"The universe is made of stories, not of atoms." -Muriel Rukeyser

Reading starts at 7:30 pm.
Light refreshments and conversation at 7:00 pm.

Join us for our quarterly reading series, Story is the Thing, where stunning, emerging voices can be heard alongside works from contemporary local established writers.

Reading starts at 7:30 pm. Light refreshments and conversation at 7:00 pm.

Carole Bumpus
A retired family therapist, CAROLE BUMPUS began writing about food and travel when she stumbled upon the amazing stories of women and war in France. She has traveled extensively throughout France and Italy, where she has interviewed more than seventy-five families to date for her food and travel blogs. Her historical novel A Cup of Redemption was published October 2014, and her unique companion cookbook, Recipes for Redemption: A Companion Cookbook to A Cup of Redemption, was released August 2015, both by She Writes Press. She is an active member in the California Writers Club and through them has also had three short stories published in the Fault Zone anthologies: Words from the Edge, Stepping up to the Edge, and Over the Edge. Bumpus lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit her website at CaroleBumpus.com.

Jerry Burger
Jerry Burger is Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Santa Clara University and an internationally recognized expert on the psychological processes that contribute to inhumane acts like atrocities and genocide. His research in this area has been featured in ABC News’ Primetime and in the Discovery Channel documentary, How Evil Are You? His fiction credits include short stories in the Bellevue Literary Review, Harpur Palate, the Briar Cliff Review, and the Potomac Review, among other literary magazines. His nonfiction book, Returning Home: Reconnecting with our Childhoods, explores the emotional attachments people develop with their childhood homes. The Shadows of 1915 is his first novel.

Chia-Chia Lin
Chia-Chia Lin is the author of The Unpassing, longlisted for the Center of Fiction's First Novel Prize and a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop and a former Steinbeck Fellow. Her writing has also appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, Zyzzyva, and The New Yorker online. She lives in San Bruno.

Peg Alford Pursell
Peg Alford Pursell is the author of A Girl Goes into the Forest (Dzanc Books, July 2019). Her previous collection, Show Her a Flower, A Bird, A Shadow was the Foreword INDIES 2017 Book of the Year for Literary Fiction. She’s the founder and director of WTAW Press and of Why There Are Words, a national literary reading series and program of WTAW Press.

Anniqua Rana
Anniqua lives in California with her husband and two sons. She has taught English to immigrant and international students at community college for over twenty years. Her extended family lives in Pakistan and England, and she visits them regularly to rekindle her roots. Her debut novel, Wild Boar in the Cane Field, is a celebration of the rural women of Pakistan whose indomitable spirit keeps them struggling against all odds. She has interviewed Asma Jahangir, Human Rights Lawyer, Pakistan, and has published essays on gender and education. Her next book, Tales of Many Nations: A Summer in Pakistan, is a collection of personal essays.

Rose Whitmore
Whitmore’s stories have appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, Mid-American Review, and The Missouri Review. Her essays have appeared in The Sun, The Iowa Review, The Colorado Review and Fourth Genre. She is currently a Jones Lecturer at Stanford University and is at work on a novel set during Enver Hoxa's communist regime in post-World War II Albania.

Tickets are $12