July 9, 2010

Peninsula Literary Series Presents
A Reading on Friday, July 16, 2010, 7:00 p.m. 
At  Gallery House, 320 South California Avenue, Palo Alto
@ Birch Street, through Printer’s Inc. Cafe

Featuring: Ken Weisner, Malena Watrous, 
and guest artist, Kevyn Warnock
And Presenting Guest Readers 
Kara Arguello, Paul Carroll, Katie Carter, and Peter Sheehy
JOIN US FOR A GREAT EVENING OF POETRY AND PROSE!
Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, Series co-organizers

About Featured Authors

Ken Weisner is the author of two books from Hummingbird Press, The Sacred Geometry of Pedestrians from 2002, and Anything on Earth, released in March of 2010. Originally from Oakland, Ken has lived in Santa Cruz since 1982. Ken edits Red Wheelbarrow through De Anza College where he teaches composition, literature, and creative writing. Weisner’s poetry has appeared in divergent media of late including the “Poets Against the War” website (2003); The Music Lovers Poetry Anthology (Persea, 2007); and more recently John Chandler and Wilma Marcus-Chandler’s “Willing Suspension Armchair Theater” production of Lost and Found: The Literature of Fathers and Sons (May, 2009).

Among other things, Malena Watrous has worked as a coat check, kindergarten teacher’s assistant, and restaurant critic.  She grew up in SF, but has lived in Eugene, Oregon, New York City, Iowa, and Japan, where she set her debut novel, If You Follow Me, which was published in 2010 by Harper Perennial, and won the Michener-Copernicus Award.  She attended the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop on a Truman Capote Fellowship and was the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, followed by a Jones Lectureship. She now works for Stanford as a head instructor in the Online Writer’s Workshop.  Her stories and essays have appeared in The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Believer, GlimmerTrain, The Massachussetts Review, Salon.com, StoryQuarterly, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. She contributes regular book reviews to the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times. She lives in San Francisco, with her husband, Matt Schumaker, their son Max. She is currently at work on a new novel.

About Featured Artist Kevyn Warnock

For me, art has always been a lifelong passion.  This became fully realized when I studied art at the University of Utah.  I worked at several careers before understanding that anything I accomplished could not create the passion art held for me.

I found plein air landscape painting to be the most difficult and interesting facet of painting. I have been mesmerized by the light playing on the scene, the subtle colors and particularly the patterns created by the change of seasons and time. All of these become critical parts of the painting.  There is a never ending source of material in landscapes. Everywhere I look is a painting waiting to happen.

In addition to painting plein air, I work from photographs I have taken.  I use them as sketches and I can recall the feeling and mood I experienced when I was there . I believe I  convey this mood to the viewer.  The artist can be reached at her studio: 1870 ART CENTER

1870 Ralston Avenue, #16

Belmont,CA 94002

About Gallery House

www.galleryhouse2.com .

March 19, 2010

Peninsula Literary Series

at Gallery House March 19, 2010

Authors Presenting

Sally Ashton is editor-in-chief of the DMQ Review (disquieting muses quarterly). She is the author of two recent poetry releases, Her Name Is Juanita and Some Odd Afternoon, recipient of an Artist Fellowship from Arts Council Silicon Valley, and has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. Ashton earned her MFA at Bennington. She teaches in local workshops and at San José State University.

Lisen Stromberg is an award-winning writer whose work has been published in Salon Magazine, Mothering Magazine, the Utne Reader and others. She is currently enrolled in an MFA in writing at Mills College where she is the fiction editor for the 580 Split.

Kelci Baughman McDowell is a graduate of USF’s MFA in Writing program and the managing editor of its online literary magazine Switchback. She is working on a poetry manuscript entitled 52 Sundays but mostly spends her time dreaming of the ideal accordion-fold book to build from scraps of fine Japanese paper. She’s also quite frequently rejected by various respected literary magazines.

Check out her blog: http://kmbm23.blogspot.com

Toni Mirosevich is the author of Queer Street, My Oblique Strategies, winner of the 2005 Frank 
O'Hara Chapbook Award, and The Rooms We Make Our Own. Her writing has appeared in Zyzzyva, 
Gastronomica, Crowd, and The Bark, among other publications, and has been anthologized in 
The Best of the Bellevue Literary Review, The Gastronomica Reader, Best American Travel 
Writing, The Discovery of Poetry, The Impossible Will Take A Little While, AutoBioDiversity, 
and elsewhere. She is a Professor of Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and 
former Associate Director of the Poetry Center. Pink Harvest (Mid-List Press, 2007), her 
first collection of nonfiction stories, won the 2007 First Series Award in Creative Nonfiction. 
She lives in Pacifica, California.

Azin Arefi was born in Iran and moved to the United States with her family. She studied English Literature at UC Berkeley and has a master’s degree from UC Davis in Creative Writing. Azin’s stories and poetry predominantly navigate the Persian culture, especially the culture of the past. Currently she teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at De Anza College and San Jose City College. Her publications include a short story in Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been, an anthology of Iranian Women Writers, edited by Prof. Persis Karim and a story in The Momaya Annual Review, based in London.

Melanie Reitzel is a maternity nurse specialist in lactation at Lucille Packard Children’s Hospital and is very close to finishing the MFA program at SFSU. She has a memoir coming out in the Spring 2010 issue of ZYZZYVA and “Gauloises” (which she will be reading tonight) has been accepted by the LA journal The Black Boot.

Also, she’d like her son and daughter-in-law to know: She’s ready to be a grandmother.

January 29, 2010

Peninsula Literary Series Presents
A Reading on Friday, January 29, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
At  Gallery House, 320 South California Avenue, Palo Alto
@ Birch Street, through Printer’s Inc. Cafe
Featuring 
Alice LaPlante and Robin Ekiss

 
JOIN US FOR A GREAT EVENING OF POETRY AND PROSE!
Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, series co-organizers
About Gallery House  www.galleryhouse2.com

About the Featured Authors

Robin Ekiss

Robin Ekiss is a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a recipient of a Rona

Jaffe Foundation Award for emerging women writers, and author of the book,

The Mansion of Happiness (University of Georgia Press, 2009). Her work has

appeared widely, in The Atlantic Monthly, POETRY, APR, Ploughshares, The

Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. She lives in San Francisco.

Alice LaPlante

Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer of both fiction and non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at Stanford University, where she was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and held a Jones Lectureship, and in the MFA program at San Francisco State University.  Her fiction has been published in Epoch, Southwestern Review, and other literary journals and won a TransAtlantic Review prize. Alice is the author of five books, including the creative writing textbook Method and Madness (W.W. Norton 2009), which Booklist said “is destined to become a standard. ” Her novel, Turn of Mind, will be published by Grove Atlantic in 2010.

December 11, 2010

Peninsula Literary Series Presents
A Reading on Friday, December 11, 2009, 7:00 p.m. 
At  Gallery House, 320 South California Avenue, Palo Alto
@ Birch Street, through Printer’s Inc. Cafe

Featuring 
Albert Flynn DeSilver and Lisa Harper

JOIN US FOR A GREAT EVENING! 
Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, series co-organizers
About Gallery House

www.galleryhouse2.com .

About the Featured Authors

Lisa Harper

Lisa Harper is Adjunct Professor of Writing at the University of San Francisco.  She received her A.B. in English/Creative Writing from Princeton University and her MA/PhD from University of California at Davis.  Her academic writing has appeared in scholarly journals and anthologies, and more recently her writing has appeared online and in print in SNReview, Offsprung, Gastronomica, Lost, Switchback, and Literary Mama and in the anthologies Mama, PhD and the forthcoming Educating Tastes: Food, Drink and Connoisseur Culture. She has completed a book of narrative essays about becoming a mother, and is currently editing Learning to Eat, an anthology of original essays. She lives in the Bay Area with her husband, and their two children, Ella and Finn. You can find her online at LisaCatherineHarper.com & LearningToEatBook.com.

Albert Flynn DeSilver

Albert Flynn DeSilver is Marin County California’s very first poet laureate (2008-2010).  He is also a teacher, visual artist and publisher living in Woodacre, California. He received a BFA in photography from the University of Colorado, and an MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute. He is the author of Letters to Early Street, Summer 2007 from La Alameda/University of New Mexico Press, and Walking Tooth & Cloud from French Connection Press in Paris, January 2007. He has published many poems in literary journals worldwide including Zyzzyva, New American Writing, Jubilat, Jacket (Australia), and Poetry Kanto (Japan). He is the editor and publisher of The Owl Press, publishing innovative poetry and poetic collaboration. He has taught poetry and writing workshops, including many years as a California Poet in the Schools in San Francisco and Marin County and is now the CEO/Director of Visiting Angels, a Senior Homecare agency in Santa Rosa, California.

September 18, 2010

Peninsula Literary Series presents
A Reading on Friday, September 18, 2009,
7:00 p.m. 
At  Gallery House, 320 South California
Avenue, Palo Alto
@ Birch, through Printer’s Inc. Café
Featuring Catherine Brady and D. A. Powell

Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, 
series co-organizers

D. A. Powell

D. A. Powell is the author of Chronic, which was published this year by Graywolf Press. In addition, he has published three previous books of poetry, Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails, which was a finalist for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. He teaches in the English Department at the University of San Francisco and lives in the Bay Area.

Catherine Brady

Catherine Brady is the author of three story collections, including Curled in the Bed of Love, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction, and The Mechanics of Falling, recently released by the University of Nevada Press. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Best American Short Stories. She is also the author of a biography, Elizabeth Blackburn and The Story of Telomeres:  Deciphering the Ends of DNA, and a forthcoming book on the craft of writing fiction. She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco.

July 17, 2009

Peninsula Literary Series Presents
A Reading on Friday, July 17, 2009, 7:00 p.m.
At  Gallery House, 320 South California
Avenue, Palo Alto
@ Birch Street, through Printer’s Inc. Cafe 
 
Featuring Charlotte Muse and Barbara Tomash
With Guest Readers 
Beverley Bie Brahic, Peter Neil Carroll,
Jeanne DuPrau, and Robert Pesich

JOIN US AT OUR NEW LOCATION!  

We look forward to seeing you there.
Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, series co-organizers

About Gallery House

www.galleryhouse2.com .

About the Featured Authors

Barbara Tomash was born in Washington DC and raised in Los Angeles. She worked extensively as a multimedia artist before her creative interests turned her toward writing. In 1998 she received her MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University, where she now teaches. Her poetry has appeared widely in literary journals, including Colorado Review, New American Writing, and, zyzzyva. Her book Flying in Water won the Winnow First Poetry Award and has been reissued by Spuyten Duyvil Press. Tomash’s newest book, The Secret of White, was published earlier this year. She lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband and son.

Charlotte Muse received both her MA and her MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, where she has taught Creative Writing and Poetry Writing.  She also taught for some years as Instructor in Poetry for U.C. Berkeley Extension, for the Lifelines Project, and for many other organizations.  Her chapbook, A Story Also Grows, was a Main Street Rag Editor’s Choice selection, published in 2009. A handmade fine letterpress edition is due out later this summer from the Chester Creek Press. She is also the author of The Comfort Teacher, a chapbook from The Heyeck Press, and co-author of Trio, a poetry collection with Toni Mirosevich and Edward Smallfield (Specter Press).  She has won several prizes for poetry, including the Yeats Society of New York’s Poetry Award, an International Publication Award from the Atlanta Review, and prizes in the Joy Harjo Poetry Award competition, the Friends of Acadia Competition judged by Wesley McNair, and several others.  Her poem, “In Which I Forgive the River” was one of three runners-up for this year’s Foley Prize, and will be published in the coming months.

May 15, 2009

Peninsula Literary Returns
with new co-organizer Jean Znidarsic
at a new location,
Gallery House, Palo Alto
courtesy of Gallery artist
Trevlyn Williams.



Looking West by Trevlyn Williams

Peninsula Literary
Series Presents
A Reading Friday,
May 15, 2009,
7:00 p.m.
At  Gallery House,
320 South California
Avenue,
Palo Alto, at Birch,
through Printer’s
Inc. Café
 
Featuring Nona Caspers
and Joel Tan
With Guest Readers 
Lisa Allen Ortiz,
Nicholas Leaskou,
Ann Ryles, and Melanie Reitzel

JOIN US IN OUR NEW LOCATION! 
 
We look forward to seeing you there.
Carrie Hechtman, Mary Petrosky
and Jean Znidarsic,
series co-organizers


About the Featured Authors

Nona Caspers 

Nona Caspers is the author of four books, 

including HEAVIER THAN AIR: STORIES which 

was awarded the Grace Paley Prize in Short 

Fiction and was a New York Times Editors' 

Choice. Her work also has received a 2008 

National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, 

Iowa Review Fiction Award, Joseph Henry 

Jackson Literary Award and Barbara 

Deming Award. Eileen Myles said of 

her recent LITTLE BOOK OF DAYS 

"an avalanch of quiet risk taking--

this book sings." She's an Associate 

Professor in Creative Writing at 

San Francisco State University. 
 

Joel Tan

Recently named of OUT Magazine's 

People of the Year,Joël Barraquiel 

Tan is also the Director of 

Community Engagement at the 

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts 

in San Francisco, Ca.  His 

publications include  El Canto de 

Animal (Noice Press, 2006) and 

Monster- Poems (Noice Press, 2002). 

Tan has been nominated for Lambda 

Literary Award, Best Anthology, 

1998 and his work is widely taught 

in the field of culture and sexuality 

studies. Joel Tan received his M.F.A. 

in Creative Writing and Literature 

from Antioch University in 2004, 

and his B.A. in Ethnic Studies at 

University of California, Berkeley 

in 2002. Tan  is also the Founding Board 

President of the Center for Disease 

Control and Association of Schools 

of Public Health’s Institute of HIV 

Prevention Leadership Alumni Association  

(2002-2003) and a cofounder of Los Angeles' 

Asian Pacific AIDS Intervention Team. He is 

currently working on a libretto 

based on Sylvester's life.

 



			

November 21, 2008

Readers – November 21, 2008

Dan Bellm’s third book of poetry, Practice, came out from Sixteen Rivers Press in March 2008. His first, One Hand on the Wheel, launched the California Poetry Series from Roundhouse Press; his second, Buried Treasure, won the Poetry Society of America’s DiCastagnola Award and the Cleveland State University Poetry Center Prize. His work has appeared in Poetry, Ploughshares, Threepenny Review, Best American Spiritual Writing, and Word of Mouth: An Anthology of Gay American Poetry. He is also a widely published translator of poetry and fiction from Spanish. He lives in San Francisco.

Rebecca Foust won the 2007 and 2008 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prizes and was a finalist for Poetry’s 2007 Emily Dickinson Award. Nominated for two 2008 Pushcart Prizes, Foust’s recent poetry appears or is forthcoming in Atlanta Review, Nimrod, North American Review, Spoon River, Women’s Review of Books and elsewhere.

Ken Haas was born and raised in New York City, went to college in the Boston area and attended graduate school in England. He now lives and writes in San Francisco, where he works in the biotechnology industry and takes time off to ski in the Sierra Nevada.

Helen Wickes received her MFA through the Bennington Writing Seminars in 2002. She has had poems published in Santa Clara Review, the California Quarterly, Zyzzyva, RUNES, Coe Review and AGNI Online. Her first book of poems, In Search of Landscape, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2007. An Oakland resident, Wickes has worked for many years as a psychotherapist.

Jacqueline Kudler lives in Sausalito and teaches classes in memoir writing and literature at the College of Marin.  She serves as an advisory director on the board of Marin Poetry Center. Her poems have appeared in numerous reviews, magazines, and anthologies. Her full length poetry collection, Sacred Precinct,  was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2003. She was awarded the Marin Arts Council Board Award in 2005 for “an exceptional body of work over a period of time.”

Lee Rossi most recent book is Ghost Diary (Terrapin Press, 2003).  His first book, Beyond Rescue, was published in 1992 by Bombshelter Press.  For six years he edited Tsunami, an L.A.-based poetry magazine.  His poetry, reviews, essays and interviews have appeared widely in such journals as The Sun, Poetry East, Nimrod, and The Beloit Poetry Journal.  Mr. Rossi resides in San Carlos. He has taught privately for 10 years, leading workshops focused on the transformation of personal experience into poetry.

September 19, 2008

September 19, 2008

Mark Heinlein’s poetry has been published in Reed: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, and presented live at numerous venues, including the Kaucher/ Mitchell Oral Interpretation & Storytelling Competition, the Poetry & Music Festival at San Jose City College, Banned Books Week, and the 2008 Cinequest Film Festival. Mark was a finalist for the 2008 Edwin Markham Poetry Prize and nominated for the 2007 A.W.P. Intro Award. He is currently a student in the M.F.A. program at San Jose State University.

Kristen Tracy’s poems have appeared in Threepenny Review, AGNI, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly and elsewhere. She co-edited A Chorus for Peace: A Global Anthology of Poetry by Women, which was published by the University of Iowa Press in 2002. Kristen has also had two young adult novels published by Simon & Schuster — Lost It and Crimes of the Sarahs – and her first middle-grade novel — Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus — is being published by Random House next year.  http://www.kristentracy.com/

Joel Katz’s his first book of poetry Away was published in April by Mayapple Press, and his poems have appeared in The Sand Hill Review, The Montserrat Review, West Wind Review and Disquieting Muses Quarterly. He is a member of the Steering Committee and regular participant at Waverley Writers in Palo Alto, and has several times been a guest on the poetry program Out of Our Minds on KKUP 91.5 FM in Cupertino.

Meredith Alexander Kunz is a writer and editor. Her journalism has appeared in Newsweek, The Industry Standard, California Lawyer, Stanford, and Stanford Business magazines. She has studied poetry with writers including Robin Ekiss, Charlotte Muse, and Louise Glück. She draws inspiration from her interests in nature and history, as well as from her family, especially her two daughters.

Paul Carroll works as an attorney bringing environmental lawsuits in northern California on behalf of public interest groups such as the Sierra Club.  His poetry gets written in the crevices between his job and his two delightful children.  His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in the Sow’s Ear Poetry Review, Cranky Literary Journal, The MacGuffin, and The Florida Review.

July 18, 2008

The series continued in the summer months with another diverse group of accomplished writers.

July 18, 2008

Phyllis Koestenbaum a senior scholar at the Michelle Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University and the author of eight poetry books, most recently, a collection of prose poems titled Doris Day and Kitschy Melodies. Her book, Criminal Sonnets, was nominated for a Bay Area Book Award, while selections from her first book, oh I can’t she says (1980), were published in an anthology of fragmentary writing called In Pieces ( Impassio Press).

Among Koestenbaum’s awards are fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Santa Clara County Arts Council, a Senior Fellowship in Poetry at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the Diane Wood Middlebrook Fellowship at the Djerassi Foundation, where she has been in residence three times.  Her work has appeared in two volumes of The Best American Poetry, and journals such as Epoch, American Letters & Commentary, Michigan Quarterly Review, Verse, Prairie Schooner, Witness, and Sentence, and is forthcoming in a prose poem anthology. Koestenbaum also writes short fiction and her essay, “The Secret Climate the Year I Stopped Writing,” ran in a recent issue of The Massachusetts Review.  She has taught in Continuing Studies at Stanford University and currently teaches poetry workshops and individual writers.

Gillian Wegener is the author of The Opposite of Clairvoyance, published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2008.  Her work has appeared in numerous journals, including Runes, English Journal, americas review, and In the Grove.  A chapbook, Lifting One Foot, Lifting the Other was published by In the Grove Press in 2001, and she was awarded a top prize by the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Foundation for 2006. Wegener works as a junior high English teacher in California’s Central Valley. She lives with her husband and daughter in Modesto.

Nancy Cherry is a North Bay Area poet currently living in her hometown of Fairfield with Harriet-the-Cat.  She was publisher/co-editor of the Bay Area Poetry Newsletter, Fish Dance from 1995-2000, and still runs Redfruit Press, producing poetry & art chapbooks. She received her M.A. in Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento, teaches monthly poetry workshops, and edits a variety of poetry newsletters and other writing projects. Her poetry has appeared in various reviews including Bellingham Review, Seattle Review, convolvulus, Pearl, Poetry Flash, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, Sycamore Review­, Slant and Parting Gifts, and most recently in Nimrod, Pinyon Review, Runes, Mad Poets and Tule Review. Her chapbook publications include: Dish Night at the Rafael Theater and Gardening in the DeepEnd.

Azin Arefi was born in Iran and moved to the United States with her family in 1989. She studied English Literature at UC Berkeley and has a master’s degree from UC Davis in Creative Writing. Azin’s most comfortable medium is the short story. Her stories predominantly navigate the Persian culture, especially the culture of the past. Currently she teaches English Literature and Creative Writing at De Anza College and San Jose City College. Her latest publication is a short story in Let Me Tell You Where I’ve Been, an anthology of Iranian Women Writers, edited by Prof. Persis Karim.

Dorothy North practiced law as a workers’ compensation specialist for thirty-one years, all the time continuing to scribble.  She retired from the law last year in order to devote her full time to writing and visual arts.  Her poem, “Pilgrims,” was the winner of the 2006 Virginia Brendemuehl prize from Rock and Sling.