Introducing Graffiti
Aunt Lute Books is happy to announce that our newest title, Graffiti, will be released October 15!
Edited by Pallavi Dhawan, Devi S. Laskar, and Tamika Thompson, Graffiti is the inaugural anthology from POC United. Through poetry, short stories, and essays, the works in Graffiti expose lives that move in unexpected ways, rendering characters who don't fit the cultural tropes we cling to. Graffiti shows what writers of color do when they are invited to scribble, scrawl, romanticize, and speculate without being politicized or exoticized.
With its array of exciting contributors, from Kirin Khan to Tongo Eisen-Martin, "Graffiti gives us just a taste of what writers of color do, unbound." —Elmaz Abinader
Click here to sign up to receive an e-blast and discount code when Graffiti comes out.
Learn more about Graffiti on its official page here.
Graffiti SF Launch + Tour Dates
San Francisco Launch Event
Date: 10/24
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Southern Exposure, 3030 20th St., San Francisco, CA
With Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tamika Thompson, Pallavi Dhawan,Tara Betts.
Join Aunt Lute Books in celebrating the release of Graffiti! MC’d by Ismail Muhammad, this event will feature readings by Bay Area literary favorites, including Devi S. Laskar, Nayomi Munaweera, Kirin Khan, and Pallavi Dhawan. In addition, there will be a community panel with two bedrocks of local literary arts programming for writers of color: Elmaz Abinader and Jason Bayani, in conversation with Graffiti editor Tamika Thompson. This event is free to the public. Southern Exposure is ADA accessible. This event is made possible thanks to grants from the San Francisco Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Can't make it to the SF launch? Graffiti is also going on tour!
Los Angeles Launch Event
Date: 10/19
Time: 5pm
Location: Skylight Books, 1814 N Vermont Ave., Los Angeles, CA
With Vickie Vertiz, Ramy El-Etreby, Pallavi Dhawan, Tamika Thompson, Kanika Punwani, Gary Dauphin.
Chicago Launch Event
Date: 10/30
Time: 7pm
Location: Semicolon Bookstore, 515 N Halsted St., Chicago, IL
With Tongo Eisen-Martin, Tamika Thompson, Pallavi Dhawan,Tara Betts.
Aunt Lute and Graffiti @ Litquake 2019
Litquake is just around the corner! This San Francisco literary tradition is a ten-day festival that’s been bringing together book lovers and authors for twenty years. Below are some Litquake panels and readings that feature Aunt Lute authors, including a few published in Graffiti!
Date: 10/14
Time: 7pm - 8:30pm
Location: San Francisco Center for the Book, 375 Rhode Island St., San Francisco
Admission: FREE, $5-10 suggested donation
What does it take to create and sustain a writing community? Why is this particularly important for women and nonbinary POC? Many of us are out there, but how do we find each other, and how do we stay in touch? How do community-specific writing spaces such as Cave Canem, Hedgebrook, and Kundiman function as tools to bring these communities together? What kind of work can we produce if we imagine our audience to be us? Faith Adiele, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Vanessa Hua read from their work and discuss.
Moderated by Piyali Bhattacharya (Good Girls Marry Doctors).
Date: 10/17
Time: 7pm - 9pm
Location: El Rio, 3158 Mission St., San Francisco
Admission: $5-10 at the door, NOTAFLOF
Tonight, the moon’s in Gemini! If you don’t know what that means for your fortunes and organs, you best come figure it out. Brace yourself for Yes, I Am a Witch: a night of magic in words and pictures. Featuring Kate Schatz & Miriam Klein-Stahl, Dia Felix, Ariel Gore, Juliana Delgado Lopera (¡Cuéntamelo!), Carley Moore, Brontez Purnell, Cristy C. Road, Mya Spalter. Curated and hosted by Michelle Tea.
Litcrawl (October 19)
Phase 1: 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Sonoma County Writers Camp
Location: The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St., San Francisco
Sonoma County Writers Camp explores and celebrates the role of the writer in troubling times. Floods, fires, and fanatics versus fruit, wine, and words. Featuring: Nayomi Munaweera (Graffiti), Lucy Bledsoe, Vanessa Hua, Shanthi Sekaran, Ellen Sussman, Devi Laskar (Graffiti), Elizabeth Stark
The SF Commune: Poems of Resistance
Location: Adobe Books & Arts Cooperative, 3130 24th St., San Francisco
Hosted by Tongo Eisen-Martin (Graffiti). Featuring: D’dra White, Lady Rev, A’aron Heard, Amber Butts
Phase 2: 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Hazel Reading Series
Location: THE WOODS, 910 Valencia St., San Francisco
Hazel celebrates the diversity of Bay Area women writers. Join us for an evening of some the very best readers from our five-year history. Featuring: Celeste Chan, Sara Marinelli, Raina León, Kirin Khan (Graffiti), Dominica Phetteplace
Visit Litquake's site to learn more about the festival and grab a full program.
Borderlands/La Frontera Reading in NYC
Date: 10/20
Time: 1pm
Location: 150 1st Ave., 4th floor, New York, NY
Performance Space New York’s Marathon Readings will feature Borderlands/La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa! This series shares the experimental and groundbreaking work of female writers who are no longer with us in order to keep their writing alive.
Click here to learn more and RSVP for this event. Admission is free!
Aunt Lute @ the NWSA 2019 Conference
The 2019 National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference at the Hilton in Union Square, San Francisco is taking place from November 14-17. Come find us at Booth #3217 in the Yosemite Room, and check out these panels presented by Aunt Lute authors! Visit the NWSA site for registration information.
Date: 11/15
Time: 9:35am - 10:50am
Location: Hilton Union Square, Floor: Tower 3, 4th Floor, Union Square 12 (LCD)
This roundtable will introduce the audience to The Chicana M(other)work Anthology: Porque Sin Madres No Hay Revolución (March 2019) and will offer a reading of selected chapters. This anthology is a collection of research, testimonios, and essays by Chicana and Women of Color Mother-scholars and allies who center mothering as a form of knowledge-production and transformative labor through an intersectional lens: The anthology serves to “write ourselves into existence” by unveiling radical narratives of Chicana and Women of Color mother-scholars who survive, thrive, and identify new ways of knowing justice while mothering our children, ourselves, and our communities.
Presenters include Larissa M. Mercado-López (El Mundo Zurdo 3-6).
Date: 11/16
Time: 3:20pm - 4:35pm
Location: Hilton Union Square, Floor: Ballroom Level, Imperial B (LCD)
NWSA held its annual conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 2014, 3 months after Israel's war on Gaza. NWSA president was Tricia Lin bell hook was the keynote speaker. Chandra Mohanty organized a presidential panel, attended by over 2000 members. Angela Davis, Rebecca-Vilkomerson, and Islah Jad, Egyptian feminist and former director of Institute for Women'd Studies at Birzeit University, Palestine, spoke. Scholar/activists who've been focusing their efforts on connecting feminist praxis and Israel's colonization, racism and occupation in Palestine, decided on the spot to organize to call on NWSA to condemn Israel's Gaza massacre and adopt BDS.
Presenters include Penny Rosenwasser (Visionary Voices: Women on Power)
Date: 11/14
Time: 4:10pm - 5:25pm
Location: Hilton Union Square, Floor: Tower 3, 4th Floor, Union Square 08
This roundtable analyzes Jewish women’s activism in many eras and regions, emphasizing the politics of knowledge. One speaker analyzes Jewish women sociologists in mid-20th-century South Africa, whose ethnographies promoted anti-apartheid activism. Another recovers marginalized Jewish women journalists from turn-of-the-century San Francisco, whose articles advocated gender and economic equality. A third reclaims feminist imaginaries in Yiddish literature. Lastly, two speakers use Jewish feminist theory to explain how Jewish American communities can better understand white supremacy, and thus better join racial justice coalitions. Though varied, these topics all emphasize how Jewish women activists have disrupted dominant knowledge systems to advance social justice.
Presenters include Penny Rosenwasser (Visionary Voices: Women on Power)
Author Events
October 4 @ 7pm: “Loving, Grieving, and Surviving: Chicanas Reading the Poetry of Community & Mental Health,” Reading with ire’ne lara silva, Carmen Tafolla, Jen Yañez-Alaniz, Jen Mendoza, and Ilza Garcia. BookWoman, 5501 N. Lamar Blvd, Austin, TX
October 26 @ 3:15pm-4:15pm: “Singing to it: Poetry that Moves Through Music,” with Tyree Daye, ire’ne lara silva, and Orlando Ricardo Menes. Texas Book Festival, Capitol Extension Room 2.028, Austin, TX
October 27 @ 2:15-3:00pm: “Compressing and Condensing: Big Stories in Short Form,” with Rey Cardenas, ire’ne lara silva, and Gabino Iglesias. Latinx Lit Tent, Austin, TX
October 4-7: Femmes to the Front: A Campout for Radical Women-Identified, Femme-Identified, & Trans-Feminine Queers. Groundswell Community and Retreat Center, 18500 CA-128, Yorkville, CA
Author Updates
Congratulations to Juliana, who was awarded an Individual Artist Commission Grant from the SFAC! This grant will support the novel she has been working on as Headlands Artist in Residence this past summer. Click here to learn more about this project.
New Book release: Fiebre Tropical is available for pre-order! Her first multilingual novel is set for release March 2020
Piyali Bhattacharya (Good girls marry doctors)
New Book release: Cuicacalli / House of Song
Poem "axolotl" selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Magazine
Rosa Montero (Beautiful and Dark)
New Book release: El arte de la entrevista: 40 años de preguntas y respuestas is now available! A selection of the most emblematic interviews of her journalism career, released September 2019
Jo Scott-Coe (Teacher at point blank)
Published chapter “Kathy Leissner Whitman and the Mad Men Milieu” in Critical Perspectives on Wives: Roles, Representations, Identities, Work, now available from Demeter Press