We are thrilled to announce that the Home in the Bay ebook is almost here, and to celebrate we are going to be holding a reading as part of Lit Crawl 2023.
Home in the Bay Release Party
October 21, 2023
6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
The Chapel SF
777 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110
Check out Lit Quake for more info and programming.
As part of this special night, and in the spirit of the Home in the Bay series, we'll be welcoming some poets to the stage. Kim Shuck, devorah major, Landon Smith, Jan Steckel, Norman Antonio Zelaya, Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia), Tongo Eisen-Martin and Shikha Malaviya will take the stage on October 21, 2023.
We hope to see you there!
Meet the Home in the Bay readers
Shikha Malaviya is a poet, writer & publisher. Her book of historical persona poetry, Anandibai Joshee: A Life in Poems (HarperCollins, India) 2023) is a unique retelling of the life of India's first female medical doctor and the first Indian woman to study medicine in the United States. Shikha’s previous book of poems, Geography of Tongues, was published to acclaim in 2014. Her poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and featured in Catamaran, PLUME, Prairie Schooner & other fine publications. Shikha has been a featured TEDx speaker and was selected as Poet Laureate of San Ramon, California, 2016. Shikha is co-founder of The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective, a mentorship-model literary press and is currently a Mosaic America Fellow. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her family, where she is a poetry mentor, publisher, and workshop facilitator.
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His book "Heaven Is All Goodbyes" was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffins Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award. His latest book “Blood On The Fog” was named one of the New York Times poetry books of the year. In 2020, he co-founded Black Freighter Press to publish revolutionary works. He is San Francisco’s eighth poet laureate.
Tiny (aka Lisa Gray-Garcia) is a formerly unhoused, incarcerated poverty scholar, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama of Tiburcio, daughter of a houseless, disabled, indigenous mama Dee, and the co–founder of POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE/PoorNewsNetwork. She is also the author of Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America, co-editor of A Decolonizers Guide to A Humble Revolution, Born & Raised in Frisco and - Poverty ScholarShip -Poor People Theory, Arts, words and Tears Across Mama Earth A PeoplesTeXt which was just released in 2019. In 2011 she co-launched The Homefulness Project - a landless peoples, self-determined land liberation movement in the Ohlone/Lisjan/Huchuin territory known as Deep East Oakland, ,and co-founded a liberation school for children, Deecolonize Academy She has taught Poverty Scholarship theory and practice in Universities, street corners and encampments from Columbia to Skid Row. In the Covid19 Pandemic she and other poverty skola leaders at POOR Magazine have galvanized folks with race and class privilege and solidarity community so POOR Magazine could increase their already existent street love-work, education , service and support to supply food, masks, gloves, healing and sanitation to over 700 unhoused and no-income housed communities per week across the Bay Area as part of healing, surviving this Corona crisis-she has dubbed it "interdependence" and Radical Redistribution-and much more She spear-headed the How To Not Call PoLice Ever workshop series with other poverty and disability skolaz at POOR Magazine in 2015 and in 2021 they released a book of the same name- Tiny also launched and co-authored a book and workshop series called Po Peoples Survival Guide Thru Covid19 and the virus called poverty released in 2020 Tiny has also authored multiple revolutionary childrens books, introducing disabled, houseless inter-generational protagonists with resistance narratives and created companion curriculum on these never included topics for all youth, children and families in poverty and with privilege.
In 2021 she released her first poetry anthology - The sidewalk Motel- Poems and PoShunary from a poverty skola and co-wrote The Homefulness Handbook- how to launch a houseless peoples solution to houselessness. In 2022 she narrated a short movie based on her childrens book When Mama and Me Lived Outside - one families journey thru homelessness which has subsequently won 22 awards across the country as well as wrote a play and led an improvisational theatre workshop with fellow houseless residents of Oakland and San Francisco and then released a play entitled Crushing Wheelchairs and in 2023 she began production on a feature length movie based on her first adapted screenplay with an all houseless cast, her tagline- We Are Not Acting - We Are Living - with a planned release date of Spring 2024.
Norman Antonio Zelaya is from San Francisco, CA. His writing is inspired by his Nicoya heritage and his lived experience as a SF native and Mission District homeboy. He’s the author of two collections of short fiction, Orlando & Other Stories (Pochino Press, 2017), and most recently, Gente, Folks (Black Freighter Press, 2022). His work has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Apogee Journal, NY Tyrant, 14 Hills, and Cipactli, among other journals. Mr. Zelaya has read and lectured throughout California, and across the country. Also, he’s appeared on stage, in film, and in the squared circle as the masked luchador, Super Pulga. He lives and works in San Francisco, where he’s completing a debut novel.
Landon Smith (he/him) is a father, a professor, a poet, half Mende and half Balanta & Fulani.
Despite his institutional degrees, he really became a poet through the East Side Arts Alliance in Oakland. Landon thanks his sister Alia for buying him his first journal, Brit Hill for pushing him to read poetry in public, and Black Freighter press for publishing his first book - No Bedtime Stories of Soil. Abolish all prisons and police.
Jan Steckel’s debut fiction collection Ghosts and Oceans just came out from Zeitgeist Press. Her poetry book The Horizontal Poet (Zeitgeist Press, 2011) won a 2012 Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry book Like Flesh Covers Bone (Zeitgeist Press, 2018) won two Rainbow Awards. Her fiction chapbook Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) and poetry chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) also won awards. Her creative prose and poetry have appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, Canary, Assaracus and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California.
Granddaughter of immigrants, documented and undocumented, baker of pies, both sweet and savory, actively trying to make the world a better place devorah major served as San Francisco’s Third Poet Laureate. She is a poetry performance artist who performs her work nationally and internationally with and without musicians. She has worked with First Voice on several projects, most recently in Brenda Wong-Aoki's "Soul of the City." She has two poetry/jazz CDs with Daughters of Yam and is featured on several others. She has seven poetry books, the most recently califia’s daughter, two novels, four chapbooks and a host of short stories, essays, and poems in anthologies and periodicals. http://www.devorahmajor.com
Kim Shuck is San Francisco's 7th Poet Laureate Emerita. At this writing she has ten published books of her own work and a further ten anthologies she's been involved in editing. Shuck hosts many reading events around the San Francisco Bay Area, including three readings per month which are part of ongoing series.