Why There Are Words presents an eloquent bounty from the following authors, reading from their works on the theme of “Plenty.” Join us for the plentitude on October 9, 2014, at Studio 333 in Sausalito. Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10.
Katie Crouch is a New York Times bestselling novelist and essayist. Her books include Girls in Trucks, Men and Dogs, and Abroad. She has also written two novels for young adults, and has contributed to The London Guardian, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Slate, Salon, and Glamour. She has a regular column on The Rumpus called “Missed.” A MacDowell Fellow and alumnae of Brown University and the Columbia MFA program, she lives with her family in Bolinas, California.
Carol Edgarian is an author, journalist, editor, and publisher. Her novels include the recent New York Times bestseller Three Stages of Amazement and the international bestseller Rise the Euphrates. She is a frequent essayist for the Wall Street Journal, NPR, W, among others. In 2003, Carol co-founded Narrative, a leading digital platform for storytelling, publishing more than three hundred writers each year. A graduate of Stanford, Carol lives with her family in San Francisco.
Anne Germanacos’s collection of short stories, In the Time of the Girls, was published by BOA Editions in 2010. Her novel, Tribute, was published by Rescue Press in 2014. Together with her husband, she ran the Ithaka Cultural Study Program in Greece on the islands of Kalymnos and Crete. She runs the Germanacos Foundation in San Francisco.
Joshua Mohr is the author of four novels, including Damascus, which the New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Fight Song and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice on the New York Times Best Seller List. His novel All This Life is due out Summer 2015 from Counterpoint/Soft Skull.
Bich Minh Nguyen (you can also call her Beth) is the author of the novel Pioneer Girl, published this year by Viking. She is also the author of the novel Short Girls, which received an American Book Award, and the memoir Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, which received the PEN/Jerard Award. Her work has been included in numerous anthologies, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, and other publications. She teaches in and directs the MFA in Writing Program at the University of San Francisco.
Ellen Sussman is the New York Times bestselling author of four novels, A Wedding in Provence, The Paradise Guest House, French Lessons, and On a Night Like This. She is the editor of two critically acclaimed anthologies, Bad Girls: 26 Writers Misbehave and Dirty Words: A Literary Encyclopedia of Sex. She teaches through Stanford Continuing Studies and in private classes.
Josh Weil is the author of the novel The Great Glass Sea (Grove, 2014) and The New Valley: Novellas (Grove, 2009), a New York Times Editors Choice that won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction from The American Academy of Arts and Letters, the New Writers Award from the GLCA, and a “5 Under 35” Award from the National Book Foundation. His short fiction has appeared in Granta, Esquire, Tin House, and One Story, among others, and his nonfiction in the Sun, Poets & Writers, and the New York Times. A recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the MacDowell Colony, and the Bread Loaf and Sewanee Writers’ Conferences, he has been the Distinguished Visiting Writer at Bowling Green State University and the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi. He lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills where he is at work on a collection of stories.
Why There Are Words takes place every second Thursday of the month, when people come from San Francisco, the North Bay, the East Bay, the South Bay–everywhere–to crowd the house. The brainchild of Peg Alford Pursell, this literary goodness has been going strong into its fifth year.
