Writers With Drinks with Anthony Marra and Naomi Williams

San Francisco's longest-running spoken word night is going to new frontiers of honesty and also deception. A little of both, really. Honest deception. These are some of our favorite writers, and we hope you like them!

When: Jan. 9 from 7 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open 6:30 PM
Who: Anthony Marra, Naomi Williams, Lisa Goldstein, Edward Gauvin, Tracey Knapp and Elizabeth McKenzie
How much: $5 to $20, all proceeds benefit the CSC
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco, CA

About the readers/performers:

Anthony Marra's latest book is The Tsar of Love and Techno: Stories. He's also the author of The Wolves of Bilaya Forest and A Constellation of Vital Phenomena. He was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, where he now teaches as the Jones Lecturer in Fiction. Marra's story "Chechnya" won a Pushcart Prize and a Narrative Prize.

Naomi Williams' first novel is Landfalls, a fictionalized account of the 18th-century Lapérouse expedition. Her fiction has appeared in A Public Space, One Story, The Southern Review, and The Gettysburg Review. In 2009, she received a Pushcart Prize and a Best American Honorable Mention.

Lisa Goldstein's latest book is Weighing Shadows. She won a National Book Award for her novel The Red Magician, a Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Uncertain Places, and the Sidewise Award for her short story "Paradise Is a Walled Garden." Her other books include Travelers in Magic, The Divided Crown, The Alchemist's Door and Dark Cities Underground.

Tracey Knapp's first full-length collection of poems, Mouth, won the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. She's received scholarships from the Tin House Writers’ Workshop and the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fund. Mark Strand and Claudia Emerson each chose her poems for Best New Poets 2008 and 2010. Other work has appeared in Five Points, The National Poetry Review, Red Wheelbarrow Review, The New Ohio Review, The Minnesota Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Connotation Press, Painted Bride Quarterly, No Tell Motel, 236, Failbetter, La Petite Zine, Sewanee Theological Review and elsewhere.

Edward Gauvin is the translator of The Deep Sea Diver Syndrome by Serge Brussolo, which he describes as ""Inception directed by David Cronenberg." He's the winner of the inaugural Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation prize for Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud's A Life on Paper. He's received fellowships and residencies from the Centre National du Livre, Ledig House, the Banff Centre, the Clarion Workshop, and the American Literary Translators Association. His work has appeared in Tin House, Conjunctions, PEN America, Epiphany, The Southern Review, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and The Harvard Review.

Elizabeth McKenzie's latest novel is The Portable Veblen. She's the author of a collection, Stop That Girl, short-listed for The Story Prize, and the novel MacGregor Tells the World, a Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Chronicle and Library Journal Best Book of the year. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the Pushcart Prize anthology, and has been recorded for NPR’sSelected Shorts. She was an NEA/Japan
US-Friendship Commission Fellow in 2010.

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks has won numerous "Best ofs" from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7x7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City novels. The spoken word "variety show" mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.