The Places We Call Home

“The Places We Call Home” -a free literary event in celebration of the upcoming Filipino American International Book Festival at Eastwind Books of Berkeley.

Eastwind Books Of BerkeleySeptember 29, 2011
Thursday 7:00 pm
Eastwind Books of Berkeley
2066 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
FREE

Authors and Poets reading will include:

Oscar Bermeo was born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest, Heaven Below and To the Break of Dawn.

Cecilia Manguerra Brainard is the award-winning author of eight books, including the internationally-acclaimed novel When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, Magdalena, and Vigan and Other Stories.

Rashaan Alexis Meneses earned her MFA from Saint Mary’s College of California’s Creative Writing Program, where she was named a 2005-2006 Jacob K. Javits Fellow and awarded the Sor Juana Ines de La Cruz Scholarship for Excellence in Fiction.

Veronica Montes is the co-author of Angelica’s Daughters, as well as a short story writer whose work has appeared in Bamboo Ridge, Growing Up Filipino, and Philippine Speculative Fiction 5.

Barbara Jane Reyes is a recipient of the James Laughlin Award of the Academy of American Poets and the author of Diwata, which was recently noted as a finalist for the California Book Award.

Benito M. Vergara, Jr. was born and raised in the Philippines. He is the author of Displaying Filipinos: Photography and Colonialism in Early 20th-Century Philippines and Pinoy Capital: The Filipino Nation in Daly City.

For more information about the October 1 to October 2, 2011 Filipino American International Book Festival visit www.filbookfest.info.

For more event information
Call: 510-548-2350
Email: eastwindbooks@gmail.com
Visit: www.asiabookcenter.com
Visit: events.sfgate.com/berkeley-ca/events/show/208000345-the-places-we-call-home

Deep Oakland Release Party

From Stephanie Young of Deep Oakland Editions:

Deep Oakland is excited to announce the publication of several new chapbooks and projects, along with a release party on November 19, organized by Charles Legere, in celebration of Deep Oakland editions.

On Thursday, November 19, please join us at 21 Grand in Oakland, at 7:00 for short readings by:
Adam Cornford
Samantha Giles
Dan Thomas Glass
Javier Huerta
Charles Legere
Barbara Jane Reyes

We’ll also be projecting photographs from Meg Escudé’s collaboration with Charlie Legere, Dan Thomas Glass’s 880 series, and Rebecca VanDeVoort’s series focused on gas stations in Oakland. There’ll be a DJ in the 21 Grand house, Alex Benson. And you know what that means: dancing!

Barbara Jane Reyes reads "We, Spoken Here"

Great reading at Pegasus Books tonight. I caught some great videos that I’ll be posting during the week. First off is Barb reading one of her “We, Spoken Here” poems. I love how this poem uses the text from General Taguba (his repeated mention of the “We”) as the launching pad for this litany.

Side rant: I am all for found text and subverting headlines, but I find it disappointing when a poem that desires to be “political” uses that text as bland stand alone lines or as the rally point of the poem. A poem like Barb’s “We, Spoken Here” or Evie Shockley’s “Torture” are great examples that a poem doesn’t need a headline to be political but can use a headline to make us examine the political.