Cutting Edge Writers Reading for new great weather for MEDIA Anthology

Alley Cat Books and great weather for MEDIA present a rollicking evening of cutting edge poets and prose writers from across the Bay Area and the U.S. They come together to celebrate the release of great weather’s new anthology, Suitcase of Chrysanthemums, which features work by intense wordsmiths – including those you’ll hear tonight – along with an interview with actor/director Sonja Sohn (The Wire, The Chi, Baltimore Rising). Come prepared for revelations, epiphanies, and a few broad smiles.

This evening features writers from across the US and beyond, including Zoë Christopher (SF), William Taylor Jr. (SF), Kit Kennedy (Rossmoor, CA), Calder G. Lorenz (SF), Mary Mackey (Albany, CA), and Richard Loranger (Oakland), and great weather editors David Lawton (NY) and Jane Ormerod (from NY and UK).

Based in New York City, great weather for MEDIA publishes established and emerging writers from across the United States and beyond.

Please stop by, get yourself dangerously verbiaged up, and pick up a Suitcase of Chrysanthemums to call your very own.


RELEASE PARTY for The Other Side of Violet

a reading by
Zoë Christopher
William Taylor Jr.
Kit Kennedy
Calder G. Lorenz
Mary Mackey
Richard Loranger
David Lawton
and Jane Ormerod

hosted by Jane Ormerod and David Lawton


PERFORMER BIOS

Zoë Christopher published her first poem at sixteen. Soon after she was sidetracked by putting food on the table as an ice-cream truck driver, waitress, medical assistant, addictions counselor, astrologer, art installer, bookseller, Holotropic breathworker, and trainer of psychospiritual crisis support. (She didn’t get paid for milking goats, teaching photography, or raising her son.) Zoë grew up in Los Angeles where her mother was in show business, but that’s another story.

William Taylor Jr. lives and writes in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco. He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus a volume of fiction, and was a recipient of a 2013 Acker Award. He recently edited Cockymoon: Selected Poems of Jack Micheline, published by Zeitgeist Press. From the Essential Handbook on Making it to the Next Whatever is his latest collection of poetry.

Kit Kennedy serves as Poet in Residence of SF Bay Times and Poet in Residence of her church. She has published six collections of poetry. She regrets little except she never (to date) has skateboarded but she is an avid pickleball player.

Calder G. Lorenz is the author of One Way Down (Or Another), his debut novel from Civil Coping Mechanisms. His writing can be found in Curly Red Stories, Black Heart Magazine, The Birds We Piled Loosely, New Pop Lit, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, Chicago Literati, and Lunch Ticket. He lives in San Francisco.

Mary Mackey is the author of eight collections of poetry including Sugar Zone, winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award and Finalist for the 2012 Northern California Book Reviewers’ Award, and The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974–2018 (Marsh Hawk Press). Poet D. Nurske has called Jaguars “a monumental achievement.” She is also the author of fourteen novels, several of which have made the New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle Bestseller Lists.

Richard Loranger is a writer, performer, musician, visual artist, and all-around squeaky wheel, currently residing in Oakland, CA. He is the founder of Poetea, a monthly literary conversation group. His recent book of flash prose, Sudden Windows (Zeitgeist Press, 2016), has been warmly received. He is also the author of the Poems for Teeth, The Orange Book, and nine chapbooks, and has work in over 100 magazines and journals. He co-curates the series Babar in Exile with poet Paul Corman-Roberts, and is debuting a new queer talk series, #we, in November, 2018. You can find more about his work and scandals at https://www.richardloranger.com.

David Lawton is the author of Sharp Blue Stream (Three Rooms Press). David is a graduate of the theatre program at Boston University, where he was also a Guest Artist in the graduate play writing classes taught by Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott. For ten years he was a background vocalist in the New York underground band Leisure Class. At the band's de facto headquarters in the Chelsea Hotel, he befriended Beat godfather Herbert Huncke and San Francisco poet Marty Matz and was inspired by their embodiment of the written word. He is a founding editor of great weather for MEDIA.

Jane Ormerod is the author of the full-length poetry collections Welcome to the Museum of Cattle and Recreational Vehicles on Fire (both from Three Rooms Press), and the chapbook 11 Films (Modern Metrics/EXOT Books). Her work also appears in publications including Maintenant, Flapperhouse, Marsh Hawk Press Review, Post (BLANK), Sensitive Skin, and Paris Lit Up. Born on the south coast of England, Jane now lives in New York City and performs extensively across the United States and beyond. She is a founding editor of great weather for MEDIA.