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Litquake's Barbary Coast Awards
Moderators/Hosts 
Acknowledged by peers and press alike as one of the premier political satirists in the country, Will Durst has patched together a comedy quilt of a career, weaving together columns, books, radio and television commentaries, acting, voiceovers, and most especially, standup comedy...
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Poet, essayist, and performance artist Justin Chin (1969-2015) was born in Malaysia and educated in Singapore and at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. With humor and raw vulnerability, Chin’s poems interrogate the personal, political, and commercial implications of claiming...
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Jewelle Gomez, (Cape Verdean/Wampanoag/Ioway), is the author of eight books including the first Black Lesbian vampire novel,
THE GILDA STORIES, winner of two Lambda Literary Awards; now available as an eBook and on AUDIBLE.The novel was recently optioned for a television mini-series by Cheryl Dunye (Queen Sugar). Her play based on the novel, “Bones and Ash,” was commissioned and performed by Urban Bush Women Comp...
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Maxine Hong Kingston, an eminent memoirist and a celebrated Chinese-American autobiographer, is best known for The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts (1976) and its companion volume, China Men (1980). The Woman Warrior won the National Book Critics Circle Award...
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Michael Krasny, Ph.D., is host of KQED's award-winning Forum, a news and public affairs program that concentrates on the arts, culture, health, business, and technology. Forum is one of KQED's most-popular shows and one of the nation's most-listened-to locally produced public radio...
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The Bancroft Library is the primary special collections library at the University of California, Berkeley. One of the largest and most heavily used libraries of manuscripts, rare books, and unique materials in the United States, Bancroft supports major research and instructional activities...
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Alejandro Murguía is the author of Southern Front and This War Called Love (both winners of the American Book Award). His nonfiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and...
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Patrick Wolff is a saxophonist rooted in the bebop tradition, with a long history in the New York City jazz scene. Since moving to San Francisco in 2009, Wolff has appeared regularly with Marcus Shelby, Adam Shulman, and Diana Gameros. He is making his mark as a composer and bandleader...
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The Threepenny Review is a quarterly literary and arts magazine, founded in 1980 in Berkeley, California by its editor, Wendy Lesser. Threepenny publishes criticism, memoir, fiction and poetry as well as reviews of the performing and visual arts. Recent contributors include Roberto...
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Thomas Sanchez is a fifth-generation Californian born days before his father was killed in World War II, and spent his early years at an orphanage and boarding school with native, black, white and Latino Americans. He participated in many iconic 1960s events, from farm workers strikes...
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Paul Yamazaki has been a bookseller since 1970, and has been the principle buyer at City Lights Booksellers for over 30 years. He has served on the board of directors of several literary and community arts organizations, including the Council of Literary Magazines & Presses (CLMP...
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