Twenty-one years ago, Paul Corman-Roberts left Las Vegas for San Francisco, hoping to reconcile a troubled relationship and build a career in theater. But he landed at New College of California, where opportunity and close engagement with an inspired cast of professors led him to a deep connection with the Bay Area writing scene. “I was loving it. Read More
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SEX WORK, POLITICS AND ROBBING THE RICH: AYA DE LEON’S UPTOWN THIEF
A Berkeley native, Aya de Leon has long married social justice activism and the arts, producing subversive work in popular forms. From 1998 to 2008, she toured extensively as a spoken-word artist, contributing to a San Francisco Slam Team that won regionals and developing the acclaimed hip-hop theater show “Thieves in the Temple: The Reclaiming of Hip Read More
Tomas Moniz On Not Forgetting How Powerful We Are
What are some of your favorite smells?
Bodies. A baby’s neck after they breast feed. Skin moist from a shower. The nervous sweat of people performing or the excitement of bodies on dance floors. The crusty smell of activist meetings. The fecund odor of desire. Hugging you….
A.D. Winans On Treating Each Day As If It Were A Free Pass
What are you working on right now?
I will soon begin what may be my last book of poetry. It will consist of poems I have written in the last two years. Poems with deeper imagery. Poems not published in previous books of mine.
Anisse Gross on Being Ready, and Strange Enough
If there were one thing about the Bay Area that you would change, what would it be?
I would bring back the artists and the sense of possibility. I would bring back heterogeneity, and prevent ugly new condos from replacing all the lovely Victorian and Edwardian beauties. I’d also bring back more dive bars. Also, I would make it cheap. If a place is cheap and by the ocean, it’s a good place to be.
Emily Meg Weinstein on the Freedom of Not Owing Anybody Anything
What are you working on right now?
I am working on “An Excel Spreadsheet About My Feelings,” the follow-up to my 2013 work, “A PowerPoint About My Feelings,” and the usual number of no doubt highly-marketable longform personal essays.
Derek Fenner on Being More than One Thing at a Time
If you got an all expenses paid life experience of your choice, what would it be?
I don’t want that. If you’ve got the cash, though, I can send you a list of young people who would be more than elated to take a trip outside the Bay Area. I can pay my own way and chaperone. Or perhaps we can fund their college education? We could also just use some Chromebooks; do you have Google’s number?
Matthew Zapruder on Language When it Starts to Get Liberated
When people ask what do you do, you tell them… ?
If in their eyes I detect the usual understandable flicker of disinterest about the conversation, in order to let us both go on our peaceful separate ways, I say “English professor.” If for some reason they seem to really want to talk, I will say “poet.” More often than not something weird happens after that.
to fairfax! in chicken’s bus we go…
We’re celebrating four years of Quiet Lightning on December 4th by taking Chicken John’s bus into Fairfax to team up with Pints & Prose for the thirteenth and final show in this year’s Tour Through Town. The curators for this momentous occasion were Meghan Thornton and Ian Tuttle, and they have selected: Keenan Norris Jennifer Williams Read More
PSYCHOLOGICAL WHIPLASH: ZARINA ZABRISKY’S WE, MONSTERS
Bossy and controlling women are not hard to find in this country, but I avoid them if I can. One reason my father moved to the west coast was to put 1500 miles between him and his mother. I don’t like taking orders and have never been to a dominatrix. The only experience I have Read More