Stories
- Janet Thornburg, Tales of Great Ulysses
- Judith Dambowic, Welcome To The Cancer Cafe
- Sarah Matsui, Hello, Boar—You Must Be Hungry
- Melissa Hobbs, Who’s Split Pea Soup?
Music
Wiley McFarland duo, Laura Wiley (vocals and flute) and David McFarland (guitar)
About the Performers
The Wiley McFarland Duo is Laura Wiley on flute and vocals and David McFarland on guitar. Laura and David play some contemporary jazz pieces, plus their own original compositions.
At age 58, Judith Dambowic received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, an incurable blood cancer, with no clear and accepted treatment path, and a limited life expectancy. She unexpectedly began writing and performing as part of a class to help her manage the ‘new normal’. This serious yet often funny piece demonstrates her transition from provider to patient and what lessons this role reversal may have for others.
Janet Thornburg has written and performed seven solo shows. Her fiction has been widely published in literary journals, and Rhubarb Pie, a collection of her short stories, was published in 2005.
Sarah Matsui is a Taiwanese and Japanese American writer who grew up in Honolulu and has since been based in Philadelphia, Oakland, and now San Francisco. Her work has been featured in NPR’s Code Switch, Jacobin magazine, and Rethinking School magazine’s “Our 2016 Picks for Books for Social Justice Teaching: Policy.”
Melissa Hobbs is an East Bay storyteller and poet who tells stories of women of excellence in history: Sacagawea, Phoebe Apperson Hearst, Gertrude Stein and Patricia Locke. She’s preparing a story about Táhirih, the first Persian woman to remove her veil, for a performance this October at Silk Road House. Her poetry books are: Under the Pomegranate Sun; and a chapbook, Athena’s Mined Gold.