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

Now with more

On Sunday, November 20, Portuguese Artists Colony now offers more. More live nude girls, more cleaning power, more skinned frogs and dancing soldiers, more conjugal visits, more all-night, twenty-four-hour protests, more tear gas, more than you ordered, more than you can choke down, more than any of us could have dreamed.

We're Americans, baby, we want more, and Portuguese Artists Colony is here to give it to you.

Featuring guest readers:
Ethel Rohan is the author of Hard to Say, PANK, 2011 and Cut Through the Bone, Dark Sky Books, 2010, the latter named a 2010 Notable Story Collection by The Story Prize. Her work has or will appear in BULL Fiction, The Good Men Project, The Chattahoochee Review, Los Angeles Review, and Potomac Review, among many others. She earned her MFA in fiction from Mills College, California. Raised in Dublin, Ireland, Ethel Rohan is now a resident of San Francisco, California.

Kelly Cressio-Moeller’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in the following poetry journals: Rattle, Southern Humanities Review, Pearl, Melusine, the Aurorean, Switched-on Gutenberg, Pirene’s Fountain, and The Newport Review among others. She shares her deeply caffeinated life with her German husband, increasingly taller sons, and their opinionated basset hound. She has a weakness for fountain pens & purple ink. And like everyone else on the planet, she is working on a book.

Nora Boxer returns after her thrilling victory in September's live writing with her finished piece, inspired by the prompt, "His hands were in the sink."

Live music from Passenger & Pilot!

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!

Pam Benjamin
Amy Cruz
Charlie Getter
Suzanne Kleid

Sunday, November 20
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm

Damage and Book Launch!

On Saturday, October 15, Portuguese Artists Colony will bring damage to Litquake's infamous Lit Crawl.

We are thrilled to be part of Litquake for the second year running, and our gratitude hurts. We say thank you with scars and breakage; it's not a party without torn dresses and mascara-streaked faces.

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  

Louise Nayer, San Francisco author and educator, has written poetry, non-fiction and recently, Burned: A Memoir, about a tragic Cape Cod accident and family resilience.

Plus! Readings from colonists Daniel Heath, Leslie Ingham, Caitlin Myer, and Cary Tennis.

Saturday, October 15
8:30 - 9:30 pm
Heart
1270 Valencia St.
San Francisco

_____________________________________________

And that's not all.

Portuguese Artists Colony is absolutely beside itself to announce the birth of its small press, Portuguese Artists Colony Books, with the launch of its very first book:

StretchyHead
fictional stories in real places 
by Ian Tuttle

Will the cocktails break your heart?
Will the ice cream make you call your mother?
Reviews are plentiful. Menus can be found online. But there is more to dining than what arrives on the plate.
Somewhere between making eye contact with the server and figuring out the tip
       we fall in love
                make plans to escape
                       dream of other worlds.

StretchyHead brings you exquisite moments from fictional lives, inspired by the real places in which they are set.

Join us for a good old fashioned book launch party with music and more!

Friday, October 21
8:00 pm
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco

Antagonist

There would be no story without us. No passions aroused, no chant for victory, no angry red welt to show Mom as evidence.

On Sunday, September 25, Portuguese Artists Colony will be the reason superheroes exist, dressed in cape and boots solely to undo our careful planning.

We'll move on anyway, nobody can stop us, we're the pretty blonde who sleeps her way onto the Dean's List, the bully who buries your lunch box, the one who watches - smiling - while you eat the cyanide-and-ground-glass pie we baked fresh, just for you.

Featuring guest readers:  

Will Boast’s story collection, Power Ballads, won the 2011 Iowa Short Fiction Award. He’s had work in Best New American Voices 2009, Narrative, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, The American Scholar, and Salon. A former Stegner Fellow, he’ll be travelling to the UK this fall as a Charles Pick Fellow at the University of East Anglia. When in San Francisco, he moonlights as a performing musician.

Isaac Fitzgerald has been a firefighter, worked on a boat, and been given a sword by a king, thereby accomplishing three out of five of his childhood goals by the age of 25. He has also written for AlterNet, The Bold Italic, McSweeney's, and Mother Jones. He is the managing editor of The Rumpus.

Tim Bauer returns to read his winning piece from last month's amazing live writing, inspired by the prompt: "She had his head."

Live music from our friends Pocket Full of Rye.

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 is always a treat and a surprise. Place your bets!

Nora Boxer (2010 Keene Prize for Literature)

Cynthia Cady (Pints & Prose)  
Janine Kovac (Writing Mamas)
M. da Silveira Serpa (Presence/Presença)

Sunday, August 25
Fivepoints Arthouse 
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Show at 5:00 pm

Toothless

You wonder if it's a sign of age, that sense of powerlessness, sitting on the edge of the bed, your hands dangling between your knees. You used to believe you could take anyone on, fast and vicious, they wouldn't know what hit them. Not like everything came down to a fistfight, we aren't savages, but it showed when you did your PowerPoint presentation for the board, when you strutted down the street in your new heels.

You were a mean and ruthless god.

But now, your shoulder hurts when you lift your arm to point, and you know in your bones that when it came to a barfight, your teeth would be the ones decorating the floor.

On Sunday, August 28, Portuguese Artists Colony will guide you to the hidden power in your obsolescence.

Featuring guest readers Jonathan Hirsch and Olga Zilberbourg

nic alea returns with nic's winning piece from last month's live writing - Portuguese Artists Colony's first ever tie, won in a sudden death round!

Live music with Brooke D.

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 is always a treat and a surprise. Place your bets!

Tim Bauer
Hunter Gatewood
Matthew Siegel
Alia Volz


Sunday, August 28
Fivepoints Arthouse
72 Tehama
One block south of Howard at 2nd Street
San Francisco
Doors open at 4:30 pm
Show at 5:00 pm