On Saturday September 13th at 7 pm, the Lone Glen garden series will host a triple book launch party, featuring writers Faith Adiele, Jennifer Hasegawa, Sarah Rosenthal, and Valerie Witte. Richard Rodriguez praises Adiele’s Her Voice as “. . . an astonishing book—[a] coming-of-age memoir—that defies easy classification because it is finally a memoir of the soul,” while author Ellen Chang-Richardson lauds Hasegawa’s NAOMIE ANOMIE as a transformative “world of surreal code where fairy tales braid with Buddhist spirituality, quantum science, and geomorphology, to weave a realm of delightful absurdity.” This event will also celebrate collaborators Sarah Rosenthal and Valerie Witte, who just released their book of essays, One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Tyrone Williams describes the “core of these essays” as “the female body’s objecthood as defined by ballet and certain modes of modern dance…” and the collection as “a four-way conversation about our bodies and what it means to move through private and public spaces.” Join us in this late summer garden to delight in the dance of these writers’ hybrid prose. $10-15 suggested donation, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
ABOUT THE WRITERS
Faith Adiele is author of the innovative memoir Meeting Faith: The Thai Forest Journals of a Black Buddhist Nun, which won a PEN Award, and 3 hybrid chapbooks about her Nigerian-Nordic-American heritage. Her media credits include Sleep Stories for the Calm meditation app, HBO-Max's A World of Calm, and the PBS documentary My Journey Home. Recipient of 30 artist residencies around the world, she hosts an African Book Club, edits a column on decolonizing travel writing, and Chairs the Writing & Literature program at CCA. Find her at
https://faithadiele.substack.com/ and
https://www.instagram.com/meetingfaith/.
Jennifer Hasegawa is a poet and community archivist. Her latest poetry collection, NAOMIE ANOMIE: A Biography of Infinite Desire (Omnidawn, 2025), is an experimental poetic take on anti-memoir. Her debut collection, La Chica's Field Guide to Banzai Living (Omnidawn), won the Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award and was long-listed for The Believer Book Award in Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Adroit Journal, Bamboo Ridge, Bennington Review, jubilat, takahē magazine, Tule Review, and Vallum. She was born and raised on the Big Island of Hawaiʻi and currently resides in the SF Bay Area.
Sarah Rosenthal’s most recent books are Estelle Meaning Star (Chax, 2024) and, in collaboration with Valerie Witte, One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Her film We Agree on the Sun won Best Experimental Short at the 2021 Berlin Independent Film Festival and a new collaborative film, Lizard Song, is currently on the film festival circuit. She is the recipient of the Leo Litwak Fiction Award, a Creative Capacity Innovation Grant, a San Francisco Education Fund Grant, and writing residencies at Cel del Nord, This Will Take Time, Hambidge, Vermont Studio Center, Soul Mountain, New York Mills, and Ragdale, as well as a two-year Affiliate Artist term at Headlands Center for the Arts.
Valerie Witte is the author of multiple poetry and hybrid books, most recently One Thing Follows Another: Experiments in Dance, Art, and Life through the Lens of Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer (punctum, 2025), in collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal; and A Rupture in the Interiors (Airlie, 2023; finalist for the 2025 Oregon Book Awards, Stafford/Hall Award for Poetry). She has served as a member of both Kelsey Street and Airlie Press, and she has held residencies at Ragdale Foundation; La Porte Peinte in Noyers, France; and the Hambidge Center. She currently works as a book editor in Portland, where she lives with her husband, Andrew. More at valeriewitte.com.
ABOUT THE SERIES
LONE GLEN is a reading and performance series dedicated to cultivating a down-to-earth, inclusive creative community among makers of all forms. In December 2021, Lone Glen celebrated its decade birthday! Lone Glen hosts most events in the spring, summer, and fall months and usually goes on hiatus each winter.
ABOUT THE VENUE
This event will take place in the back garden at 1409 Derby Street, Berkeley: find the open fence door on the right side of the house (please don’t use the front door). PLEASE BRING A FRIEND, and maybe a blanket or chair! Lone Glen will provide a nonalcoholic array of drinks, and also, plenty of wine. $10-15 suggested donation, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. ADA accessible to the yard; there is no ADA accessible restroom.
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