San Francisco Writers Workshop is hosting a benefit for our current venue, Noisebridge. This legendary maker and hackerspace in the Mission prides itself on being open to all and provides infrastructure to people interested in art and technology. Our workshop, for instance, has been meeting in the sewing room equipped with machines for professional sewing projects. Like all creative venues in San Francisco, Noisebridge needs help making rent. This event will be a celebration of our writing and creative communities and a fundraiser for one of the coolest spaces in the Mission.
The event will include featured readers, a storytelling game, refreshments, cash bar, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Mark your calendars for 7 pm on April 6, 2023, at Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street. Suggested donation starts at $10, and please give as much as you can!
This event is now happening at Stage Werx Theatre, 446 Valencia Street — by there on October 22nd at 5 pm!
Punctured Lines is co-hosting a Lit Crawl reading by six Bay Area writers born in Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova. Shaken by the horrific tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we will read pieces exploring our connections, direct and indirect, to the part of the world we associate with home and exile, and where many of our friends and relatives are suffering as a result of the war. We work in the genres of nonfiction, literary and historical fiction, YA, flash, and other literary forms to tell our stories, and will read excerpts from our published and new work.
Maggie Levantovskaya is a writer and lecturer in the English department at Santa Clara University. She was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and grew up in San Francisco. She has a PhD in comparative literature from UC San Diego. Her creative nonfiction and journalism have appeared in The Rumpus, Michigan Quarterly Review, Catapult, The LA Times, Current Affairs, and Lithub. Twitter: @MLevantovskaya
Masha Rumer‘s nonfiction book about immigrant families, Parenting with an Accent, was published by Beacon Press in 2021, with a paperback coming out in October 2022. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Parents, and more, winning awards from the New York Press Association. Twitter: @MashaDC
Originally from Kishinev, Moldova, Tatyana Sundeyeva is a Russian-American writer living in San Francisco. She writes short fiction, travel writing, and Young Adult novels and has been published in Oyster River Pages, Cleaver, and Hadassah Magazine. Twitter: @TeaOnSundey
Vlada Teper is a writer and educator from Moldova. Her essays have been featured in Newsweek and on NPR. A former Fulbright Scholar in Russia, Teper is the founder of Inspiring Multicultural Understanding (IMU) Peace Club. With MAs in English and Education from Stanford University, Vlada is the recipient of the 826 Valencia Teacher of the Month Award. Twitter: @VladaTeper
Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and author of forthcoming novel YOUR PRESENCE IS MANDATORY set between Ukraine and Nazi Germany (Bloomsbury, 2024). She has written about Eastern Europe for The New York Times, TIME, BBC, Harper’s Bazaar, NBC, USA Today, Narrative, and others. Twitter: @SashaVasilyuk
Olga Zilberbourg is the author of LIKE WATER AND OTHER STORIES (WTAW Press) and four Russian-language story collections. She has published fiction and essays in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Narrative, Alaska Quarterly Review, Confrontation, Scoundrel Time, and elsewhere. She co-edits Punctured Lines, a feminist blog on post-Soviet and diaspora literatures, and co-hosts the San Francisco Writers Workshop. Twitter: @bowlga
Starting on August 2nd and ongoing, we’ll be meeting at Noisebridge Hackerspace, 272 Capp Streetin San Francisco (near 16th Street BART). We will be assembling at 7 pm as usual in the 2nd floor lounge. Let us know if you have any accessibility issues, and we will try to accommodate.
We will continue to ask for donations to support this venue (San Francisco rents!) and we continue to ask that everyone masks.
Punctured Lines is delighted to bring you our next event–a reading and a Q&A with six established authors who were born in the former Soviet Union and immigrated to Canada as children. In their fiction and nonfiction they explore topics of multicultural identity, life under communism, Jewish culture, food, history, and making a home in a strange land.
We began planning this event before Russia’s renewed, full-scale attack on Ukraine, and we want to acknowledge that this war is resonating deeply throughout the diasporic community. We feel that it’s particularly important for us to come together at this time, to listen to each other’s stories and to amplify each other’s voices and resources in support of the people of Ukraine in their fight against the Russian totalitarian regime. We also want to extend our support to those citizens of the Russian Federation resisting and fleeing…
– supplementing basic income for members whose income has dropped because they are focusing on emergency pro bono translation and interpreting
Natalia is herself in the city of Kalush in the west of Ukraine. She reports: “so far the fund has helped evacuate two people from Kharkiv and has helped cover the cost of special footwear and a safety vest for one of our colleagues who is now in the territorial defense; and provided funds to a single…
Most of these opportunities are currently provided by European institutions, and we urge our friends with any influence at North American institutions and those around the world to consider expanding existing opportunities and to establish new positions for writers fleeing the war in Ukraine, as well as for writers speaking out against their regimes in Belarus and Russia.
For those watching in horror the atrocities committed by Russian troops in Ukraine and wondering what can be done from afar, here is a list of various types of organizations to support. Given the rapidly developing situation and the number of appeals from various channels, this list is by definition incomplete. If you know of other organizations please add them, and we will be updating, as well. We stand with the citizens of Ukraine, the Russian protesters, and members of the various diasporas who have family, friends, and ties in one or both places.
Many of us have been wondering how to help Ukrainians who are under a renewed attack from Russia. Poets Olga Livshin and Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach have put together a bilingual reading by poets and translators from Ukraine and the US. Read the event description below and register for the event happening March 1 at 12:30pm ET. This message includes links to organizations where you can make donations to support Ukraine in this time of war.
From Olga and Julia:
Amid the current catastrophe in Ukraine, a brutal invasion of a sovereign nation, it is more urgent than ever to listen to the voices of its people. While media provides overwhelming coverage, literature, poetry, and art are just as important for processing, coping, and surviving trauma.
Hosts Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach and Olga Livshin unite Ukrainian poets and their translators alongside US poet-allies in Voices for Ukraine–a transatlantic reading spanning from Kyiv…
Thanks to Dorian Stuber’s very bookish blog prompt, I got a chance to reflect on my reading in 2021. It proved to be very meaningful as I move forward. Thank you, Dorian!
Today‘s reflection on a year in reading is by Olga Zilberbourg (@bowlga). The author of Like Water and Other Stories (WTAW Press) and four Russian-language books, Olga co-hosts the San Francisco Writers Workshop; and together with Yelena Furman runs Punctured Lines, a feminist blog about post-Soviet and diaspora literature.
Look for more reflections from a wonderful assortment of readers every day this week. Remember, you can always add your thoughts to the mix. Just let me know, either in the comments or on Twitter (@ds228).
El Anatsui, Fading Cloth, 2005
My reading life this past year was dominated by my role as a juror for the 2022 Neustadt International Literary Prize. The first task we were given was to nominate an author based on the quality of their writing. After considering (and rereading) authors from Yoko Tawada to Jenny Erpenbeck to Polina Barskova, I finally settled…
Olga Zilberbourg 