Today and Tomorrow: Here, There and Everywhere

THURSDAY
Check out our earlier post and the sidebar for today's activities beginning with children's author, Susan Patron at Santaigo Canyon College in the morning, followed by evening appearances by novelist Mary Castillo at Calacas, Inc. and poet Michael Collier at UCI.

FRIDAY
Poet Ben Trigg will be featured at the Our Little Open Mic series tomorrow, Friday, Oct. 19, at 11 am, at the Starbucks at 24100 El Toro Road in Laguna Woods (5 fwy - El Toro Rd exit - go west - stop at Paseo de Valencia).

Ben co-hosts Two Idiots Peddling Poetry at the Ugly Mug Café in Orange. He has performed throughout southern California, parts of the northeastern U.S., and in Texas as part of the Austin International Poetry Festival. He has four chapbooks, and has been published in the Orange County/Long Beach Poets anthology "Incidental Buildings and Accidental Beauty," and the California Poets anthologies "So Luminous The Wildflowers" and "Blue Arc West." Ben helped organize the first Orange County Poetry Festival in 2002, as well as subsequent festivals in 2003 and 2004.

For more info: http://www.myspace.com/ourlittleopenmic.

Portrait Of A Boy Trying Not To Lose His Mind

This boy transcends
the way a cat is humbled.
He plays well with others,
though he's beginning to wish he didn't.
He is the kind of tired only a coma can cure.
He would like to be someone else,
but he knows this wouldn't change anything.
He's starting to understand Willy Loman
in ways he doesn't understand.
He is afraid of Virginia Woolf.
He's in the supporting role -- Mercutio or Ophelia.
The final act eludes him.
He never depends on the kindness of strangers.
He knows where that leads.

-Ben Trigg

Later the Same Day, In Another County

Readings to celebrate the Fall 2007 issue of the Santa Monica Review continue at Dutton's Bookstore in Brentwood Friday evening at 7 PM.

Modjeska Canyon resident and editor Andrew Tonkovich introduces readings by three contributors to the current issue. Diane Gurman received a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing from New York University. Her stories have appeared in SMR, Quarterly West, ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) and Midway Journal. Monona Wali is completing her first novel, My Blue Skin Lover, and a collection of short stories, The Seedling’s Song. Recent stories appear in SMR; Catamaran, A Journal of South Asian American Writing and Tiferet, A Journal of Spiritual Literature. Tod Goldberg is the author of the novels Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and Fake Liar Cheat. Most recently, his short story collection Simplify was a finalist for the SCBA Award for Fiction and winner of the Other Voices Short Story Collection Prize.

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Los Angeles, CA 90049
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Read, she said.