Fwd: Two great shows!!

[Porch Light]

Litquake on Oct. 15!

Free star-studded show in Palo Alto Nov. 1!

 

Porchlight and Litquake present: A Night of Stories About Advice

 

Monday, October 15

 

The Show

We could all stand to hear some wisdom and guidance right about now. The Bay Area’s long-running Porchlight storytelling series returns with "advice"-themed tales from Steve Almond, Dickson Lam, Sands Hall, Sisonke Msimang, Maggie Rowe, and Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin, the nation's oldest park ranger.

Steve Almond is the author of eight books of fiction and nonfiction, including the New York Times bestsellers Candyfreak and Against Football. His short stories have been anthologized widely, in the Best American Short Stories, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Erotica, and Best American Mysteries series. His essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Boston Globe, Washington Post, and elsewhere. He teaches at the Nieman Fellowship for Journalism at Harvard, and hosts the New York Times podcast “Dear Sugars” with fellow writer Cheryl Strayed.

 

Sands Hall is author of the memoir Flunk. Start, the novel Catching Heaven, a Willa Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction, and a Random House Reader’s Circle selection; and a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. She teaches at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, the Community of Writers, Squaw Valley, and is a Teaching Professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA. Hall lives in Nevada City.

 

Dickson Lam is author of the memoir Paper Sons, winner of the 2017 Autumn House Press Nonfiction Prize. His work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, The Kenyon Review Online, Hyphen Magazine, The Normal School, PANK, The Good Men Project, The Rumpus, and Kartika Review. He is a VONA alum and has been a resident fellow at the Millay Colony for the Arts and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. He holds MFA degrees in creative writing from the University of Houston and Rutgers-Newark. Lam is an Assistant Professor of English at Contra Costa College, and lives in Oakland with his wife and daughter.

 

Sisonke Msimang is a South African writer, speaker and political analyst in issues related to race, gender and democracy. With her successful debut Always Another Country: A Memoir of Exile and Home, she has established herself as one of the most exciting new contemporary voices in literature. Born to parents living in political exile, Sisonke Msimang was raised in Zambia, Kenya and Canada, before going to the U.S. as an undergraduate. She has a Master’s Degree in Political Science and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Macalester College. She has held fellowships at Yale University and the Aspen Institute and was selected as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum (WEF). She has worked for the United Nations and as an Executive Director of George Soros’ Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa. Now based in Perth, Australia, she is Program Director for the Centre for Stories, a social enterprise organization, from where she travels regularly to the U.S., South Africa and other countries. She contributes to publications such as The New York Times, The Guardian and Huffington Post, and has over 20,000 followers on Twitter (@Sisonkemsimang). Her TED Talk "If a story moves you, act on it" has been viewed over a million times.

 

For the last 15 years, Maggie Rowe has performed in and produced the Comedy Central stage show sitnspin, Los Angeles’ longest-running spoken word, having taken over the reigns from creator Jill Soloway in 2002. She has written for Arrested Development and Flaked for Netflix. She directed and co-wrote the screenplay for the New Age religious mockumentary Bright Day, and is creator of the theatrical satires "Hollywood Hellhouse" and "Hollywood Purity Ball." She is author of Sin Bravely: A Memoir of Spiritual Disobedience, and lives in Los Angeles with her husband, writer Jim Vallely.

 

Betty Charbonnet Reid Soskin is the oldest park ranger with National Park Service, and author of the recently published Sign My Name to Freedom: A Memoir of a Pioneering Life. Her remarkable life spans nearly ten decades and has included being an author, composer and singer, social and political activist, entrepreneur, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, historian, blogger, and public speaker. Betty was instrumental in the establishment of the Rosie the Riveter/World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. She was later hired to work at the Rosie the Riveter Park, where she works today.

 

hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick

music by Marc Capelle

Swedish American Hall

2174 Market St., SF

8pm

$20 advance / $25 door

 

Tickets from Eventbrite

 

JOIN US FOR A FREE EVENING AT THE PALO ALTO ART CENTER! 

"Because I Said So... Stories About Parenting"  

Nov. 1st Art Center Auditorium 7-9 pm free!

Talk about a great date night! Leave the kids at home and join us as we celebrate The Palo Alto Art Center’s new exhibit  Care and Feeding: The Art of Parenthood. Five storytellers, including Susie Bright, Moon Zappa, Bayo Omololu and Jeremiah Jenkins, will entertain and inspire with stories on parenthood. Bring your own tales from the frontlines because willing audience members will be selected at random to get on stage. Hosted by Arline Klatte and Beth Lisick with music by Marc Capelle. Cash bar provided by the Palo Alto Art Center Foundation. 

Your storytellers:

Best-selling author Susie Bright, is one of the world’s most respected voices on sexual politics, as well as an award-winning author and editor who’s produced and published thousands of the finest writers and journalists working in American literature and progressive activism today. She is the author/editor of 35 books, including  “Mommy’s Little Girl,” “Full Exposure,” and “Santa Cruz Noir,” — and is Audible’s Editor-at-Large, producing Margaret Atwood’s "Handmaid’s Tale" and Jon Oliver’s “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo."  

Jeremiah Jenkins is an artist living in the SF Bay area. Born and raised in rural Tennessee, he explored the woods alone as a child. In 2005 he came to California to pursue his career as an artist and see the pacific ocean. He left, once to Hawaii and once in a school bus, but came back. Since 2013 he has married his wife Natalie and his daughters Sequoia and Jiya were born. In addition to making art he also teaches, performs, and writes. 

Bayo Omololu: I was born in Nigeria, went to school in England from the age of 9 through High School. I then came over to the US and attended American University in D.C before coming out to the West Coast. I started working at the San Francisco Bay Guardian where I met my beautiful wife Cynthia. Together we had to wonderful boys, Jaron age 21 who is a senior at the University of Arizona and Taemon age 18 who is a Freshman at UC Santa Cruz. Cyn and I had dreams enjoying our years as we aged hopefully gracefully together as we became empty nesters. Her passing thrust me into a position of being both a father and caretaker  mother role. I learned from the best and have tried to be the parent that she was.

Moon Unit Zappa is a writer, comic, yogi, entrepreneur, podster, and mom.

Thursday, November 1, 2018, 7-9 p.m.

 Palo Alto Art Center

1313 Newell Road

Palo Alto, CA FREE!