Happy 2016! This Saturday night, I’ll be reading at San Francisco’s longest-running spoken word night, Writers With Drinks, hosted by io9’s very own Charlie Jane Anders!
But get this all-star line-up: Lisa Goldstein, Tracey Knapp, Anthony Marra, Elizabeth McKenzie, and Naomi Williams!
I’ll be reading from Serge Brussolo’s English debut, The Deep Sea Diver’s Syndrome, a science-fictional noir about dream heists, art, pulp, and ectoplasm. What’s not to like? Melville House will be publishing this novel, which I pitched them as “Inception directed by David Cronenberg,†later this month.
When:Â Jan. 9 from 7 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
How much:Â $5 to $20, all proceeds benefit the CSC
Where:Â The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco, CA
Back in 2001, writer Charlie Jane Anders set out to create a new kind of reading that jettisoned the idea of a hushed audience hanging reverentially on each carefully-crafted word, replacing it with a lively cabaret night drawing writers from a smorgasbord of genres—poetry to sci-fi to comedy to kids books.
Writers With Drinks has won numerous “Best ofs” from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7×7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The spoken word “variety show†mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.
About the readers:
Anthony Marra’s latest book is The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories. He’s also the author of The Wolves of Bilaya Forest and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. He was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he now teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. Marra’s story “Chechnya” won a Pushcart Prize and a Narrative Prize.
Naomi Williams’ first novel is Landfalls, a fictionalized account of the 18th-century Lapérouse expedition. Her fiction has appeared in A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. In 2009, she received a Pushcart Prize and a Best American Honorable Mention.
Lisa Goldstein’s latest book is Weighing Shadows. She won a National Book Award for her novel The Red Magician, a Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Uncertain Places, and the Sidewise Award for her short story “Paradise Is a Walled Garden.†Her other books include Travelers in Magic, The Divided Crown, The Alchemist’s Door and Dark Cities Underground.
Tracey Knapp’s first full-length collection of poems, Mouth, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. She’s received scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fund. Mark Strand and Claudia Emerson each chose her poems for Best New Poets 2008 and 2010. Other work has appeared in Five Points, The National Poetry Review, Red Wheelbarrow Review, The New Ohio Review, The Minnesota Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Connotation Press, Painted Bride Quarterly, No Tell Motel, 236, Failbetter, La Petite Zine, Sewanee Theological Review and elsewhere.
Elizabeth McKenzie’s latest novel is The Portable Veblen. She’s the author of a collection, Stop That Girl, short-listed for The Story Prize, and the novel MacGregor Tells the World, a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and has been recorded for NPR’s Selected Shorts. She was an NEA/Japan US-Friendship Commission Fellow in 2010.
“When you move to San Francisco and ask about the literary scene, Writers With Drinks is likely the first thing people tell you about. For one thing, most of us can get behind drinking as a social activity, especially when it’s being done by the witty and verbose. But the real reason is host Charlie Jane Anders, who is a pioneer and master of free-form and fictitious biography.†~ San Francisco Weekly