Literary life in the Bay Area is booming, friends. No doubt in response to the increasing violence the world, people are writing, and they are coming together to share their work.

My friend, writer and librarian Monica Nolan is starting a writing group at Excelsior Branch Library. The first meetup is next Wednesday, March 25. And over in Oakland, my friend, writer Tahirah Dean is collaborating to start a generative Writer’s Circle at Nomadic Bookshop. Their first meeting is on Saturday, March 28. Both groups are free of charge and open to all interested writers.

On Monday, April 6, I will be heading over to Clio’s to moderate a panel of three Jewish-American writers with roots in what is now Ukraine. Poet Natalya Sukhonos will be introducing her third book of poems, Sunlight Trapped in Stone, in which she explores her background as an immigrant from Ukraine and recent work helping Ukrainian refugees as well as received historical memory of Holodomor famine and WWII stories of survival. Miryam (Bela) Sas will be introducing her memoir Milk in an Eggshell, forthcoming this fall, that traces her family’s roots to the town of Zbaraż (now in Ukraine, formerly Poland) and connects her family’s story of survival to their struggles after immigration to the United States. The title of our panel, The Memory Picture, comes from the work of Maggie Levantovskaya, whose work in progress Foreign Body: A Memoir of Lupus, Academia and Belonging is about negotiating chronic illness while attempting to become a scholar and process long-held feelings of alienation as a Jewish-Ukrainian immigrant.

The writers on this panel each have three, very different ways of connecting to contemporary Ukraine, as well as three very different artistic sensibilities. I will be asking them questions about the nuanced ways they work with memory, resisting easy answers and comparisons with the past, while pushing us to consider new perspectives. How can we resist the weaponization of traumatic stories for authoritarian aims?

I promise a rich conversation. For more details and to register, please go to this Eventbrite page.

And if you haven’t yet made it to Clio’s, a unique Oakland bookstore and bar, come just to check it out. The books are organized in chronological order!! Really, think about it! The bar serves delicious drinks and tinned fish for snacks. It’s so hip! The place opened a couple of years ago and has been thriving. If you’re lucky, you’ll meet poet Josh Peralta there. He helps to run events among many other things. Buy his book and please buy all the books to support all the writers.

And if you feel inspired and want to improve your craft, consider taking one of the fiction classes my friend Evgeniya Dame is offering this Spring. Your choices are: ELEVATE YOUR CRAFT: FICTION WORKSHOP [in person on Stanford Campus], THE ARC OF THE STORY [in person at Left Margin Lit, Berkeley], or SPRING CLEAN YOUR STORY: A STEP BY STEP REVISION GUIDE [online through Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance].

It is a bounty of riches, friends. Here’s with anticipation to reading and hearing your stories,

Olga