Dear Writers, Readers and Friends:
I hope this note finds you well. What a lovely cool week we’ve had! Maybe you’re feeling a bit recharged and ready for some more summer literary awesomeness. Check out the below. Also, don’t forget to surf my Links list as well as my Resources page—these days, most nights of the week you’ll find several options for getting wordy.
Yours in writing,
Kate
**
SACRAMENTO POETRY CENTER PRESENTS:
Danny Romero
Book Release Reading for Traces
with Allison Joy and Kabir McKitrick
Monday July 23 at 7:30 PM
1719 25th Street
Host: Tim Kahl
Danny Romero earned a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA from Temple University in Philadelphia. His poems and short stories have been published in a variety of journals, including Colorado Review, Drumvoices Revue, Paterson Literary Review, Ploughshares, and The Raven Chronicles; they can also be found in the anthologies Pieces of the Heart: New Chicano Fiction; Los Vasos Communicates: Antologia de Poesia Chicana (Spain); and Latinos in Lotusland: An Anthology of Contemporary Southern California Literature, among others. He is the author of the novel Calle 10 (Mercury House, 1996), the poetry chapbooks P/V (The Chicano Chapbook Series, 1997) and Land of a Thousand Barrios (Pudding House Publications, 2002), and a poetry pamphlet (Palanquin/TDM 8.4: 1995).
Allison Joy is a Wisconsin gypsy (not to be confused with the variety of moth), a veteran sushi slinger and server at Mikuni. She has worked in a law office and as a language instructor in Chiba, Japan. Currently she is enrolled at Sacramento City College, and she is interested in journalism and fiction that features working class protagonists.
Kabir McKitrick recently published his first story in The Susquehanna Review, and he is headed to UC Santa Cruz in the fall to pursue a BA in literature.
Coming Events at SPC and Elsewhere:
All events are at Sacramento Poetry Center at 7:30 PM unless noted otherwise. Host name in brackets.
July 30 [Paco Marquez and Frank Graham]: A Benefit Reading for C.O.R.E. [Chicano Organizing and Research in Education] Poets William O’ Daly and Francisco Alarcon.
August 6 [Bob Stanley]: Paco Marquez, Zia Torabi, and Parisa Samadi
August 13 [Emmanuel Sigauke]:
August 16 [Mary Zeppa and Lawrence Dinkins] Poetry at the Central Library, 828 I Street, 12 noon on hiatus until fall
August 20 [Rebecca Moos]: 7 p.m. (early start time) Hot Poetry in the Park: Michael R. Gorman, at Fremont Park corner of 15th and Q
August 27 [Tim Kahl]: Ewa Chrusciel and Mira Rosenthal
September 3 [Bob Stanley]: Cynthia Linville and
September 10 [Emmanuel Sigauke]:
September 17 [Rebecca Moos]: the San Francisco Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon debuts their anthology, Turning a Train of Though Upside Down, edited by Andrena Zawinski. Readings by Tobey Kaplan, Dawn McGuire, Judith Offer, and Nanette Deetz.
September 20 [Mary Zeppa and Lawrence Dinkins] Poetry at the Central Library, 828 I Street, 12 noon
September 24 [Tim Kahl]: Kathleen Winter and Greg Mahrer
**
JULY STORIES ON STAGE ~ DEBUT NOVELIST NIGHT! Guest hosted by yours truly…!
Enjoy interview with the authors at http://storiesonstagesacramento.wordpress.com/
Friday, July 27th, 2012, 7:30PM
Debut Novelists Night with Guest Host Kate Asche
Featuring Christian Kiefer, author of The Infinite Tides & Melanie Thorne, author of Hand Me Down
Sacramento Poetry Center
1719 25th Street (@R)
Donation: $5
Doors open 7PM
FEATURED WRITERS & PERFORMERS
Christian Kiefer earned is PhD in American literature from UC Davis, and is on the English faculty of American River College in Sacramento. He is an active poet, songwriter, and recording artist, and lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California with his wife and five sons. The Infinite Tides is his first novel.
p joshua laskey is a globetrotting theater artist with roots in the Sacramento area. He and his wife Jessica founded Theater Galatea and successfully produced its critically acclaimed production of his play Put Out: An Adulterated Farce—marking the thirteenth time laskey has premiered one of his original works in Sacramento and his latest return to the stage as an actor. SoS is thrilled to have p joshua return and share the bill with wife Jessica Goldman.
Melanie Thorne earned her MA in Creative Writing from UC Davis, where she was awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship and the Maurice Prize in fiction. She was a resident at the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat in 2011, and her work has appeared in various journals, including The Greenbelt Review and Global City Review. Hand Me Down is her first novel.
Jessica Goldman is thrilled to perform for SOS for the very first time. As an Equity actress, she’s been seen frequently at the Sacramento Theatre Company (Musical of Musicals, Cinderella, Arcadia, and most recently as Audrey in Little Shop of Horrors), California Stage (Reefer Madness, Threepenny Opera) and in the director’s chair for Theater Galatea’s world premiere of Put Out—written by her husband, p joshua laskey! Jessica is also a freelance writer for Inside Publications and Sacramento Magazine. “Je t’aime, pjl!”
**
ONE SPOT LEFT IN UPCOMING MASTER TEACHER FICTION WORKSHOP WITH KEVIN MCILVOY, September 1 & 2, 2012 in Sacramento
Kevin (Mc) McIlvoy is the author of the novels A Waltz, The Fifth Station, Little Peg, and Hyssop, and the story collection The Complete History of New Mexico. I refer to Mc as the manuscript whisperer, for his ability to both guide and inspire writers. Mc currently teaches in the Low Residency MFA program at Warren Wilson and is a regular faculty member at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. He has a devoted following as an editor and teacher of writing, and a particular interest in working with mature developing writers.. The workshop will be capped at 12 students. The cost is $400. There is currently one space available in this workshop. To apply for the workshop, use the contact form below and include a brief writing sample. There is an interview with Kevin McIlvoy posted on the SoS blog, which you can read here, or you can listen to Tim Kahl read Mc’s “The People Who Own Pianos” here.
**
ENROLL TODAY FOR THE
SURPRISE VALLEY WRITERS’ CONFERENCE
Deadline August 1!
Surprise Valley Writers’ Conference
Sept. 13-16
“This is the next Fishtrap.” — William Kittredge
Deadline for Application is Aug. 1
An exceptional faculty will be on hand this fall as the Surprise Valley Writers’ Conference enters its sixth year of offering workshops in poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction and translation. For the first time the conference will include a workshop in poetry translation, led by Willis Barnstone, a Guggenheim fellow and distinguished professor of comparative literature at Indiana University. Barnstone will be joined by Western States Book Award winner poet Primus St. John, Copper Canyon Press co-founder and poet William O’Daly, “Quantum Web” author Kirby Wilkins, and investigative journalist Ray A. March, author of “River In Ruin” and a recent Pushcart nominee.
For more information and to register go to: www.modocforum.org or call 530/ 279-2099.
Translation. Willis Barnstone, born in Lewiston, Maine, and educated at Bowdoin, the Sorbonne, Columbia and Yale, taught in Greece at end of the civil war (1949-51), in Buenos Aires during the Dirty War, and in China during Cultural Revolution, where he was later a Fulbright Professor in Beijing (1984-85). Former O’Connor Professor of Greek at Colgate University, he is Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at Indiana University. A Guggenheim fellow, he has received the NEA, NEH, Emily Dickinson Award of the PSA, Auden Award of NY Council on the Arts, Midland Authors Award, four Book of the Month selections, four Pulitzer nominations. His work has appeared in APR, Harper’s, NYRB, Paris Review, Poetry, New Yorker, TLS. Author of seventy books, recent volumes are Poetics of Translation (Yale, 1995), The Gnostic Bible (Shambhala, 2003), Life Watch (BOA, 2003), Border of a Dream: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (2004), Restored New Testament (Norton, 2009), Stickball on 88th Street (Red Hen Press, 2011), Dawn Café in Paris (Sheep Meadow, 2011), and The Poems of Jesus Christ (Norton, 2012).
Poetry. Primus St. John was born in New York City in 1939. For more than 30 years he has lived in Oregon and taught at Portland State University. He is one of the inaugurators of the national Poets in the Schools program, the editor of two anthologies, and the author of several collections of poetry, for which he has received an Oregon Book Award and a Western States Book Award. Three of these books have been collected together, along with more recent poems, in Communion: Poems 1976–1998 (1999), which showcases his idiosyncratic use of language, political engagement, and ability to make tangible the failures and successes of the past.
Creative Non-fiction. Ray A. March graduated from San Francisco State where he earned a degree in English Literature/Humanities. As a lifelong journalist and nonfiction author he has worked on newspapers in Europe and the U.S. His articles and essays have appeared in Time, The New York Times, Oceans, San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere. His first major work, an oral history, “Alabama Bound: Forty-Five Years Inside A Prison System,” was nominated for the National Book Award by the University of Alabama Press. His recent book, “River in Ruin: The Story of the Carmel River,” (University of Nebraska Press, 2012) has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Rachael Carson Environmental Book Award.
Poetry. William O’Daly is a poet, translator, and fiction writer. His translations include eight books of the poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day, The Separate Rose, Winter Garden, The Sea and the Bells, The Yellow Heart, The Book of Questions, The Hands of Day, and World’s End), all published with Copper Canyon Press. Also with Copper Canyon, he has published a chapbook of his own poems, The Whale in the Web. O’Daly was a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry and was profiled on NBC’s The Today Show. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, his poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared widely in domestic and international magazines and anthologies. With co-author Han-ping Chin, O’Daly recently completed a historical novel, This Earthly Life, which was awarded as a Finalist in Narrative’s 2009 Fall Story Contest. He has received national and regional honors for his literary editing and instructional design.
Fiction. Kirby Wilkins did his undergraduate work in creative writing at Stanford with Wallace Stegner. He completed his graduate work at San Francisco State where Walter Van Tilburg Clark became a model for his own writing and teaching. He is the author of a book of short stories, “Vanishing,” and two novels, “King Season” and “Quantum Web.” Wilkins taught fiction writing at Cabrillo College for over 30 years, and also at a number of fiction workshops at the Foothill Writer’s Conference. In those classes and workshops, he stressed the importance of voice and of finding the deepest sources for fiction. He encourages writers to find, and honor, the natural shape of their narratives, suggesting ways to generate writing and to elude writer’s block and destructive self-editing. So the tone of a workshop is very important to him. Wilkins says, “My own writing in recent years has focused on my son, whose disability has driven my writing in new directions.”
**
UPCOMING POETRY NIGHT IN DAVIS READERS:
http://poetryindavis.com/upcoming-performers-3/
