Martinis & Writers With Literary Speakeasy

It’s the first Literary Speakeasy of 2018! A new year and a new lineup of the best Bay Area talent! This month we bring you writers Matt Carney, Donald Currie, Alison Luterman, Danny Thanh Nguyen, and the musical duo of Michael Holmes and Mike Linn, better known as Postcapitalism. Your host and curator every month is James J. Siegel. So come on out and enjoy a martini (or two) and let us entertain you! Literary Speakeasy is always FREE with NO drink minimum. Also, come out early and get your FREE raffle ticket. At the end of the night, we will draw a ticket for the evening’s secret Speakeasy prize. Performer bios: Matt Carney is a writer, educator and anti-educator in San Francisco. He holds an MA and MFA from SFSU. His work appears in A cappella Zoo, Inkwell, Red Light Lit, Writing Without Walls, sPARKLE & bLINK, Entropy, and in readings at eclectic or seedy bars. His heroes are David Bowie, Ellen Ripley, and Chun Li. Donald Currie has acted, directed, and produced theatre in the Bay Area all his life. He recently won a Best Actor award from Theatre Bay Area for Habit of Art with Theatre Rhino. He has also acted with Virago Theatre, Theatre Shark, Cutting Ball, New Conservatory Theatre Center, and Boxcar Theatre. Donald is the songwriter/singer for the cabaret act Don and Pilar and the writer and performer of the CD series Sex and Mayhem. Alison Luterman's three books of poetry are The Largest Possible Life; See How We Almost Fly; and Desire Zoo. Her poems and stories have appeared in The Sun, Rattle, Prairie Schooner, Nimrod, The Atlanta Review, Tattoo Highway, and elsewhere. She teaches memoir at The Writing Salon in Berkeley. She has also written an e-book of personal essays, Feral City, and more than half a dozen plays, including Oasis, Saying Kaddish With My Sister, Glitter and Spew, Touched, and two musicals, The Chain and Nasty Women. She performs with the Oakland-based improvisation troupe Wing It! and has given writing workshops all over the country, including at Omega and Esalen Institutes. For more information, please visit her website at www.alisonluterman.net. Danny Thanh Nguyen is a Kundiman Fiction Fellow and a Lambda Literary Nonfiction Fellow. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in The Journal, South Dakota Review, Entropy, Foglifter, New Delta Review, Gulf Coast, and other magazines. He received his MFA from Indiana University and is the editor of AS IS, an anthology of Vietnamese American art and literature. Michael Holmes and Mike Linn are Postcapitalism. Their songs speak to the days beyond all this bean counting nonsense — days of music and poetry, love and nuance, joy and humor. Dostoevsky said, “Beauty will save the world.” Postcapitalism banks on this idea, especially when the valentines are allowed to be funny. James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection "How Ghosts Travel" from Spuyten Duyvil Press, a finalist for the Ohioana Library Book Award. He lives in San Francisco where he hosts and curates Literary Speakeasy at Martuni’s, which showcases Bay Area authors, poets, and songwriters. His work has appeared in several journals including The Cortland Review, Assaracus, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, The Good Men Project, and more.