Sunset Stories

Litquake's Fabulous Femmes of Fiction

  Litquake's now-annual “women’s night,” a classy Friday happy hour at North Beach's Bubble Lounge, is my favorite event of the festival.

Ladies dressed in cotton skirts, silk blouses, beads and tattoos, sipping from champagne flutes, perch on fuchsia, overstuffed chairs, between panels of setting sun and the sound of popping corks and excited chatter.

Litquake co-founder Jane Ganahl emceedthe lively "Elizabeth Bennet Lives: Fabulous Femmes of Fiction," featuring the strong, nimble-minded, fearless Austen-inspired female characters: the Daisy Buchanan-costumed wife acting out to infidelity, the adolescent Paisley Hanover desperate to fit in, the vacant slave girl seduced by her master, the egg-roll girl flirting with her first time, the bitch posse leader felled by a preemie child and alcoholisim.

Kathi Kamen Goldmark, founder of the all-author rock band the Rock Bottom Remainders, was well at ease at the mike, and we spoke about the local lit scene.

Kim Wong Keltner, a long-time San Franciscan, made small talk while she signed books and met fans.

Cameron Tuttle, marketing queen of the Dirty Girl book series, expertly worked the room.

And, a girl named Samantha who recently moved to the City from Chicago, said she'd be reading a personal essay about her San Francsico impressions and experiences on the Litcrawl tomorrow, and I discovered she works for the PR firm that represents Six Apart.

Litquake's Either/Or: Original Shorts

Stylish square leather seats take up the space between devil-like metal figures, poised on white podiums. Recessed ceiling lights are carefully positioned onto a frank rectangle bar at the back of the gallery, surrounded by brick-and-steel walls-- revealing smiles and glances, chatter, bowed heads reading-- waiting for the event to begin.

An industruous staircase at the back leads up to a full-frontal vintage Chevy fender-and-headlight bench directly behind the railing upstairs, among more paintings and hangings. And even a chance meeting of Matt Gonzalez; how very San Francisco.

The Litquakers sat silently between the podiums and under the lights, as five authors rang out with the truth of their stories, exploring the aesthetic and ethical "phases" of existence in Kierkegaard's “Either/Or” method, on a warm, Wednesday, downtown evening.

Nona Caspers read "The Dog;" Matthew Iribar a story about a struggling artist in SF; Andrew Foster Altschul delivered a snappy piece called "Mile High;" Sean Beaudoin a short on making adeal with the devil; Ben Greenman read the finale, about love and infidelity.

The name of the event hints at the genre itself, shortened stories: shorts. And the rawness of the experience itself, read out loud, live and in front, among wine glasses and thoughtful gases.

Litquake Executive DirectorElise Proulx conducted the first poll of the six-year old festival, which described festival attendees as a distinctly 30-something crowd, and mostly women (among mostly male authors).

Ben Greenman left flyers for his postcard story-writing project called Correspondences, celebrating the lost art of letter-writing. He joked with us at intermission that he usually goes with a humorous story over a serious one, since that kind of silence could mean the audience is in rapt attention, or  merely indifferent. And, he also reported that Litcrawl doesn't work in New York, since there isn't a close-knit enough area that works, without having to taxi. 

Litquake's Barbary Coast Award to Tobias Wolff

By the time Tobias Wolff finally arrived at the softly-lit podium in front of a cheering crowd of about 100 well-dressed local literary types, in the swanky South-of-Market museum, it was clear that not only was this humble, humorous, and powerful man revered, but that his life's mission to defend, describe, espouse literature-- is a true contribution to the excellence of Bay Area literature. 

George Saunders lives in Wolff's New York house, and said Toby is a great man, and a great writer.

Tom Barbash, my creative writing professor at SCU, said that Wolff's characters are masters of deception, and that we've all had "Tobias Wolff moments."

Adam Johnson and Tom Kealey created a slide show spoof about the Tobias Wolff Code, and Wolff's uncanny resemblance to the Big Lebowski.

Self-described "token outsider" (and token woman) Ann Packer described her idolatry of Wolff, and that he's a willing foot soldier in the war against idiocy.

And, together with the girls from McSweeney's (who'd toiled to produce, in a record two weeks, a beautiful 43-page booklet in honor of the author), several other volunteers, fans, and friends, I too honored Tobias Wolff at Litquake's Barbary Coast Award ceremony, Tuesday evening.

Porchlight Storytellers: seventh birthday, and tales of the human body

Kathy, the woman I met sitting to my left, was right: getting up in front of a group of strangers to tell your story is wonderful-- and oddly healing. In fact, she's been so inspired by Porchlight Storytellers that she's learning to start her own storytelling show, telling me all about a workshop she took at Esalen Institute, sitting in vintage high-backed plastic chairs, lined up theater style facing a open-mouth stage among romantic prom-night lights, in the Verdi Club auditorium.

Porchlight Storytellers celebrated it's seventh birthday with a show, themed "The Skin We're In: Tales of the Human Body." Six scheduled storytellers and a handful of spontaneous audience participants told tales about bodies: from Tara Jepsen's black-lit zit cover-up to Reny Ryan's Boy-zillian wax client, to Ed Wolf's Hush-Puppied size 15 feet, to Frank Andrick's Interferion medication warning "bleeding from the eyes."

I love telling stories too, and I'll be back for more as the newest member of Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, offering a first-ever partnership to give $50-level members half off Porchlight tickets for a year.

Short Story seminar at 826 Valencia

I entered the Pirate Store at 826 Valencia for the first time on Thursday evening for an evening panel discussion on "Writing and Publishing the Short Story," moving past the fish theater, hand-made chapbooks, wooden catalog drawers full of candlesticks, stacks of books, bins of "who-what-when-where" dice, rows of natural-fiber brushes and trick trunks full of rope above waiting to open onto unwitting browsers in the Pirate Store, to the hardwood space beyond the jolly roger flag on a rope, where straight-back chairs (with just the suggestion of seat cushions) stood in cozy horizontal rows facing a long, wide table rimmed by office chairs and dotted by bottled waters.

Four authors and a publisher (entering on the scene of 40 eager writing enthusiasts a bit more amicable by the plastic cups three-quarters empty of white wine they carried to the table) entertained for three hours with stories of how they write a story: getting started, finishing, being in charge, character development, strengths and weaknesses, character development, motivation, voice and egos.

Judy is big on first sentences, if Nona feels a story is missing a lung she puts it away till it calls her back, Ann hides behind the strength of her characters, and Eric doesn't struggle with ending but rather the penultimate scene which must earn the ending.

Naturally, the publishing process is the second half of the story, and the panel discussed agents, editors, cover letters and submission process in the second half of the evening. And from the publisher's point of view, Eli described McSweeney's selection process as taking the cashmere sweater with a spot on the sleeve, and working with the owner to get the spot out in order to wear it.

My favorite part was the discussion about genre. Each panelist is published in short story, and some also in novel (and feeling both ends of the love-hate spectrum), with the shorter being the more difficult but rewarding suspension disbelief of character, plot and precision of language. Nona published one novel, and will never do so again. Ann is working on hers. And then the question came up about fiction versus non-fiction. Why is fiction reading at an all-time low? Somebody suggested that the public is craving something real. And that creative non-fiction is an interesting cross-section of the real and the make-believe. Eric made the point that autobiographical isn't that interesting, because as he's found with his students, one can't get the necessary perspective from what actually happened.

At the break, I went to talk with Nona. she remembered that I'd raised my hand at her question to the audience of who writes creative non-fiction, and suggested a few good places to get more. And off her earlier character comment, I told her about an essay I just read in Poets & Writers about Dubois hoping his character Miranda would do something different in her story, but that after three times re-writing, it was always the same ending.

At the end, I asked what they think about a study reported in Poets & Writers magazine about Americans reading less -- particularly young Americans. Eli responded (passionately) that the validity of their numbers is questionable, and what exactly they consider "reading." The retiree next to me whispered in agreement: "what about Internet?"

I first heard about 826 Valencia a couple years ago from a colleague, when I was marketing the Yosemite Writers Conference and checking out the local literary scene. And after the glow of camaraderie with fellow writers and the 826 events' coordinators, I know it won't be the last.