Babylon Salon

12/09/2024

Many, many thanks to our 4 amazing authors at Babylon Salon Sat. night: Susan Calvillo; Chiwan Choi; Terry Tierney & Eleanor Vincent! You were terrific!💜

12/06/2024

"Eleanor Vincent paints a searing portrait of a highly challenging relationship. I read this in one gulp. Wow. This is an important book.” ~ Julia Scheeres, NYT bestselling author of the memoir Jesus Land.

Eleanor Vincent’s new memoir, Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage, is a must-read. We are honored to hear Eleanor share her work at our Babylon Salon Winter 2024 Performance!

Join us this Saturday, 12/7, at The Sycamore in the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm. As always, admission is free.

Word Count 2021 “I deserve so much better,” I whispered.  It was the morning after my husband Lars stood me up for a lunch date. He’d feel cornered if I looked into his eyes, so I drew him into a hug and spoke softly into his ear.  “Yesterday you left me waiting for you at the

12/04/2024

“When I feel a poem coming on, I drop whatever I’m doing (if I can) and let the words lead me from one image to another. I seldom have an idea where the poem will take me or whether it’s even a poem at all.” ~ Terry Tierney

Terry Tierney’s process note in periodicities: a journal of poetry and poetics is a whole craft lesson filled with writing and revision gems. 💎

Give this piece (curated by Maw Shein Win) a read, and get excited to hear Terry read from his new collection, Why Trees Stay Outside at our Babylon Salon Winter 2024 Performance

Join us at The Sycamore in the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm. As always, admission is free.

The 'process note' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for...

12/04/2024

“The collection took my breath away from the beginning,” writes Porochista Khakpour about Chiwan Choi's poetry collection, The Yellow House:

“i chose poetry / over honesty / then lived this unremarkable life.”

Chiwan Choi’s poetry will take your breath away too. We cannot wait to hear him perform at our Babylon Salon Winter 2024 Performance this Saturday!

Join us at The Sycamore in the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm. As always, admission is free.

Poems, readings, poetry news and the entire 110-year archive of POETRY magazine.

12/03/2024

"What woman isn’t audacious? What woman has not been cracked or broken and had to remake herself?" ~ Susan Calvillo

Poet, essayist, and fantasy author Susan Calvillo is an absolute FORCE! If you've never seen her perform, you are in for a treat. Get ready to be 🤩 wowed 🤩 at our Babylon Salon Winter 2024 Performance this Saturday!

Join us at The Sycamore in the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm. As always, admission is free.

HRM's Audacious Women: An Anthology is now released to readers and the public, and we are pleased to share some illuminating thoughts from our contributors about how they view "audacious women," their contributions to the anthology, and what they are working on now. Today's featured author is Susan....

10/28/2024

What a whirlwind! Litquake Halloween magic with pieces by Becca Krock Burns, Ryan Sloan, Lauren C. Johnson, Maury Zeff and Katie Flynn + impeccable emceeing from Dominic Lim. Thanks to The Sycamore and everyone who came out for a very special Babylon Salon show at Lit Crawl ‘24!

10/26/2024

Presenting a founding member of Babylon Salon, the inimitable Maury Zeff! We cannot wait to hear Maury share his work tonight at ⭐ Lit Crawl! ⭐

Maury Zeff’s fiction and plays have been published and performed throughout the US and Europe. He won the 2021 Clark-Gross Novel Award, was a 2020 Pushcart Fiction nominee, and won third place in the 2024 O. Henry World Championship Pun-off. His play "Dada Teen Musical: The Play" will be produced by Central Works in 2025.

TONIGHT! TONIGHT! TONIGHT! Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/25/2024

Meet our long-time co-host, the swashbuckling Ryan Sloan! 🐦‍⬛⚔️

Ryan Sloan lives in Oakland and teaches writing at UC Berkeley. His work is published in LA Weekly, Joyland Magazine and Painted Bride Quarterly, among others. Recent residencies include Tin House, Vermont Studio Center & the Arctic Circle. When he's not epee fencing or building immersive art, he's revising a novel on the Gold Rush, con artists and metamorphosis.

We can't wait to hear the tale Ryan has to tell TOMORROW Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/24/2024

Introducing our MC for Babylon Salon Lit Crawl 2024, Dominic Lim!!! ⭐⭐⭐

Dominic Lim’s debut novel, All the Right Notes, has been named a 2023 best book by USA Today, Harper’s Bazaar, Library Journal, and Entertainment Weekly, who called it “a swoony, joyful rom-com to take readers into a love story worthy of a Broadway stage.” His 2nd novel, Karaoke Queen, is out September 17. He is a member of the Writers Grotto and a co-host of Babylon Salon. He holds a Master of Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, is an alum of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and has sung with numerous professional early music and choral ensembles. As a proud member of the Actors’ Equity Association he has performed Off-Broadway and in regional productions throughout the US. He works as a paralegal for a biotech company in the Bay Area and lives in Oakland with his loving and supportive husband, Peter, and their whiny cat, Phoebe.

Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/24/2024

We are thrilled to welcome our beloved former co-host ⭐Becca Krock Berns ⭐ back to the Babylon Salon Stage for Lit Crawl 2024!

Becca Krock Berns is a writer and scientist. Her fiction has appeared in Carve and Peatsmoke, and she holds a PhD in neuroscience from Stanford University. Originally from the Chicago area, she lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and daughter.

Come hear Becca share her work on Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/22/2024

Introducing Babylon Salon co-host and Lit Crawl performer, Lauren C. Johnson! 🦉

Lauren C. Johnson (she/her) attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she co-hosts Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a sci-fi and fantasy reading series. Her debut novel, The West Façade, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in 2026.

We can’t wait to hear Lauren share her work on Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/21/2024

Just a few more days until Lit Crawl, and we are so stoked to hear a tale from the ⭐ dazzling ⭐ Katie M. Flynn!

Katie M. Flynn’s short fiction has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Tin House, Tor.com, and elsewhere. She’s been awarded Colorado Review’s Nelligan Prize for Short Fiction and the Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing. Her first novel, The Companions, came out in March 2020, and her interlinked collection of short stories, Island Rule, is out now from Gallery Books.

Saturday, October 26! Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

10/15/2024

On Saturday, October 26, Babylon Salon proudly presents our Lit Crawl performance featuring Babylon Salon’s organizers and friends, Becca Krock Burns, Katie Flynn, Dominic Lim, Lauren C. Johnson, and Maury Zeff!

We’ll share original work inspired by the groundbreaking authors who have graced our stage over the past seventeen years. Come and get stories that are exuberant, comedic, historical, ecological, and otherworldly!

Lit Crawl Phase 1, 5-6 pm at The Sycamore, located at 2140 Mission St in San Francisco (near 16th St Mission BART).

09/12/2024

"I stand gazing out into the blankness around me. I look down over the rail and am surprised to find dark shapes below—seabirds of some kind. From their postures I can tell they’re sitting on the surface of the water. But the water on which they bob remains invisible, overlaid with mist and opaque to the sky. The birds seem to float, unmoored, in mid-air, like magical creatures who have learned how to hold themselves in suspension."

Landfalls by Naomi J. Williams is the perfect read for a crisp, foggy Autumn day in the Bay. Give this lyrical excerpt in Literary Hub a read, and get excited to hear Naomi J. Williams share her beautiful work at our Babylon Salon Fall 2024 Performance this Saturday, Sept 14!

North American Coast, August – September 1786 White everywhere. Mist so thick it obliterates colors and edges. Up on the quarterdeck, our captain looks like an artist’s afterthought. He stands on t…

09/12/2024

"She had discovered one of the most powerful predictors of happiness and good health at any age, and something else she’d been seeking all along: awe."

Caroline Paul, author of Tough Broad, is nothing short of awe-inspiring! She flies, she dives, she is Wonder Woman. We cannot wait to hear Caroline share her adventures at our Babylon Salon Fall 2024 Performance this Saturday, Sept 14!

‘Tough Broad’ is a guide to keeping your foot on the gas as you reach your golden years

09/09/2024

“Landsickness names and navigates a shattering grief in every possible way: through the pulse, via the intellect, from the shivering body and all its sweaters, over land, underwater, in the leaky vastness of night, in suffocating day, in a therapist’s questions, with rage and somehow humor, too. I could not stop reading this collection. Its candor startles. Its speaker seems to hold nothing back about how ungraceful, how ugly the grieving has been and is…I mean—this is love. Read it now.” ~ Chen Chen on Leigh Lucas’s stunning chapbook, Landsickness

Landsickness left us breathless and reeling, and we’re honored that poet Leigh Lucas will join our Babylon Salon Fall 2024 Performance! Join us at The Sycamore this Saturday, Sept 14!

In Leigh Lucas’s startling chapbook, Landsickness , “Nights // Are each the same” as the speaker “lie[s] in bed and stare[s] into the messy monuments in search of signs from the beyond.” These “monuments” are precious objects belonging to a lover who died of su***de: “Shrines of his ...