THEME: Openings

Thursday, May 31st @ 7pm
Progressive Grounds (2301 Bryant Street @ 21st Street; San Francisco, CA)
Hosted by Tara Dorabji

Featured Writers:

Dennis Bernstein

DENNIS BERNSTEIN has been a longtime front line reporter specializing in Human Rights. His articles have appeared widely including in the Boston Globe, New York Times, The Progressive, and The Nation. Bernstein was chosen by Pulse Media as one of "20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009." His first book of poems, Special Ed, is just out from NYQ Books.

Zahra Noorbakhsh

ZAHRA NOORBAKHSH is a writer, actor and stand-up comedian, whose one-woman shows All Atheists Are Muslim and Hijab and Hammerpants have appeared at the New York International Fringe Theater Festival, San Francisco Theater Festival, and Solo Performance Workshop Festival, with widespread critical acclaim. Her play will have its LA premiere on June 10th. She is a graduate of the UC Berkeley in Theatre & Performance Studies. Though she began as a stand-up comic, her love of storytelling drew her into the world of theater and ultimately the art of short story writing.

Nayomi Munaweera

NAYOMI MUNAWEERA is a Sri Lankan-American author. Growing up in Nigeria and California, Nayomi spent months in Sri Lanka witnessing the devastation wrought upon her country of birth by civil war. These experiences led her to write her first novel, Island of a Thousand Mirrors, which is being published by Perera Hussein Publishing House in late 2012. She is currently at work upon her second and third novels as well as venturing tentatively into the mysterious world of the short story. She lives in Oakland, California.

Juan Alvarado Valdivia.

JUAN ALVARADO VALDIVIA does not fuck around.  The son of Peruvian parents, he was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and raised in Fremont, CA.  He is a 2010 graduate of Saint Mary’s College of California’s MFA in Creative Writing.  In 2011, he attended the Voices of Our Nations (VONA) Fiction workshop taught by ZZ Packer.  Last winter, he served an artist residency at The Helene Wurlitzer Foundation of New Mexico.  A former resident of the
Mission District—aka Hipsterlandia—Juan now lives in Oakland where he is completing a memoir which was previously titled: The Chemo Fucked Me Up!; Portrait of a Young Artist with a Life-threatening Disease; and I Came To Get Down…and I Ain’t Goin’ Out Like That!

Jason Wyman

JASON WYMAN is many things. He is an experimental writer performing critiques of permanence, acceptance, death, and transcendence. He also facilitates arts and wellness workshops and experiences through 14 Black Poppies, revives the collective spirits of the LGBTQIA communities through OutLook Theater Project, manages cultural programs and slings coffee at Progressive Grounds, and transforms his body into the Illustrated Man 2.0 where each tattoo tells a fable.

Regardless of who he is at any given moment, Jason is also (and always) a husband to his greatest love, John. And he is always and forever family to those on the margins. He has called San Francisco home for over 14 years.