Boxing Day Pajama Party Storytelling Extravaganza for (Grownup) Holiday Orphans

Walk through downtown San Francisco on Christmas day, and you can begin to believe you are the last person on earth. Everyone else has fled to the family bosom, retreating to childhood rituals, faces aglow from twinkling Christmas tree lights, sledding down pristine, snow-covered hills.

But not you. You're a holiday orphan, left alone in the big city.
...
Or, not quite alone. Portuguese Artists Colony will turn on the light, just for you. On December 26, we are your family, minus the years of disappointment, the festering resentments. Join us to hear twisted tales, drink something to warm you, and sing anything but Christmas carols.

You may belong nowhere else, but you will always belong with us.

Featured guest reader JOSHUA MOHR is the author of the novels "Termite Parade," which was an Editors’ Choice on The New York Times Best Seller List, and “Some Things that Meant the World to Me," one of O Magazine's Top 10 reads of 2009 and a SF Chronicle best-seller. He has an MFA from the University of San Francisco and has published numerous short stories and essays in publications such as The New York Times Book Review, 7×7, the Bay Guardian, ZYZZYVA, The Rumpus, The Nervous Breakdown, among many others. He lives in San Francisco and teaches fiction writing. Please visit him at joshuamohr.net.

Image courtesy of Winston Smith

ALSO:

Sing-along!
Specialty cocktails
Readings by Colonists

Sunday, December 26

Doors at 4:30 pm
Readings at 5:00 pm

$5 suggested donation

Fivepoints Arthouse

72 Tehama

One block south of Howard, off 2nd Street

Suggested donation is waived for those wearing pajamas.

Revenant

We're haunted by you. You've invaded our dreams, you drag behind us like the chains of our sins. You sit beside us at dinner and ruin our appetite. You overturn the dishes and leave clumps of earth in the sheets.

And we want more.

Featuring guest readers:
Tamim Ansary is a writer, lecturer, editor, and teacher based in San Francisco.  Ansary directs the San Francisco Writer’s Workshop, teaches sporadically through the Osher Institute,  and writes fiction and nonfiction about Afghanistan, Islam-and-the-West, democracy, education, history, current events, social issues, his cat, and other topics as they come up.
 
Clint Talbert is adept at doing things he never intends to do.  He's completed four novels, three of which were intended to be short stories.  He spends most daylight hours at Mozilla doing programming, which is a profession he never intended to pursue. If he could stop intending to publish one of these novels, he's sure he could land a deal.

Live music from Dawn Oberg.


Live writing is back!
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 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.

Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious.
W. Ross Ayers

Andrew O. Dugas
Daniel Heath
Cary Tennis 

Plus, readings from Colonists:
Leslie Ingham
Caitlin Myer (reading her story developed from September's live writing)
Benjamin Wachs 

Join us Sunday, November 28
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Specialty cocktails starting at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm

Fake ID

What did you want so badly you were willing to be someone else to get it? Portuguese Artists Colony has been there, too, and we're willing to spill.

Colonists Daniel Heath, Leslie Ingham, Caitlin Myer, Cary Tennis, and Benjamin Wachs will violate the rules and risk trouble with the bouncers. Just for you.

For October's show, Portuguese Artists Colony is on the move and appearing in the fabled Lit Crawl, part of Litquake, the West Coast's largest literary festival.

Saturday, October 9, at 8:30 pm
Laszlo Bar
2526 Mission St., San Francisco

The Crawl starts at 6, so you can get all warmed up, but when 8:30 comes, you know where you want to be.

Omphaloskepsis

om·pha·lo·skep·sis (noun): the contemplation of one's navel as an aid to meditation.

Join Portuguese Artists Colony on a journey to the center of your self and all the monsters who reside in the alien landscape of your bellybutton.

Special guest reader:
Peg Alford Pursell's fiction received the (S.C.) State Fiction Award and was a short-list finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. Stories have recently appeared or are forthcoming in Staccato Fiction, Emprise Review, Precipitate Journal, The Fabulist, Pure Francis, Burrow Press, and The Big Ugly Review. She teaches at the College of Marin and Book Passage, and in private workshops, and curates the Why There Are Words Literary Reading Series in Sausalito.

 Live music from The Alegre Sisters.

Introducing a new feature: Live writing
Ever wondered how writers write? Now you can see it as it happens. 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 s/he 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.

Four writers compete, and one will emerge victorious.
Daniel Heath
Evan Karp

Caitlin Myer
Ian Tuttle

Plus, work from Colonists:
Megan Enright
Cary Tennis
Benjamin Wachs
Leslie Ingham

Sunday, September 26th, at 5:00 pm at Fivepoints Arthouse.

Drinking starts at 4:30, with specialty cocktails mixed by Daniel Heath!

72 Tehama
San Francisco
One block south of Howard @ 2nd St.

Scintillating literary entertainment

PAC is getting noticed, and in a good way. Read the latest review from Charles Kruger and just try to stay away:

http://www.examiner.com/sf-in-san-francisco/portuguese-artists-colony-extreme-unction

We're cooking up something new and kind of kinky for our reading on September 26: Live writing. Stay tuned to learn more about it.

Xtreme! Unction

An ordinary-sized healing just won’t do, not for you. Your sickness goes way too deep. Your pathology is mountain biking down a snow-covered peak in the Rockies; your sin is bungee jumping off a bridge in New York; your depravity is shredding a broken asphalt path in a park for senior citizens.

You are in need of Xtreme! Unction, and Portuguese Artists Colony has a jumbo vat of consecrated oil with your name on it.

Special guest readers:
Robin Ekiss is the author of The Mansion of Happiness, winner of the 2010 Shenandoah/Glasgow Prize and a finalist for both the 2010 Northern California and California Book Awards.She lives in San Francisco with her husband, also a poet, their son, and their cats, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein.

Tim Bauer is a Bay Area playwright, and his plays have been produced and developed around the country. He has received full-length play commissions from Magic Theatre and PlayGround, and he has been a two-time finalist for the Humana Festival’s Heideman Award, a finalist for the Lark Playwright’s Festival, a semifinalist for PlayLabs, a semifinalist for the Nicholl Fellowship, and a winner of three PlayGround Emerging Playwright Awards.

Live music from Scott Sier.

Plus, work from Colonists:
Leslie Ingham
Daniel Heath
Cary Tennis
Caitlin Myer
Benjamin Wachs

Receive your blessing on Sunday, August 22nd, at 5:00 pm at Fivepoints Arthouse.

Doors open at 4:30. Come early to get a seat, have a drink, settle into your Sunday afternoon.

72 Tehama
San Francisco
One block south of Howard @ 2nd St.

Sin

UPDATE

Featuring a short play by Ken Slattery, fiction by Syda Day, and live music from Pocket Full of Rye. Not to be missed.

One performance is not enough to plumb the depths of sin, to revel in moral turpitude, to drive out to the far edge of consequences and peer into the abyss.

One performance isn't enough, but it's a place to start.

Join us in Sin. Appropriately enough on Sunday, July 25th, at 5:00 pm. Come early and drink.

For one evening, all is permitted, but little will be forgiven.

Morally suspect work from Colonists Daniel Heath, Leslie Ingham, Benjamin Wachs and Caitlin Myer.

Performance at Fivepoints Arthouse, 72 Tehama St., San Francisco. One block south of Howard at 2nd St.