I attended this reading for the first time last month and found it to be very inspiring, lively and well-run. Seats get filled fast so get there early!
"There are always
new words to be heard, to inspire, amaze,
and move you at
Why There Are Words, and this event will be no
exception. Doors open at 7 pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10. Bring extra
cash for books and booze."
Louise Aronson is the author of
A History of the Present Illness,
linked stories which take readers into the lives of diverse doctors,
patients, and their families, providing an intimate portrait of health
and illness in modern life. Her writing has appeared in literary and
medical journals and the lay press, including the
Bellevue Literary Review, Northwest Review, Fourteen Hills, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the
New York Times.
She has won the Sonora Review Prize, the New Millennium Short Fiction
Award, multiple writer’s residency fellowships, and three Pushcart
nominations. A geriatrician, medical educator, and Associate Professor
of Medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF), she is
also the founding director of UCSF Medical Humanities and the field of
Public Medical Writing, which provides clinicians and scientists with
the craft skills to advocate, educate, and bear witness to key
experiences and issues in medicine. Find her on twitter
@louisearonson.
Winner of the 2008 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize,
Cheryl Dumesnil is the author of the memoir
Love Song for Baby X and the poetry collection
In Praise of Falling. She edited
Hitched! Wedding Stories from San Francisco City Hall and co-edited, with Kim Addonizio,
Dorothy Parker’s Elbow: Tattoos on Writers, Writers on Tattoos. She’s a regular contributor to Huffington Post.
Josh Farrar is the author of the middle-grade novels,
Rules to Rock By and
A Song for Bijou.
He started writing fiction after spending ten years at companies like
LeapFrog and Scholastic, where he designed and produced software that
helped kids become better readers. His first love was music, which is
probably why music has played such a prominent role in his fiction. (
Rules, about the formation of a middle-school rock band, featured an
original soundtrack; and
Bijou
features enough Haitian drumming that it could be sold with a volume
knob). He has played in bands, composed music for plays and films, and
when he’s not reading or writing, he usually has a stringed instrument
in his hands. A graduate of Wesleyan University, he lives with his
family in Brooklyn.
Paul Mihas has taught creative writing in Raleigh-Durham,
North Carolina for over ten years, including classes at the continuing
education departments of Duke University and the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the recipient of the 2008 Thomas Wolfe
Fiction Prize and the 2008 Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Fiction.
Mihas is a Greek American and often writes about the blending of
cultures in the U.S. His fiction has been published in
Prairie Schooner,
Best of the West,
Nimrod International Journal,
Pindeldyboz, Talking River, and Northwoods Anthology.
Brian Sousa‘s debut collection of stories
Almost Gone
has been described as “doing for Portuguese immigrants from Southern
New England what Stuart Dybek did for the Polish of Chicago,” by Jeff
Parker, author of
Ovenman. He has published poetry and prose in various journals and anthologies, including
Verdad, Newfound, Quiddity, Redivider, and
others. His fiction is also featured in the Rutgers University Press
anthology of Luso-American Literature, 2011. In 2007, he was awarded a
fellowship by the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, and in 2011,
he was a finalist for the Dzanc Books International Literary Award, and
winner of a scholarship to the Dzanc Books International Literary
Program in Portugal. He holds an MFA from Emerson College, is an editor
for the music and culture website
Mule Variations, and teaches writing at Boston College. He also plays guitar in the indie-rockband
Ocean*Transfer.
Melanie Thorne is the author of
Hand Me Down, a debut novel in the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Janet Fitch that
Publisher’s Weekly deemed “an intriguing first outing by a talented new writer.” A
Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2012 and a 2013 YALSA Alex Award nominee,
Hand Me Down has been widely praised by media, including the
San Francisco Chronicle and Daily Candy, and received a “compelling” 3.5/4 stars from
People.
Melanie earned her MA in Creative Writing from the University of CA,
Davis, and has been awarded the Alva Englund Fellowship, the Maurice
Prize in Fiction, and a residency at the Hedgebrook Writers’ Retreat.
She lives in Northern California with her fiancé, and is currently at
work on her second novel.
Nancy Zafris is the series editor for the Flannery O’Connor award for short fiction. Before that she was the fiction editor of
The Kenyon Review for nine years. This month, April 2013, she has released a new collection of short stories,
The Home Jar(Switchgrass Books/NIU Press.) Her first collection of short stories,
The People I Know, won the Flannery O’Connor award as well as the Ohioana Library Association award. Her two novels are
The Metal Shredders, a New York Times notable book, and
Lucky Strike,
a BookSense notable. She is the recipient of two National Endowment for
the Arts grants and has taught at many universities, including Masaryk
University in Brno, Czech Republic as a Fulbright Fellow. Each June she
teaches at the Kenyon Review Adult Summer Workshop, where she is also
Associate Director.
Jonny Geller
