Tuesday, November 14th, 2006

Same Time, Same Place

a poetry reading and chapbook release

featuring

Maile Arvin, Oscar Bermeo, Eleanore Fernandez, Janell Moon, Nirmala Nataraj, Michelle Ryan, Christine Vilar, and Joy Hae Yung

& emceed by Truong Tran

Join KSW and Truong Tran's KSW summer 2006 poetry writing workshop for a poetry reading and release of the next in KSW's chapbook series, Same Time, Same Place, with original cover illustration and design by noted cartoonist and APAture 2006 featured artist Thien Pham. Featuring new work from eight emerging literary voices of the San Francisco Bay Area--Maile Arvin, Oscar Bermeo, Eleanore Fernandez, Janell Moon, Nirmala Nataraj, Michelle Ryan, Christine Vilar, and Joy Hae Yung--the readings will be followed by a reception and opportunity for book signings and meeting the poets.

Date/Time:            Tuesday, November 14th , 2006; 7 - 9pm

Location:               KSW's space180, 180 capp street, @ 17th street, San Francisco

Cost:                      $5

Info:                        sam@kearnystreet.org; 415.503.0520; www.kearnystreet.org

KSW's 2006 Poetry Writing workshop with Truong Tran was supported by Poets & Writers, Inc., through a grant it received from the James Irvine Foundation.

About some of the artists

Maile Arvin grew up in both Richmond, Kentucky and Kaneohe, Hawaii; a background which continues to require a good deal of explaining. Kentucky, for instance, is not near Louisiana. Nor is Hawaii a separate country, although it very much should be. Her Native Hawaiian and hapa roots inform most of her work and she finds a special interest in the poetry of personal language. She has lived in the Bay Area for about a year now, and is passionate about most everything here except the weather.

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet. He has facilitated poetry workshops at Rikers Island, as well as led poetry discussions and seminars in schools throughout New York City. Oscar has been a featured performer at a variety of venues and institutions including 13 Bar|Lounge, the Nuyorican Poets Café, the Bowery Poetry Club, St. Marks Church, WBAI radio, Columbia University, Illinois State University (Normal), William Paterson University, Amherst College, Syracuse University, New York University and many others. His written work appears in the anthologies, I Just Hope It's Lethal: Poems of Sadness, Madness, and Joy (Houghton Mifflin, 2005), From Page to Stage and Back Again (Wordsmith Press, 2004) and Parse (Friendly Fire Press, 2004) and can also be heard on the CD, 5 Past 13— A Little Bit Louder: Volume 1 (louderARTS Project, 2003).  His work can also be viewed at his website: www.oscarbermeo.com. Oscar works, lives and loves in Oakland.

Eleanore Fernandez is a Pilipina-American writer who grew up on various military bases in the U.S., Asia and Europe, and learned early on that change is the only constant thing.  She received her B.A. in English Literature from Notre Dame de Namur University, resides in San Francisco, has a day job with a local utilities agency, and is surrounded by a large extended family that includes her partner, John Payne.  She weaves the vibrance of her adored and adoring "familia" into every aspect of her art. 

Joy Dawn Hae Yung was born in Korea and was adopted by an American family when she was two years old.  She grew up in South Carolina, and sometimes the scent of magnolia makes her cry, even though the trees do not reach their native grandeur in her current home of San Francisco.  Just because she majored in English doesn’t automatically mean she’s neurotic.

Janell Moon is the author of  The Mouth of Home  published by Arctos Press.  She is an award winning poet who won the National Salt Hill Prize, The American Pen Prize, and The  Stonewall Prize which awarded her the publication of her third chapbook. She is a reader with the Bay Area Poets for Peace Project. She is the author of Stirring the Waters: Writing to Find Your Spirit (Tuttle) and nominated for the NAPRA Award as one of the five best spirituality books of 2002 and chosen by One Spirit Books, Quality Book Club, and Hazelton Book Club. She is also the author of The Wise Earth Speaks to Your Spirit (RedWheelWeiser),  The Prayer Box (RedWheelWeiser), and How to Pray Without Being Religious (Thorsons Element UK), a division of HarperCollins. She is a graduate of Ohio University in Athen, Ohio, and is a San Francisco bay area counselor and hypnotherapist who teaches Writing as Spiritual Practice and Stringing the Pearls: Memoirs and Journals at local community colleges.

Nirmala Nataraj is a poet and playwright who has been involved in the Bay Area arts scene for nearly the past decade. Her work has been produced at Femina Potens Performance Space, San Francisco; the Climate Theatre, San Francisco; the 2nd Annual San Francisco Theater Festival; the 2nd Annual Queer Women of Color Film Festival; the Red Poppy Art House’s bi-monthly Mission Arts & Performance Project (MAPP); and Kearny Street Workshop’s 8th Annual APAture Festival. Aside from her creative work, Nirmala is a freelance writer and editor for various publications in the Bay Area, including SF Weekly and ArtWeek magazine.

Michelle Ryan has been writing since she can remember.  She grew up in New Jersey and currently lives in San Francisco.  Michelle received her MFA in poetry from Emerson College in Boston and has published poems in Busenhalter, Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, Mad Poets Review, Spillway, Angelflesh Press, Phoenix Press, and two volumes of the Beacon Street Review.

Christine Vilar is a media pack rat who compulsively hoardes, stores, and sometimes even steals books and music from friends. When not working in San Francisco for an online media company, she can be found enjoying karaoke, dairy or various forms of pork. Her singing and songwriting somehow led to writing poetry, which she subsequently learned are two completely different but not incompatible things. In her work she emphasizes the alienation and chronic tendonitis caused from being enslaved by a tech-oriented world.

About the workshop instructor
Truong Tran received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his MFA at San Francisco State University. He is the recipient of poetry fellowships from the Arts Council of Santa Clara, the California Arts Council, the Creative Work Fund and The San Franciso Arts Commission. His poems have been published in numerous literary journals including ZYZZYVA, The American Voice, Crazyhorse, Prairie Schooner, Poetry East, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) and The North Dakota Quarterly. He is the author of three collections of poetry including Placing The Accents, The Book of Perceptions and dust and concscience which recently received the Poetry Center Book Award. Truong is currently living in San Francisco and teaching poetry at San Francisco State University, Mills College, and elsewhere.

About the cover designer
THIEN PHAM is a comic book and visual artist, as well as the founder of Global Hobo (www.hobocomics.com), a grassroots enterprise that promotes handmade and hard-to-find comics and also includes a small studio for silkscreening and book-making. Sumo is Thien's long-awaited graphic novel about sumo wrestling, which will be published in summer 2008, after a small print run of 500 handmade, hand-bound editions that debuted at APAture 2006.

 

Putting the There in There: Writing about place
with Thy Tran

October 16 - November 20, 2006;

Mondays, 7 - 9.30 PM at Kearny Street Workshop's space180, 180 Capp Street (@17th street ), San Francisco

Class size: minimum of 7, maximum of 12.
Cost: $195 non-members, $175 members.

Register by check or credit card. Registration information follows class description and instructor bio.

Class Description:
Join us for a six-week workshop about the world outside. Whether your story shows the NE corner of 6th and Mission or a strawberry field overlooking the Pacific or your grandfather's garage, you'll learn to write about an actual location. More than simply providing a setting, a place that is richly written provides meaning, dimension and unity. Use facts to create texture and research to ensure accuracy.

This is not a memoir class. Our emphasis will be on developing your skills of observation, conveying a wide range of sensory details and finding the stories hidden in a specific environment. Expect to offer and receive constructive comments in a workshop format, to invest at least two hours outside of class exploring a specific location of your choice, and to complete at least one 1200-word piece. This class will culminate in an anthology under the KSW imprint and a reading open to the public. While literary nonfiction is the general format of instruction, fiction writers who want to convey a strong sense of place in their stories will also find these techniques useful.

About the instructor:
Thy Tran is a freelance writer whose features have appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and the San Francisco Chronicle. She has co-authored diverse books, from Asia in the San Francisco Bay Area: A Cultural Travel Guide (Avalon, 2004) to the award-winning Kitchen Companion (Weldon Owen, 2001). In her free time, she sets type for her Kelsey printing press, fries dough, or travels away as far as she can.

To register with credit card, please click on one of the buttons below. To register by check, please send a check or money order for full amount to KSW, 180 capp street #5, san francisco, ca 94110, and include your full name and contact info:

General workshop registration (non-KSW members):

KSW member workshop registration:

contact Samantha Chanse at 415.503.0520 or sam@kearnystreet.org for more information.