It's Lit: Festival of Storytelling

Rickydocs Traveling Medicine Show, featuring novelist, performance artist and delta griot, Arthur Flowers, using a fusion of African American oral traditions including blueswork, storytelling, spokenword and Black Baptist oratory with musical accompaniment. Check your troubles at the door. Whatever ails you I will cure it for sure. Down at the Traveling Medicine Show. Come one come all, to the county line. If I can’t cure you I will ease your troubled mind.

Arthur Flowers is a novelist, essayist, and performance poet. A native of Memphis Tennessee, he is the author of novels, Another Good Loving Blues and De Mojo Blues; a children’s book, Cleveland Lee’s Beale Street Band, and a memoir/manifesto, Mojo Rising: Confessions of a 21st Century Conjureman and a graphic nonfiction, I See The Promise Land. He has published shorts and articles and is a bluesbased performance poet. He is a founding member/director of New Renaissance Writers Guild, NYC, The Griot Shop, Memphis, and the Pan African Literary Forum. He has been Executive Director of the Harlem Writers Guild. He has been the recipient of NEA and NYSFA awards in fiction and nonfiction.

His novel in progress, Rest for the Weary, is a meditation on prophecy, destiny, fate and the human condition. He is also working on a nonfiction work, The Hoodoo Book of Flowers. He considers having an online literary presence part of being a 21st Century literary man and has a blog, Rootsblog, a cyberhoodoo webspace.

For more than 25 years, Katharine Gin '90 (she/her) has worked to enhance arts, career, and education opportunities for young people of color. Katharine is the co-founder and executive director of Immigrants Rising, and the 2022 recipient of UHS Alumni Honors. She has developed innovative programs in schools, housing projects, and detention facilities. Her work with young people has been highlighted in college textbooks, literary anthologies, magazines, and national newspapers, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Pod Save America, Harvard Educational Review, PRI’s The World, KQED, San Francisco Chronicle, and Fast Company.

Outside of her work with Immigrants Rising, Katharine serves on the board of TheDream.US and Horizons at San Francisco Friends School. She was previously board president of the California Immigrant Policy Center (CIPC) and advisor to the Nelson Fund at The Silicon Valley Community Foundation, where she directed the fund’s philanthropic investments in arts and education.

Katharine was born and raised in San Francisco, and received her BA from Yale University and MFA from the University of Oregon. She is the proud descendant of Chinese immigrants, who first came to the U.S. in the 1860s to work in the gold mines of California and later during the restrictive Chinese Exclusion Acts. She is also mother to Anna Dido Nordeson and partner to Kjell Nordeson.

Watch Katharine speaking at the Women’s March San Francisco.

Steve Li is a leader in the undocumented community advocating for immigration reform and social justice. He is a co-author of “Dreams Deported: Immigrant Youth and Families Resist Deportation”- a UCLA publication where he shares his first-hand experience of being arrested and detained by ICE. Li has also worked on several campaigns, including the California Endowment Foundation’s #Health4All campaign, a bill that aims to expand healthcare access to the undocumented community. He serves on the board of Asian Health Services, a community health clinic located in Oakland, CA. Li holds a B.A in Asian American Studies & Public Health from the University of California, Davis. Currently, he works as a healthcare consultant at UCSF.

Marithza Quiroz is a graphic artist currently living in the Bay Area. Born and raised in Sonora, Mexico, she migrated to the U.S. with her parents at age 17. She began her storytelling work with collages and journaling, an emotional mapping that is a crucial medium for her. From drawing comic strips to faciliating storytelling workshops for undocumented students, Marithza is committed to illustrate stories of agency, creativity and humor from the undocumented immigrant community living in the U.S. She is now pursuing a Master in Science in Learning, Design & Technology at Stanford University.

A graduate of UCLA and NYU's Graduate Film Program, Amyn Kaderali '90 is an award-winning filmmaker who currently directs episodic television (The Resident, Supernatural, Walker, Animal Kingdom, Private Practice and more) while also working as a screenwriter on holiday romantic comedies for Netflix, Hallmark and Lifetime as well as his own eclectic range of passion projects. He wrote and directed his first feature film, “Kissing Cousins,” in 2006 and, more recently, “Grounded for Christmas” for Lifetime Network. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America and the Writers Guild of America. For more about Amyn go to AmynKaderali.com

Ana Maria Telfer '17 is a bilingual Spanish-American writer who learned from growing up between London, San Francisco, and Madrid that the world is both fun and dangerous. Ana writes crime dramedies about ambitious femme fatales who run from life, break rules, enjoy sex, befriend zesty idiots, and covet shiny gems. She got her B.F.A. in Screenwriting at USC's Film School. As a Catholic, she is intrigued by the repressed, and minored in Forensics and Criminology. Ana rollerskates, penned an award-winning short film about the Congo-Brazzaville, and her co-writing has been recognized by AFF and Humanitas. Ana has worked in the world of movie editing, and at the VERVE Talent and Literary Agency.

Ulysses King '96 is Chief Communications Officer at Humane, Inc., a technology startup, currently in stealth mode. Prior to joining Humane, Ulysses was a Vice President at Outcast, a public relations agency. While at Outcast, his clients included Amazon, Instagram, Nike, and Salesforce. Ulysses received his Bachelor of Science, Communications from Boston University and is a proud alumnus of University High School.

Tomicia Blunt '17 is a marketing professional who uses storytelling to match products and services to their target customer. She has worked as a professional writer for 7 years, and has been in the marketing, public relations, and strategic partnerships sectors for 4 years. She has gained experience by working for small and large organizations which include Google, Halpern PR, Russell Reynolds Associates, Nadi by Dani, First Republic Bank, The University of Puget Sound, and San Francisco University High School. In 2021, she received her Bachelors of Arts in Communication Studies with minors in Business Administration and African American Studies from the University of Puget Sound.

Highly regarded as both a novelist and a short story writer, Ethan Canin '78 has ranged in his career from the "breathtaking" short stories of Emperor of the Air to the "stunning" novellas of The Palace Thief,  from the "wise and beautiful" short novel Carry Me Across the Water to the "epic" America America.  His short stories, which have been the basis for four Hollywood movies, have appeared in a wide range of magazines, including The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, The Paris Review, and Granta, and have been selected for many prize anthologies.

The son of a musician and a public-school art teacher, he spent his childhood in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and California before attending Stanford University, the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, and then Harvard Medical School. He subsequently gave up a career in medicine to write and teach, and is now F. Wendell Miller Professor of English at his alma mater, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, where he has been privileged to teach a great number of talented new writers. In his spare time he is very slowly remodeling two old houses, one in the woods of northern Michigan and the other in Iowa City, where he lives with his wife, their three children, and four chickens.

Hannah Kingsley-Ma '09 is a writer and radio producer. Her work has appeared in outlets like The Believer, McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The Kenyon Review Online, and the CBC, KCRW, KQED and KALW Public Radio. As a graduate of New York University’s MFA in Fiction, she received the Jan Gabrial Fellowship, and was the 2020-21 Axinn Writer-in-Residence. She currently teaches creative writing at NYU, Catapult, and Pen America. 

Ben Tarnoff '03 is a tech worker, writer, and co-founder of Logic Magazine. His newest book comes out in May; Internet for the People is about how the modern internet came to be, why it's so broken, and what might make it less broken. He has written for the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Republic, and Jacobin.

Jesse Berrett earned a PhD in History at the University of California, Berkeley. He has worked as a rock critic, television columnist, and book reviewer. He teaches history at University High School in San Francisco.

Annie Barrows is the author of many books for children, including the Ivy and Bean series, which concluded in 2021 with Ivy and Bean Get to Work, and the Iggy books, which began in 2020 with The Best of Iggy. She also writes for adults when she’s in the mood; together with her aunt Mary Ann Shaffer, she coauthored The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.

Laura Cogan is the editor of ZYZZYVA. She holds a BA and an MA from New York University. ZYZZYVA, a San Francisco based literary journal, celebrated its 35th anniversary in 2020.

Nandita Dinesh holds a PhD in Drama from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, an MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and a BA in Economics & Theater from Wellesley College. An alumna of the United World College movement, Nandita has conducted community-based theatre projects in Kashmir, India, the United States, Mexico, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. In 2017, she was awarded the Elliott Hayes Award for Outstanding Achievement in Dramaturgy by Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas. Nandita’s first novel, This Place That Place, is forthcoming (Melville House, 2022), and she is currently working on projects across literary genres. For more info on Nandita's work, see www.NanditaDinesh.com. Nandita is also a member of the faculty at UHS, she is the director of the Institute for Responsive Education.

Pete Mulvihill is the co-owner of Green Apple Books, a San Francisco Legacy Business on Clement Street, plus Green Apple Books on the Park and Browser Books on Fillmore Street. When not reading or telling his kids to get off their phones, he tries to be in the park or the ocean.

Bob Hillman is navigating the second act of a career that began in the late 1990s, flourished in the early 00s, survived ten years of “real jobs,” and resumed in 2016 with the Peter Case-produced Lost Soul. His latest EP, Bob Hillman & Spooky Ghost, is a "noise folk" collaboration with guitarist Gerry Leonard; he also released a COVID EP called Inside & Terrified in 2020. In the early 00s, his music connected with Suzanne Vega, who invited him to open her Songs In Red And Gray tour in the U.S. and Europe. More recently, David Crosby re-tweeted a demo of Cocaine Ruins Everything: “Great song...very very good...well done.”

Brandon Gagante is a Filipino spoken word artist who uses he/him/his pronouns. In the breakout sessions, participants will examine location, activity, and self, building towards an incremental understanding of the context in which they live.  Drawing from a communally constructed word palette, students will produce a descriptive poem about a moment in which they felt truly alive.  This workshop is used to encourage continued practice with fundamental Youth Speaks concepts and tools – “No Wrong Answers,” “The Standard is Yourself,” the word palette, the free write.

Founded in 1996 in San Francisco, Youth Speaks is a leading presenter of Spoken Word performance, education, and youth development programs. Our writing & performance workshops create an opportunity for participants of all skill levels to connect with peers, build confidence in their writing , and find, develop, publicly present, and apply their voices as creators of societal change. Trailblazers of local and national youth poetry slams, festivals, and more, Youth Speaks offers a comprehensive slate of literary arts education programs and provides numerous opportunities for youth to be published and heard.

silvi alcivar is a lover of typewriters, sufjan stevens, bunnies, jellyfish, wild parrots, san francisco, ocean, and wind. her poetry lives in the moment two strangers meet over her red royal typewriter--the anonymity an invitation to speak, the typewriter keys a willing listener. as poet and owner of the poetry store since 2008, silvi writes and sells custom poetry in three ways: on-demand and as art. in addition to selling tens of thousands of poems worldwide, she has performed her work on stage and radio, as well as exhibited in galleries throughout the bay area. silvi also spent a decade teaching poetry classes for the elderly. she holds degrees in writing and art from cornell university and an mfa from penn state. to learn more and buy her work visit www.thepoetrystore.net or follow @thepoetrystore.

Sarah Ladipo Manyika is a writer who has written for The Guardian, Granta and The Washington Post amongst others. Her debut novel, In Dependence, is an international bestseller while her second novel, Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun, was shortlisted for the UK’s Goldsmiths Prize and the California Book Awards and translated into six languages. Sarah has served as Board Chair for the women’s writing residency, Hedgebrook; Board Director for the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; and a judge for the Goldsmiths Prize, California Book Awards, Aspen Words Literary Prize, and Chair of judges for the Pan-African Etisalat Prize. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a San Francisco Public Library Laureate, and a MacDowell fellow. Sarah holds an MA and PhD from UC Berkeley and has lived in France, Nigeria, Kenya, England, and America. Sarah is the parent of UHS alumnus Julian Manyika '18.

Christine teaches English at University High School. She holds a BA in English from the University of Chicago and a MS from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

This breakout session is located near Mountain Lake Park in the Presidio. If you choose this session, you are limited to ONE session only in the afternoon. 

Arion Press is ecstatic to host public tours of its production floor. This in-depth tour takes you through the hot metal type foundry, letterpress room, and bookbindery – one of the last facilities of its kind. 

In 1974, Arion Press was officially formed and launched a series of limited-edition books, printed by letterpress and bound by hand. Many of them were illustrated by prominent artists; some were accompanied by separate editions of original prints. To this day, the list of Arion publications is characterized by its diversity, with titles that range from ancient literature to modern classics. The Press has also developed new material for publication, and resurrected “lost” texts. The Arion Press edition of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, handset and printed in a folio edition on handmade paper, with 100 wood engravings by Barry Moser, has been hailed as “a modern masterpiece of bookmaking” (University of California Press). Read the full history of the press here.

The Arion Press facility includes multiple letterpresses ranging from the petite tabletop C&P Pilot to the enormous Miller press. View one of the largest collections of metal types in the US, watch machines from over 100 years ago still in daily use, and learn how expert artisans bind a book by hand.

Arion Press pairs great artists with great literature to create beautiful books by hand. They publish limited editions every year, each conceptually unique. Some are accompanied by limited edition art prints. Past collaborators include Wayne Thiebaud, Kara Walker, Margaret Atwood.