Sam Silvas, author of the short story collection Stanton, California, will appear along with more than 100 authors at LitFest Pasadena, which will take place in Pasadena, California, on May 20 & 21, 2017. For a complete schedule of authors and events, visit litfestpasadena.org.
Archives for posts with tag: readings
Chicago-area book lovers — join six authors who contributed their work to the Nancy Drew Anthology as they read from the collection on Friday, Dec. 9, 2016 at Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore in Forest Park, Illinois. Readers include organizer Cynthia Todd Quam, along with Steve Bogdaniec, Jennifer Finstrom, Jessie Keary, Elizabeth Kerper, and Patrick T. Reardon, A big thank you to Century & Sleuths Bookstore — and owner Augie Aleksy — for hosting the event!
WHEN: Friday, Dec. 9, 2016, 7-10 p.m. (CST)
WHERE: Centuries & Sleuths Bookstore, 7419 Madison St., Forest Park, IL, 60130. 708-771-7243
WHAT: Readings from the Nancy Drew Anthology by six contributors — Steve Bogdaniec, Jennifer Finstrom, Jessie Keary, Elizabeth Kerper, Cynthia Todd Quam, and Patrick T. Reardon! Get your autographed copy at the event!
Congrats to frequent Silver Birch Press contributor Lee Parpart who won an emerging writer prize in Open Book: Toronto’s 2016 “What’s Your Story” competition for the Toronto community of East York. Her short story, “Piano-Player’s Reach,” about neighbors caught up in tensions over a renovation project, will be published on openbooktoronto.ca. Lee and writers Kate Marshall Flaherty, Michael Januska, and Diana Fitzgerald Bryden will read from their work on Saturday, October 1, 2016, at the S. Walter Stewart Library at 170 Memorial Park Ave. in Toronto. All are welcome to this free event!
SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!
Tongue & Groove
If you’re in the L.A. area on Sunday, July 31, 2016, check out Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo with an impressive roster of featured performers.
Sunday, July 31, 2016
6-7:30 p.m.
The Hotel Cafe
1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.
Hollywood, California 90028
$7.00
Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! The club is a two-story black brick building, a third of a block below Hollywood Blvd. There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed till 8pm. Avoid Cahuenga street parking
This month’s featured performers include Pam Ward, David Darmstaedter, Elizabeth Marquez, Rios de la Luz, Kristina Wong, and music by Linda Ravenswood
Pam Ward is an author/artist and L.A. native. An art advocate as well as an instructor and mentor at Art Center College of Design, Pam has designed for politicians, community organizations, and corporate America. A former board member of Beyond Baroque Literary Foundation, Pam was also an artist-in-resident for the City of Los Angeles, Venice and Manhattan Beach. After publishing two novels, Want Some Get Some and Bad Girls Burn Slow, and working on merging writing and graphic design, Pam produced the recent installation, My Life, LA: The Los Angeles Legacy Project, a poster project blending graphics with story/facts documenting the impact of Angelenos on the actual land. Her play, I Didn’t Survive Slavery for This has played throughout L.A. Currently she is working on the true story of her aunt, a real Black Dahlia suspect.
David Darmstaedter lives in Topanga, California, and travels the hills dressed in tinfoil underwear to summon ideas from the wild. He has written plays, screenplays, short stories and novels. His memoir My Monster is in eternal development with Mark Ruffalo and Ethan Hawke. He will be reading from his current book in the works, Solly’s Shangri-La.
Beth Marquez stumbled into a spoken word tent at Lollapalooza when she was 13, and it changed her life. She co-hosted Java Gardens reading in Huntington Beach and attended the National Poetry Slam as an alternate for the Laguna Beach team. She’d been published in the Moontide Press, Valley of Contemporary Poets, and Ugly Mug anthologies and elsewhere. She will be debuting a show based on her poetry at The Victory Theater in Burbank in September.
Rios de la Luz is a queer xicana/chapina living in Portland, Oregon. She is brown and proud. She is the author of The Pulse Between Dimensions and the Desert (Ladybox Books, 2015). Her work has been featured in Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Entropy, The Fem Lit Magazine, World Literature Today, and St. Sucia.
Kristina Wong is a performance artist, comedian, and writer who has created five solo shows and one ensemble play that have toured throughout the US and UK. She was recently featured in the New York Times‘s Off Color series highlighting artists of color who use humor to make smart social statements about the sometimes subtle, sometimes obvious ways that race plays out in America today. She’s been a frequent ommentator/guest with, xoJane, Playgirl Magazine, Huffington Post, and The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore to mention but a few places. She has been the recipient of numerous prestigious grants and residencies and not to brag, but Kristina has twice given the commencement speech at UCLA, her alma mater. Her most recent solo show “The Wong Street Journal,” which navigates privilege and economic disparity, premieree in June 2015. Kristina’s mail order bride website is www.bigbadchinesemama.com. This Fall, she is a guest professor at Cal Arts in the MFA Creative Writing Program.
Linda Ravenswood, with an aim towards inquiry, tantalization, and uncovering, speaks, stands, beckons, and reminds viewers to hold memory, history, place, and lineage as holy, yet available markers. In these ways, Linda has evolved an arts practice holding a strong and defining spatial, and theatrical course. Recent work (2014¬2016) has appeared, or been commissioned at The Broad Theatre, AWP/Pen Centre USA, Cornell University, The Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, The Angel’s Gate Cultural Centre, The Artery, The Bootleg Theatre, Gallery 16 (San Francisco), The Lancaster Museum, The Hollywood Fringe Festival, and Craftswoman House. She has been published in 30 literary journals, her music has appeared in three documentary films (PBS), she has four books in print (Sybaritic Press, Mouthfeel Press, Gallery 16 Press, LACMA Press – forthcoming), and she is a 2016 Vermont Studio Centre fellow in Poetry. Twice nominated for The Pushcart Prize for Poetry, Linda is a lecturer, dramaturg, and workshop presenter, most recently teaching at Occidental College. Linda Ravenswood is NDN, First Nation, (Pokanoket Nation), a Mayflower descendant on her mother’s side, and an Indigenous Mestiza from Baja California Sur on her father’s side. She was raised by Holocaust survivors from WWII. No kiddin’.
Paul Fericano is a poet, satirist, social activist and San Francisco native. His poetry and prose have appeared in publications and media outlets in the U.S. and abroad since 1971, including The Realist, The New York Quarterly, Krokodil (Moscow) and Charlie Hebdo (Paris). He is a recipient of the Prix de Voltaire (France) and the Ambrose Bierce Prize (San Francisco).
Ellaraine Lockie is a widely published and awarded author of poetry, nonfiction books and essays. Her newest collection, Love Me Tender in Midlife, has been released as an internal chapbook in IDES from Silver Birch Press. Ellaraine teaches poetry workshops, frequently judges poetry contests and serves as Poetry Editor for the lifestyles magazine, Lilipoh.
Art Beck’s poetry and essays have appeared in a wide range of literary journals, including Alaska Quarterly, OR, Artful Dodge, and Translation Review. His several collections of poetry and poetry translations include Luxorius Opera Omnia, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone (Otis College, Seismicity Editions), which was awarded the 2013 Northern California Book award for poetry in translation.
On Wednesday, January 13, 2016 (the ides of January!), poets featured in IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks will read from their work at The Ugly Mug in Orange, California. All poetry lovers welcome! Please join poets Robin Dawn Hudechek, Daniel McGinn, Daniel Romo, and Thomas R. Thomas as they read from their chapbooks included in the 288-page collection.
WHEN: Wednesday, January 13, 2016, 8-10 p.m.
WHERE: The Ugly Mug Cafe, 261 N. Glassell St., Orange, CA, 92866
FEATURED POETS
Robin Dawn Hudechek received her MFA in creative writing, poetry from UCI. Her poems have appeared in numerous publications including Caliban, Cream City Review,Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets, Cadence Collective, Hedgerow: a journal of small poems, Silver Birch Press, Right Hand Pointing, and work forthcoming in Chiron Review. She lives in Laguna Beach, California, with her husband Manny and two beautiful cats, Ashley and Misty. Find more of her poetry at robindawnh.wordpress.com.
DANIEL McGINN has been active in the SoCal poetry scene since 1995. He’s written about poets and poetry for Next Magazine and the OC Weekly. He’s taught workshops for Half-Off Books in Whittier, The Lab in Long Beach, and the Orange County Rescue Mission. Daniel has an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. His book, 1000 Black Umbrellas, was published by Write Bloody. Daniel, his wife, the poet Lori McGinn, and their poodle, Pearl Le Girl, are natives of Whittier, California.
DANIEL ROMO is the author of Romancing Gravity (Silver Birch Press, 2013) and When Kerosene’s Involved (Mojave River Press, 2014). His poetry and photography can be found in The Los Angeles Review, Gargoyle, MiPOesias, Yemassee, and elsewhere.
THOMAS R. THOMAS publishes the small press Arroyo Seco Press. Publications include Carnival, Pipe Dream, Bank Heavy Press, Chiron Review, Electric Windmill, Marco Polo, and Silver Birch Press. His books are Scorpio (Carnival), Five Lines (World Parade Books), and the art of invisibility (Dark Heart Press). His website is thomasrthomas.org.
Find IDES: A Collection of Poetry Chapbooks at Amazon.com.
Check out a trailer for the collection:
If you’re in Long Beach, California, on Saturday, Jan. 31st, head over to Gatsby Books and help celebrate the launch of Joan Jobe Smith‘s latest memoir Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl!
WHEN: Sat., Jan. 31, 2015, 3-5 p.m.
WHERE: Gatsby Books, 5535 Spring St., Long Beach, California, 90808, 562-208-5862
WHAT: Launch party for Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl by Joan Jobe Smith. Please bring a poem to read in honor of Pearl Magazine editor Barbara Hauk (August 1937-Dec. 2014).
ABOUT THE BOOK: In Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl, poet, historian, and Bukowski confidante Joan Jobe Smith endures ordeals and challenges — and survives to tell the tale. This picaresque true story spans the 1965 Los Angeles Watts Riots, near death at the hands of a homicidal ex-husband, the counterculture go-go swinging let-it-all-hang-out 1960s and 70s, single motherhood, and feminism. This memorable and moving tale — which ends in 2014 with Joan dancing to Doors’ guitarist Robby Krieger — is told with heart and courage and humor. Don’t miss it! Find Tales of an Ancient Go-Go Girl by Joan Jobe Smith at Amazon.com or purchase a copy at Gatsby Books.
Tongue & Groove — a literary variety show tonight of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word & music produced by Conrad Romo — tonight (Monday, August 26, 2014) features Taylor Negron, Tonya Ingram, Carlos Kotkin, Ann Buxie, and music by Logan Heftel.
Taylor Negron is a comedian, novelist, playwright, and a damned good cook. As an actor, he can be seen in the upcoming films Pledge This, Retirement, and Surf School, which he also co-produced. He just got back from an off-Broadway show The Unbearable Lightness of Being Taylor Negron, and was met with standing ovations. Visit him at taylornegron.com.
Carlos Kotkin is a monthly contributor to the online literary magazine Smalldoggies as well as a featured performer on NPR’s The Moth Radio Hour, KCRW’s unfictional and the popular podcast Risk! He is a 10-time Moth storyslam winner and author of the recently published humorous memoir of romantic misadventures Please God Let It Be Herpes: A Heartfelt Quest for Love and Companionship. Learn more at carloskotkin.com.
Ann Buxie is a poet/storyteller raised in Yuma, Arizona, who now lives in Malibu, where she produces the wonderful home concert series, Tales by the Sea.
Tonya Ingram is the 2011 New York Knicks Poetry Slam champion, a member and cofounder of NYU’s poetry slam team, a member of the 2011 Urban Word-NYC team, and the 2013 Nuyorican Grand Slam team. She is the author of Growl and Snare. Her work has traveled to Ghana, California, Michigan, Texas, Georgia, Massachusetts, Washington D.C., New York, The Literary Bohemian, Cultural Weekly, Upworthy, Youtube, and season four of Lexus Verses and Flow. She is a New York University alumna, a Cincinnati native, a Bronx-bred introvert, and a hopeful Los Angeles flower-child, where she will be pursuing her MFA in Public Practice at Otis College of Art & Design. Learn more at silenceturnedshotgun.
Logan Heftel is a producer and singer/songwriter based in Los Angeles. Visit him at loganheftel.com.
Conrad Romo grew up in L.A. short, stocky and swarthy. He is the producer and host of the literary reading series Tongue & Groove, now into year 11. He is also a cofounder of the NoHo Litcrawl and earns his daily bread as a salesman. His writing has appeared in Los Angeles Review, Wednesday Magazine, Noveltown, Tu Ciudad, Brooklyn & Boyle, Palehouse, Huizache, and Latinos in Lotusland. Visit him at conradromo.com.
WHAT: Tongue & Groove Literary Event
WHEN: Tuesday, August 26, 2014, 6:30-7:45 p.m.
WHERE: Annenberg Community Beach House 415 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica, CA, 90402
MORE INFORMATION: Facebook
On Sunday, August 24, 2014, Tongue & Groove — a monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, and music founded and hosted by Conrad Romo — features readings by Jim Ruland, J. Ryan Stradal, Dinah Lenney, Rolland Vasin, Cathy Schenkelberg, and a performance by musical guest Jeremy Bass.
Jim Ruland is the author of the short story collection Big Lonesome and co-author with Scott Campbell, Jr., of Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch of Giving the Finger. His debut novel is Forest of Fortune (Tyrus Press). Learn more at jimruland.net.
J. Ryan Stradal volunteers at 826LA and co-produces the literary/culinary event “Hot Dish,” and works in TV, most recently as the Supervising Producer on the A&E series “Storage Wars: Texas.” He likes wine, books, root beer, and peas. Some places where he has been published include Hobart, The Rattling Wall, Midwestern Gothic, The Rumpus, and McSweeney’s. His first novel Kitchens of the Great Midwest will be published by Viking in 2015. Visit him at jryanstradal.com.
Dinah Lenney is the author of Bigger Than Life: A Murder, a Memoir, and co-authored Acting for Young Actors. Her essays and reviews have been published in a wide range of publications and anthologies, including LARB, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, AGNI, Creative Nonfiction, the Kenyon Review, Ploughshares, TriQuarterly, and Brevity.com. Dinah serves as core faculty for the Bennington Writing Seminars, the Rainier Writing Workshop, and in the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California. Her new book The Object Parade was recently published by Counterpoint Press. Find out more at dinahlenney.com.
Cathy Schenkelberg is an actress, singer, mom, and all around bon vivant. She will tell you how she feels about spending nearly one million dollars on Scientology services for her bridge to freedom and then some.
Rolland Vasin, third-generation American writer (pen name Vachine), has been published in Open Minds Quarterly, Gnome, and Found and Lost, and is an active open-mic reader at venues from Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Big Sur, California. He has appeared at Los Angeles’ World Stage, The Rapp Saloon, and Cobalt Cafe, among others, and dabbles in improvisational theater and standup comedy for which we was recognized as the Laugh Factory’s 1992 3rd Funniest CPA in Los Angeles. As a day job, Rolland’s CPA corporation audits youth and family charities.
Jeremy Bass is a singer/songwriter, master strings player, and a published poet and literary critic. He is the Musical Director and Bandleader for the bicoastal cabaret The Secret City, and is touring this summer in support of his debut album, TENANT, set for release October 7, 2014. Visit him at jeremybassmusic.com.
WHEN: Sunday, Aug. 24, 2014, 6-7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Hotel Cafe, 1623 1/2 N Cahuenga Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028
TAB: $7.00 at the door
ETC.: Come early! Seating is limited and the event starts on time! There are parking lots on Selma as well as Cahuenga. Meters need to be fed until 8 p.m. Avoid Cahuenga street parking. The signs are deceptive.
Silver Birch Press 
