Springtime has brought lit readings galore to the Bay Area. Here’s just a smattering of excellent readings, book launches, and poetry events happening across the region.
Thursday, April 7: Rob Spillman at Green Apple Books, SF
Soon after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Rob Spillman and his wife Elisa Schappell (you probably recognize them as editors at Tin House magazine) moved from New York City to Berlin. The young couple, both aspiring writers, wanted to live bohemian lifestyles infused with art, love, and political passion. Spillman, who lived in Berlin as a child, reveals a second motive in his new memoir All Tomorrow’s Parties. “I was hoping that Berlin would welcome me back like a long-lost native son.” Fueled by absinthe and Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, Spillman searches for art and meaning in Europe, “with amplified emotions you feel only in your twenties, when you are wildly changeable even as your artistic opinions are set in stone.” Does Berlin welcome the son back with open arms? Read the book to find out. Details here
Saturday, April 9: Daring to Write: Contemporary Narratives from Dominican Women at Modern Times, SF
Edited by Erika M. Martinez, Daring to Write offers 25 essays, memoirs, novel excerpts and poems by Dominican women and women of Dominican descent living in the United States. We’ve all read Julia Alvaraz, who wrote the foreword, but what about lesser known Dominican writers like Angie Cruz and Nelly Rosario, not to mention emerging writers just being published for the first time? These are voices whose time has come. The reading at Modern Times features Martinez along with contributor Yalitza Ferreras, a 2014-15 Steinbeck Fellow at San Jose State University. Details here