Elsewhere

Portuguese Artists Colony is taking a stroll.

It all begins Sunday, July 8, 5:00 pm at Stories, with the maiden appearance of PAC Los Angeles' Roar Shack.
Featuring Chiwan Choi, Jillian Lauren, Shilpa Agarwal, Live Writing with J Ryan Stradal and Ameni Rozsa, and music by Scott Shriner.

On Monday, July 9, we're wandering across the ocean to host the participant open mic as part of Dzanc Books/CNC DISQUIET International Literary Program in Lisbon, Portugal. This is our second year as part of DISQUIET, and we're mighty pleased to return. Live Writing in a 150-year old literary club. What could be sweeter? Grémio Literário, at 6:00 pm.

We're back to our original home in San Francisco on Sunday, July 22, with a wonderful lineup:
Craig Clevenger and Lauren Eggert-Crowe
Musical guest: Jascha Hoffman
Live writing winner: Ethel Rohan 
Live writers: Claire Hennessy, Marianne Lonsdale, Jeremy Ravdin, Trent Tano   
Sunday,  July 22
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter Street
In the Salon, just behind the Library Bar
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm  
Sliding scale $5-10

Take your medicine

You've had it coming for a while. Your wife asked about the smell on you when you crept in between the sheets last night, you'd hoped she wouldn't notice. Just that, her voice coming calm out of the dark, and it was clear she knew. She turned her back on you to sleep, but you can't, you'll lie awake all night.

Man up with Portuguese Artists Colony on May 27 at Hotel Rex. We'll hold your hand in the grim morning-after light.

Featuring guest readers:
Local singer Songwriter David Berkeley wrote most of the songs from his latest album Some Kind of Cure while living in a 40-person village in the mountains of Corsica. He also penned a memoir called 140 Goats and a Guitar, which tells the stories that inspired those songs.

Jane Ganahl has been a journalist, author, editor and arts producer in San Francisco for 30 years. She is the co-founder and co-director of Litquake, the West Coast’s largest independent literary festival. She is also the author of the memoir Naked on the Page: the Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife.

Plus! We have two live writing winners:
Actual Portuguese-American Linette Escobar won March's live writing with the prompt, "She craved nachos."

"Not-a-writer" Kevin Hunsanger returns with his winning piece about a hoarder from February's show.

Live music from the wonderful Erma Kyriakos. Listen to her songs here, and watch for the full-length album!

Live writing:
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. It's a thrill - place your bets now!

Julie Greicius
Douglas Henderson
Ira Marlowe
Ethel Rohan

Sunday, May 27
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter Street
In the Salon, just behind the Library Bar
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm  

Reality show

There's a camera behind your bathroom mirror, another over your bed, behind your left ear, under your tongue. You're being watched by millions, over dinner, faces lit by the screen. Your whole life is a reality show. You're the dickhead on a power trip, the weakling who pisses himself under pressure, the compulsive crier. Under the eye of the camera, as under God's obsessive stare, you are your worst self. Every time you pick your nose, every stupid confession to your boyfriend is tallied on the crawl at the bottom of the screen.

So why not let it all go? Why not go flamboyant, give the gods of your world some real entertainment? Bring out the pogo-stilts and the flamethrower. Join Portuguese Artists Colony on March 25 at Hotel Rex as we blur the line between life and performance, if there ever was a line in the first place.

Featuring guest readers:
Sally Ashton is a poet and Editor-in-Chief of the DMQReview. She teaches creative writing and is the current Poet Laureate of Santa Clara County, blogging at poetlaureateblog.org

Dean Rader’s Works & Days received the 2010 T. S. Eliot Poetry Prize, was a finalist for the Bob Bush Memorial First Book Prize, and won the Writer’s League of Texas Book Award for Poetry. Verse Daily named his poem “Ocean Beach at Twilight: 14” one of the best poems of 2010, and another of his poems will appear in Best American Poetry 2012. He is a professor at the University of San Francisco.

PLUS!
Sona Avakian lives in San Francisco and has had work published or forthcoming in ZYZZYVA, Sonora Review, Instant City and Sand Hill Review. 

Live music from the fabulous Sadie Contini of The Invisible Cities.

Live writing:
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing gets more exciting with every show. Place your bets!

Missy Church
Linette Escobar
Gary Turchin
Matthew DeCoster

Sunday, March 25
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter Street
In the Salon, just behind the Library Bar
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm

I can't hear you

Baby, I can't hear you, she says. You try again, but your words get mangled along the way. There's too much interference, too many years, betrayals, the gap between your pickup basketball game in Chicago and her Kyoto classroom unbridgeable. You open your mouth and all she hears is static, sirens, the thwack of knuckle on cheek. You want to say love, Baby, love, but it turns to roadkill in her ear.

Join Portuguese Artists Colony at our new location, the Hotel Rex, on February 26 to get the message straight.

Featuring guest readers:
Kelly Luce's story collection received the San Francisco Foundation’s Jackson Award and was a finalist for the 2010 Bakeless Prize. Her fiction has recently appeared in The Southern Review, Crazyhorse, and Kenyon Review. This summer she’ll be a resident at Fogo Island Arts Corporation in Newfoundland.

Peter Orner is the author of three books of fiction, including Esther Stories, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, and the recently published novel, Love and Shame and Love, a New York Times Editor's Choice book. He lives in Bernal Heights and is generally against colonization, except in circumstances such as these.

PLUS! Geetha Reddy's winning play from last month's live writing, inspired by the prompt: The restaurant served only meat.

Live music from The Barbary Ghosts. 

Live writing:
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing gets more exciting with every show. Place your bets!

Katrin Arefy
Kevin Hunsanger

Ira Marlowe
Don Menn

Sunday, February 26
NEW LOCATION!
Hotel Rex
562 Sutter Street
In the Salon, just behind the Library Bar
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm  

Not loaded

She says it isn't loaded as she passes it to you, but it feels heavy, the metal still warm from her hand. You could open the chamber and check, but that would violate some rule of trust between you. You have to believe her, it isn't loaded. The neighbor kid thought the gun wasn't loaded when he took it out to show his friend, just that little thing, and the shot was heard for years after, the story whispered from kid to kid through two generations. Your uncle must have thought the shotgun wasn't loaded when he leaned it against the fence before climbing over, but we'll never know, his mouth is closed forever.

So it isn't loaded. So you trust her, and put your finger on the trigger. Join Portuguese Artists Colony on January 22 to see what happens next.

Featuring guest readers:
Seth Harwood received an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and went on to build a large fan base for his first novel, Jack Wakes Up, by first serializing it as a free audiobook. Across iTunes and sethharwood.com, his work has been downloaded over one million times. His second novel, Young Junius, is billed as "The Wire meets Cambridge, MA in 1987″ and was picked by George Pelecanos as one of his best books of 2010. Seth currently lives in San Francisco where he teaches English and creative writing at Stanford and the City College of San Francisco.

Brittany Perham is the author of The Curiosities (Parlor Press 2012). Her recent work may be found in Southern Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Lo-Ball, Linebreak, and elsewhere. She is a Jones Lecturer in poetry at Stanford University, where she held the Wallace Stegner Fellowship from 2009-2011. She is a member of the word/music project Nonstop Beautiful Ladies and she lives in San Francisco.

Steven Paul Lansky will return with a long-distance reading of his winning piece from December's live writing, inspired by the prompt, "She saw Jesus."

Live music from "Oakland's sweet little secret," Ira Marlowe.

Live writing:
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing gets more exciting with every show. Place your bets!

MaryBeth Lorence
Geetha Reddy
Duo Von Dagrate
Cary Tennis

Sunday, January 22
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm

StretchyHead on KALW

Lovely words from Kevin Hunsanger of Green Apple Books on KALW about Ian Tuttle's book StretchyHead. Kevin calls this sweet collection of stories "...a cross between Richard Brautigan and Raymond Carver."

Listen to the whole show (StretchyHead is mentioned in the last ten minutes):
Today on Your Call: What are your favorite books of the year?

StretchyHead is the first release from PACBooks, a small publishing house that spun off from Portuguese Artists Colony.

Heavy

It clings around your ankles, curves your back. It's bigger and badder and you squint to peer through its density. On December 18, let Portuguese Artists Colony share your burden.

We will bring you heavy metals with their mineral certainty, the massive guitar solos, the weighty thoughts to remind you of your center of gravity. Join us in the deep of December, just days before the earth shifts its weight, wobbling back toward the longer days of light.

Featuring guest readers:
The Boston Globe has called Shawna Yang Ryan “a writer to watch.” Her debut novel, Water Ghosts, was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, a Maurice Prize winner and a finalist for the Northern California Book Award and the Asian American Literary Award.

Kyle Thomas Smith is the author of the novel, 85A (Bascom Hill, 2010), which has received seven awards, including one from the American Library Association's Over the Rainbow Committee, which named it one of the best books of 2010. He lives in Brooklyn with his husband Julius and his cats Marquez and Giuseppe.

Suzanne Kleid returns to read the conclusion to her hilarious live writing piece inspired by the prompt, "He wore red shoes."

Live music from the unmatched Dawn Oberg.

Live writing:
Vote on a prompt as you enter the show, and four writers will write on the winning topic while you watch them sweat, swear, and get inspired. Each writer will read what he/she wrote, and you get to vote on which piece you'd like to see developed into a finished story/poem/rant to be read at the next PAC performance. The live writing gets more exciting with every show. Place your bets!

Steven Paul Lansky
Kyle Thomas Smith

Eric Aragon
Janey Smith

Sunday, December 18
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm