Events - Modern Times Bookstore

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Tede Matthews Initiative Special Events The Tede Matthews Initiative (TMI) is a new project of Modern Times Bookstore. Honoring the fierce cultural legacy of founding collective member Tede Matthews’ queer literary cultural activism, TMI partners with Mission District community cultural organizations, schools, artists, and educators to launch a series of performances, workshops and free to low cost cultural events to support the Bay Area's activist, artistic, and literary communities. To support us or find out more, click here.

Declaring Our Erotic: A creative writing workshop for queer survivors of sexual trauma 4-week series taught by Jen Cross - Wednesday, February 3, and Tuesdays, February 9, 16, and 23 - 7 PM - 9 PM (includes 30-40 minutes of writing/sketching development) - Cost: $50-$100 sliding scale - Note: final workshop will be held offsite in a wheelchair-accessible location. Preregistration required! Please email leah@moderntimesbookstore.com, pay using our PayPal link or drop by the store. Come together with queer survivors of sexual abuse (open to all gender identities) to create a space in which we struggle with and celebrate our complex sexualities, in an attempt to become less isolated around, and more comfortable talking about, our sexual desires. Each week, we will write in response to exercises designed to tap into different aspects of our sexual selves: memory, fantasy, experience, relationship with the body, and so on. Jen Cross is a writer and certified AWA workshop facilitator. In 2002 she founded Writing Ourselves Whole, which focuses primarily on sexuality writing workshops and writing with survivors of sexual trauma. Her writing appears in more than thirty anthologies and periodicals, including Nobody Passes, Visible: A Femmethology, Best Sex Writing 2008. For more information, visit www.writingourselveswhole.org. top of page

Activist Spanish Classes with Francisco Jimenez! Classes are taking a break in February wile Francisco is on vacation! They will resume in March. top of page

Keeping It Nasty: How to Write Hot Five-Minute Erotica Led by Meliza Bañales - Thursday, February 11 - 7 PM - 9 PM - Cost: $15-$25 sliding scale. Ever wanted to tell a quick n’ dirty hot story? How about write one? This afternoon smut fest will be an opportunity for participants to do just that! We will learn how to focus in on a singular moment and turn it into a short n’ sweet, naughty story that you can perform and anthologize for years to come. Using lots of dirty little prompts and free-writes, we’ll spend our time using an array of techniques and styles to hone-in on a singular sexy moment and how to make that moment last for up to five pages. Participants will walk away with several different methods of how to get started and how to keep it like a quickie: short, hot, and leave people begging for more. Meliza Bañales, aka Missy Fuego, writes books, sews clothes, and makes movies. She has won an ’08-’09 AIRspace Residency for her one-woman show, One Bad Year, a 2008 Creating Queer Community Grant, a 2006 Frameline Completion Grant for the film Do the Math with Mary Guzman, a 2002 People Before Profits Poetry Prize and toured with Sister Spit in 2007. She recently completed another short film with J Aguilar entitled Getting Off which is appearing in Frameline 33 International LGBT Film Festival. She has been accepted into the RADAR Writer’s Lab to complete her second book of poems, 51 Poems About Nothing At All. Come be her friend on MySpace. top of page

Kids' Story Hour Facilitated by Melissa Merin - Saturday, February 20 - 1 PM - 2 PM - Free! All Ages! Come to this fantastic, free monthly kids' story hour, hang out with other parents and give your kids a chance to listen to wonderful, progressive children's lit! About Melissa: As an early childhood educator and general childcare provider, Melissa Merin believes that active story telling is a key component to unleash the critical thinking skills necessary for young children to navigate the broader worlds around them. When children are read to, they gain a new understanding of how to tell their own stories. She hope that Children's Story Hour provides an opportunity for children to listen, to speak, and to act! For more information about Melissa, click here. top of page

Modern Times Community Love Fund At Modern Times, we love the communities of resistance that support us- and we want to support them back. So we're kicking off our new Community Love Fund! On the last Friday of each month, Modern Times will give back to our communities by donating 10% of our sales to different Bay Area community organizations working for social justice. By shopping at Modern Times, you support two amazing community institutions- us and our sponsee of the month! Friday, February 26: The Center for Sex and Culture Founded by Dr. Carol Queen and Dr. Robert Morgan Lawrence, The Center for Sex & Culture's mission is to provide judgment-free education, cultural events, a library/media archive, and other resources to audiences across the sexual and gender spectrum; and to research and disseminate factual information, framing and informing issues of public policy and public health. We envision the day when people around the world are free from the stigmas and shame attached to sexuality. top of page


	Launch Party Granta 109: Work Featuring readings by Daniel Alarcon and Yiyun Li - Tuesday, February 2 - 7 PM Come to a launch party celebrating the release of Granta 109: Work. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of the Industrial Revolution is, for better or for worse, our inclination to define who were are by what we do, and this essential new issue of Granta lays bare the intrinsic link between work and identity. From the jobless to the workaholics, from the hard work of dying to the landscape work has created out of office parks and suburbs, Granta 109 will tell the story of how and why we work in the twenty-first century. Featuring writing by Salman Rushdie, Ng?g? Wa Thiong’o, Steven Hall, V.V. Ganeshananthan and more! top of page

	Reading Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History Canyon Sam - Thursday, February 4 - 7 PM In the groundbreaking Sky Train: Tibetan Women on the Edge of History, writer and activist Canyon Sam uncovers the untold history of Tibet from the perspective of women in a lyrical memoir that spans nearly twenty-five years. Traveling on the newly opened Beijing to Lhasa train in 2007, she crossed the Himalayas to find women from her earlier oral history project. As she reveals the unexpected stories of women's resistance, courage and spiritual resilience through fifty years of Chinese occupation, and gives an account of the changes wrought by the controversial new railroad, she comes to embrace her own capacity for faith and acceptance. "A striking portrait of Tibet... Readers will be moved by these powerful tales." Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama Canyon Sam is a writer, nationally acclaimed performance artist and activist from San Francisco. She spent a year in Tibet and the Himalayan region when Tibet first opened in 1986 and helped found the Tibetan Nuns Project. Her fiction, nonfiction and drama have been published in Shambhala Sun, the Seattle Review, and dozens of journals and anthologies. top of page

	Institute for the Critical Study of Society Talk Marx and Politics Ron Kelch - Monday, February 8 - 7 PM The election of Barack Obama brought hope for change to many. However, multiple crises have deepened since the election: a Great Recession, an expanded permanent war and an impending ecological catastrophe. Many who worked for Obama's election are now disillusioned and wondering if it is possible to get out of the present total threat to human survival through politics. What can we learn from Marx's concept of politics for today's reality? top of page

	Celebrating the publication of the late kari edwards' Bharat jiva and No Gender: Reflections on the Life and Work of kari edwards - Thursday, February 18 - 7 PM kari edwards (1954 - 2006) was a beloved Bay Area-based poet, artist and gender activist. The winner of New Langton Art's Bay Area Award in literature (2002), kari was the author of have been blue for charity, BlazeVox (2006); obedience, Factory School (2005); iduna, O Books (2003); a day in the life of p., subpress collective (2002); a diary of lies, and many other works. Come join us in celebration of kari's work, and the posthumous publication of her work, Bharat jiva. Contributors to No Gender: Reflections of the Life and Work of kari edwards will read, including Fran Blau, Rob Halpern, Tanya Hollis, Kevin Killian, Wendy Kramer, Joseph Lease, Yedda Morrison, Donna de la Perriere, Leslie Scalapino and Eleni Stecopoulos. top of page

	Spanish Book Club / Circulo de Lectoras/es de Literatura en Español Corazon tan Blanco Javier Marse - Tuesday, February 23 - 7 PM Join us for our Spanish language book group. 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. Participants receive a 10% discount on their book purchases. Los libros estan en la seccion de libros en espanol. Las personas que participan en el grupo reciben 10% de descuento al comprar los libros. top of page

	Reading Beautiful Amy Reed with Daphne Gottlieb - Thursday, February 25 - 7 PM Come out for a night of readings celebrating rebellious women. Described as a latter-day Go Ask Alice, Beautiful is Amy Reed's debut young adult novel about a young girl who trades her good-girl existence for a swift downward spiral tinged with drugs and abuse. When Cassie moves from the tiny town where she has always lived to a suburb of Seattle, she is determined to leave her boring, good-girl existence behind. Swept into a world of illicit parties and social landmines, she sheds her virginity, embraces the numbness she feels from the drugs, and floats through it all, knowing that she is now called beautiful. She ignores the dangers of her fast-paced life…but she can’t sidestep the secrets and the cruelty. Amy Reed's short work has been published in journals such as Kitchen Sink, Contrary, and Fiction. She grew up around Seattle, received her MFA from New College of California, and currently lives in Oakland. Beautiful is her first novel. San Francisco-based Performance Poet Daphne Gottlieb stitches together the ivory tower and the gutter just using her tongue. She is the editor of Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions and Homewrecker: An Adultery Reader, as well as the author of the poetry books Kissing Dead Girls, Final Girl, Why Things Burn and Pelt, as well as the graphic novel Jokes and the Unconscious with artist Diane DiMassa. top of page

	Queer Open Mic - Friday, February 26 - 7 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 minds of queer writers are welcome- just bring that rough draft or polished gem! Five minutes max, $3-5 donation, no one turned away, and lots of queer literary love. For more information: queeropenmic.com top of page

	The Burger Queen Social - Saturday, February 27 - 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! top of page

	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. top of page