Author: Evan Karp

Shortly after winning the 2013 National Book Award for her second collection of poems, Incarnadine, Portland’s Mary Szybist told the Paris Review that she started writing poetry when she was young, after losing her ability to pray. “I was devastated by it,” she said. “I missed being able to say words in my head that I believed could be Read More

Born in Ecuador, Mauro Javier Cardenas planned to return home after receiving an education in the United States, with the intention of changing the political environment there. Antonio, one of the principal characters in Cardenas’ debut novel, The Revolutionaries Try Again, does return to Ecuador. Summoned by a childhood friend with whom he had catechized the poor, in order Read More

In a tribute to the life and work of Justin Chin, who died late last year at age 46, Jennifer Joseph of Manic D Press will release Justin Chin: Selected Works Thursday night, Sept. 8, with readings and reflections by some of the poet’s close friends and fellow writers. Celebrated for what Joseph calls “his ability to combine humor with Read More

What started as a late-night text message has turned into a five-day East Bay Poetry Summit, with poets flying in from as far away as New York, that’ll take place in homes and gardens in Oakland and Berkeley for the near entirety of Memorial Day weekend and at absolutely no cost to attendees. Local poet Andrew Read More

Love, money, property, state, war, death and revolutionary change: These are the themes of the “Seven Meditations on Political Sadomasochism,” one of the most famous plays in The Living Theatre’s nearly 80-year repertoire as an internationally touring experimental collective. When the New York company presents “Seven Meditations” on Thursday, Aug. 25, at Great Star Theater, it Read More

From around 1996 to 1999, Brian Lucas edited a poetry magazine and chapbook press called Angle, the issues of which were stapled and letter-size and included a formidable roster of contributors, including Barbara Guest, Paul Vangelisti, Clark Coolidge and Cole Swensen. A visual artist and musician as well, Lucas hand-painted three of the five covers of Angle, which Read More

To kick off last summer’s long journey into winter and to raise funds for its annual programming, Small Press Trafficinvited the larger community of Bay Area poets to sign up to read as part of a daylong marathon called Endless Summer that included barbecue, beer and a strong sense of community. Anyone could sign up, so long as Read More

In 2008, Kimberly Escamilla founded the nonprofit International Poetry Library of San Francisco to serve the rapidly growing number of master of fine arts students and the corresponding boom in small press literature. The idea is twofold: to provide students and the public access to relatively hard-to-find poetry collections and to establish an archive dedicated exclusively to poetry, which Read More

In his 1998 “Compressions: A Second Helping,” Thomas Farber describes his epigrammatic writing as “using the enchantment of language to express … aspects of disenchantment, brief briefs about or against what we profess to hold to be true.” Author of more than 20 books of fiction, nonfiction, and writing on photography, Farber recently published his fourth book Read More

The Monthly Rumpus, an offshoot of the San Francisco literary culture website TheRumpus.net, recently hosted its final party at the Make-Out Room after three years at the location. Stephen Elliott began the site as a way to spread the word about his 2009 memoir, “The Adderall Diaries”; the Monthly Rumpus, which featured readings and other performances, had long Read More