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Modern Times is now investing 10% of the total sales on all events books to community organizations... Read more »
See a list of archived events... Read more »
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You Left Without Your Shoes
Kenji Liu
- Thursday, November 5
In this debut Kenji Liu explores the interweavings of migration, love, memory and mourning in an autobiography of poems spanning four years. Beginning with the untimely death of his mother, this collection contemplates the difficult task of transforming one’s relationship with the dead and the renewal of life that can accompany it.
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Dolltopia
Abby Denson
Friday, November 6
- 7:00 PM
Free! Free cupcakes! Bring your own punk rock queer dolls to show and tell!
Lulu Award-winning cartoonist Abby Denson is a regular script-writer for both Marvel and DC Comic, and the creator of the queer comic Tough Love: High School Confidential. This Fall, the punked-up Barbies and stripped-down Kens of her new book Dolltopia will be joining her on a tour to celebrate their release.
Dolltopia is the story of Kitty, a ballerina doll forced into a not-so-happily-ever-after living arrangement with a male jock toy. Filled with discontent, Kitty takes it upon herself to escape her human-imposed domesticity and create a new life and a new image for herself away from the persecution of the human world. On this mission, she finds not only a host of like-minded individuals, but a veritable heaven for the alternative doll: Dolltopia.
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Cuba's Revolutionary Health Care System
Talk, Institute for the Critical Study of Society
- Monday, November 9
- 7:00 PM
The sad state of health care here in the world's richest nation and the ongoing but very limited debate on how to change it allows the consideration of revolutionary, human-centered alternatives instead of profit-making at the expense of people's lives. This talk will focus on Cuba's revolutionary health care system as an example of an alternative that is affordable and works for all of the people. It will include excerpts from the 2006 movie "SALUD! What puts Cuba on the map in the quest for global health."
Historian Laurence H. Shoup has visited Cuba numerous times, three of those visits as part of a Bay Area medical solidarity committee.
The Institute for the Critical Study of Society is a diverse group of activists and educators based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Through classes and workshops, social events and community action, we focus on an analysis of our society from a working-class perspective. Class analysis is used to provide crucial insights into how today’s conditions came about and how we can implement positive changes in our society.
Presented by the Tede Matthews Initiative
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The Importance of Being Iceland
Eileen Myles
- Wednesday, November 11
- 7:00 PM
Poet and post-punk hero Eileen Myles has always operated in the art, writing, and queer performance scenes as a kind of observant flaneur. Myles travels the city—wandering on garbage-strewn New York streets in the heat of summer, drifting though the antiseptic malls of La Jolla, and riding in the van with Sister Spit—seeing it with a poet's eye for detail and with the consciousness that writing about art and culture has always been a social gesture. Culled by the poet from twenty years of art writing, the essays in The Importance of Being Iceland make a lush document of her—and our—lives in these contemporary crowds.
Framed by Myles's account of her travels in Iceland, these essays posit inbetweenness as the most vital position from which to perceive culture as a whole, and a fluidity in national identity as the best model for writing and thinking about art and culture. The essays include fresh takes on Thoreau's Cape Cod walk, working class speech, James Schuyler and Björk, queer Russia and Robert Smithson; how-tos on writing an avant-garde poem and driving a battered Japanese car that resembles a menopausal body; and opinions on such widely ranging subjects as filmmaker Sadie Benning, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and flossing.
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Kimberly DaSilva, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Natalia Vigil, Jaime Cortez and more!
- Thursday, November 12
- 7:00 PM
Local author Kimberly DaSilva will read from her current manuscript: The Same Tide For Us Both, a ghost story about a demon, a mother, and the end of the world.
Kimberly’s work has been described as “impressive” by Kirkus and “elegant” by The Advocate. She has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, an American Library Association Stonewall Book Award, as received an ‘also noted’ in Ebony Magazine.
Her guest readers include a myriad of local writers of color and queer writers. Come hear:
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore / Claire Light / Natalia Vigil / Jaime Co rtez / Carole Simmons / LeConte Dill / Elissa Perry / Kenji Liu / Adam Smyer / Mel Hilario / Mahru Elahi / and Rona Fernandez all in one place!
This reading is a product of the San Francisco Arts Commission’s Cultural Equity Grant program.
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WORKSHOP: Writing the Body with Elaine Beale
- Saturday, November 14
- 1:00 - 4:00 PM
- Co-sponsored by Sins Invalid
A creative writing workshop using writing to explore our relationship with our bodies, dis/ability, concepts of health and illness and our experiences of sexuality. Open to writers of all levels of experience.
Elaine Beale has been involved in feminist queer and other social justice activism for most of her adult life. She has taught creative writing for more than a decade and is a member of the Sins Invalid Artistic Core. Elaine's second novel, Another Life Altogether, is forthcoming in February 2010 from Spiegal and Gray, a division of Random House. In 2007 she won the Poets and Writers staewide fiction contest. and was a finalist for the 2007 Center for Women Writers National Literary Awards in Nonfiction.
For more information or to pre-register, please email info@sinsinvalid.org or call 510 689-7198.
Wheelchair accessible. Although we cannot guarantee a scent-free environment, please refrain from using scented products for this event.
Presented by the Tede Matthews Initiative
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El Monstruo
John Ross
- Wednesday, November 18
- 7:00 PM
Spanning 50 million years from the Paleocene to last spring's swine flu panic, El Monstruo - Dread & Redemption in Mexico City is a love letter to the most contaminated, corrupt, and conflicitive megalopolis in the Americas where the author has lived for the past quarter of a century.
John Ross is a familiar figure on Mission District streets. The author of ten books of fiction and non-fiction and an equal number of poetry chapbooks, Ross is a longtime correspondent for the SF Bay Guardian and the winner of both the American Book Award and the Upton Sinclair ("The Uppie") prize.
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The Invisible Mountain
Carolina de Robertis
- Thursday, November 19
- 7:00 PM
On the first day of the century, a small town gathers to witness a miracle and unravel its portents: the mysterious reappearance of a lost infant, Pajarita. Later, as a young woman in the capital city—Montevideo, brimming with growth and promise—Pajarita begins a lineage of independent women. Her daughter Eva, intent on becoming a poet, overcomes an early, shattering betrayal to embark on a most unconventional path toward personal and artistic fulfillment. And Eva’s daughter Salomé, awakening to both her sensuality and political convictions amidst the violent turmoil of the late 1960s, finds herself dangerously attracted to a cadre of urban guerilla rebels.
From Perón’s glittering Buenos Aires to the rustic hills of Rio de Janeiro, from the haven of a Montevideo butchershop to U.S. embassy halls, The Invisible Mountain celebrates a nation’s spirit, the will to survive in the most desperate of circumstances, and the fierce and complex connections between mother and daughter.
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The Fat Studies Reader
Edited by Esther Rosenblum and Sondra Solovay
- Saturday, November 21
- 3:00 PM
Free! Free cake!
The Fat Studies Reader is a milestone achievement, bringing together fifty-three diverse voices to explore a wide range of topics related to body weight. From the historical construction of fatness to public health policy, from job discrimination to social class disparities,from chick-lit to airline seats, this collection covers it all.
Come hear brilliant reader contributors tease you with short, tantalizing, provocative excerpts from their groundbreaking chapters. The lineup includes: Esther Rothblum, Sondra Solovay, Marilyn Wann, Elana Dykewomon, Lacy Asbill, Beth Bernstein, Matilda St. John, Natalie Boero, Deb Burgard, Nat Pyle, Michael Loewy, Dana Schuster, Lisa Tealer, and Dylan Vade, Elena Escalera and Pat Lyons
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Spanish Book Group / Círculo de Lectores de Literatura en Español
Blake Boles
- Tuesday, November 24
- 7:00PM
Join us for our Spanish language book group on the fourth Tuesday of each month. A mix of native speakers and advanced level hablantes, the group has been meeting in the Mission District on a monthly basis for nine years. In November the group will discuss La Tregua by Mario Beneditti and is available at a 10% discount for all book group participants.
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Queer Open Mic
- Friday, November 27
- 7:00 PM sign-up for performers
- 7:30 PM start time
Queer Open Mic is a regular event offering a mixed bag of open mic performances (usually poetry and short stories, sometimes music or comedy) and kick-ass features. Primarily serving the queer community, it’s been running since 2004. All ages and inds of queer writers are welcome- just bring that rough draft or polished gem! Five minutes max, $3-5 donation, no one turned away, lots of queer literary love. For more information: queeropenmic.com.
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The Burger Queen Social
- Saturday, November 28
- 5:30 PM
From the minds that brought about Gay Shame and Ships in the Night comes the Burger Queen Social—a fun and exciting opportunity to meet other radical queer, trans, and genderqueer folks to hook up with for political witchery and discussion. With free vegan eats and a wildly engaging DJ!
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Fundi: The Story of Ella Baker
Left Turn Film Night
- Monday, November 30
- 7:00 PM
Fundi is a Swahili word for a person who passes skills from one generation to another. Join Left Turn Magazine to remember Ella Baker. This phenomenal woman, activist, and advisor to Martin Luther King, played an instrumental role in the American civil rights movement.
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Gay Shame Weekly Meetings
- Saturdays
- 5:30 PM
Gay Shame seeks nothing less than a new queer activism that foregrounds race, class, gender and sexuality, to counter gay consumerism and the increasingly hypocritical left. Come to a general meeting: all are welcome.
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