Maura Carta
An Evening of Poetry and Prose
at Gallery House, 320 California Ave, Palo Alto
Joan Marx, John McDonough, Katie Zeigler,
and artist Anne Lamborne
PENINSULA LITERARY PRESENTS
An Evening of Poetry and Prose
Friday, January 30, 2015, 7:00 p.m.
at Gallery House, 320 California Avenue, Palo Alto
Featuring: Kristi Moos and Kevin Sharp
with Guest Readers: Paul Carroll, Mary-Marcia Casoly, Sibel Sayiner, Preeva Tramiel
Produced by Jean Znidarsic and Carrie Hechtman
Kevin Sharp is a former screenwriter and current high school creative writing teacher. His first novel, After Dakota, was published in 2013. His work has appeared online on The Weeklings and 100 Word Story; in print in Bookmarks magazine and in the Palo Alto Weekly. He will be featured in the upcoming Fiction Attic Press short story anthology. Looking back, he knows that working at a comic book store in high school was still the best job he’s ever had.
Kristi Moos’s poetry appears in Crab Orchard Review, Denver Quarterly, Ecotone, ISLE, New American Writing, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Winner of the Harold Taylor Prize from the Academy of American Poets and nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Kristi is currently finishing a collection of narrative poems set in California. She serves as editor of Poecology(www.poecology.org) and teaches at San Francisco State University.
John Nimmo Reads at Peninsula Literary September 12, 2014
Our September reading found us near the end of a hot day, everyone still wishing for rain. Gallery House filled up quickly with friends of the series, and we settled in for the pleasure of being read to by the authors themselves.
It’s always a surprise to watch a reading unfold in real time after all that goes into putting the program together. Together, the diverse voices and elements make an experience that is somehow more than the sum of its parts.
Below are the bios of our September readers. Thank you to all of them, and to all who helped set up, tear down, and all who came to join us! We hope to have videos of the reading online soon. Please check back.
Jean Znidarsic and Carrie Hechtman, Peninsula Literary
First Half
Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at Stanford, where she was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and held a Jones Lectureship; and in the MFA program at San Francisco State. Her fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, and won a TransAtlantic Review prize. She’s the author of six books, including creative writing textbooks, The Making of a Story and Method and Madness (both published by Norton), and the novels, Turn of Mind, and Circle of Wives,which was published earlier this year.
Lita Kurth has an MFA from Rainier Writers Workshop and has work accepted or published in FjordsReview, Redux, Raven Chronicles, Main Street Rag, Tikkun, NewVerseNews, Blast Furnace, eliipsis…literature and art, Compose, Tattoo Highway, Composite Arts, Verbatim Poetry, the Santa Clara Review, Vermont Literary Review, and others. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her CNF “This is the Way We Wash the Clothes,” presented at the Working Class Studies conference, 2012, won the 2014 Diana Woods Memorial Award (summer-fall 2014) and appeared in Lunchticket 2014. She contributes to Tikkun.org/tikkundaily, TheReviewReview.net, and classism.org. In 2013, she co-founded the Flash Fiction Forum, a reading series in San Jose. She teaches writing and creative writing at De Anza College and in private workshops.
Noorulain Noor is a clinical researcher at Stanford University and the poetry editor of Papercuts. Papercuts is a publication of Desi Writers’ Lounge, an online writing community for emerging South Asian writers, run entirely on a voluntary basis. Noorulain’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in ARDOR literary magazine, The Bangalore Review, Apeiron Review, Clapboard House, Blue Lake Review, aaduna, and other journals. Raised in Lahore, Pakistan, Noorulain now lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she leads poetry workshops, blogs, and writes on the broad themes of identity, multiculturalism, and the immigrant experience.
Papercuts Magazine: http://desiwriterslounge.net/papercuts/
Blog: http://gollgappay.blogspot.com/
Erin Byrne writes travel essays, poetry, fiction and screenplays. Her work has won numerous awards, including Travelers’ Tales Grand Prize Solas Awards for Travel Story of the Year, and appears in a variety of publications, including World Hum and Best Travel Writing. Erin is writer of The Storykeeper, an award-winning film about occupied Paris. She is occasional guest instructor at Shakespeare and Company Bookstore, and is co-editor of Vignettes & Postcards From Paris, the first in a series of anthologies based on her workshops in different parts of the world. http://www.e-byrne.com
–Intermission
Peninsula Literary Series, Sept 12, 2014
Reader Bios
Second Half
David Roderick’s first book of poems, Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize. This fall, the Pitt Poetry Series published his second book, The Americans. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and hosts The Late Nite Poetry Show, an interview series on The Rumpus.
Rebekah Pickard studies with Peter Orner and Nona Caspers in the MFA fiction program at SF State. Glimmer Train named her short story, Pray Down the Rain, on the Top-25 list of their September 2012 fiction open contest. She is currently working on a novel with the working title of I Am My Brother’s River, the story of two brothers growing up together in rural Missouri in the 1920s.
John Nimmo has been seriously hooked on poetry since the mid 1990s. His poems have appeared in various online and paper journals, including Stirring, Rattle, Sand Hill Review, Pirene’s Fountain, and DMQ Review. He has an active career as an environmental physicist, and lives with his wife Elsa in Menlo Park.
PENINSULA LITERARY PRESENTS
An Evening of Poetry and Prose – 7pm Friday Sept. 12 at Gallery House, 320 South California Ave, Palo Alto
Featuring David Roderick and Alice LaPlante, with Lita Kurth,
Paul Carroll, Noorulain Noor, Rebekah Pickard, and Erin Byrne
Produced by Jean Znidarsic and Carrie Hechtman, peninsulaliterary.wordpress.com
Alice LaPlante is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction. She teaches creative writing at Stanford, where she was awarded a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and held a Jones Lectureship; and in the MFA program at San Francisco State. Her fiction has been published in numerous literary journals, and won a TransAtlantic Review prize. Author of six books, including creative writing textbook, Method and Madness (W.W. Norton 2009), her novel, Coming of Age at the End of Days will come out in the spring.
David Roderick’s first book of poems, Blue Colonial, won the APR/Honickman Prize. This fall, the Pitt Poetry Series published his second book, The Americans. He teaches in the MFA Writing Program at University of North Carolina, Greensboro, and hosts The Late Nite Poetry Show, an interview series on The Rumpus.
Peninsula Literary is accepting submissions for Guest Readers in our fall reading,
Friday, September 12, at 7:00 p.m.
Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic, Peninsula Literary
If you’d like to receive our call for submissions, please email peninsulaliterary@gmail.com and ask to be added to our email list.
Peninsula Literary Presents
A Reading on Friday, April 25, 2014, 7:00 p.m.
At Gallery House, 320 South California Avenue,
Palo Alto@ Birch Street, through Printer’s Inc. Cafe
Featuring John Evans and Angela Torres
With Guest Readers Victoria Muirhead, Jeanne Watson, Katie Wu, Olga Zilberbourg and Guest Artist Maura Carta
Produced by Carrie Hechtman and Jean Znidarsic
Angela Narciso Torres’s first book of poetry, Blood Orange, won the Willow Books Literature Award for Poetry and was published by Willow Books/Aquarius Press in September 2013. Recent work appears in Cimarron Review, Colorado Review, and Cream City Review. A graduate of Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and the Harvard Graduate School of Education, Angela has received fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Ragdale Foundation, and Midwest Writing Center. Born in Brooklyn and raised in Manila, she currently resides in Chicago, where she teaches poetry workshops and serves as a senior poetry editor for RHINO.
John W. Evans was born in Kansas and grew up in New York and Chicago. His memoir, Young Widower (University of Nebraska Press, 2014), won the 2013 River Teeth Book Prize. His poetry collection, The Consolations (Trio House Press, 2014), won the 2013 Trio Award. His poems and essays appear in Slate, The Missouri Review, Boston Review, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, and Poetry Daily, as well as the chapbooks, No Season (FWQ, 2011) and Zugzwang (RockSaw, 2009). After completing a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in poetry, John was a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, where he continues to teach creative writing today. He has worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bangladesh, a public school teacher in Chicago, and a college teacher in Romania. He lives in Northern California with his wife and two young sons.
