community wizard + beast crawl: random play free saturday in oakland

Thanks everyone who came out to Galería de la Raza last night; that was some pure Side A/Side B magic, right!? Proud of Chris Cole and Josey Lee for putting together such an emotionally resonant yet experimentally bold show, and really, truly proud that we are able to present a place for such beautiful people to express themselves: whether we particularly are happy to meet Zack Haber or Mariama Lockington, or to see Karen Penley work her stage magic, or to recognize the quaver in Zoe Brezsny‘s voice as the lump in our own throats; whether we saw ourselves more clearly in Aaron DiFranco‘s Mission Renga or Valerie Chavez‘s Tenderloin Portraits or in the inexplicably new-to-poetry wonder of Matthew Rogers; whether we believed Max Tomlinson‘s story was fiction or nonfiction, felt like an outcast in our own homes, submitted from Uruguay or traveled from Colorado to make something sonorous out of a physics-based exercise meant for the page; do you imagine Chris Carosi walking through the city working on these $ poems; did you see yourself in Cybele Zufolo‘s all-encompassing elegance, in Samantha Rubenstein‘s childhood coming to terms; after all that, still, did Casey McAlduff leave you wanting more?

With our powers combined; with our bag of tricks, so endless, we, Community Wizard, hereby ask you to join us this Saturday for our first-ever East Bay show in the first leg of the first Beast Crawl at 5pm at Vessel Gallery– a free show! We are introducing a new series called Random Play, which you can read more about here, and our readers will be Lauren BeckerChris PeckNicole HenaresAnna PulleyLizzy AckerAmanda SnyderNick Johnson and Alia Volz.

Click here to help us spread the word. Then there’s two more legs and an afterparty! Hope to see you sometime… the good people organizing this festival have done a wonderful job putting it together, and we hope you’ll check it out whether you can catch our show or not.

One final thing: please send in some of your work for consideration for our three-show series at the Conservatory of Flowers! If you weren’t there last year, check out some of Julie Michelle’s photos to see what you don’t have to miss again. Deadline for August 6 and October 8 is the end of Wednesday, July 18th; tell your friends, and make sure to specify if you’d like us to consider your work for August AND October, or for only one of them. Click here to submit!

Thanks again for everything. Big, big love; c’mon, let’s hug one more time.

xoxo Evan for QL

galería de la raza + beast crawl

We are thrilled to announce the lineup for our July 2nd show at Galería de la Raza:

 

This show was curated by Chris Cole and Josey Lee and will feature the art of Steven Gray, a special performance by Michael Musika, $3 drafts of Lagunitas, wine and a specialty drink a la Raza, food (feel free to bring a dish), and an afterparty down the street.

This was a particularly excellent batch of submissions and we had to make some painful decisions. Of the 61 people who submitted work, we selected 15 authors; of those 15, 11 have never performed at Quiet Lightning, 1 has performed 3x, 1 2x, and 2 1x. We mean it when we ask you to resubmit: several of these pieces did not fit into previous shows, but we are proud to present them to you on July 2nd. This is going to be a dynamite show, packed house, promise. War on words with words! Tell your friends: $5 donation, no one ever turned away.

Now, below:

Announcing a new Quiet Lightning series: Random Play: this is how we determined who will read at our show on July 7th at Vessel Gallery; we are in the first leg of the very first, sure to be epic Beast Crawl. Sure, but what is all that random business?

We assigned every author who has every read as part of Quiet Lightning a number corresponding with the order in which they’ve performed, used random.org/integers to select 20 of them and then emailed the first 10.

8 said they could roll so we got ourselves the first Quiet Lightning: Random Play:

Lauren Becker (3)
Chris Peck (152)
Nicole Henares (144)
Anna Pulley (142)
Lizzy Acker (112)
Amanda Snyder (80)
Nick Johnson (199)
Alia Volz (13)

Each person received one number regardless of how many times they have read. Selected authors who have read @ QL more than once (Lauren, Nicole, Lizzy, and Alia) were allowed to choose which of their sets they wanted to read. We took a healthy relook and put them in order. See how it plays on July 7th, then continue with the rest of the crawl (we’re in the first leg).

This will be our first show in the East Bay and we are stoked!

Hope to see you on July 2nd and July 7th — our first double dose of the lightning, and hopefully yours!

en la galería!

Humongous gratitude to Jimmy Siegel and Kelly Edwards for having Quiet Lightning at the William Westerfeld House, and to everyone who spent the night with us we hope you are as happy with the way things went as we are. We should do that again sometime, right?

Let’s meet at Galería de la Raza on Monday, July 2nd. Bring a friend. Say what you have to say, but say it by the end of this Wednesday, June 13th!

Let’s meet at Vessel Gallery on Saturday, July 7th. We’re doing this new thing called Random Play and it’s part of the first Beast Crawl and our first time in the East Bay. That whole day is going to be off the richter.

Then, to the Conservatory of Flowers! Who is letting us get away with all of this?

Thanks to all of our volunteers: Josey Duncan, Christian Lee, Sandra Wassilie, Sarah Maria Griffin, Ceri Bevan, Shelli Owens, and Tom Joyce; to our artist, Dianne Hoffman; to Julie Michelle Sparenberg for putting us in touch with the Westerfeld; and to all of you for being there. Really, what an unforgettable evening.

Do check out our authors and their projects. They’re not just amazing in mansions!

That’s it for now. Talk to you soon. xoxo