BANG OUT

BANG OUT Featured in San Francisco Examiner

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Bang Out Volume VI: Resolution

The sixth installment of BANG OUT Reading Series returned home to Amnesia Bar on Valencia Street on Saturday, January 16th with a theme of “Resolution.”  Fans braved the rain to hear fresh new work from local authors:

Amanda Davidson is a San Francisco based writer and multimedia artist who recently spent time as a fellow at the Art Farm Nebraska and the MacDowell Colony. She is an editor of DigitalArtifactMagazine.com and her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Paul Revere’s Horse, Encyclopedia Vol. F-K, and elsewhere. Find out more at partedinthemiddle.com.

Jason Morris was born in Vermont. His poems & essays have appeared in Forklift Ohio, Parthenon West, Jacket, TRY!, Mirage #4 Period(ical), Ping Pong, and elsewhere. Spirits & Anchors, a chapbook, is forthcoming from Auguste Press. He lives in San Francisco where he edits Big Bell.

Ami Sheth resides in San Francisco where she is in the MFA program at San Francisco State University. There she is working on a collection of non-fiction essays called Let Go and Let Ganesh and a collection of fiction stories entitled When Everything Was Alive At Once. She is the recipient of the Leo Litwak Award for fiction and her work has appeared in Transfer Magazine. Insert random tidbit here—something about cheese, recent safaris (made up,) opinion on state of pop music, or youtube kitten videos addiction.

Michael Francis Rutherglen is from Charlottesville, VA. Some poems of his have appeared in Poetry and The Colorado Review; others are forthcoming in the Antioch Review.

Candra Kolodziej is originally from northern Michigan. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2009. By day she works on finishing her first novel, and by night she fights illiteracy in North Beach as a bookseller at City Lights. She currently lives in a purple house in San Francisco where she dreams of one day owning a pet dog named Boy.

Deborah Wood graduated from NYU and worked in the field of book publishing before moving to San Francisco in 2006. If all goes accordingly she will graduate in May with her MFA. She has published her poetry and fiction in places such as Lungfull, Transfer, Bird Dog, Nimble, EOAGH, Hotel Amerika, and Parthenon West Review. She is a firm believer that a straight line is never the best way to get from point A to point B, and that we should all try and get lost at least once a day.




BANG OUT Volume IV: Toxic Assets

The fourth installment of BANG OUT Reading Series Saturday was on July 18th at Amnesia in San Francisco.  The reading featured drinks, debauchery and a full helping of fresh new work from local writers inspired by our theme “Toxic Assets.”

Truong Tran is a poet and visual artist. His publications include The Book of Perceptions, Placing The Accents, dust and conscience (awarded the San Francisco Poetry Center Book Prize in 2002), within the margin and Four Letter Words. He is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including two San Francisco Arts Commission’s Individual Artist Grants in poetry, The Arts Council of Silicon Valley Grant, The California Arts Council Grant, The Creative Work Fund Grant, The Fund For Poetry Grant and most recently, The SF Arts Commission Grant in Visual Arts. Truong lives in San Francisco in an apartment at the corner of Haight and Ashbury rumored to be the former home of Janis Joplin.

Sarah Fran Wisby (is the author of Viva Loss. She lives in San Francisco.)

Marisa Crawford grew up in New York and in Connecticut.  She graduated from the University of Massachusetts, where she studied Creative Writing and Women’s Studies, and received her MFA from San Francisco State University. Some of her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Invisible Ear, Big Bell, GlitterPony, Parthenon West and Shampoo. Her first book, The Haunted House, was the winner of the 2008 Gatewood Prize and is forthcoming from Switchback Books in 2010.

Matt L. Rohrer is a writer and musician living in San Francisco. His writing has appeared in Tinfish, Watchword, the Surfer’s Journal and other publications. He is a founding editor of Small Desk Press, and works as a substitute teacher. You can find his music at: www.myspace.com/goldenwestservice.

Jamey Genna teaches fiction writing at the Writing Salon in Berkeley, California and is also a high school English and creative writing teacher. Her short stories and flash fiction have been published in many fine literary magazines, most recently in Georgetown Review, 580 Split, Storyglossia and The Iowa Review. Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart, and her collection Stories I Heard When I Went Home for My Grandmother’s Funeral was a semifinalist for the Iowa Prize in 2008.

Brent Armendinger is a satellite orbiting San Francisco while he also teaches creative writing at Pitzer College in Claremont, CA. His chapbook Archipelago was published this spring by Noemi Press. He is also the author of a poem contained in a can of Beanie Weenies, available for purchase at the Frankenart Mart, where he wrote on the window until he disappeared in April.




BANG OUT Featured in San Francisco Magazine

Click Here to read the article, which details a variety of different resources (including BANG OUT Reading Series) available to burgeoning (and established) writers.




BANG OUT Volume III: (Naked)

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.

BANG OUT Volume III: (Naked)




BANG OUT Reading Series Volume II: Change

In honor of this January’s presidential inauguration, the second BANG OUT reading, on Saturday, January 17th at Amnesia in San Francisco, featured work by local writers inspired by the theme “Change.”

Matthew Zapruder is the author of American Linden (Tupelo Press, 2002), and The Pajamaist (Copper Canyon, 2006), winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America. He is co-translator of Secret Weapon, the final collection by the late Romanian poet Eugen Jebeleanu (Coffee House Press, 2007). His collaborative book with painter Chris Uphues, For You in Full Bloom, will be published by Pilot Books in 2009 and his third book of poems, Come on All You Ghosts, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in 2010.

Rosemary Griggs received her BA from University of Iowa and her MFA from San Francisco State. Her book Sky Girl was published in 2003 by Fence Books. She has recently completed a provocative, political new manuscript of poetry for which she is seeking publication.

Paul Dertien lives in San Francisco. He has studied and taught creative writing at San Francisco State University. He is currently working on a crime fiction novel. His work has been previously published in ZYZZYVA and Six Little Things.

Sona Avakian was recently awarded a grant from the San Francisco Arts Commission. Her stories have been published in Instant City, ZYZZYVA and other journals.

Lindsey Wolkin is a graduate from the MFA Fiction program at San Francisco State. She is the recipient of a 2009 San Francisco Individual Artist Commission Grant and is currently working on a novel.

Susanna Kittredge holds an MFA in Poetry from San Francisco State University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in 14 Hills, Sidebrow, Parthenon West Review, Shampoo, 580 Split, and the anthology Bay Poetics (Faux Press, 2006).

Michelle Puckett’s poetry has appeared in the Naropa Summer Writing Program Journal, N.U.T.S., and she has participated in readings in both Boulder and Prague.

BANG OUT Volume II: Change