Photo by Tracy Ingle.

Please put this on your calendar: I’ll be reading at Writers With Drinks on October 24!

This is a dream-come-true for me. Writers With Drinks is an amazing reading series, hosted by Charlie Jane Anders, that has been going on forever in San Francisco. I have seen so many incredible people read there. It’s such an honor to be standing on the same stage!

When: Oct. 24, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
What: WRITERS WITH DRINKS!
Who: Adam Johnson, Faith Adiele, Fayette Fox, Daphne Gottlieb, Loren
Rhoads, and Brontez Purnell!
How much: $5 to $20, all proceeds benefit the CSC
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco, CA

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks has won numerous “Best ofs” from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7×7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The spoken word “variety show” mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance,
mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.

About the readers/performers:

Loren Rhoads is the author of The Dangerous Type, Kill By Numbers, and No More Heroes. She was the publisher of Morbid Curiosity magazine. In her secret life, she writes about cemeteries as travel destinations.

Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the award-winning author of ten books including the new collection of short stories, Pretty Much Dead, which addresses the eradication of a city’s most vulnerable, from the streets to the rent-controlled — in a city under siege by the tech industry. Previous works include Dear Dawn: Aileen Wuornos in her Own Words, a collection of letters from Death Row by the “first female serial killer” to her childhood best friend. She is also the author of five books of poetry, editor of two anthologies, and, with artist Diane DiMassa, the co-creator of the graphic novel Jokes and the
Unconscious. By day, she is band aid in the class war.

Adam Johnson’s newest book is the story collection Fortune Smiles. His novel The Orphan Master’s Son was published in 2012 by Random House and received the 2013 Pulitzer Prize in fiction. He also has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for 2013-14. A Whiting Writers’ Award winner, his work has appeared in Esquire, Harper’s, Playboy, GQ, Paris Review, Granta, Tin House, The New York Times and Best American Short Stories. He is the author of Emporium, a short-story collection, and the novel Parasites Like Us. His books have been translated into twenty-three languages. Johnson was a 2010 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow.

Brontez Purnell is the author of Johnny Would You Love Me If My Dick Were Bigger? He is the head of the Brontez Purnell Dance Company, and also has performed with the bands Gravy Train!!!! and the Younger Lovers. He also published the illustrated book The Cruising Diaries and put out the influential zine Fag School. He was on Out Magazine’s Hot List.

Faith Adiele is the author of The Nigerian-Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems (Shebooks), and Meeting Faith (W.W. Norton & Co.), which received PEN Beyond Margins Award for Best Memoir of 2004. She’s also the co-editor of Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural Anthology and the subject of the PBS documentary My Journey Home. She also co-wrote the multicultural thriller The Student Body: A Novel (Random House). She’s been featured in O: The Oprah Magazine, Marie Claire’s 5 Women to Learn From, and the Huffington Post. She has appeared on NPR, on the Tavis Smiley show, in a national television ad for TIAA-CREF, in the pilot for a new reality show, and in a 2-page spread: “A Day in the Life of Faith Adiele” for Pink magazine. She is the recipient of a UNESCO International Artists Bursary, the Millennium Award from Creative Nonfiction, and 16 artists’ residencies in Brazil, Canada, Italy and the USA.

Fayette Fox’s debut novel The Deception Artist was originally published in the UK by Myriad Editions in 2013. The book was just published in North America by Roaring Forties Press in March 2015. She works as the Writer and Community Manager at Jaunty, an organization that teaches social intelligence. She helps people put their best foot
forward and find love as the Co-Founder of My Love Ninja, a boutique OkCupid profile makeover service. She is a former commissioning editor for Lonely Planet Publications.