A Design Flaw

Coming to NYC! My story A Design Flaw will be performed at KGB Bar on April 1st. The story will be read by Alex Gray as a part of Liars' League NYC show themed "Kiss and Breakup."

Funny thing about that theme: Dave and I will be celebrating our 14th wedding anniversary the same day!

The show starts at 7 pm.

What Goes Around on YouTube

The video of of Elise Marie Hodge reading my story What Goes Around at Stories on Stage in Sacramento on back in June is now online. Thanks Sue Staats for posting and for hosting this wonderful evening! I have another event coming up in September, will share the details shortly.

Reading at Bird & Beckett

I'm doing a reading this Sunday, July 27, at Bird & Beckett, one of the best neighborhood bookstores in San Francisco. I'll be reading a piece or two together with three fascinating writers: Karen Lillis, Margarita Meklina, Lauren Traetto. I know Margarita Meklina's work best: her Russian-language book of stories and essays won the prestigious Andrey Bely prize in St. Petersburg a few years ago, for its contribution to Russian prose, and she's done some fine work in English -- including an interview with Ursula Le Guin!

The reading is titled "Fertile Chaos" and promises to show off writers "experimenting in various unique ways with prose and story." I've been digging through my archives trying to figure out what story to read. Should I read the "we" story (a piece written from the first-person plural point of view) that makes people confused about who the narrator is? An all-dialogue story with a twist ending? A story framed as an essay? Looking through these old pieces inspires me to experiment wider and wilder :)

The reading is at 2 pm, July 27, Bird & Beckett at 653 Chenery Street.

Stories on Stage

Tonight Dave and I are heading out to Sacramento, where Stories on Stage is producing one of my stories together with a story by Tom Barbash. Here's their blurb for the program:

He’s a playwright who can’t stay awake.

She’s a Russian immigrant too easily fooled.

Two characters. Two stories you won’t be able to forget.

This month at Stories on Stage Sacramento

Tom Barbash

and a reading of the title story from his collection, Stay Up With Me, by actor Dougie Pieper

with emerging writer Olga Zilberbourg

whose story,  What Goes Around, will be read by actor and playwright Elise Marie Hodge

7 pm, Sacramento Poetry Center

1719 25th street

Writing That Risks Reading

Litquake's approaching! An amazing festival of hundreds of readings and thousands of authors, all taking over San Francisco for one week, from 11th to 19th of October. I'll be reading as a part of Writing That Risks anthology release party, on October 17th at Alley Cat books. Come hear my alien story and the wonderful and surprising work of my fellow authors.

More fun stuff!

The super secret NYRB Salon (a book group where we read books published by New York Review of Books) is no longer as secret -- there's now a Facebook group, where we can post meeting dates and book titles. We meet first Sunday of every month, in the evenings, at Dog Eared Books in the Mission. If you are in the area at the proper time, stop by whether or not you've read the book. The discussion might make no sense and give away the ending, but at least you can pick up more fun books!

On April 25th, I'll be reading my work at the release party for Eleven Eleven Journal's 14th issue. This should be a fun event, as I'll be performing alongside several local poets. Time and place: 8 pm, at LeQuiVive Gallery in Downtown Oakland (1525 Webster St.). This event also has a proper Facebook invite page here. My story "Survivors" that has appeared in the magazine has also been performed by actors at Action Fiction!, and so I don't know if I should read it again. They're giving me a good chunk of time for the reading, so maybe there'll be time for that and for something new as well.

Small Press Love Fest

On February 23, 2013 (the day before my birthday), I'm participating in this reading event -- Small Press Love Fest, organized by three local and one New York-based magazines and publishers: great weather for MEDIA, Ambush Review, Corium Magazine, and Red Bridge Press (who is publishing a story of mine in an upcoming anthology). This will take place at Alley Books in the Mission, and will be a midday reading, after which it is oh so convenient to move the party to some bar in the neighborhood and to continue talking lit and new media.. Also, birthday. I have in mind three bakeries whose chocolate cakes I want to sample.

Litcrawl Reading

It's Litquake week in San Francisco -- 850 authors reading at 163 events all around town. And Saturday is Litcrawl, a reading extravaganza that happens in three phases from 6 to 9:30 pm. If you aren't local and thinking when's the best time to visit San Francisco, the weekend of Litcrawl is always a good choice. The city goes mad for literature!

This year, I'll be reading at an event hosted by my friend, a wonderful writer Peg Alford Pursell. The reading is called "Tzara's Hat" and is inspired by Dada art. A few weeks ago, Peg has gathered all the readers in her home for a live writing session. Each of us came up with a word that we wrote down on a scrap of paper, and then we went around pulling these words from a hat and writing for three to five minutes on each word. The idea was to come up with a complete piece of flash fiction in that time--a piece of fiction that included each of these words in the order pulled from the hat. We would then revise these flashes before the actual reading.

I know writing from prompts is popular among poets and among some (experimental) groups of fiction writers. I have not had much experience with it in my own writing--when I started, I would set out prompts for myself, but they were vague (write something funny!) and I never held myself very strictly to the formality of it. This exercise turned out to be a lot of fun--in an odd way, the story ideas I came up with were based on memories from deep within my subconsciousness, experiences and feelings I had not thought of in many years. I enjoyed this exercise very much.

We'll be reading from 6 to 7 pm on Saturday, October 13, at Four Barrel, a coffee shop at 375 Valencia Street. More details are here, on the Litcrawl site. Please come and hear us read these stories, and be as surprised as we were when we shared first drafts with one another about how different these stories turned out and how wonderfully they represent each writer's strengths and interests. Here's a hint: our list of words included "popcorn" and "alien" :)

InsideStoryTime Gods and Dogs

I'm reading at one of my favorite reading series in town, InsideStoryTime, with a bunch of great people: my Alia Volz, Peter Orner, Gary Turchin, and Sarah Ladipo Manyika (whom I don't know personally yet, but look forward to meeting). The show will take place on December 15, starting at 6:30 pm, at Cafe Royale. Here's the link to InsideStoryTime: http://www.insidestorytime.com/.

The theme is Gods and Dogs, and I'm thinking of reading from A Dark and Empty Corner, my story that recently appeared on Narrative Magazine, that features God as one of the characters. Or maybe I'll write something new by then about dogs.

Portuguese Artists Colony: Toothless

Next weekend, on Sunday, August 28th, starting at 5 pm, I will be a featured reader at a local reading series -- Portuguese Artists Colony -- who always do a wonderful show with music and live writing at a local art gallery, Fivepoints Arthouse. The address of the gallery is 72 Tehama Street, near Montgomery MUNI/BART station. Come to see the show if you're around!

The theme of this month's reading is "Toothless" -- my first association had to do with aging, but I am trying to interpret the word more broadly. I am planning to read two very short recent stories. One of these stories, "The Weather in Dublin," was published by elimae, one of the oldest online literary magazines.