Michelle Tea‘s monthly RADAR series of readings by writers looks especially good this month. Ali Liebgott, winner of the 2008 Lambda Literary Award for women’s fiction; Sara Shun-Lien Bynum, a National Book Award finalist 2004; San Francisco queer activist and writer Gina DeVries, and fiction and non-fiction writer Frances Lefkowitz appear. Liebgott and Bynum, both connected with UC San Diego, bring a Southern California flair to the event.

Michelle Tea’s monthly RADAR reading series is at the SF Public Library main branch [location] Wednesday, Sep. 10 at 6:00 pm.

The LA Times had a nice piece today about Zyzzyva. The San Francisco litmag is still edited, after nearly 25 years, by its founder Howard Junker, though Junker is threatening to retire next year. I was charmed to read that Junker was a technical writer before being laid off by Bechtel, whereupon he founded the litmag. (Of course, the last time I was laid off by a high tech company, I finished my first novel during the downtime. And now look at me. I’m a technical writer again. And trying to finish my second novel.)

Progressive Reading Series organizer and well-known local author Stephen Elliot writes in the Huffington Post of last night’s successful event to raise money for recycling bins for Houston. They raised enough for 276  18-gallon bins, and more importantly raised the profile of the recycling program of the Texas city.

Previously:
Houston to accept donation

Congratulations to San Francisco’s Joshua Mohr, whose debut novel “Some Things That Meant the World To Me” has been sold as part of a two-book deal, according to Publisher’s Marketplace. Mohr teaches a writing course at the local The Writing Salon and has had several short stories in litmags. But as far as I can tell from Google, he has neither a website nor a blog. So he actually might write a second book some day!

In Marin, the literary scene in remote but picturesque Point Reyes Station [map] was the subject of a long article in the Marin Independent Journal on Sunday. The piece draws attention to the visits by nationally known authors and political figures, as well as a recent three-day Stegner conference.

And the folks at Stephen Elliott‘s Progressive Reading Series are excited about the upcoming August 16 show to be headlined by Jonathan Franzen.