Wednesday 3/4: Alameda Island Poets present Sharon Coleman and Lisa Gluskin Stonestreet at the Frank Bette Center for the Arts. Coleman has been a huge influence on the East Bay poetry community through the classes she teaches at Berkeley City College. Stonestreet is a multi-award winning poet who has published widely. Free, 7 p.m., Frank Bette Center for the Arts.
Prolific Dublin-based novelist John Boyne is in San Francisco promoting his latest, A History of Loneliness. Boyne is the author of 13 acclaimed novels for adults and young adult readers, and is among Ireland’s most noted contemporary writers. Free, 7:30 p.m., Books, Inc.
Thursday 3/5: The First Annual Oakland Book Festival will debut in May, but its launch event is tonight at Cafe van Cleef. Desley Brooks, Vikram Chandra, C. J. Hirschfield, Gary Kamiya, Nayomi Munaweera, and Zac Unger will be reading literary excerpts based in and around Oakland. This is an opportunity to learn all about the upcoming Festival. Free, 7 p.m., Cafe van Cleef.
An exceptional group of poets (Matthew Zapruder, Brynn Saito, Bruce Snider and Robin Ekiss) will read in the unusual location of a florist’s shop. The occasion? The West Coast launch of The Book of Scented Things, for which 100 contemporary American poets were each sent a vial of perfume & invited to respond. Free, 6:30 p.m., Ampersand.
Friday 3/6: Many of San Francisco’s Bohemian elite will be in attendance at North Beach’s Emerald Tablet for the opening of the art show, “From Mission to North Beach”. Featured poets will include Adrian Arias, Agneta Falk, SF Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, and Francisco Orrego. Free, 6-10 p.m., The Emerald Tablet.
Saturday 3/7: Babylon Salon is a quarterly reading series that has featured many of the Bay area’s best talent. This edition promises to live up to that reputation with Edan Lapucki, Charles Yu, Adam Rogers, Josh Weil, and Helen Wecker. Free, 6 p.m., Cantina SF.
Monday 3/9: If you need an excuse to visit one of San Francisco’s largest and most popular new and used bookstores, this is it. The Green Apple presents “Clement: A Night of Poetry” featuring Peter Kline, Brittany Perham, and Matthew Siegel. Free, 7 p.m., Green Apple Books, Clement Street.
Tuesday 3/10: Elaine Kahn reads at City Lights Books, celebrating the publication and release of her full length collection, Women In Public, as part of the City Lights Spotlight Poetry Series. Free, 7 p.m., City Lights Booksellers.
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This week, we’re aware of over 70 (!) literary events scheduled around San Francisco and the Bay area, 20 on Thursday night alone. We’ve made a (difficult) selection of some of the most notable above. If you want to see more possibilities, try visiting here.
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This week, we present two theatre recommendations. For those in the mood for a classic, there is Cutting Ball’s presentation of Sophocles’s Antigone in a new, modern translation by Daniel Sullivan, developed under the direction of Paige Rogers, after the company spent several weeks in residence at the famous Teatr ZAR in Poland, the leading training school for the avant garde theatre techniques of the great director Jerzy Grotowski. Read a review here. Click here for detailed information about attending.
For something more contemporary, there is the Bay area preview of The Convert by Danai Gurira. You might have seen her on television as Michonne on The Walking Dead and not known that she is a fine playwright as well as an actress. The Convert is a brilliant play, brilliantly performed, about characters involved in the colonization of the African country now known as Zimbabwe, and the rebellions which followed. Read a review here. Click here for detailed information about attending.
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This week’s featured local author is Rebecca Foust (click here to read an interview):
