had to go.

As the website explains, “The fray organization is devoted to the art of the personal story.” So Fray Day is not about performing or reading poetry, necessarily, it's about telling your own true stories in your own way, ideally, without memorization or notes.

“This is not an elitist event,” Fray founder, Derek Powazek explains. “It's just story-telling. Be authentic. “ He feels it's better if you mess up than look at your notes. I like that attitude. Indeed the whole evening had a comfortable, intimate, in-your-living-room feel to it, even though the place was packed.

Derek Powazek did a fabulous job organizing and emceeing the whole event. Blending ten open mic storytellers in with the four featured performers and two musical guests, he gave us an evening of balanced variety and engaging entertainment.

Powazek himself kicked off Fray Day 8 with his own two-part story of becoming a vegetarian. At this year's event, he also introduced the “Boa of Shame,” a friendly, but not-so-subtle method of letting a storyteller know his/her time was up. It worked, because no one ended up having to wear the embarrassing, bright, red feathery boa.

First up was musician/singer-songwriter, Goh Nakamura, telling his own stories on acoustic guitar, “Embarcadero Blues” among them. Beautiful. Sweet without being sentimental. He set the tone for the evening.

Afterwards, open mic'er, Jish Mukerji, a regular fray storyteller, started the stories by telling about an Internet date that went very, very, very, very – well. After all the self-deprecations (“she must not know how to say no”), the story ends in a proposal, and guess what? Jish will be married two weeks after Fray Day!

Feature, Kevin Smokler, spoke of helping to marry gay couples at City Hall; Emily Ostendorf talked about beauty pageants and feminism; Susan McNeece told of having drifted out to sea during Shark Rodeo Week; and feature, Jack Boulware, co-founder of Litquake, shared a “holiday” story about his normally restrained mother having too many Cutty Sharks and vomiting over the restaurant table. Really, Jack, did you have to go into all that detail about the actual vomit? No wonder he leaves such lasting impressions at Fray Day.

The hilarious Kirk Read, also a feature, entertained with a story of a sex trick turned religious experience at the Fairmont Hotel, and still, there were more stories from open mic'ers.

But by far the most hilarious, entertaining story of the evening (in my opinion, anyway) was Beth Lisick's tale of donning a banana suit for money. Lisick, co-founder of the Porch Light storytelling series and also a Fray Day feature, told us, “I had a good week. I sold some coats … about $30… went to CoinStar … more money… was in a cheap check cashing movie …$150!, and now I was going to be a banana for $45.“ She went on to say, “I'm 35. I'm a mom. I'm embarrassed for the people seeing me.” Lisick expressed herself in animated gestures, demonstrating the enthusiasm that took hold, once the banana suit was on, and showing us what a banana looks like drinking a beer in a bar while a guy hits on her.

Another outstanding performance tucked between storytellers came from Kid Beyond ( http://www.kidbeyond.com/), a Beatboxer with an unusual talent. He makes incredible hip-hop style music using only his voice. I had never seen anything like it – and I don't think the crowd had either. We gave him a standing ovation.

Powazek ended the evening with part two of his story, and sadly, it was over.

Earlier, Powazek told me, “Each year, I think this is the year no one will show up, and the opposite happens.” Of course! People love stories, telling them and hearing them. And now Fray Day happens in cities around the globe. Next year, try to catch one in your city.

Over and out for now. Cindy

David Sedaris at Last

2008-04-12T09:42:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 11.9.04

I tried getting tickets to see David Sedaris in L.A. once. Sold out. I learned his work was going to be performed at the Old Globe in San Diego. Fantastic! But also sold out. While deep in the north of California, I spotted an ad that said he would be reading in Santa Rosa. Damn if I wasn't going to be on vacation. Finally, he came right to my own neighborhood, at a bookstore just up the street to promote his latest bestseller, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim . But the entry list was already full.

It seemed there would be no David Sedaris for me.

I was angry, but this time I fought back. Ripping into Google, I searched and searched. Mr. Sedaris, I learned, would be performing at Zellerbach Hall on the U.C. Berkeley campus (my alma mater) on November 9, 2004. It was May and who knew where my husband and I would be come November (we're like that). But no matter. We were going to fly in to see David Sedaris if it came to that, because enough is enough. The day tickets went on sale, I bought some, and not long after, the event sold out.

Sitting in Zellerbach Hall on the big day, my expectations were huge, and why wouldn't they be? I had read every book Mr. Sedaris had written, except his latest (still waiting for paperback). I recall a quote on the back of one of his books promising that you will laugh so hard tears will stream from your eyes and snot will dribble from your nose, or something to that effect. Indeed, this was true. You cannot stop laughing and you cannot stop reading until the whole book is done, and then you wait, suspended, hungry, for his next.

For those unacquainted, Sedaris is a master humorist, but not of the punch line variety. His humor seeps in through masterful storytelling and an irreverent style. Aside from his bestsellers, he's read his stories on NPR's Morning Edition , where he made his comic debut, and has written several plays along with his sister, Amy Sedaris, under the name, “The Talent Family.” His essays appear regularly in Esquire and The New Yorker .

When the lights dimmed, a small man in khakis, a button-up blue shirt, and tie walked swiftly to the podium. After pulling papers out of his folders and setting them on the podium, he looked up. The first story, he explained, was something new that he had been asked to write for an anthology. The theme was relationships, and the story, titled, “Old Faithful,” will be appearing in The New Yorker in a few weeks.

Sedaris, I noticed, had an immediate ease with the audience, as if he were addressing extended family at a reunion gathering.

This first story started out in standard Sedaris style: by describing in grotesque detail a boil on his backside that he was intensely worried about. He imagined a doctor having to operate, having to remove his whole backside in order to save his life, and the sad thing is, Sedaris said, that probably no one would even notice his backside was missing. The story eventually shifted to the poignant 13-year relationship he has shared with his boyfriend, Hugh. And that's another thing about Sedaris: you're laughing hard, you're occasionally grossed out, but in the end you're usually also moved.

After describing other gay, male relationships he knew (“Most men in relationships had arrangements,” he explained. “It would only work if the other guy promised to never bring men home. Or to always bring men home.”), and describing how he and Hugh knew each other so well, they didn't have to speak (which led to the restaurant scene in which Sedaris' need to create conversation for appearances sake had him saying, “So Hugh, what do you think about monkeys?”), Sedaris eventually returned to the bathroom, where he tried to look at his boil and Hugh said, “Why don't we lance that thing off?” After mocking the use of the word lance, Sedaris described in gruesome detail the “lancing” job, referring to what came out of the boil as “spraying, oozing custard” or something like that. The audience let out a collective, ghastly “Ewwwwwwwww.” Of course, Hugh then became David's “Sir Lance-a-lot” and the story ended.

Afterwards, Sedaris expressed surprise that we reacted that way. “That's nothing,” he said, implying that he's capable of much more gruesome description, which you know is true if you've read the story in which he tries in vain to flush away incriminating pooh. He did admit that for this story, The New Yorker drew the line at “custard.”

His next story was just as hilarious and yet poignant as the first. It was called “Baby Einstein” and it was about his brother, Paul. If you've read his story about the “Rooster,” then you've been acquainted with the lovable, foul-mouthed ball of fire that is his brother. When I saw Amy Sedaris, David's sister, in an on stage interview a few months prior, she claimed to always have pen and paper ready by the phone whenever Paul called. She was always learning something new from him.

Paul is different than Sedaris' other siblings, he explained in the story, “because he was born in North Carolina.” In describing the excitement and perils of Paul's experiences with his wife's pregnancy and a new baby, Sedaris cracked us up by using Paul's deep Southern accent and colorful choice of words. We were completely taken into the story.

The title comes from the Baby Einstein books Paul buys for his new born baby. Sedaris was hilarious when he described Paul spending hours on the talking books himself, trying to get them to cuss. But the book pronounces each letter individually, so it comes out sounding like, “A-S-S-H-O-L-E,” or “F-U-C-K-Y-O-U,” as Sedaris demonstrated by pronouncing each letter distinctly, mocking the mechanical voice. We rolled on the floor, laughing some more. After the stories, Sedaris read from his diary. “I don't usually read from my diary. Mostly it's just whining anyway. But sometimes, something shows up.” He read 12 or so entries, most from 2003 and 2004. They were mini stories and anecdotes, all in classic Sedaris style (hilarious!). Among the most memorable included his learning about people who wanted amputations because they felt they were burdened in life with too many limbs. They had a support group and everything, and Sedaris took us with him as he imagined their chat room talks and what would happen if the chainsaw didn't do the job as expected.

There was a joke about a lady making a bet that a man's testicles were shaped like dice.

And then there were the slave monkeys, the subject of a lengthy diary entry that surely will show up in a future book. He opened this one by saying that sometimes he gets bored signing books and he runs out of things to say, so he'll ask the person whose book he's signing odd questions. One day he asked, “So, when was the last time you touched a monkey?” To his surprise, the woman who was getting her book signed looked at her watch and said “four hours ago.” It turned out this woman works for an organization that trains moneys to help paraplegics. Slave monkeys, and Sedaris really wanted to have one.

You come to realize that Sedaris has a serious thing for monkeys because the topic has populated every story of the evening. It was in “Old Faithful” as the subject of dinner-table conversation when he went out with Hugh; it was in “Baby Einstein” as what Sedaris' mother thought Amy will have (a monkey) instead of a baby; and it seemed to have snuck into more than one diary entry.

At the end of his show, Sedaris would tell us that he didn't realize till the end of his first performance on this tour that monkeys were everywhere. Just a coincidence. Right. We all saw the expression he wore when he was describing the slave monkeys, when one was picking through his hair and actually found something, while another was trying to pop black heads off his face, and another was checking out his pockets, and a fourth was eating from his hand. “Pure heaven,” is how he described it. Mr. Sedaris just has a thing for monkeys, that's all. I remember listening to Terry Gross on NPR interview him some months ago, and at that time he was into spiders. Or arachnophobia. I don't recall which. But again, this is just Sedaris.

After the diary entries, Sedaris said that on every tour he sells something, and this time it's Germany. ”First,” he said, “They speak English better than we do.” Among other selling points was something a German store clerk told him, which was if store clerks hear more than five Christmas carols in a row over the loudspeaker, they get a pay raise. “They recognize that Christmas carols are damaging, if you listen to too many. Doesn't that make you want to move there?” Sedaris asked.

Sadly, the one hour was up. Sedaris then submitted himself to a half hour of questions from the audience. He was asked why he lived in Europe. (Sedaris recently moved to London after years of living in Paris.) Among his answers: “I'm a heavy smoker, and it's one place a smoker can live with dignity.” And: “I like being an outsider because nothing is ever your fault.”

Before ending, he took the opportunity to promote someone else's book, which I thought unusual. He explained that he was at the airport and picked this book because he liked the book jacket, and it turned out it was really good. It was the Columnist by Jeffrey Frank, and he held it up for all to see, insisting that we read it, “especially if you write.”

Then it was all over. We could wait in the lobby for Sedaris to sign our books, but that wasn't for me. I got what I came for, which is a barrel of laughs, and to see Sedaris in the flesh, speaking candidly to his audience. And to have my own little piece of Sedaris with me when I read his next work.

Over and out for now. Cindy

Dispatch from San Francisco

2008-03-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

By Cindy Bailey 10.14.04

I may be forgotten, but I'm definitely not lost.

I'm found, way up here in San Francisco, where the lit scene is sizzling! Eureka!

For those who have forgotten (or never knew in the first place), I'm one of the original LitRavers, along with Wayman Barnes and Frankie Drayus – founding members, we be. (There I am on the “About Us” page.) But I've always been more of the silent partner type. Credit for LitRave really belongs to those other two, plus those who came on board soon after. In the beginning, I attended most LitRave events, even getting behind the mic a few times. But I'm not really a poetry gal, after all, and so eventually, slithered back to my hollowed office to write prose, making appearances mostly only to lead workshops in creative nonfiction along with Mr. Barnes.

Then poof! I was magically transported to San Francisco, where – as I've already reported – the lit scene is sizzling. And I'm all turned on.

To give you the quick & dirty, the giant view from the sky: You can find open mics and other literary events in this city every night of the week (checkout sfstation.com and click on Literary Arts, and then [if you like] click on Spoken Word Events. I have to thank my new friend, Vene Franco, for that tip). Popular writing centers include the Grotto ( http://www.sfgrotto.org/), which I was told single-handedly raised San Francisco's literary arts scene into the pumping machine that it is this very minute) and 826Valencia ( http://www.826valencia.org/). There's also Beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti's City Lights Bookstore, the MakeOut Room (for performances and readings; cocktails also available), A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, Cody's Bookstore in Berkeley to name just a very few. NY's Media Bistro ( http://www.mediabistro.com/) has occasional cocktail parties here, and you can always take workshops at the Writing Salon ( http://www.writingsalons.com/), or over at UC Berkeley, or down at Stanford University, which has those prestigious Wallace Stegner Fellowships, or at a number of the venues already mentioned. Here, there's ZYZZYVA, Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope: All-Story, Three Penny Review, and Watchword Press. And writers living in the Bay Area? There are hundreds, including Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon, Isabelle Allende, Dave Eggers, Po Bronson, Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Julie Orringer, Tobias Wolff, ZZ Packer, Vendela Vida, Michael Lewis, Michelle Tea, Ayelet Waldman, Ann Packard, Mary Roach, and the list goes on and on and on. Oh, and it has been reported that people in the San Francisco Bay Area buy more books per capita than in any other part of the country.

Enough about San Francisco, let's talk about me, and a few of the lit events I finally got off my ass to attend.

On 826 Valencia ( http://www.826valencia.org/)

The first literary event I attended was a panel discussion on memoir writing put on by 826 Valencia in the Mission District (August, 2004). A small word on 826 Valencia. It's a pirate supply store. Really, they sell eye patches and flags and glass eyes. If you wander toward the back of the room, however, the look changes. There are bookshelves and couches and chairs and rugs on the floors. A little farther and there's even another room, full of tables with kids all around it, laughing and talking and probably writing, too.

Still, the place is so much more than what appears. 826 Valencia is Dave Egger's baby, and he is truly committed to its mission of helping kids learn and grow through writing. Nationally, Eggers may be recognized and respected as a best-selling author (A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and You Shall Know Our Velocity), but in the San Francisco Bay Area he's a god. Besides helping hundreds of kids through tutoring and scholarships, he also publishes, along with his author wife, Vendela Vada, a quarterly literary magazine called Believer, publishes books by the likes of Steve Elliott and Nick Hornby under his imprint of McSweeny's Books, puts on monthly seminars for “adults,” helps connect writers in the community and supports them with resources through 826 Valencia, performs and reads at venues throughout San Francisco as well as the nation, hosts famous local writers like Isabelle Allende, works with San Francisco's City Arts and Lectures series to host their 24th annual literary event series (which benefits 826 Valencia and through which I saw the hilarious Amy Sedaris, being interviewed by Michael Chabon's wife and author, Ayelet Waldman). I'm exhausted just listing this! And I'm sure I've left things out, like his political interest in helping to do something about the crisis in Sudan.

But for a god, Dave is really just a regular guy: approachable, accessible, nice. Dave himself moderated the panel on memoirs. Authors on the panel included Steve Elliott (Happy Baby), Jenny Traig (Devil in the Details), Caroline Kraus (Borderlines), and lit agent Elise Proulx (also on the LitQuake committee, an event which I write about next). There appeared to be 100 of us packed into that middle room (the one with bookshelves and couches; I think they call it the Den), all in fold-out chairs. Dave was in his customary attire of baseball cap, T-shirt, and jeans, and he was prepared with a list of intelligent, logical, useful questions for the panelists. The format ran like this: questions answered by panel members (well-organized by topics that started with craft and moved on to publishing and marketing), interspersed by questions from the audience. After about two hours or so of this, we broke into groups. Each author (and one agent) dispersed him/herself to a part of the room and we participants could go hang with one of these guys for a while and ask him/her our own personal writing/publishing-related questions. The positive was that you got to hang out with a popular local author in a very casual environment, but the negative was that after you had asked your question (or two), you felt guilty sneaking off to talk to another author, so you didn't. The author I randomly selected said, “Ew, a popularity contest.”

But when I left, I was thrilled. Not because I learned so much, but because I was starting to meet and greet literary San Francisco, which is what I had set out to do. Who the hell knew there was that strong of a literary community here?

On LitQuake 2004 ( http://www.litquake.org/)

The second literary event I attended is still going on as I write this, and it's not really an event. It's a series of events, a nine-day celebration, now in its fifth year (three as “LitQuake” and the previous two under some other less popular name). The web site tells it best, so I won't repeat what they've written. I will only share a few brief reviews of the events I've attended to date.

EVENT 1:“Writing Women's Lives” on 10/10/04 – OK, so I missed the big LitQuake Launch party on Saturday night at Café du Nord on Market Street the night before, where a number of author bands like Eddy Joe Cotton's Yard Dogs Jug Band and Bronte Suarus played. So what? I got in on the rest of the action at least. The panel discussion on “Writing Women's Lives” took place at the Noe Valley Ministry, a modern, airy church just a few blocks walk from my house. Panel participants included Liz Maverick, Ann Packer, Maxine Hong Kingston, Julie Orringer, and ZZ Packer, the big name line up of which probably accounted for the 20 men that attended this “women's” event among the 100-person crowd on this hot, 85-degree Sunday afternoon. David Kipin of the San Francisco Chronicle moderated. Although all panelists contributed to a lively discussion, for me, anyway, Maxine stole the show. I mean, here is a woman whose books have been around for decades (particularly, The Woman Warrior, copyrighted in 1975 and required reading for me in college); here is a woman who had to write The Fifth Book of Peace twice because the first time around her work in progress (and only copy) got completely burned in the Oakland fires (along with her house), and yet she was hilarious. This petit, confident, Chinese woman with thick, long white hair, pulled back into a single pony tail and with a friendly, open face, well, she had these sorts of responses to share:

On the fact that 80 percent of book reviews go to men, leaving only 20 percent for women: “I've found that those few, minority women reviewers who do review our books will bend over backwards to critique the fact that you're not being feminist enough… and then you find yourself being accused of being a mother…”

On choosing book covers for your books: “I would be shown [this artwork] and I would have to tell them that this looks like Chinese wallpaper, that this is stereotyping and it's not beautiful, but they don't listen…I've solved the problem by drawing my own pictures for book jackets.”

On a tangent off of writing from the male point of view: “Until I was 35, I wrote only in the first person. I think this was because I was a self-centered, narcissistic writer …”

On a tangent off of how teaching writing can affect your writing: “When I teach high school students… they all write love stories and all of their love objects, male or female, regardless of race, are blond with blue eyes.”

EVENT 2: Upstairs at the ever popular Café du Nord ( http://www.cafedunord.com/), LitQuake teamed with Porch Light ( http://www.porchlightsf.com/) for an evening of storytelling from a mix of local writers. The theme was “Throes of Rejection,” and the writers were not to have notes or to have memorized the stories (clearly, a few cheated). They were all fabulous, given what they had to do. Standouts for me were probably Josh Kornbluth, who rambled on about I have no idea what, but I found it all funny; Regina Louise (one of the cheaters) who perfectly performed a poignant story of waiting at the window to see her mom Ruby, who promised to come see her but never showed up; and Joyce Maynard, who told an eerie story of her building a relationship through letters with a California inmate known as Grizzly.

EVENT 3: At this event, Tuesday night (10/12/04) at the Balboa Theater, Tamara Straus, the Editor-in-Chief of Zoetrope: All-Story, interviewed Barry Gifford on the process of transforming his book, Wild at Heart, to film with David Lynch. To be honest, I didn't find any zingers in his talk. He's a friendly, casual, engaging guy, who is truly committed to his art (huge applaud for this), but he didn't tell me anything I didn't already know. If you've been around the writing block a few times, you wouldn't have found any zingers either. But it was a thrill to re-watch, after all these many years, the crazy, violent, original Wild at Heart, right there on the big screen all over again, with Laura Dern and a very young, baby-faced Nicolas Cage.

EVENT X: I'm skipping Wednesday and Thursday night, but I'll be out there on Friday night (10/15/04) for LitQuake's popular Pub Crawl, in which hundreds of authors will read at various pubs and venues on Valencia and 22nd streets in the artsy Mission District. You can read all about it at http://www.litquake.org/. If you can't make it here this Friday night, I'd consider driving up from LA for next year's LitQuake events. It's only a 5-hour drive, and it's worth it!

Over and out for now. Cindy

Dark Readings, All Lit Up

2008-02-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

By Cindy Bailey

I attended a book reading at Borderlands on Valencia this last Saturday. The genre was horror. Not my thing. But one of the readers, Maria Alexander, is an old writer friend from L.A., one I hadn’t seen in years. We used to work together at Warner Bros., crafting business documentation for them, while discussing our various creative writing projects on the side. Eventually, I moved to San Francisco and she started with another company, and life went on.

Now here she was, just down the street from me, reading one of her stories. So I had to go. (We writers have to support each other.)

Now, I’m very naïve about horror. When I think of it, I imagine blood and killings and body parts flying. I think of Halloween and Night of the Living Dead. I don’t, necessarily, think of good, quality writing. Yet that’s what I heard from the two women who read at Borderlands.

Maria and Loren Rhoads read stories from Sins of the Sirens: Fourteen Tales of Dark Desire, an anthology of dark stories from four female authors. I found Loren’s story moving—it created an eerie atmosphere that was palpable, complete with a solid sex scene. Maria’s story expressed intrigue and imagination; it was about a journal that writes back to it’s owner, advising him to kill the woman he writes bitterly about.

During the follow-up Q&A, I learned a little something more about my friend. Apparently, what turned her on to all things ghouly is having seen a horror movie on TV at the age of three. It blew her mind. In her words, she didn’t know that was not OK; her parents allowed it. The experience proved liberating for her. As a parent myself it made me think, hmm… maybe I should be careful to allow my son more freedoms...

Unfortunately, my life is such that I had to dash from the reading as soon as it was over, hoping to catch up with Maria later. But I appreciate what I gained from the reading by accident: a new found respect for the genre.

Way to go, Maria!

LitRave

2008-02-18T19:30:00.000-08:00