BANG OUT Volume III: (Naked)
“I Used To Sleep Naked Beside You” by Ali Lawrence
“Santa Crawl” by Ana Maria Ventura
“After BANG OUT” by Chris Stroffolino
Visit the Video Library to watch excerpts of the live performances.
The third BANG OUT reading was held Saturday, April 18th at Amnesia in San Francisco. The reading featured work by local writers inspired by the theme “(Naked).”
Peter Orner was born in Chicago and is the author of the novel, The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo (Little, Brown, 2006), and the story collection, “Esther Stories” (Houghton Mifflin, 2001). A film version of one of Orner’s stories, The Raft, is currently in production and stars Ed Asner. Orner has published fiction in the Atlantic Monthly, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Southern Review, and various other publications. Stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and the Pushcart Prize Annual. Orner has been awarded fellowships from the Guggenheim and Lannan Foundations. Currently, Orner is an associate professor at San Francisco State University.
Chris Stroffolino is the author of three full length collections of poetry: Oops (Pavement Saw Press, 1994), Stealer’s Wheel (Hard Press, 1999), and Speculative Primitive (Tougher Disguises, 2005) as well as several limited edition chapbooks. His outspoken views on poetry can be found in Spin Cycle (Spuyten Duyvil, 2001). He co-edited An Anthology of New (American) Poets (Talisman House, 1998) and a critical edition of Shakespeare’s 12th Night (IDG Books, 2006). He was Visiting Distinguished Poet in Residence at St. Mary’s College from 2001-2004, and played with Silver Jews, Continuous Peasant, Sir Lord Von Raven, and is currently working on his first solo album. (www.myspace.com/chrisstroffolino)
Kirk Read is the author of “How I Learned to Snap” and two upcoming books, a novel and a collection of essays. He created the multimedia show “This is the Thing” with Jeffrey Alphonsus Mooney and is the director of Army of Lovers. He’s worked at St. James Infirmary and toured twice with the Sex Workers Art Show. He grew up in Virginia.
Ali Lawrence received her MFA in poetry from San Francisco State in Spring 2007, and since her first book of poetry, “Anatomic,” was published on Small Desk Press in Summer 2008. She is presently planning her next attack.
Ana Maria Ventura moved to San Francisco from Salt Lake City, Utah, where she quickly learned to tack on the disclaimer, “And, no, I’m not Mormon,” to any introduction. After finishing her master’s degree in creative writing at San Francisco State University, she was left in a quandary concerning What to Do With Her Life. After a few years of corporate editing, she rededicated herself to the utterly fulfilling art of teaching high school. To appease her innate editorial desire, she now works as copyeditor for Instant City, one of San Francisco’s finest literary journals.
Laura Wolfe is in her final semester as a poetry MFA student at San Francisco State University. She grew up near Boston, Massachusetts and attended Bryn Mawr College as an undergraduate. Laura’s work has been published in freefall, Nimbus, and is soon to be found in Transfer Magazine.
H. K. Rainey lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and is poetry editor of the literary journal 580 Split. She is an MFA candidate at Mills College in Oakland where she studies poetics.
