Lunada Literary Lounge and Open-Mic
Featuring Yosimar Reyes, Kirya Traber and Dominique Jones
Curated by Tomas Riley
Admission: $5 / Free with Membership

Taco Shop Poet, author and youth mentor Tomas Riley curates and co-hosts this incredible night of spoken word performance by the next generation of urban griots and inner-city mystics. If you haven’t experienced a LUNADA recently, this is the one to come to!

Celebrate the full blossoming of spring with good folks, good food and good stories. Kirya Traber is a nationally awarded spoken word artist. She has been featured at Robert Redford's Sundance Summit, the Bay Area Hip Hop Theatre Festival, the Living Word Festival, SanFrancisco's Lit Quake, The Stern Grove Festival, and the San Francisco Queer Arts Festival, among other notable stages. She is currently working as the Program Manager of Residencies at Youth Speaks where she develops and facilitates spoken word workshops for Bay Area teens. (Photo credit: Bethanie Hines.)

Yosimar Reyes is a Two-Spirit Poet/Activist based out of San Jose, Yosimar’s style has been described as "a brave and vulnerable voice that shines light on the issues affecting Queer Immigrant Youth and the many disenfranchised communities in the U.S and throughout the world." He has performed from the Bay Area to New York City as a teen slam poet and holds the title for the 2005 as well as the 2006 South Bay teen Grand SLAM Champion. He is featured in the documentary 2nd Verse: the Rebirth of Poetry. He currently lives in East Side San Jose.

Dominique Jones A member of the Bay Area’s 2006 International Youth Slam Team Dominique Jones performed at the Apollo Theatre where the team won the national title. Currently, Dominique visits middle schools and high schools across the Bay Area spreading the message of literary arts. She co-founded the dynamic female emcee/singer duo CocoNique and works with artists like Will Bracy and I.D in her music production company ILL ONES, Entertainment.

Tomás Riley is an author, educator and a veteran of the Chicano spoken word collective The Taco Shop Poets. A finalist for the California Voices Award from Poets & Writers Magazine, his written work has been featured in several anthologies including Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Three Rivers Press), Primera Pagina (Scapegoat Press) and Chorizo Tonguefire (California Arts Council). His first book Mahcic debuted on Calaca Press in December 2005. Currently he works as Co-Executive Director of ArtsChange, an organization dedicated to arts and social transformation in Richmond, CA.

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Upcoming Events
Sept. 17 – 18 in Chicago

PALABRA PURA POETRY SERIES (9.17)


WRITING WORKSHOP (9.18)

This workshop is free of charge, to participate RSVP is required. To reserve your spot, send an email to info@tianguis.biz.

This workshop is sponsored by the Guild Complex and will be held at Tianguis, 2003 S. Damen.


Oct. 4 – 6 in San Diego

ART OF DEMOCRACY @ EL CENTRO CULTURAL de la RAZA (10.4)


SAN DIEGO STATE UNIVERSITY (10.6)



Bay Area Events
Sept. 14 at La Peña Cultural Center, Berkeley
Aimee Suzara Book Release Party


Sept. 27 at Mission Cultural Center, SF
Ilusiones 7

Sunday, September 14, 2008, 7pm
With poets Tomás Riley, Leticia Hernandez, Raphael Cohen, dancer Frances Sedayao, singer Larena Burno, dj fflood. Emceed by Lisa Marie Rollins.

La Peña Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley. www.lapena.org.
$5 students and seniors; $8 adults.
Sponsored by La Peña Cultural Center, Arkipelago Books and the Pagbabalik Project.

The whole family is doing this one! Join Leticia, Mahcic and me for this very cool public art happening!


REQUIRED ATTIRE
Guests come dressed all in BLACK.
Artists are dressed all in WHITE.
Gloves of any color are encouraged.
Admission: $5

The Event
Illusion is a one-night event that develops over the course of 4 hours. 77 artists engage in creating, with other artists, and the public sharing the space of the Mission Cultural Center's two galleries. All surfaces are wrapped in white paper: walls, floors & columns. Artists are dressed in white while the public comes dressed in black producing the optical illusion of vibration.

Illusion is a moment of energetic, public happening.

After seven consecutive years, this will be the last Illusion show. If you have not experienced the Illusion, this is your last chance.

The Theme
This year's theme of "DREAMS" is open to interpretation and is offered as a design parameter to those artists interested in commenting upon and creating around this theme. The idea can be simple and transformed into its own making, with the DREAM color, words, sound, movement etc

About the Curator
Adrián Arias is a visual artist and poet that created Illusion show in 2003 to congregate the artists from the community of San Francisco in a collective party of live art to show the public the secret and special moment of creation. He believes that the creative process is the greatest strength of the human spirit, where we get the essence of daily existence. Adrián has participated in shows around the world and has organized events of similar scale in Canada and Peru. He has received important prizes in poetry and visual arts in France, Japan, Peru and Spain.

Assistants: Sandra Durand and Maisa Arias-Urizar

More Info
415 821 1155
www.missionculturalcenter.org
http://illusionshow.blogspot.com/

Artists participating in the last Illusion Show:
Zore
Ytaelena López
Yadira Cazares
Vannesa De Fabrega
Tomás Riley
Todd Brown
Tiffani Graham
Tilda Kapuya
Tania Padilla
Tania Llambelis
Tania Figueroa
Susan Matthews
Stephanie Narváez
Simone Guimaraes
Sebastiana Pastor
Sebastián Dávila
Scarp
Sachiko Morino
Sandy Christensen
Sandra Durand
Sabina Nieto
Ryan Garcia
Rupa
Rossana Alves
Rio Yañez
Riaz Abdula
Rene Yañez
Rachel Bouch
Poeta Mahcic Riley-Hernandez
Oakland Impro-Collective
Norita Gonzalez
Nina Serrano
Nadja Haas
Natta Haotzima
Mona Caron
Mission Grafica
Meklit Hadero
Mara Brown
Mamacoatl
Mabel Negrete
Lulacruza
Luis Vazquez-Gomez
Locura
Leticia Hernández
Lea Kobeli
La Tania
Kata Miletich
Juan R. Fuentes
José Leon
Joaquin Zamudio
Jamille Griss
Iris Clearwater
Hugh D' Andrade
Gina M. Contreras
Gina Giammanco
Geraldine Lozano
Fidel Dolorier
Eunice Soto
El Fotografo Clandestino
Ella Noe
Diana McCullough
Diana Marcela Suarez-Vargas
David Flaig
Darcie Luce
Dan Kennedy
Chelis López
Circo Gitano
Camilo Dolorier
Carlos Cartagena
Bob Sanders
Ariela Graham
Araceli León
Anna Ciacchella
Anais Arias-Aragón
Ana Baldwin
Alexa Fabrega
Achille Massoma

Come support the Bay Area's emerging artists as the San Francisco International Poetry Festival: Flor y Canto en el Barrio hosts:

The Word From the Street
Friday, July 25th at 2:00pm
Mission Branch Library Main Reading Room
FREE

Writers from the forefront of San Francisco's next movement of poetry and spoken word join host Tomás Riley (Mahcic: Selected Poems, Post Chicano Stress Disorder) Friday afternoon at the Mission Branch Library (24th St. at Bartlett).

Scheduled to perform:
Eric Foster - 2007 Teen Slam Finalist
Annie Yu - WritersCorps
George Hurtado - 2006 SF Unified District Slam Champ
Erika Kent Cespedes - 2007 Teen Slam Finalist
Drew Vai - 2007 Teen Slam Finalist
Nestor Reyes - 2007 SF Unified Slam Finalist
Hadeel Ramadan - Youth Speaks Youth Advisory Board
and many more...

Check some of the brightest young writers in the city and give them the audience they deserve!

The reading occurs in conjunction with three days of poetry July 24th through 26th in San Francisco's Mission District. Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and Litquake have joined forces this year for Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latina/o Poetry. The Festival will begin on Thursday, July 24 with a kick-off party at 6:00pm in Balmy Alley (24th St. between Harrison and Folsom) and a Lit Crawl of both established and emerging poets. The Lit Crawl will take place at over six different venues on 24th Street (between Mission and Bryant). Poetry readings and workshops for various ages and interests will continue throughout Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26. For locations of the poetry crawl or for more details visit the Friends' website at www.friendssfpl.org.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and Litquake announced today the San Francisco International Poetry Festival—Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry. The Festival will take place throughout San Francisco's Mission District, July 24-26, 2008.

Translated to mean "Flower and Song in the Neighborhood," the festival brings young, unpublished poets alongside authors such as two-time winner of the American Book Award, Alejandro Murguía, and San Francisco Poet Laureate Jack Hirschman for poetry readings, workshops, and a special exchange of culture and history.

"Flor y Canto is about the pursuit of peace through the celebration of poetry, art, culture, and friendship," said the event's curator and critically acclaimed poet Alejandro Murguía. "We want to bring together people from all walks of life to be part of this extraordinary event." Murguía will be joined by other poets including, Alfredo Arteaga, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Tomás Riley, Leticia Hernandez, Roberto Vargas, Marc Pinate and many others.

"What we know is events such as Flor y Canto help bridge great divides," said Donna Bero, Executive Director for the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. "People from across the city who would never strike up a conversation are talking at these festivals. We're excited to continue the conversation by hosting Flor y Canto."

Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry is presented in conjunction with the San Francisco International Poetry Festival. While the International Poetry Festival is a biennial event, in the interim years, Friends of the Library present smaller language poetry festivals, such as this year's Latino Poetry Festival.

The first Latino poetry festival west of the Mississippi was held in 1973 at the University of Southern California, but it was not until 2006 that San Francisco first hosted this event.

"It started out as a small gathering with a few poetry readings in the Mission District," said Murguía, "This year's event will include several additional poetry readings, music, workshops, and other activities. It will still embrace the festival's core purpose of poetry as a bridge of culture and community."

The festival is made possible through the support of several Bay Area organizations and business, especially those located in the Mission District of San Francisco. In addition to the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco Public Library, Litquake and 826 Valencia, local coffee shops and restaurants such as Philz Coffee, L's Café, Casa Sanchez and many others will host readings and other events. "Since community is at the heart of this event it was important for us to gain the support of the local merchants and organizations," said Bero.

The Festival will begin on Thursday, July 24 with a kick-off party at 6:00pm in Balmy Alley (24th St. between Harrison and Folsom) and a Lit Crawl of both established and emerging poets. The Lit Crawl will take place at over six different venues on 24th Street (between Mission and Bryant). Poetry readings and workshops for various ages and interests will continue throughout Friday and Saturday, July 25 and 26. For locations of the poetry crawl or for more details visit the Friends' website at www.friendssfpl.org.

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library is a member-supported, non-profit organization that fundraises, advocates, and provides financial support for the San Francisco Public Library.

Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry
Featured Poets
* Lorna Dee Cervantes
* José Montoya
* Mamacoatl
* Roberto Vargas
* Jackie Mendez
* Alfredo Arteaga
* Nina Serrano
* Alejandro Murguía
* Cipactli
* Norman Zelaya
* Melissa Lozano
* Javier O Huerta
* Kim Shuck
* Francisco X Alarcon
* Victor Valle
* Naomi Quiñonez
* Marc Piñate
* Milta Ortiz
* Darren de Leon
* Las Manas Tres
* Alejandra Mojica
* Tomás Riley
* Barbara Jane Reyes
* Jack Hirschman
* Leticia Hernández
* Alfonso Texidor
* Catrióna Rueda Esquibel
* Jorge Argueta
* Janet J Cruz
* Adrian Arias
* Noelia Mendoza
* Walter Huracan Gomez

Schedule of Events for Flor y Canto en el Barrio: A Celebration of Latino Poetry

Below is a list of events that will take place during each day of the festival. Please note that each day includes multiple activities.

Thursday, July 24

Event 1: Festival kick-off party and Lit Crawl with young poets
6:00 pm; Balmy Alley, 24th St. between Harrison & Folsom; Lit Crawl locations include:

7:00 pm—"Other Voices/Many Americas"
Café La Boheme
3318 24th St.
(415) 643-0481

7:00 pm—"La Nueva Flor"
Philz Coffee
3101 24th St.
(415) 282-9155

7:00 pm—"El Corazon de la Misión"
Sundance Coffee
3000 24th St.
(415) 824-1706

8:00 pm—"Breaking Borders"
Accion Latina (El Tecolote Headquarters)
2958 24th St.
(415) 648-1045

8:00 pm—"Fuerza: From Sor Juana to the Mission"
L's Café
2871 24th St.

8:00 pm—"Brave New Mundo – Cutting Edge of the 21st Century"
Galería de la Raza
2857 24th St. @ Bryant
(415) 826-8009

Event 2: Reception for young poets
9:00 pm; Casa Sanchez, 2778 24th St




Friday, July 25

Event 1: The Word From The Street (Tomas Riley of Streetside Stories hosts teen reading)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America I (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.




Saturday, July, 26

Event 1: The Word Made Perfect: The Art and Craft of Translation (Translation reading/workshop)
2:00 pm; Mission Branch Library, 300 Bartlett St. @ 24th St.

Event 2: Nuestra America II (Main Reading featuring six poets)
7:00 pm; Mission Cultural Center, 2868 Mission St.




Contacts
Friends of the San Francisco Public Library
Katie Ambellan, 415-626-7512 ext. 123
Katie@friendssfpl.org