“Black Candies: The Eighties” Book Reading | Green Apple Books

Submitted by the Event Organizer

Join us for a night of literary horror with readings from contributors to Black Candies: The Eighties.

About Black Candies

Black Candies is a journal of literary horror and darkness. In these dark corners, We have infinite room to grow, and to innovate. We’re allowed to push boundaries and set precedents. We revel in the daring. We aim to scare. Scary can be good. Scary can cause change.

This year, our theme is The Eighties. Whether you lived through it, or fetishize it, there’s no denying its continued effect.

Horror and the ‘80s go hand in hand. Movie fans can point to it as the decade where franchises like Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Hellraiser and Friday the 13th turned monsters into celebrities. It’s a decade that gave birth to the VHS, which allowed us to mainline horror right into our living rooms. The format also enabled a generation of crude, disgusting, and often brilliant filmmakers whose access to the expansive market gave them free reign to coat their screens with blood.

But art wasn’t the only thing that became horrific. Both consumerism and nationalism surged. Hate and bigotry blinded us to an epidemic that ravaged the country, while those in power laughed about it. We were ruled by an idiot entertainer. Any of this sound familiar?

About The Readers

Madeline Gobbo is a graduate fiction candidate at UC Davis. She is the former store artist at The Booksmith in San Francisco. Her work has appeared on KQED, The Toast, The Kernel, The Daily Dot, SparkLife, Joyland, Black Candies, Full Stop Quarterly, Reservoir, and Meridian. She was the illustrator for Mallory Ortberg’s Texts from Jane Eyre and for Loose Lips, an anthology of erotic fanfiction, edited by Amy Stephenson and Casey Childers. Her fiction and collaborative fiction with Miles Klee can be found in Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Hexus, Another Chicago, Territory, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Arcturus, Wigleaf, Joyland and Funhouse. She is the editor and illustrator of Unmother, a zine about reproductive justice.

Jake Arky is an actor, writer, and storyteller in San Francisco. His is the author of the plays Brothers of Emery, Little Perfections, The Birthday Girl, The Green Flash, The Ruby Goldberg Machine, and Erasers. Jake co-founded So Say We All: a non-profit arts production and education organization specializing in the literary and storytelling arts. He regularly performs stories on stage with The Moth, RISK!, Fireside Storytelling, and the Oakland Story Slam. He is currently developing an original television comedy series, Open, which was a finalist at CineStory in March, 2017.

Dave Maass is a writer, journalist, and activist based in San Francisco. Born and raised in Phoenix, Ariz., he cut his teeth writing for alternative weeklies in every Southwestern border state, covering everything from Texas death row to Southern California’s medical marijuana scene. Beginning in 2010, he has been a San Diego Comic-Con correspondent for media outlets such as the SyFy Channel and Rolling Stone. He also edited the science fiction anthology Pwning Tomorrow for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties organization where he is a full-time investigative researcher specializing in government transparency and police surveillance.

Melissa Gutierrez is an artist and writer living and working in Sacramento.

About The Hosts

Ryan Bradford (editor) is the founding editor of Black Candies, the author of Horror Business, and a regular columnist for San Diego CityBeat.

Julia Dixon Evans (editor) is author of the forthcoming novel How to Set Yourself on Fire (May 2018). Her work can be found or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, Paper Darts, Hobart, Barrelhouse, and elsewhere. She is program director for the literary nonprofit and small press So Say We All, and host of the Foundry literary reading in San Diego.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.