BANG OUT Volume XXI: “Bridges and Tunnels”
Join us for BANG OUT Volume XXI: “Bridges and Tunnels” Saturday, May 18th at 7:30 at the Make Out Room.
B and T’s. They’re not just ways to get jerks into the city to take over the bars. They’re the Bay Area’s most beautiful conduits. They’re golden, alight with pulsating LEDs, socked in fog, constant sources of beauty and frustration, the connectors, the betweens. As always, we encouraged any and all interpretations of the theme, especially those that surprised us.
Hear new work banged out on the theme “Bridges and Tunnels” by local writers:
Tarin Towers
Zarina Zabrisky
Audrey Dilling
Pam Benjamin
Karen Macklin
Megan Brown
Naomi Goldner
Tarin Towers has been living and writing in the Mission District for the past 18 years. She is the author of a full-length book of poetry, “Sorry We’re Close,” (Manic D Press), as well as four chapbooks and several books about computers and the Internet. She has toured with Sister Spit, Daphne Gottlieb, and Beth Lisick, and has read her work in dozens of venues in the Bay Area and across the United States. She won a Pushcart Prize in 1999, and her work has also appeared in Exquisite Corpse, A Gathering of the Tribes, Eleven Eleven, The Fray, Salon, San Francisco Stories, and American Poetry: The Next Generation, among others. Follow her on Twitter (@tarintowers) and Facebook.
Zarina Zabrisky is the author of short story collections IRON (Epic Rites Press), A CUTE TOMBSTONE (forthcoming in 2013 from Epic Press) and a novel We, Monsters (forthcoming in 2013 from Numina Press). Zabrisky’s work appeared in over twenty literary magazines and anthologies in the US, UK, Canada, Ireland, Hong Kong and Nepal. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a finalist in The Normal School’s Prize in Fiction, 2012 (judge Amy Hempel), and a recipient of 2013 Acker Award.
Audrey Dilling is a producer at KALW public radio in San Francisco, where she heads up Hear Here, a project that records regular people telling their stories in public libraries and puts them on the air. Most of the things she writes are for the radio, but she’s currently working on a how-to book for happy people who get sad sometimes. You can find Audrey’s best self in the Internet, where she takes a shameful amount of pride in her Facebook status updates.
Pam Benjamin has an MFA in Poetry from SFSU and an MA in fiction because she likes pretty framed paper hanging in her kitchen. She is the host of Pamtastic’s Comedy Clubhouse on Mutiny Radio and performs stand-up comedy all over the Bay Area. Pam has two published novellas “The Pigeon Chronicles or Bike Messenger Assassins” and “Voices” (available hard copy and on Kindle). She loves her cat, dudes with tattoos who skateboard, and baking cookies. Be her friend on Facebook to find out where she performs next.
Karen Macklin is a journalist, essayist, playwright, poet, fiction writer, and author of creative nonfiction. Her articles have been published bicoastally in more than a dozen newspapers and magazines, including The New York Times, Yoga Journal, and The San Francisco Bay Guardian. Her one-act and full length plays have received readings and/or productions in San Francisco, Seattle, and Italy, and she co-authored the nonfiction book Indie Girl. Karen is currently a member of the Playground writer’s pool and holds a MFA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. When she’s not playing with words, she can be found teaching yoga throughout the city or getting lost in a steamy cup of tea.
Megan Brown, a first-year MFA student at Mills College, has lived in the Bay Area since 2005. As a writer-in-training, she’s crafted poems, film reviews, news content for non-profits, and essays. As a New Orleans native, she will always be drawn to water. “You do the weather well,” one writer told her. Megan thinks we should all submit to our artistic tendencies.
Naomi Goldner is a writer and educator living and working in San Francisco. She holds an MA in English and an MFA in Fiction from San Francisco State University, where she wrote a collection of short stories entitled “Necessities and Desires.” Most recently, her short story “Evyatar,” a Glimmer Train Finalist, was published in Amerarcana, and her prose poem “Kitchen Table” was included in Poetica Magazine. While living in Israel, Naomi wrote pieces for Ha’Ir Weekly, including “Coming Out of My Mother’s Closet,” and “Civil Marriage,” as well as a collection of stories for Morocco in Colors. Naomi spends much of her time enjoying almost every minute of teaching writing at San Francisco State University and Foothill College as she works to complete her first novel.