Once again, six real, raw literary voices within the hallowed walls of Specs Bar in North Beach, where the ghosts of the beat writers will sit among us. Please join our standing-room-only audience to welcome new work from Peter Kline, Janis Cooke Newman, Maury Zeff, Alan Black, Tania Malik, and Jesus Sierra. Bios below:
Peter Kline is the author of two poetry collections, "Mirrorforms" (Parlor Press) and "Deviants" (SFASU Press). A former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has also received residency fellowships from the Hemingway House, Amy Clampitt House, and James Merrill House, and has won the Morton Marr Prize from Southwest Review, the River Styx International Poetry Prize, and The Columbia Review Poetry Prize. His poems have appeared in "Ploughshares", "Poetry", "Tin House", and many other journals, as well as the "Best New Poets" series, the "Verse Daily" website, the Random House anthology of metrical poetry, "Measure for Measure", and the Persea anthology of self-portrait poems, "More Truly and More Strange". Since 2012 he has directed the San Francisco literary reading series Bazaar Writers Salon. He teaches writing at the University of San Francisco and Stanford University, and can be found online at www.peterklinepoetry.com.
Janis Cooke Newman is the author of the bestselling novel, "Mary: Mrs. A. Lincoln", which was an LA Times Book Prize Finalist, as well as USA Today' Historical Novel of the Year. She is also the author of the novel, "A Master Plan for Rescue", which was named "One of the Best Books of the Year" by the San Francisco Chronicle, and the memoir, "The Russian Word for Snow", which has been translated into several languages. She is also the founder of the nonprofit, LitCamp, which sponsors a yearly writers conference, as well as the founder of Page Street, co-working spaces exclusively for writers in SF and Berkeley.
Maury Zeff’s work has been published and performed around the US and in Europe. He won the 2021 Clark-Gross Novel Award and was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Fiction Prize. Maury placed third in the 2024 O. Henry World Championship Pun-off in Austin and is a nationally rated Scrabble player. His full-length play Dada Teen Musical: The Play will be produced by Central Works at the Berkeley City Club from October 18 to November 16.
Alan Black hasbeen a writer, mightbe a writer, couldbe a writer, mightnotbe a writer.
Tania Malik is the author of the novel "Hope You Are Satisfied" (Unnamed Press/Verve Books UK), which was recommended by NPR and named one of the best espionage novels of 2023 by CrimeReads. Her previous novel, "Three Bargains" (W.W. Norton), received a Publishers Weekly Starred review and a Booklist Starred review. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Split Lip Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Off-Assignment, Write or Die Magazine, Full Stop Magazine and other publications. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Jesus Francisco Sierra is a Cuban writer who as a young man emigrated to San Francisco’s Mission District. He is a member of The Writers Grotto and a founder of the Rooted & Written Conference, the only free annual writing conference for writers of colors, by writers of color. His work has appeared in "Zyzzyva", "Los Angeles Review of Books", "The Common", "Gulf Stream Literary Journal", "Solstice Literary Magazine", "The Caribbean Writer", "The Acentos Review", among others. His short story collection "At Times of Loss and Other Cuban Stories" was a finalist for Leapfrog Press’ 2023 Global Fiction Prize. He holds an MFA from Antioch University Los Angeles and is currently at work on his first novel.
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