Wednesday 3/16: Shobha Rao, a 2014 winner of the Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction, will celebrate the release of her debut short story collection, An Unrestored Woman, at City Lights. Free, 7 p.m., City Lights Bookstore.
Lyrics and Dirges, curated by MK Chavez, presents Tongo Eisen-Martin, Shirley Acuna, Ruby Spies, Peter Tieryas, Trey “Drow Flow” Amos, and musical guest Harriet Poznansky. Free, 7:30 p.m., Pegasus Books Downtown.
If you are in a gonzo mood, you might want to take the opportunity to meet Juan Thompson, son of Hunter S. Thompson, who will be in the Haight reading from his memoir, Stories I Tell Myself: Growing Up With Hunter S. Thompson. We expect that the reading will be a great deal calmer than a live encounter with the old man might have been. Free, 7:30 p.m., The Booksmith.
Thursday 3/17: Poetry Flash presents Iris Jamahl Dunkle (There’s A Ghost in this Machine of Air) and recently named California poet laureate, Dana Gioia (99 Poems: New and Selected). Free, 7:30 p.m., Moe’s Books.
Friday 3/18: And it’s another night at Moe’s: OmniDawn Night to be precise. OmniDawn Press presents readers Lyn Hejinian, Meredith Stricker, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Denise Newman, Mg Roberts, and Jane Gregory. Moe’s web site describes this as an “extraordinary list” and we don’t take issue with that. Free, 7:30 p.m., Moe’s Books.
Saturday 3/19: Nomadic Press continues to blow our minds with their regular seasonal releases of chapbook collections. This takes the idea of making poetry fashionable to a whole new level. The Spring Collection, presented at Studio Grand, includes chapbooks by Arisa White, Soma Mei Sheng Frazier, Maisha Z. Johnson, and MK Chavez. Free, 4 p.m., Studio Grand
Sunday 3/20: Laurel Blossom (Longevity, Degrees of Latitude) and Brian Dempster (Topaz) read at Diesel, A Bookstore. Presented by Poetry Flash. Free, 3 p.m., Diesel, Oakland.
Monday 3/21: Poetry Express presents Susan Terris (Ghosts of Yesterday: New and Selected Poems) and CB Follett (winner of a National Poetry Book Award). Together, they were editors of the much-admired Runes, A Review of Poetry, published from 2001 through 2007 Free, 7 p.m., Himalayan Flavors.
*
This week’s theatre recommendation is Tony Kushner’s Angels In America: Perstroika, presented by Town Hall Theatre in Lafayette. Critics have been very enthusiastic about the Town Hall company’s second crack at Angels In America (they produced the first part, Millennium Approaches, last year). Critic Mark Johnson notes that Angels in America has “wormed its way deeply into the public consciousness.” It is now considered a major work of American drama. It is as essential to see for the educated theatergoer as any work by Eugene O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, Lorraine Hansberry, or Lillian Hellman. To read a review, click here. For further information, or to purchase tickets, click here.
For more extensive coverage of the Bay Area theatre scene, visit TheatreStorm.
*
Evan Karp presents video of this week’s featured local author, Gloria Frym. Read an interview here.
And here’s some older video of one of last week’s SF Notables, Brandon Brown.
***
If you have a Bay Area event listing you’d like us to consider for Notable SF, please contact [email protected] as far in advance as possible, and include the date of the event in the subject line.
