Wednesday 8/19: Lyrics and Dirges Fifth Year Anniversary, featuring Allie Marini Batts, Vernon Keeve III, Maisha Z Johnson, Joshua Kent Fowler, Peter Bullen, and Brynn Saito. Combining powerful attention and quiet, unassuming support, curators Sharon Coleman, Daniel Moniz, and MK Chavez have helmed this series to its five year anniversary, celebrated tonight. Intended to “spotlight the diverse literary community of the East Bay,” Lyrics and Dirges presents writers beginning, emerging, and prominent to a grateful audience. Free, 7:30 p.m., Pegasus Books.
Thursday 8/20: Novelists Carolina De Robertis (The Gods of Tango) and Parnaz Faroutan (The Girl from the Garden) discuss and read from their latest novels in Berkeley. Free, 7:30 p.m., Mrs. Dalloway’s.
Sean Labador Y Manzano and Jeff Von Ward have been organizing MFA Mixers long enough to be considered a local institution. The Mixer “brings together graduate student writers from throughout the Bay to share literature and socialize in one space, blurring the academies on stage and on the dance floor.” There is no other reading that I know of where young poets perform from inside a dance cage. So far, nobody has done a strip tease, but one never knows… Featured tonight are Abbigail Baldys, Anna Avery, Ben Austin, Christopher Soto, Esther Patterson, Jacob Minasian, Jeffrey Neilson, Kacy Cunningham, and Kimberly Reyes. Free, 7 p.m., Cat Club SF.
Friday 8/21: Elaine Kahn, John Sakkis, Zoe Brezsny, and James Cordas read tonight in Oakland. Free, 7 p.m., City Limits Gallery.
Saturday 8/22: Jennifer Steil (The Woman Who Fell from the Sky) will be at the San Francisco Ferry Building to read from her new novel, The Ambassador’s Wife. Free, 4 p.m., Book Passage.
Sunday 8/23: The Mystic Boxing Commission (sponsor of the popular Sparring With Beatnik Ghosts reading series) adds its voice to the National Beat Poetry Festival with Legacy of Rebellion in Berkeley. Features will include Jerry Kamstra, Jami Cassady Ratto, Clive Matson, Jessica Loos, Jennifer Barone, and Daniel Yaryan. Sliding Scale Donation (no one turned away), 3 p.m., Art House Gallery and Cultural Center.
Monday 8/24: Oakland favorite Cassandra Dallett will celebrating the release of a new collection of poems, Pearl Tongue, with the help of additional readers, Joel Landmine, Jezebel Delilah, and SB Stokes. Free, 7 p.m., E. M. Wolfman.
Bay Area Generations achieves a two year landmark with its 24th edition, featuring intergeneational pairs of readers. $7.00 ($10.00 with souvenir chapbook), 7 p.m., Berkeley City Club.
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This week’s theatre recommendation comes from San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle member and TheatreStorm reviewer Victor Cordell. He suggests Lila Rose Kaplan’s 1 2 3, a world premiere presented by the San Francisco Playhouse as part of their Sandbox Series. The Sandbox series features limited stagings of new work, something between a staged reading and a full production, in order to provide increased exposure to new voices in the American theatre. According to Cordell, the actors in 1 2 3 “. . . are superb as they transition from adolescence to maturity. . . ,” playing three sisters whose lives and relationships are disrupted when they are placed in separate foster homes after their politically radical parents are jailed on charges of “domestic terrorism.” For further details, click here.
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Evan Karp presents video of this week’s featured local author, Jacob Minasian. Click here to read an interview.
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