Center for Sex and Culture

sexandculture:

Writers With Drinks is back after taking July off — and we’re hitting
twice as hard to make up for the hiatus!

When: Saturday, August 11, 2012, 7:30 to 9:30 PM
Who: Jane McGonigal, Saqib Mausoof, Rachel Swirsky, Javier Zamora, and
Simon Sheppard!
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco
How much: $5 to $10 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.

About the readers/performers:

Jane McGonigal, PhD is a world-renowned designer of alternate reality
games. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is
Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
(Penguin Press, 2011) — and currently serves as the Creative Director
for Social Chocolate, where she is making games powered by the science
of positive emotion and social connection.She is the Director of Games
Research & Development at the Institute for the Future, a non-profit
research group in Palo Alto, California. She is also the founder of
Gameful, “a secret headquarters for worldchanging game developers.”
She’s ranked at #16 out of the top 20 most engaging TED talks, and
frequently appears on lists of the top innovators to watch and top
creative people in business.

Saqib Mausoof is a Pakistani-American filmmaker. His narrative, Kala
Pul - The Black Bridge, a topical thriller shot on Super 16 in
Karachi, was short listed at the Asian Festival of First Films and won
Best Short at New Jersey Independent Cinefest. He is raising funds on
Kickstarter to make a movie called In Search of Meluhha: The Story of
Mohenjodaro.

Rachel Swirsky’s short fiction has appeared in Tor.com, PANK, the
Konundrum Engine Literary Review, the New Haven Review, Weird Tales,
Fantasy Magazine, and Subterranean Magazine, among others, and been
collected in Year’s Best anthologies edited by Rich Horton, Jonathan
Strahan, and the VanderMeers. She was the founding editor of
Podcastle, an audio fantasy magazine. Her novella “The Lady Who
Plucked Red Flowers Beneath the Queen’s Window” won the 2010 Nebula
Award, and was nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy awards. Her
novella “A Memory of Wind” was a finalist for the 2009 Nebula Awards
ballot. Her novelette “Eros, Philia, Agape,” was nominated for the
Hugo, as well as the Theodore Sturgeon Award, the Locus Award, the
storySouth Million Writers Award, and the Tiptree Award. And most
recently, her novelette “Fields of Gold” has been nominated for the
Hugo and Nebula awards.

Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, La Paz, El Salvador. At the
age of nine he immigrated to the Yunaited Estais. His chapbook, Nine
Immigrant Years, is the winner of the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts
Chapbook Contest. Zamora is a CantoMundo fellow and a Breadloaf
work-study scholarship recipient. He has received scholarships from
Frost Place, Napa Valley, Squaw Valley, and VONA. His poems appear or
are forthcoming in DirtyLaundry, NewBorder, Phat’titude, The Homestead
Review, The Poetry Show, Spillway Magazine, among other journals. He
will attend NYU’s MFA program in Fall 2012.

Proclaimed “our erotica king” by San Francisco magazine, Simon
Sheppard is the editor of Homosex: 60 Years of Gay Erotica, winner of
the Lambda Literary Award, and the author of Hotter Than Hell and
Other Stories, which won the Erotic Authors Association award. His
other books include In Deep, Sex Parties 101, and Kinkorama:
Dispatches From the Front Lines of Perversion. His work has also been
published in over 300 anthologies, including five editions of The Best
American Erotica and a record number of appearances in the Best Gay
Erotica series.

About Writers With Drinks:

Writers With Drinks won “Best Literary Night” from the SF Bay Guardian
readers’ poll six years in a row and was named “Best Literary
Drinking” by the SF Weekly. And it was namechecked in Armistead
Maupin’s latest Tales of the City novel. The spoken word “variety
show” mixes genres to raise money for local worthy 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.

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture. 

Writers With Drinks won “Best Literary Night” from the SF Bay Guardian

readers’ poll six years in a row and was named “Best Literary

Drinking” by the SF Weekly. And it was namechecked in Armistead

Maupin’s latest Tales of the City novel. The spoken word “variety

show” mixes genres to raise money for local worthy 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.