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)

Michael Aleynikov, Author of Ivan and Misha

Michael Aleynikov is the pen name of the author of Ivan and Misha: A Novel in Stories, the forthcoming novella collection Sorrow's Drive: A Quartet, a novel in progress Angor Anime--the conjoined lives of four friends told from a different viewpoint each chapter, and numerous short stories published in literary magazines and anthologies, including the Chicago Quarterly Review of Books, the Georgia Review, the James White Review, Modern Words, and New York Stories.  He is a MacDowell Fellow and Gina Berriault Award winner.  Ivan and Misha won the Northern California Book Award for Fiction and was nominated for the Edmund White Award.  His short stories have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and other honors.

Michael is originally from New York City but now lives in San Francisco.  He has worked as a cab drive, bookstore clerk, "interactive media writer," and a clinical psychologist.  He is the organizer of a  long-running free-write group in San Francisco and is a known frequenter of coffee shops and bookstores.

He will read from Ivan and Misha in "The Long & Short of It," the July 11 Perfectly Queer reading at Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness Avenue, in San Francisco.  Wine and appetizers at 6:45 p.m.  Readings begin at 7 p.m.  www.facebook.com/events/619573908219248 to rsvp.

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/

2016 Pride Poetry Readings

2016 Pride Poetry panelists (from left) James J. Siegel, MK Chavez, Natasha Dennerstein, and Nico Peck read last night in San Francisco at Books Inc. Castro. Difficult to continue on after the massacre of Queer people in Orlando the day before, but all agreed that being together with other Queer people and listening to funny, serious, thoughtful, emotional Queer poetry was just what we needed.  Thank you poets, thank you everyone who came out to listen, and thank you to Books Inc.

Cinema, Kink and California

Natasha Dennerstein's new book of poetry Triptych Caliform is a three-part collection consisting of a Cinema section, a Kink section and a California section. The poems are in dialogue with each other across the sections. It will be published by Norfolk Press in September 2016. She will read poems from  Triptych Caliform Monday, June 13, 7 pm, at Books Inc. Castro, in the 2016 Pride Poetry Panel. This is an event in the continuing reading series Perfectly Queer. https://www.facebook.com/events/207796866274145/

Natasha was born in Melbourne, Australia to a family originating from Belarus. She worked as a psychiatric nurse for 20 years, which gave her an interesting perspective on the human condition. In 2016, she graduated with an MFA from San Francisco State University. She has had poetry published in numerous journals, including Shenandoah, Bloom, Red Light Lit, Spoon River Poetry Review, and Foglifter. Anatomize, her first collection, was inspired by the body. It was published last year, also by Norfolk Press.  

"In Anatomize, Natasha Dennerstein is the poet as a sensual anatomist, delineating the corporeal realm with a kind of spiritual fervor. What we are, we are, she splendidly affirms, from our heads down to our toes.  Reciting the saga of her own encounters with mortality, with beginnings and endings, with all that flesh entails, she declares with a Whitmanesque lyricism the song of herself--her individual take on our common humanity."  --David Eagleton, editor, Landfall Journal

(author photo by Jose Colon)

James J. Siegel @ Pride Poetry Panel

Poet James J. Siegel will read at Perfectly Queer June 13 as part of the 2016 Pride Poetry Panel, the last event at Books Inc. Castro before the bookstore closes its doors forever. James is the author of the new poetry collection How Ghosts Travel, published by Spuyten Duyvill Press.  He has also, for the past 10 years, been a literary arts organizer in San Francisco. He currently curates Literary Speakeasy, an evening of poetry and prose at Martuni's Piano Bar on Market Street.

"How Ghosts Travel is James Siegel's beautifully-atmospheric explication of his past, which here is ever-present.  His voice, though casual and colloquial at times, is always tuned to the lyrical as he resurrects his childhood and young adulthood in industrial and small-town Ohio in poems scarred with heartbreak and loss.  But what is perhaps most impressive about this debut collection is the sheer number of poems that remain vibrantly in mind long after they're read, among them "Fishing Photo, Circa 1984," "Boy Scout Blue," "Massillon," "Flatlands," "The Road," and "Serpent Mound," one of the most skillful love poems I've encountered. This is a book well worth the price of admission." (Myrna Stone, author of in the Present Tense and The Casanova Chronicles)

There is no price of admission at Perfectly Queer.  Enjoy free champagne and chocolate at 6:45pm and poetry readings at 7pm, followed by the four poets in a panel discussion on writing Queer poetry. Author book sales and signings finish the night.