CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems Nominated For Northern California Book Award for Poetry! Lorna Dee Cervantes at Awards Ceremony TODAY!

I'll be at the Northern California Book Awards, 2012, ceremony TODAY at the San Francisco Main Library, Koret Hall, 1-4 pm! My book, CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems has been nominated for an award for Best Book of Poetry! Michael Pollan will be accepting a Lifetime Achievement Award. One of my favorite poets, Jane Hirshfield is also nominated for an award for poetry; I don't expect to win.

Will I see you there?

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31st Annual Northern California Book Awards

Sunday, June 10, 2012

1:00-2:30 pm: Awards Ceremony
readings & remarks by this year's award-winning authors

2:30-4:00 pm: Book Signing & Reception

San Francisco Main Library
Koret Auditorium, 100 Larkin, Civic Center, San Francisco
Reception follows in the Latino/Hispanic Meeting Room
Nominated books on sale by Readers Bookstore at the Main
Fred Cody Award presented by Jonah Raskin
Event emcee Sedge Thomson, "West Coast Live"

The Northern California Book Awards are presented by Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, Center for the Art of Translation, Red Room (redroom.com), PEN West, Mechanics' Institute, San Francisco Public Library, Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, and Readers Bookstore at the Main.

For more information: Poetryflash.org, 510.525.5476, NCBR@poetryflash.org

FRED CODY AWARD FOR LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT
in COMMUNITY & LITERATURE
Michael Pollan, author, journalist, food activist & cultural critic

NCBR RECOGNITION AWARD
Everything Is Its Own Reward, An All Over Coffee Collection,
Paul Madonna, City Lights

FICTION
Sequoia Gardens, Ernest J. Finney, Southern Methodist University Press
A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion, Ron Hansen, Scribner
Turn of Mind, Alice LaPlante, Atlantic Monthly Press
Lola, California, Edie Meidav, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
We the Animals, Justin Torres, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CREATIVE NONFICTION
A Journey with Two Maps: Becoming a Woman Poet, Eavan Boland, W. W. Norton
Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife, Philip L. Fradkin, University of California Press
The Left Coast: California on the Edge, Philip L. Fradkin, photos by Alex L. Fradkin, University of California Press
Rereading Women: Thirty Years of Exploring Our Literary Traditions, Sandra M. Gilbert, W.W. Norton
Maya Roads: One Woman's Journey Among the People of the Rainforest, Mary Jo McConahay, Chicago Review Press

GENERAL NONFICTION
Exorbitant Privilege: The Rise and Fall of the Dollar and the Future of the International Monetary System, Barry Eichengreen, Oxford University Press
To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion, 1914-1918, Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
The Shah, Abbas Milani, Palgrave Macmillan
Natural History of San Francisco Bay, California Natural History Guides, Ariel Rubissow Okamoto and Kathleen M. Wong, University of California Press
Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942, Ian W. Toll, W. W. Norton

POETRY
Ciento: 100 100-Word Love Poems, Lorna Dee Cervantes, Wings Press
Come, Thief, Jane Hirshfield, Alfred A. Knopf
Sugar Zone, Mary Mackey, Marsh Hawk Press
When I Was a Poet, David Meltzer, City Lights
Thread, Michael Palmer, New Directions

TRANSLATION
Fiction
The Twelve Chairs, Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov, translated by Anne O. Fisher, Northwestern
Tyrant Memory, Horacio Castellanos Moya, translated by Katherine Silver, New Directions
Poetry
After Many Autumns: A Collection of Chinese Buddhist Literature, editors John Gill and Susan Tidwell, translated by John Balcom, Buddha's Light Publishing
The Changing Room, by Zhai Yongming, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter, Zephyr Press
My Naked Brain: Selected Poems of Leopoldo María Panero, translated by Arturo Mantecón, Swan Scythe Press

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE
Young Adult
Instructions for a Broken Heart, Kim Culbertson, Sourcebooks
Why We Broke Up, Daniel Handler, illustrations by Maira Kalman, Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Clean, Amy Reed, Simon Pulse
Younger Readers
Seabird in the Forest, Joan Dunning, Boyd Mills Press
A Dazzling Display of Dogs, Betsy Franco, illustrations by Michael Wertz, Tricycle Press
Far from Shore: Chronicles of an Open Ocean Voyage, Sophie Webb, Houghton Mifflin Books for Children

Lorna Dee Cervantes Book Launch for CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems in SF 10/27

CIENTO: 100 100-Word Love Poems Just Released From Wings Press!

Order your copy direct from the publisher, Wings Press now!

Where In The World Is Lorna? Writers With Drinks TONIGHT @ The MakeOut Room, 22nd. St., SF, 7:30-9:30. Next Sat. @ Precita Eyes Muralists Gala, 9/19

Come on out and get your own original personalized love poem to you or yours written by Lorna Dee Cervantes for her book, 100 LOVE POEMS TO STRANGER. $10+

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Writers With Drinks, the city's most alternative reading series according to American Airlines' inflight magazine, is back!

When: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 7:30 to 9:30 PM
Who: Michelle Richmond, John Shirley, Jeremy Adam Smith, Lorna Dee Cervantes and Christy Chan
Where: The Make Out Room, 3225 22nd. St. between Mission and Valencia, San Francisco
How much: $3 to $5 sliding scale, all proceeds benefit the CSC.

About the readers/performers:

Michelle Richmond is the author of the New York Times and international bestseller The Year of Fog, which was a Kirkus Reviews top pick for reading groups, one of Library Journal's Best Books of 2007, a Washington Post A-List selection, and a San Francisco Chronicle Notable book. Her most recent novel is No One You Know, and she's also the author of The Girl In The Fall-Away Dress and Dream Of The Blue Room. Her stories and essays have appeared in Glimmer Train, Playboy, Oxford American, The Believer, Salon.com, The Kenyon Review, The Missouri Review, and elsewhere. She received the 2009 Hillsdale Award for Fiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers and the 2006 Mississippi Review Fiction Prize.

John Shirley's most recent books include Bleak History, the lost cyberpunk classic Black Glass, and the story collection Living Shadows. He's also the author of Demons, Crawlers, Spider Moon, Transmaniacon, City Come-Walkin', Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona, The Brigade, A Splendid Chaos, Three-Ring Psychus, Dracula in Love, Cellars, In Darkness Waiting, Wetbones and Silicon Embrace. He's written lyrics for the Blue Öyster Cult and episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, VR5 and Poltergeist.

Jeremy Adam Smith is the author of The Daddy Shift, and co-editor of the forthcoming books The Compassionate Instinct and Are We Born Racist?. He's senior editor of Greater Good magazine, published by the U.C. Berkeley Greater Good Science Center, and founder of Daddy Dialectic, a group blog that explores the experiences of twenty-first-century dads. His essays, short stories, and articles on parenting, popular culture, urban life, and politics have appeared in The Nation, BusinessWeek.com, Mothering, San Francisco Bay Guardian, San Francisco Chronicle, Utne Reader, Wired, and numerous other periodicals and books.

Lorna Dee Cervantes' poetry collection From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger was awarded the Patterson Poetry Prize, the poetry prize of the Institute of Latin American Writers, and the Latino Literature Award. She founded a literary journal and a small press, both called Mango. Her poetry has appeared in hundreds of literary journals, plus the anthologies Daughters of the Fifth Sun, ¡Floricanto Sí! A Collection of Latina Poetry, Unsettling America: An Anthology of Contemporary Multicultural Poetry, and No More Masks!

Christy Chan is a Virginia-born filmmaker and writer whose film Wash 'n' Fold has appeared in many film festivals. She's also done storytelling at the Porchlight Reading Series and elsewhere. She's an affiliate artist at Sausalito's Headland Center For The Arts.

About Writers With Drinks:
Writers With Drinks has won "Best Literary Night" from the SF Bay Guardian readers' poll five years in a row and was named "Best Literary Drinking" by the SF Weekly. 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.

Hostess Charlie Jane Anders blogs about science fiction and futurism at io9.com. She's the author of the Lambda Award-winning Choir Boy (2005 Soft Skull Press) and the co-editor, with Annalee Newitz, of She's Such A Geek (Seal Press 2007). She also publishes other magazine.

3 100-Word Love Poems

These were posted on the Heretical Consumer Researchers site; I've been reading them in here in Washington state so I just thought I'd post them here. Provecho!
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100 Words Against Poverty



I’m not afraid of poverty.
I have your golden touch.
I have your threadlike hair.
I have the gold coin
and gentle rain of you.

I’m not afraid of poverty.
I could sip your soup
all day. I would play
with your remains, twist you
into endless mouthfuls, love you.

I’m not afraid of poverty,
not with this filling music,
not with these eyes, lips
that could cradle a tongue,
all that lean of you.

I’m not afraid of poverty.
I have your meaty heart.
I have the best of you.
I have your art
of loving back, have you.

5/4/08
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100 Words Past Poverty



You were meant for me.
The rest is just poverty,
a piss poor way home,
a basket of backyard oranges,
fat potatoes, too many eggs.

You were born for me,
born to the losers class,
born to sorrow, born full
of all that you’ve been
missing, born half-way there.

You were waiting for me,
waiting to eat your fill,
waiting out tomorrow, a future
tense, a perfect reunion: you,
last splash in the present.

You were once my destiny, my
one-way ticket out of poverty,
a full tank of gas,
a brimming goblet, a lotto
love for you—for me.

5/4/08

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

100 Words for Money



Baby, you don’t need money.
You need me, my siren
in the surf, my song
in the dawn for you.
Who needs money? Anyone’s got
money. Ah, but who you
are, your inner change, that
spare coinage when you speak,
the enchanted gold of your
tongue — and its place! Baby,
who needs money? You’ve got
a gal like me, even
for a bargain. You, my
blue light special: with those
raptor eyes, lackadaisical sighs, wise
assed smiles in the comments;
every hundred dollars in your
heartbeat, that shirtful of soul;
Baby, who puts a price
on a heart like that?

10/1/08


Lorna Dee Cervantes