Readings by Authors Born in Ukraine, Russia, and Moldova at San Francisco’s Lit Crawl

Punctured Lines

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.

This event will take place at 5 pm on October 22nd at Blondie’s Bar, 540 Valencia St. in San Francisco .

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…

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Litquake Panel on Writing Communities

The world is on fire, cataclysmic events developing by the day and by the hour. As I am working on a novel, I feel that to do my job well, I have to turn off all the news for long chunks of time. My novel is set in the year 1990, and current news are not helpful when I’m trying to finish my draft. Yet I don’t want to hide my head in the sand and miss an opportunity to contribute today and now, whenever my particular intersection of skills can be of use.

I know many writers are trying to balance these impossible contradictions and demands on our time. Finding time to build community has never felt more important. For writers in San Francisco, come to this Litquake event for info about awesome local writers communities. I’ll be representing the San Francisco Writers Workshop — a free community workshop that meets at Noisebridge Hackerspace at 272 Capp Street on Tuesday nights 7-9 pm.

Pre-order tickets on Eventbrite.

Conversations Between Friends: Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg

At the beginning of October, 2019, Nancy Au and Olga Zilberbourg celebrated the publication of their books Spider Love Song and Other Stories and Like Water and Other Stories. The E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore of Oakland, CA, generously hosted their conversation. Nancy grew up in San Francisco and writes about three generations of Chinese-American families. Olga grew up in the Soviet Union and Russia and immigrated to the United States, where she landed in San Francisco. Each of their story collections center on immigrant relationships and complex family dynamics. Following up on their in-person conversation, the authors unpacked their lived experiences and approaches to craft in the email exchange documented here.

Read this conversation in CRAFT magazine.