SNS | 06-24-23

Featuring: Miah Jeffra & Amber Flame

Theme: The Rainbow

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday June 24, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 834 5519 1875

Passcode: 325168

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+1 253 205 0468 US

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Author Bios

Miah Jeffra is the author of four books, most recently The Violence Almanac (finalist for several awards, including the Grace Paley and St. Lawrence Book Prizes) and the novel American Gospel. Work can be seen in StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, The North American Review, storySouth, DIAGRAM, jubilat and many others. Miah is co-founder of Whiting Award-winning queer and trans literary collaborative, Foglifter Press, and teaches writing and decolonial studies at Santa Clara University.
Learn more and buy books at miahjeffra.com

Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, activist and educator, whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. In her writing, Flame explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and the interstitial joy in it all. As the singer-songwriter front of her band, Last of the RedHot Mamas, Flame brings raunchy wordplay, constant hustle and heartbreaking love of the blues to contemporary issues of self-care, racial injustice, apocalypse survival, ethical non-monogamy, and post-church spirituality. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame’s second book of poetry, apocrifa, launched May 2023 from Red Hen Press. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks.

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The SNS Write-In Returns this Month!

LET’S WRITE TOGETHER!

Join me the week before SNS, on Saturday afternoon, June 17, for the SNS Write-In, a generative online workshop.

Write In Details/ Sign Up

June Writing Prompt:

The rainbow represents inclusivity. It celebrates our diversity, our differences and how whatever our stripe or color, we are all beautifully human, deserving of celebration and freedom to be ourselves. The rainbow also means hope, love, and friendship.

In a climate of violence and political backlash against the LGBTQ+ community, the values represented by the rainbow are as urgent and imperative as ever. So, in honor of Pride Month, the SNS (always optional) theme this month is:  The Rainbow.

SOME IDEAS TO GET YOU STARTED:

Write about identity, gender, sexuality, love, sex, relationships, a celebration of self-acceptance, or discrimination, stereotypes, family or social pressures. Or write about current politics around these issues. Or a personal experience of Pride—a parade or bar or drag show or dance party you attended, a historical event or tragedy you witnessed or were affected by, a law or teaching by a school or church that impacted you, something that shaped your understanding as an adult or child. A comment that hurt or healed. This might be your own experience or something you witnessed as a friend or a conversation you had.

Or

If all this feels too personal or political, you are welcome to write into more general representations of the rainbow introduced above—hope, love, friendship, diversity, inclusivity, freedom, beauty, etc. Try to ground your writing in a specific detail, image, moment or story.

Or

Be literal! Write about the time you saw a double rainbow on a camping trip or with your family at Disneyworld, or how you used to decorate your locker with rainbow stickers and believe in leprechauns and fairies, or that rainbow-after-the-storm feeling that came after an emotional breakthrough.

Or

Let color itself be your muse. Pick a specific color to explore or write into each color of the rainbow. Paint with words.

Or something else! The sky is the limit, as they say.

FOR INSPIRATION:

“An American Poem,” by Eileen Myles
”Summer,” by Chen Chen
”The Mortician in San Francisco,” by Randall Mann
”Lisp,” by Sam Sax
”A Litany for Survival,” by Audrey Lorde
”At Last the New Arriving,” by Gabrielle Calvocoressi
”Double Rainbow,” by Ravi Shankar
”Colors of the Comanche Flag,” by Sy Hoahwah
”Colors Passing through Us,” by Marge Piercy

“Pride Inside,” Selected Shorts podcast hosted by Meg Wolitzer

SNS | 05-27-23

Featuring: Keenan Norris & Propaganda Poet

Theme: The Future

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday May 27, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

May Writing Prompt:

"The future is made of the same stuff as the present," wrote French philosopher Simone Weil. Do you agree? This month at SNS, your mission is to write into the future.

Stretch your imagination 200 years ahead, or five years, or to tomorrow. Compare to today, or the past, or imagine it newly. You could write speculative fiction, or take on the voice of a fortune teller, a tarot card reader, a newscaster, Nostradamus himself, or write a personal self-reflection or wishlist poem of your most exciting goals. Or think about a younger you, what you thought your future would be like. Does it measure up? How has life surprised you in the present of your former future?

Is your vision of the future apocalyptic or utopian? How does technology, science, medicine, religion, politics burgeon newly (or remain the same) in the future? Consider all the technological advances that have occurred in your own lifetime or your parents’. Think of wars fought, diseases cured, all the information (and misinformation) in the world readily available in a hand-held computer/ phone/ camera/ cookbook/ chess board/ radio/newspaper/ mailbox/ et al.

Are humans kinder and more accepting of each other in the future? Or more divided? Do we still have animals? What about global warming? Genetics? Aliens? Zombies?! AI? Self-driving cars? Space travel? Where will you be in 10 or 20 years? What will you be wearing? What will life be like? What will you miss?

FOR INSPIRATION:

“Don’t You Wonder, Sometimes?” poem by Tracy K. Smith (from her award-winning collection Life on Mars)

“The Future,” poem by Neal Bowers

“The Future,” poem by Sandra Lim

“Are We Not Men,” fiction by T. C. Boyle (I read this years ago in The New Yorker and still think of it)

NOTE: Sorry, no pre-SNS Write-In this month. I’m going camping! But I’ll be home to host SNS, and we can write together again next month. " Please check back for details.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 811 9345 5762

Passcode: 666166

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+17193594580,,81193455762# US

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Author Bios

Keenan Norris’s latest novel is The Confession of Copeland Cane, the winner of the 2022 Northern California Book Award. Keenan teaches English and creative writing at San Jose State University. His essays have received the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award and Folio: Eddie Award. Earlier this year he published the biblio-memoir Chi Boy: Native Sons and Chicago Reckonings.
Learn more and buy books at: KeenanNorris.com

PropagandaPoet (Bear Wolf) is a Shawnee Gypsy Jew social justice humanist making his triumphant return to California. He sees tattoos as physical manifestations of emotional scars and lost count of his somewhere around twenty. His works include an array of poetry, music, performance and teaching at the collegiate level, including creating and curating the Hearing Marginalized Voices Through Poetry series. Word Tornadoes is his second book of poetry following on the footsteps of his debut book 2020 D//Vision.

Support and follow at these links:
https://linktr.ee/changelingstudios
https://ko-fi.com/cs420/shop
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXmu-aq8RjxzPutvgneIarQ
IG: @changelingstudios420

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SNS | 04-29-23

Featuring: Linda Ravenswood
& Jeannine Hall Gailey

Theme: Hybrid

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday April 29, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

April Writing Prompt:

Happy National Poetry Month! Your free April SNS Writing Prompt is “HYBRID.” 

This word simply means combining or mixing two different things to make something new, and applies to a vast range of topics from ligers and tigons and unicorns and animal-headed humans, to hybrid cars and GMOs and pink-lady-cherry-lemon trees, and coffee-quinoa cocktails (ew, what? no.), to the pandemic adaptions of hybrid work and learning environments, to hybrid cultures experienced by some immigrant and interracial families.

Another example of hybridity is the portmanteau—mash-up words like “brunch” and “spork” and “mockumentary.” 

In terms of literature, there are many hybrid forms—mixed-medium and mixed-genre creations—letter and collage poems, ekphrasis, collaborative art/dance/writing projects, poems or stories incorporating multiple languages, maps, music, lists, diagrams, photographs, or other visual or sensory elements, or combining old and new, traditional and experimental forms, like broken sonnets, or Jericho Brown’s duplex form, anything that straddles the line between poetry and prose, like flash fiction and prose poetry, or any 2-thing-mashup! 

Your invitation: Get creative! Be experimental! Mix and “mash” things together. Write about something hybrid. Or write/create something hybrid. 

FOR INSPIRATION:

Here’s a sample from “Testaments Scratched into a Water Station Barrel” hybrid poems by Eduardo C. Corral, from his collection Guillotine.

Here’s a duplex by Jericho Brown, from his Pulitzer-Prize-winning collection, The Tradition.

NOTE: No Write-In this month. (I’m going on a much-needed vacation!) But I’ll be back to host SNS and we can write together again next month.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 841 8860 5302

Passcode: 483253

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+17193594580,,84188605302# US

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Author Bios

LINDA RAVENSWOOD is an award-winning poet, performance artist, and founding Editor-in-Chief of The Los Angeles Press. She a winner of the Oxford Poetry Prize, the Edwin Markham Poetry Prize selected by former US Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera, and the 2023 Arthur Smith Prize from Madville Press. Her hybrid poetry collection Cantadora – Letters from California was released in January 2023 from Eyewear London/Black Spring Press Group. Other current and forthcoming publications include The Stan Poems (Pedestrian Press, 2022), A Poem Is a House (forthcoming from Flowersong Press 2023), The 500 – The End of Conquest (Alternating Currents Press, 2024), and If We Never Meet Again: A Pandemic Diary (X Artists’ Books, 2024). Ravenswood is also the founder of the poet laureate program in Glendale, California and introduces the Poets Café on KPFK in LA on Wednesdays at 2:00p.m. Find her at The Los Angeles Press www.thelosangelespress.com

Buy Cantadora —Letters from California here: https://www.amazon.com/Cantadora-Letters-California-Linda-Ravenswood/dp/1913606244

Jeannine Hall Gailey is a writer with MS who served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and is the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize, Field Guide to the End of the World, and the newly released Flare, Corona from BOA Editions. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and Ploughshares. 

Find her at: https://webbish6.com/

Get a signed copy of Flare Corona here: https://webbish6.com/books/flare-corona/

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Austin Living Room Literary Salon

Join us for an evening of live music and literary performance in Austin, TX.

Featuring:

Heidi Kasa
Hollie Hardy
Loria Mendoza
Tomas Moniz

Live Music:

Devin Marie

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Sunday, April 23, 2023
6pm mixer, 7pm music, 8pm words

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DM for Address

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Free Event
Donations Welcome
BYOB

SNS | 03-25-23

Featuring: Nicole Callihan & Unmesh Mohitkar

Theme: Rupture

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday March 25, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

March Writing Prompt:

I recently bought Jenny Xie’s book, The Rupture Tense, to teach in my Contemporary Poets & Poetry workshop and before I even read this amazing collection, I fell for the word “rupture.” Its versatility and violence; its brutal, catalytic change.

To break. To shatter warningless. A glass table exploding in slow motion. To breach. To disturb. To disrupt. An alien bursting from a stomach like a surprise from a cake. Harmony collision. An unwanted memory. Engorged river. Protestors infenestrating buildings through ruptured glass. Bombed cities. Broken silence.  

For your prompt this month, think burst pipes and flooded banks; think derailed trains and ruptured relationships; think explosions and popped balloons or tendons, organs spilling and borders breached. Even thunder, laughter, or a sneeze can rupture. Think egg shells and ruined yolks. Fissure. Puncture. Erupt. And then, perhaps...repair. Think wabi-sabi and kintsugi. Think make-up sex.

Or play with form. How can you rupture the narrative? The sentence? The line? The page? Language and tense! Disrupt the normative syntax! Word mutiny! Dismember and rebuild! Consider how breaking something can provide a new way to revise, a new way to create.

Feel free to interpret the prompt any way you choose or to ignore it entirely. Sign up below to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches at this month's open mic.

Want to work on the prompt together?

Join me the week before SNS (on Saturday afternoon, March 18) for the Saturday Night Special Write-In! Details/ sign up here.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 868 7267 5637

Passcode: 172727

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+17193594580,,86872675637# US

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Author Bio

Nicole Callihan’s This Strange Garment was released this month by Terrapin Books. Her other books include SuperLoop and the poetry chapbooks The Deeply Flawed Human, Downtown, and ELSEWHERE (with Zoë Ryder White), as well as a novella, The Couples. Her work has appeared in Kenyon Review, Colorado Review, Conduit, The American Poetry Review, and as a Poem-a-Day selection from the Academy of American Poets. Find out more at www.nicolecallihan.com.
Get your copy of This Strange Garment here: https://www.terrapinbooks.com/store/p55/garment.html

Unmesh Mohitkar is a performance poet and spoken word artist from Pune, India. He is the author of the poetry collections, Light Shadow Life: The Missing Verse of the Soul and most recently Let’s Un-Mesh Life. He has featured at multiple international open mics and spoken word events, including the Singapore and San Jose Poetry Festival, Phynncabulary, Put it in the Chat, Word is Write, Time to Arrive, Cobalt poets and The Nuyorican Poets Cafe Online. Unmesh writes in three languages (English, Hindi, Marathi) and is a globetrotter who has visited twenty-two countries. He hosts his own open mic Let’s UN-Mesh Life every Saturday at 9pm IST, 10:30am EST.
Learn more: https://linktr.ee/UnmeshMohitkar
His latest book, Let’s Un-Mesh Life is available now: https://a.co/d/9vE0Glm

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SNS | 02-25-23

Featuring: Ali Lanzetta & Truong Tran

Theme: Light Switch

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday February 25, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for spring. As I write this, I’m hiding out with family, hours from home, where a frozen tree came crashing, snapping the power line to our house. Across town, thousands more trees lay in icy ruins as Austonians huddle in the dark. Waiting for the lights to switch back on.

This month at SNS we’re leaning into the light. Bring me your sunshine! There are so many ways to think about a light switch, from the beginning of the universe, to the changing of the seasons where light slides newly through trees, the times of day that simmer and glow in transition, a wisp of sun settling in eyelashes, your childhood flashlight under the covers, the antique lamp’s snap into brightness, the way light teases the tips of waves, the first windows to blink awake on a hillside, captured fireflies in a jar, the spark of new love, the poet’s epiphany. Let there be light!

Want to work on the prompt together? Join me the week before SNS (on Saturday, February 18) for the first ever Saturday Night Special Write-In! Details/ sign up here.

Feel free to interpret the prompt any way you choose or to ignore it entirely. Sign up below to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches at this month's open mic.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

---

Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 829 5578 8503

Passcode: 700511

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+16694449171,,82955788503# US

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Author Bios

Ali Lanzetta is a writer, educator, artist, musician, and bookseller who lives between trees, sleeps under a blanket of books, and has a soft spot for giraffes, whose hearts are over two feet long. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Verse, Switchback, Eleven Eleven, Flock, Panapoly, Gertrude, and elsewhere. Her debut book, marmalade, a collection of prose poetry and flash narrative nonfiction, is scheduled for release in March 2023 from Spuyten Duyvil Press. ali studied creative writing and teaching on the enchanted electric hilltops of San Francisco, but eventually set sail from the city to live, love, and practice the literary arts in a Vermont valley filled with birds. You can find out more about ali and her work at alilanzetta.com.
Preorder her book here: https://www.spuytenduyvil.net/marmalade.html

Truong Tran is a Vietnamese-American poet, visual artist, and teacher. He is an author of eight collections of poetry, most recently, Book of the Other (Kaya Press, 2021), as well as an artist book, and a children's book. As a visual artist Tran is best known for mixed media pieces and light installations. His work is in private collections, and has been featured in solo gallery shows as well as museum exhibitions across the Bay Area. As a teacher, Truong Tran has over twenty years experience as a professor of Creative Writing to both graduates and undergraduates, and has mentored thousands in the community.
truong-tran.com

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Red Light Lit presents: From the heART

Join us for an evening of poetry, music, comedy, and drag on the theme of love.

Featuring:

Anthony Mai
Eman Khan
Gabrielle Grace Hogan
Hank Opal Jove
Hollie Hardy
Kelly Madera
Meredith Johnson
Owie
Renée Woolley
Sam Castillo

Live Music:

UGH

Hosted By: Loria Mendoza

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Friday, February 10, 2023
8pm

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Native Hostel
(in the coffee parlor)
807 E. 4th Street
Austin, TX

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Donations at the door
(sliding scale)

SNS | 01-28-23

Featuring: Toni Mirosevich & Arisa White

Theme: Long Dark Night

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday January 28, 2023
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

This month at SNS, on the last Saturday of January, in the heart of midwinter, we celebrate “the long dark night,” with blackouts and snow, existential woe and holidays behind us, at the end of a (maybe/semi) sober January, with resolutions made and (maybe) broken, the smell of wood smoke welcome (or warning), winter invites us to turn inward, to hibernate and reflect, to make soup, write, and reset, to recommit to goals, and reconnect to the people and things that matter, to rest and rejuvenate. Consider, perhaps, the soul in search of fresh faith after a period of darkness, rejection, illness, failure, ennui—what lifts us up, nourishes and inspires, what light persists through the long dark night?

Want to work on the prompt together? Join me the week before SNS (on Saturday, Jan 21) for the first ever Saturday Night Special Write-In! Details/ sign up here.

Feel free to interpret the prompt any way you choose or to ignore it entirely. Sign up below to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches at this month's open mic.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 845 4394 5181

Passcode: 832676

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,,84543945181# US

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Author Bios

Toni Mirosevich was raised in a Croatian-American fishing family in Everett, Washington. In Spell Heaven, her linked story collection recently released from Counterpoint Press, a lesbian couple moves to a coast town and unexpectedly finds a sense of belonging with a group of outsiders. Mirosevich is also the author of Pink Harvest, winner of the First Series Award for Creative Nonfiction, and five books of poetry. Her cross-genre writings have been widely anthologized and her fiction and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals. A professor of creative writing at San Francisco State University for many years, she currently resides with her wife in Pacifica, California.
Buy her book here: counterpointpress.com/books/spell-heaven
Learn more: tonimirosevich.com

Arisa White is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College. Most recently, she is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and Golden Crown Literary Award. Currently, in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera. arisawhite.com

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SNS | 11-26-22

Featuring: Jennifer Lewis & Zomkhonto

Theme: Recover

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday November 26, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

Join me on Saturday after Thanksgiving for the last SNS of 2022

As we bask in the afterglow of too much food, friends and family, football and politics, and reflect on the closing year, for your November writing challenge, I invite you to consider the idea of RECOVERY, in any of its many senses.   

To RECOVER is to "return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength; to regain control or possession of (something stolen or lost); to make up for."

From what have you recovered or are you still recovering from? This could be a small triumph, like recovering a lost $20 in the pocket of last year's coat, or you could be recovering from an injury or the loss of a friend, a heartbreak, the economic downturn, or a bout with Covid (in many ways we're all still trying to recover from the pandemic), some of us have recovered from depression, rejection, addictions or hangovers, even writer's block. What is the spark that gives us the hope to fight for our own recovery? How can we lift ourselves and each other up?  

Feel free to interpret this prompt any way you choose or to ignore it entirely. Sign up below to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches at this month's open mic.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to
3 MINUTES MAX

---

Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 812 2917 6407
Passcode: 755207

iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,,81229176407# US

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Author Bios

Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, was recently released in 2022, by Nomadic Press, where her short story, "New Low," was the winner of the Bindle Award. In 2020, she won the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for "Put a Teat in It." She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco. Buy her book here: https://www.nomadicpress.org/store/p/thenewlow

Mbonisi Zikhali was born in Makokoba, in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. His spoken-word/storytelling name is Zomkhonto, which happens to be his bloodline’s totem. He is a spoken-word artist, story-teller, arts educator, youth mentor, qualified community services worker, grassroots community organizer and mental wellness advocate. He considers himself an afro-empath, and is driven to ensure that people find joy and healing in the power of words and story-telling. Some of the recent publications he has appeared in include winner of Off Topic Publishing's August 2022 Poetry Contest, Best New African Poets 2019 Anthology by Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Ipikai Poetry Journal’s inaugural and second edition (initiative of the Zimbabwe Poets Society) among others. His work was recently showcased at the World Poetry Slam Championships’ spoken word video presentations (September 26-30, 2022) in Brussels, Belgium. He is the current President of Artcite Windsor Inc (Canada)’s Board of Directors.
Check out a digital broadside of his work here: https://www.poetrysuperhighway.com/cobalt/092722.pdf

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SNS | 10-29-22

Featuring: Sara Biel & Fraser Johnson

Theme: Trick!

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday October 29, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

It's decorative gourd season AND the 12th annual SNS Halloween Reading is happening on the last Saturday of October! Let's get festive. Wear a costume, or a hat, wig, mask, paint your face if you're feeling spicy.

Our theme this month is: TRICK. Think: mirage, disguise, card tricks, trick-or-treating, pranks, sex workers, gymnastics, sugar cereal, dog training, con artists, mistaken identity, a trick of the light. Or whatever you want.

Sign up to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches on our optional theme.

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 823 2213 0882
Passcode: 939981

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://peralta-edu.zoom.us/j/82322130882?pwd=K0RDWWlWbVFqTFJLRW5UUlJwSDNhUT09

Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+1 346 248 7799 US (Houston)

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Author Bios

Sara Biel, a poet, visual artist and social worker living in Oakland, CA, coedits the Colossus Press anthology series. Her poems have been published in sPARKLE & bLINK; Button Eye Review, and Beyond Words: She won honorable mention in the Streetlight 2021 poetry contest. Her chapbook Prescribed Burn will be published in 2023 by Finishing Line Press. She sees the creative process as a medium for change, healing and building community.

Fraser Johnson is the author of the newly released memoire, "WTF are Boundaries: Good Times, Bad Times, and Narcissistic Abuse." He lives in Toronto, Ontario, where he is visited by his young adult sons, two of the best people he has ever known. Outside of writing, Fraser loves nature; an avid outdoorsman, he has led camping and outdoor experiences for groups as well as designed and developed camping gear.

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Red Light Lit: The New Low

Join us for an evening of storytelling, poetry, and music in celebration of Jennifer Lewis' debut short story collection, The New Low, published by Nomadic Press. Writers will read excepts from The New Low mixed with their own work.

Featuring:

Peter Bullen, Hollie Hardy, Miah Jeffra, Kar Johnson, Loria Mendoza, Monique Mero, Christine No, Sarah Bethe Nelson
& Jennifer Lewis

Music:

Nick Jaina & Zero Charisma

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday, October 15, 2022
7pm

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Make-Out Room
3225 22nd ST
San Francisco, CA

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Free Show!

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RSVP and invite your friends on Facebook!

Homecoming Reading & Gallery Reopening

Featuring:

Tongo Eisen-Martin
Cassandra Dallett
K.R. Morrison
Jennifer Lewis
Peter Thomas Bullen
Elisa Salasin
Sara Biel
Keith Gaboury
Tomas Moniz
Liz Cahill
Hollie Hardy
Heidi Kasa
Miah Jeffra
Richard Loranger
Lisa Martinovic
Hugh Behm-Steinberg
Melissa Anderson
Garrett Murphy
Tracy Artson
Loria Mendoza
Riley O'Connell
Kimi Sugioka
Matthew Zapruder

Live Music:

Punk Funk Mob

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy & Donald Morey

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Friday, October 14, 2022
4pm - 6:30pm Come early to mingle & meet the artists
7pm-9pm Literary performances
9:30pm Live music

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Address
5500 Martin Luther King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94609

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Suggested Donation
$5-20 sliding scale
No one turned away for lack of funds.

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RSVP and invite your friends on Facebook!

SNS | 9-24-22

Featuring: Valerie Sopher & Steven Gray

Theme: The Blues

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday September 24, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

In honor of this month’s musical poet features, Steven Gray & Valerie Sopher, we’re celebrating The Blues—whether that means music, or something lyrical, or the color of your childhood bathroom, ocean and sky, the worst flavor of M&M, your favorite jeans, the “something blue” from your wedding, your sad post-pandemic life, your Covid Blues, the time you saw Taj Mahal live at Yoshi’s, your ekphrastic take on Picasso’s Blue Period, your jealous tribute to Maggie Nelson’s “Bluets”—let (the) BLUE(s) inspire you this month.

Sign up to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches about the burning at this month's open mic.

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Meeting ID: 813 9445 7915

Passcode: 980124

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
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Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,,81394457915# US or +16694449171,,81394457915# US

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The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX

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Author Bios

Valerie Sopher s a singing quilter from the San Francisco Bay Area who found her poetic voice during the pandemic. She did so with much help from Hollie Hardy and her San Francisco Creative Writing Institute classes. She has had some success in getting her poems out into the world, many of which were written from prompts in Hollie’s classes. Her work has appeared in Canary, Caustic Frolic, Slant, Prometheus Dreaming, Science Write Now and will soon appear in River Mouth Review and Quiet Diamonds - the Orchard Street Press Poetry Contest 2022. She was the grand prize winner in the Wingless Dreamer Dawn of the day contest.

Steven Gray is a poet and musician celebrating the new release of his album, Exile:
https://stevengray.bandcamp.com/album/exile

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SNS | 8-27-22

Featuring: Heidi Kasa & T.A. Niles

Theme: Opposites

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday, August 27, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

When I was in college at SFSU studying creative writing, I took a class with the fabulous Nona Caspers. One day she started her lecture by holding up a potted plant she had brought for this purpose. "Write like this pink flower!" she commanded. Then she raised her other fist above her head, "Write like this rusty railroad spike!" I never forgot her lesson on "beauty and its opposite," how opposites can help us better understand truth.

This month at SNS, you are invited to explore the idea of opposites in your writing—day and night, hot and cold, love and indifference, acceptance and rejection, kindness vs malevolence, young vs old, virtue vs sin, truth and lies, red and blue, beauty and its opposite, or any other polarization of your choosing.

Sign up to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches about the burning at this month's open mic.

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 963 5543 3334

Password: 135019

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/96355433334?pwd=ZEhSeU52THhiNnVZQXlzVklJSFVXUT09#success

Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,96355433334# or +12532158782,96355433334#

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Sign Up in Advance to Get on the Open Mic List

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX

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Author Bios

Heidi Kasa writes weird fiction that sometimes gives people chills. She is also a poet, though lately her poems are more like political rants. Her work has been a finalist for a Black Lawrence Press award and shortlisted for a Fractured Lit award. Kasa’s fiction chapbook, Split, is due out from Monday Night Press in August 2022. She edits nonfiction and is learning how to take good care of native Texas flowers and plants.

Buy Split here: https://www.mondaynightpress.com/split/
Find more of Kasa's work here: www.heidikasa.com

T.A. Niles is
just a crude dude spillin'
in a world that's illin'
spinnin' turnin' so fast it's burnin'
trailin smoke so thick and noxious
it can choke the righteous
into coughing up the platitudes
of the multitudes....

He’s throwin’ down on Fear
like it stole sump’n
embracing Truth
like an imaginary lover
coaxing, cajoling
but never coercing
Authenticity
from Plasticity’s clutches…

Can ya feel im?
Do you care to?
If so, you can find more of his expressions on his
YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQuUXZENe-u4D0TZn1x01ew
And his blog: https://tapoetexpress.blogspot.com/

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SNS | 7-30-22

Featuring: Richard Loranger & Daphne Gottlieb

Theme: The Burning

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday July 30, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

Hello summer! It's 106 degrees in Austin this week, but it feels like 114. The planet's getting hotter, and so are you.

This month at SNS, let's embrace the burn! Write about the hot hot heat, the sun burn, the hot seat, write about about fire, burning up the dance floor or bacon sizzling, write about friction, about the burn of rage, or skidding tires, about the burnt house or the near miss, the smokey orange sky, or better yet, your burning desire. Be the fire.

Sign up to share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches about the burning at this month's open mic.

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 923 8487 1607

Password: 280277

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92384871607?pwd=L0ZwejU3S1V6U2V5SU5vanBaVDJmdz09
Password: 280277

Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,92384871607# or +16699006833,92384871607#

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The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX

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Author Bios

Richard Loranger RICHARD LORANGER is a multi-genre writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. His newest book Unit of Agency, which he describes as a collection of his human struggle/protest culture/social justice/pissed-off leftie poems, came out in October, 2021 from Collapse Press (www.collapsepress.com). He’s also the author of Be A Bough Tit, Sudden Windows, Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and ten chapbooks, and has work in over 100 magazines and journals. You can find more about his work and scandals at www.richardloranger.com.

Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the award-winning author of eleven books including her latest, Saint 1001 (MadHat Press 2021), a collection of short stories, Pretty Much Dead, and Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words, a collection of letters from Death Row by the “first female serial killer” to her childhood best friend. She is also the author of five books of poetry, editor of two anthologies, and, with artist Diane DiMassa, the co-creator of the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious.

Gottlieb is the winner of the Acker Award for Excellence in the Avant-Garde, the Audre Lorde Award for Poetry, the Firecracker Alternative Book Award, and is a five-time finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry, fiction and essays have appeared in more than 50 anthologies.

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SNS | 6-25-22

Featuring: Ivan Hobson

Theme: Lucky

Hosted By: Hollie Hardy

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Saturday June 25, 2022
6:00pm Pacific Time
(8:00pm Central time)

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Online Event
Free Admission

Join SNS for an extra lucky open mic on the last Saturday in June.

Have you ever wished on a dandelion? Thrown I-Ching Pennies? Read a horoscope, had a tarot reading, found a 4-leaf clover? Cast a spell? Owned a happy cat charm? Do you have a dice tattoo? What about the parking gods? Are they on your side? Have you dodged a bullet? Kissed a Blarney Stone or a frog? Thrown broken dishes at a house? Been crapped on by a bird? Thrown salt or knocked on wood?

For this month's writing challenge, you are invited to write about luck. Do you believe (or unbelieve?) Are you lucky or unlucky? What's your secret to luck?

Come share your poems, stories, songs, dances, or short comedy sketches at our open mic.

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Join Event on Zoom

Meeting ID: 923 8487 1607

Password: 280277

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:
https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/92384871607?pwd=L0ZwejU3S1V6U2V5SU5vanBaVDJmdz09
Password: 280277

Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll):
+13462487799,92384871607# or +16699006833,92384871607#

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Sign Up to Read at SNS

The theme is optional | Time limit is not optional
Please plan ahead and keep your reading to 3 MINUTES MAX

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Author Bio

Ivan Hobson is an MFA graduate from San Francisco State University. Along with teaching English at Diablo Valley College, he also works as a shipyard machinist on Mare Island. Ivan's poetry has appeared, or is forthcoming, in publications including the North American Review, Oxford Poetry, The Malahat Review, as well as Ted Kooser and The Poetry Foundation’s American Life in Poetry. Ivan’s first book, Cutting Teeth, was recently released by Meadowlark Press.

More about author:

Buy book here:

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