Literary Speakeasy at Martuni’s (SF)

Literary Speakeasy is always free with no drink minimum. Arrive early for a free raffle ticket for your chance to win the evening’s secret Speakeasy prize. Show starts at 7PM. It will be an awesome night of the best Bay Area writers and the best martinis in town.

Author bios:
James Cagney’s second poetry collection, Martian: The Saint of Loneliness is the winner of the 2021 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. His first, Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour Of Chaos Theory won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award in 2018. Both titles are available from Nomadic Press. For more information, please visit JamesCagneypoet.com

Jennifer Lewis is a writer, editor, and the publisher of Red Light Lit. Her debut short story collection, The New Low, was released in 2022 by Nomadic Press, where her short story, “New Low,” was the winner of the Bindle Award in 2018. In 2020, she won the Los Angeles Review Flash Fiction award for “Put a Teat in It.” She received her MFA in creative writing from San Francisco State University in May 2015. She teaches at The Writing Salon in San Francisco.

Ryan Nakano is an Okinawan/Japanese American poet, journalist and aspiring birder currently living in Huchiun, on the unceded lands of the Lisjan Ohlone (Oakland, CA) with his wonderful partner and cat. His poems have been published in Riksha Magazine as well as Voicemail Poems, and his first chapbook, I Am Minor, will be published with Nomadic Press February 2023. When he has time, he contributes to the Nichi Bei Weekly as a freelance writer. Currently his Google Drive includes but is not limited to; several children’s book manuscripts, an oral history on Okinawan diaspora, song lyrics and a full-length book of poetry in the works.

Melissa Ragsly’s collection We Know This Will All Disappear was published by Pank in 2020 Her stories have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Iowa Review, Joyland and other journals. She’s currently working on a book for Barrelhouse about MTV’s 120 Minutes, writing TV pilots and working at an independent bookstore in the Hudson Valley, New York, where she lives.

Andrena Zawinski has two recently released collections: A fourth full-length book of poetry, Born Under the Influence, is praised as brilliant revealing great skill and feeling for paths of struggle for women, the working class, and immigrants and she as a poet we are fortunate to have among us. A debut book of flash fiction, Plumes and other flights of fancy, is lauded for its gift of diction, syntax, rhythm, imagery, plot, character and she for tackling misogyny, racism, homophobia. Zawinski, born and raised landlocked in Pittsburgh, PA, makes her home at water’s edge in Alameda.