SPREADING THE WORD for 12 YEARS!

“Tongue & Groove”

A monthly offering of short fiction, personal essays, poetry, spoken word + music produced by Conrad Romo. This month features Janet Fitch, David Francis, Rita Williams, Julianne Ortale and music by Garretson & Gorodetsky

Sunday October 25th

6-7:30 pm

The Hotel Cafe

1623 1/2 No. Cahuenga Blvd.

Hollywood, Ca 90028

$6.00

Janet Fitch is the author of the novels Paint It Black and White Oleander. Her short stories and essays have appeared in anthologies and journals such  as Black Clock, Room of One’s Own, Los Angeles Noir, the Los Angeles Times, Salon.com, Black Warrior Review, Vogue and Los Angeles Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor She currently teaches at the Vermont College of Fine Arts and at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers.  Paint it Black has been made into a feature film, the directing debut of Amber Tamblyn, and will be released early next year.  She is currently working on an epic novel of the Russian Revolution.

In her memoir, If the Creek Don’t Rise, Rita Williams shares the story of her childhood with the last African American widow of a Civil War soldier in Colorado. Her work has appeared in O, The Oprah Magazine, O at Home, Saveur, Best Food Writing for 2007, The Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, The Utne Reader and Fins and Feathers, as well as numerous anthologies.  She taught at the University of Southern California.  Rita is reading this evening from her work in progress: a novel about a trucker with a meth problem.

David Francis‘ first novel AGAPANTHUS TANGO was published internationally in seven languages and then in the United States as THE GREAT INLAND SEA.  His second novel, STRAY DOG WINTER, was named Book of the Year in The Advocate, Novel of the Year in the Australian Literature Review, was a LAMBDA fiction award finalist and won the American Library Association Stonewall Prize for Literature.  His short fiction has appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald, Best Australian Stories 2010 and 2012, Griffith Review,The Harvard Review, Australian Love Stories and The Ratting Wall. His third novel WEDDING BUSH ROAD is being released by Counterpoint press in the fall of 2016.

Julianne Ortale is co-editor along with Samantha Dunn of the short story anthology Women on the Edge: Writing from Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in The Rattling Wall, Alaska Quarterly Review, Salmagundi, The Malahat Review, Stand, Happy, The Gobshite Review and Barbaric Yawp. She received her MFA in Fiction at UC Irvine’s Programs in Writing where she was the Cheng Fellow. Her dialogues “Hombre Kabuki” and “Fluorescent Grey” were produced as short films and placed at Breckenridge Film Festival, Mexico International Film Festival, Tulsa International Film Festival, New Filmmakers Los Angeles, SNOB and won Narrative Merit Award at Los Angeles Cinema Festival. She lives with her family on Bainbridge Island where she writes and works with children with autism. Her story collection, Music For Incurables is under review. She is currently finishing a novel.

Weba Garretson and Ralph Gorodetsky combine folk and pop music, blues riffs and jazz harmonies with poetic lyrics to create songs that are haunting and humorous. Their most recent work “What Must the Hummingbird See?” is a song cycle about the fragile existence of urban wildlife In Los Angeles. Other commissions include music for Los Angeles Poverty Department’s “Utopia/Dystopia” at the Redcat, and the LA Public Library stage celebration of Melville’s Moby Dick “My Moby Dick” at the Broad Theatre.

Come early!  Seating is limited and we start on time! www.conradromo.com