Ivan & Misha, 40 Wild Crushes, and The Root: Books at July 2016 Perfectly Queer

  

In Ivan and Misha, a novel in linked stories by Michael Alenyikov, events swirl around fraternal twins and their father, Louie, as they make their way from Soviet-era Kiev to New York City in the late nineties and early aughts. Socially adrift, father and sons search for meaning in their divergent romantic relationships. Louie embarks on a traditional heterosexual dating relationship late in life, Ivan is sexually opportunistic and omnivorous, and Misha is torn between his family and the prospect of a committed gay relationship. The brothers’ search for connection leads them through a multitude of subcultures, all depicted in vivid detail.

40 Wild Crushes: Stories by Lambda Literary Award Winner Jim Provenzano is comprised of new and previously stories, as well as excerpts from Provenzano’s forthcoming novels. He presents teenage lust in summer theatre, cheating boyfriends on “The Tonight Show,” a transgender performer on the rise, and an escapee from a pumpkin farm—among other vivid characters and stories. Varying from terse accounts of an anti-gay assault to a post-9/11 moment of resolution, Provenzano shares a diverse array of contemporary experiences in rural Ohio and New York City, at funerals and wrestling matches, inside Manhattan cathedrals and Paris museums.  

The Root by Na’amen Gobert Tilahun is a dark, gritty urban fantasy debut set in modern-day San Francisco, filled with gods, sinister government agencies, and worlds of dark magic hidden just below the surface. When a secret government agency trying to enslave you isn’t the biggest problem you’re facing, you’re in trouble. A darkness is coming, something no one has faced in living memory. It eats. It hunts. In The Root, a dark and surging urban fantasy, two worlds must come together if even a remnant of one is to survive.

Diversity in Writing Reflects the Real World

Na'amen Gobert Tilahun is reading at Perfectly Queer July 11, 7 p.m., at Books Inc. Opera Plaza in San Francisco.  (facebook.com/events/619573908219248/)  He was recently named one of 13 Bay Area Authors to Watch and Read in 2016 by 7X7 magazine. His writing has been published by io9, Queers Dig Time Lords, Stone Telling, The Big Click, and more. His debut novel The Root was published by Night Shade Books this June.  It is the first in the Wrath & Athenaeum trilogy. The second volume, The Tree, will be out next June.

He advocates diversity in writing as a reflection of the real world.  He “believes all writing to be a political act that includes decisions on who to feature in your work and who to ignore and how to portray those you decide to feature.”

Na'amen said in his interview in The Qwillery blog June 9, 2016 that he was inspired to write The Root because he "wanted an Urban Fantasy that reflected my own lived experience.  Also, I wanted to explore/mess with the stereotype of the overly aggressive/violent black man and expand that simplistic idea into a three-dimensional character and one of the heroes of the text."

Na’amen is from Los Angeles and the Bay Area and now lives in Oakland.  He has a bachelors degree in English, with a focus on creative writing.  He is the co-creator and cohost of the geek podcast The Adventures of Yellow Peril + Magical Negro and has lived many a writer’s dream, having worked in a bookstore, in his case Borderlands.  Find out more about him and his writing at naamen.org.

Author, Journalist and Dancer Jim Provenzano at "The Long & Short of It"

Jim Provenzano is the author of five novels, a short story collection, numerous stories in anthologies and magazines, and a play. His novel Every Time I Think of You won a Lambda Literary Award and its sequel Message of Love was a LLA finalist. His stage adaptation of his novel PINS received the Bay Area Theatre Critics Award. He has also received several awards in journalism. For more information, see jimprovenzano.blogspot.com/

A graduate of Ohio State University in dance, Jim performed with the Pittsburgh Dance Alloy, the Bill Cratty Dance Theatre and choreographer Steve Gross and also created and performed his own works. He has been a reporter, columnist and editor at the Bay Area Reporter newspaper in San Francisco since 1989. He earned his Masters in English/Creative Writing from San Francisco State University in 1997.

July 11, Jim will read from his latest book, 40 Wild Crushes, his first short story collection, at the Perfectly Queer reading series program "The Long & Short of It," featuring writers who publish both long and short fiction. For more information on the reading, go to facebook.com/events/619573908219248

(author photo by Steven Underhill)

A Place for Us, a Time and Place for Us

It's depressing when a bookstore closes, especially when it's become your home. As we've blogged, when Books Inc. Castro closed, the Books Inc. owners asked us to continue the Perfectly Queer book reading series at the Opera Plaza store. That store will be adding Queer books on display and hopes to host Queer book clubs and events. We agreed to move. Here's a photo of the entrance. The location is on Van Ness between Golden Gate and Turk in the Civic Center cultural district, just up from the Symphony and the War Memorial Opera House. There's a parking garage in the building, buses run along Van Ness and you're only a 15 minute walk from the MUNI stop at Van Ness or the BART stop at Civic Center. Come see us Monday, July 11--6:45 for wine, water and snacks, 7pm for readings by Michael Aleynikov, Jim Provenzano and Na'amen Gobert Tilahun. More info at https://www.facebook.com/events/619573908219248/

The Long & Short of It

Here's the poster for the July 2016 Perfectly Queer book reading at our new home, Books Inc. Opera Plaza. Come see us at 601 Van Ness in San Francisco on Monday, July 11--6:45pm for wine and desserts, 7pm for the readings. 3 authors who write short fiction AND long fiction will be reading. Panel discussion and book signing follow the readings. Here's the link for more information: Facebook.com/events/619573908219248/