Tuesday, January 16th, 2007

KSW-Next Meeting

Interested in sharing your art with others, putting on events, or curating shows with KSW? KSW-Next is the emerging artist and arts organizer arm of KSW, and is composed of volunteer artists and arts organizers who are interested in sharing their work with others and curating events. This meeting is open to all who are interested, and will include more information about the history of KSW-Next, how you can be involved, as well as a brainstorming session to plan the next quarter of events.

Date/Time:  Tuesday, January 16th, 2007; 6 - 8pm

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

Cost:     free; RSVP appreciated

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

For more information on KSW-Next, please click here.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Points not found:
readings about place and chapbook release

featuring writers from KSW's fall 2006 writing workshop with Thy Tran, Putting the There in There

Join KSW and Thy Tran's KSW fall 2006 writing workshop for an evening of readings about place, and the release of the next in KSW's chapbook series, Places not found , with original cover illustration and design by graphic designer and visual artist Amy Lam. Featuring new work from emerging literary voices of the San Francisco Bay Area--Oscar Bermeo, Nicole Hsiang, Harry Mok, Nirmala Nataraj, Robynn Takayama, and Debbie Yee --the readings will be followed by a reception and opportunity for book signings and meeting the writers.

Date/Time: Thursday, January 18th , 2007; 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

Left: design by Amy Lam | mobilerepublic.net

About some of the artists

Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar Bermeo is a BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) award winning poet, educator and literary events coordinator.  Oscar now makes his home in Oakland, Califas, where he devotes his time and energy towards new culinary experiments, working admin at a local charter school and enjoying the bliss of married life with his wife, poeta Barbara Jane Reyes. For more information, please visit www.oscarbermeo.com

Nicole Hsiang is a native of San Francisco.  She is the development associate for San Francisco Women Against Rape and the Agape Foundation.
This is her first writing endeavor, though she is sure it won't be her last.

Harry Mok has been a journalist for more than 15 years. His day job is as a Web producer for ContraCostaTimes.com. He's also an editor for Hyphen magazine and he blogs there and at HarryMok.com. He has a master's degree from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and his writing has appeared in Hyphen, the San Francisco Chronicle, Salon.com, A. magazine, USA Today and other publications.

Nirmala Nataraj is a poet and journalist who lives in San Francisco, and occasionally, in her blog.

Robynn Takayama is an award winning radio producer who can discover sound in visual art, dance movement, and murals. She is indebted to KSW for allowing her to stretch her muscles into the visual and literary arts.

Debbie Yee is an attorney and poet living in San Francisco.  She is an avid supporter and organizer of the nonprofit arts community and currently serves as board president of Asian American Women Artists Association.  Her work will appear in the forthcoming anthology, Cheers to Muses: Contemporary Works by Asian American Women (Asian American Women Artists Association, 2007).  In her spare time, she makes things and develops ideas for making even more things.

About the editor & workshop 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.

About the cover designer
A native of Dublin, CA, Amy Lam is a graphic designer currently employed in Berkeley. Amy can be found lurking in the background of Kearny Street Workshop and Locus events posing as an artist/writer type. Visit her online at www.mobilerepublic.net.

Mondays, January 22 - April 2, 2007

Two Truths and a Lie: Writing Creative Non-Fiction
a 10-week writing workshop with Bushra Rehman

All ten sessions meet Mondays, 7 - 9pm, at KSW's space180, 180 Capp Street, @17th Street, San Francisco. The workshop will not meet on Monday, February 19th, 2007.

This event is supported by Poets & Writers, Inc., through a grant it has received from the Hearst Foundation.

Please note: all multi-session KSW workshops include a public reading and chapbook publication following the final workshop session, coordinated and scheduled by KSW with the workshop participants.

Class Description:
Writing from life can be a tricky business.  There are people to protect, faulty memories of events, and the pitfalls of self-censorship and self-aggrandizement. This is where creative non-fiction comes in. It’s a form of writing that is drawn from real life, but employs techniques of poetry and fiction.  Permission is given to veer from the facts, to change names and the order of happenings, to start with a true story and end it the way it should have ended. Creative non-fiction recognizes that our lives are too rich not to write about, but that our imaginations are too strong to ignore.

In this class, we will write by drawing on memory, family myth, and the truth and lies of our lives.  We will cover literary techniques such as character, dialogue, setting and story arc, as well as performance. We as a collective will give ourselves permission not only to share our life stories, but to re-write them into the stories we want them to be.

About the instructor:
Bushra Rehman’s mother says Bushra was born in an ambulance flying through the streets of Brooklyn.  Her father is not so sure.  Since there are no definitive records of the time of her birth, there is no real way of knowing, but it would explain a few things.  Bushra is a vagabond poet who traveled for years with nothing more than a greyhound ticket and a book bag full of poems. Now, she performs her poetry regularly in theaters and colleges around the country. Lately, she’s been spending her time flying through the streets of Oakland and Brooklyn, writing an on the road adventure novel for Muslim girls. 

Bushra is co-editor of the anthology Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism (Seal Press, 2002) which has been adopted as essential reading material in women’s studies and ethnic studies classes around the United States. She has been featured in The New York Times and NY Newsday and her work has appeared in ColorLines, Mizna, Curve, SAMAR, and Bottomfish. Her writing is forthcoming in Writing the Lines of Our Hands: An Anthology of South Asian American Poetry (Creative Arts Press), Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War, Faith and Sexuality (Seal Press)and Stories of Illness and Healing: Women Write Their Bodies (Kent State University Press).

Registration fee is $215 regular, $195 for KSW members. Class is capped at 14 registrants; first come, first serve basis. 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.