STIR! A Reading Series at Cafe Suspiro

DEBUT of Stir: A Reading Series at Cafe Suspiro

Cafe Suspiro and Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco CA 94102

Thursday July 10, 6pm–8pm

South of Market’s neighborhood cultural revival continues with STIR — a new reading series launching on July 10 at the coffee shop/bookstore/record shop Cafe Suspiro and Arc Gallery at 1246 Folsom Street in San Francisco.

This brand-new literary series will feature a seasonal lineup of readings, interviews, and audience Q&A with Bay Area authors, a featured local publisher, plus great art on the walls of Arc Gallery, social time, coffee, treats, and records and books for sale at host venue Cafe Suspiro. STIR is a seasonal event, with four readings per year: Foggy Season, Fire Season, Flower Season, and Rainy Season.

For the July 10 Foggy Season launch, the lineup includes Josh Fernandez, Audrey T. Williams, K. M. Soehnlein, Lehua Taitano, Cynthia Gómez, plus featured publisher PM Press, and STIR hosts T.K. Rex (The Wildcraft Drones, Stelliform Press, Fall 2026), and Josh Wilson (editor, The Fabulist Magazine).

Stop by Cafe Suspiro July 10 from 5-6 p.m. for coffee and vibes, and then join the hosts and six local authors at Arc Gallery next door from 6pm to 8pm for an evening of local literary adventure in the thriving SoMa West/Folsom Corridor neighborhood — a longtime home to after-hours art, literary happenings, music and performance. STIR now joins SoMa Nights, new cafes and restaurants, and a resurgent arts and nightlife scene as part of SoMa West's post-pandemic flowering.

Full July 10 lineup and bios follow.

Josh Fernandez (he/him) is an antiracist organizer, a father, a runner, a fighter, an English professor, a doctoral candidate, a poet, author, and a journalist whose stories have appeared in Spin Magazine, the Sacramento Bee, The Hard Times, and several alternative newsweeklies. His novel The Hands That Crafted the Bomb “is nothing less than incendiary, a memoir as timely and vital as it is irreverent, as gritty, and uncomfortable as it is necessary,” wrote New York Times best-selling author Jonathan Evison. Fernandez’s forthcoming book, Letters to my FBI Agent, will be released in January 2027 on PM Press. blog.pmpress.org/authors-artists-comrades/josh-fernandez/; Instagram: @_3_arrows


Audrey T. Williams is a Black American poet, writer, facilitator, and literary arts organizer. She has been named the inaugural Speculative Poet-in-Residence at BayCon 2025 (BayCon.org), and will be the Opening and Closing Ceremonies Director for Seattle World Con (seattlein2025.org) in August 2025, as well as Co-chair of the World Fantasy Convention 2026 (wfc2026.org) to be held in Oakland, CA. An accomplished speculative literature event organizer and "Words for Wellness" creativity workshop facilitator, she bridges literary worlds and imagination activism through exploration of ancestral archetypes and cultural narrative preservation. Founder of AncestralFutures.org, Audrey's writing has been published in Lightspeed Magazine, Space & Time magazine, Conjuring Worlds: An Afrofuturist Textbook, and more. Williams combines writing craft with wellness to facilitate transformative self-care and radical resilience through poetry. Her current projects include a memoir on multi-racial identity, a full-length poetry manuscript, and a speculative flash fiction collection. She is a member of the San Francisco Writers' Grotto, the Black Speculative Arts Movement, the Afrosurreal Writers Workshop of Oakland, and the Transformative Language Arts Network. Learn more at AncestralFutures.org and reach out via email at YXVkdGhlbnRpYyB8IGdtYWlsICEgY29t.

K.M. Soehnlein (he/him) has been living, loving, and writing in San Francisco since the early ’90s. In 2024, he was honored with the Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize from Lambda Literary. His published novels are: Army of Lovers, recognized by the Independent Publisher Book Awards for the best LGBTQ Fiction 0f 2022; The World of Normal Boys, winner of the Lambda Award for Gay Fiction; You Can Say You Knew Me When; and Robin and Ruby. He teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco. @kmsoehnlein (IG and FB); kmsoehnlein.com

Lehua M. Taitano (she/her) is a queer CHamoru writer and interdisciplinary artist from Yigu, Guåhan (Guam) and co-founder of Art 25: Art in the Twenty-fifth Century. She is the author of two volumes of poetry—Inside Me an Island and A Bell Made of Stones. Taitano's work investigates modern indigeneity, decolonization, and cultural identity in the context of diaspora. www.lehuamtaitano.com; Instagram: @lehua_m._taitano

Cynthia Gómez (she/her) writes horror and other types of speculative fiction, set primarily in Oakland, where she makes her home. She has a particular love for themes of revenge, retribution, and resistance to oppression, and she loves to write dark and frightening things while cuddling with her shadow, aka her adorable little dog. Her work has appeared/will appear in Fantasy Magazine, Strange Horizons, Nightmare Magazine, and numerous anthologies. Her collection The Nightmare Box and Other Stories was released in July 2024. Her story “Lips Like Sugar” was a 2024 Ignyte Award nominee. You can find more of her work at cynthiasaysboo.wordpress.com.

Featured Publisher: PM Press is an independent, radical publisher of critically necessary books for our tumultuous times. Our aim is to deliver bold political ideas and vital stories to all walks of life and arm the dreamers to demand the impossible. Founded in 2007 by a small group of people with decades of publishing, media, and organizing experience, we have sold millions of copies of our books, most often one at a time, face to face. We’re old enough to know what we’re doing and young enough to know what’s at stake. Join us to create a better world. www.pmpress.org.

HOSTS:

T. K. Rex is a science fiction and fantasy author who first moved to San Francisco for art school in 2002, whose stories can be read in more than forty publications, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Gizmodo, and Strange Horizons. Their debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones, is coming in fall 2026 from Stelliform Press. They’re an alumni of the Clarion writers workshop, a podcast co-host at the Writers Grotto, and the bookshelf curator at Cafe Suspiro. T. K.'s stories, socials, and newsletter can be found at tkrex.wtf.

Josh Wilson, publisher of The Fabulist Words & Art, is an editor, journalist and writer in San Francisco. He received a Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi award for his work leading team coverage of public health issues in West Oakland. He founded the 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor Independent Arts & Media. His articles, essays and coverage of San Francisco and Northern California environment and issues have been published in the San Francisco Chronicle, The San Jose Mercury News, the SF Bay Guardian, The Frisc, the San Francisco Public Press, and elsewhere.