6/10/17

Peg Alford PursellPeg Alford Pursell is the author of Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow (ELJ Editions, March 2017), a collection of hybrid prose and micro-fictions with praise from Peter Orner, Joan Silber, Antonya Nelson, and others. Her work has appeared in Permafrost, the Los Angeles Review, Joyland Magazine, and many other journals and anthologies. She is the founder and director of the national reading series Why There Are Words and of WTAW Press. Visit her at www.pegalfordpursell.com.

Martha Omiyo KightMartha Omiyo Kight will read an excerpt from Peg Alford Pursell’s collection, Show Her a Flower, a Bird, a Shadow. Kight has been very active in the Sacramento area theater community for four decades as an actor, singer, director, props mistress, and costumer. Most recently, she appeared in Sacramento Theater Company’s world premiere of the musical drama The Donner Party. Her credits in area theaters include Violet Weston in August: Osage County, Mrs. Lovett in Sweeney Todd, Sister Aloysius in Doubt, Ruth in Pirates of Penzance, as well as leading roles in A New Brain, Noises Off, Angels in America, and The Importance of Being Earnest. Kight has been writing poetry and reading her own and others’ work since 2009. Her poetry has been published in three Sacramento Voices anthologies and featured at Poetry Live Sunday in Placerville. She was also a featured reader for Evan Myquest’s “Death Valley Days” and Gene Avery’s “Death by Deer Rifle.” She read Lori Ostlund’s “Talking Fowl with My Father” for Stories on Stage Sacramento in 2010 and is delighted to be reading Peg Alford Pursell’s work with Stories on Stage Davis.

Shawna Yang RyanShawna Yang Ryan teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. She is the author of Water Ghosts and Green Island, a novel set in martial law era Taiwan. Green Island was an Amazon Best Book of February 2016 and a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Historical Fiction. A graduate of the UC Davis creative writing master’s program, she is also the 2015 recipient of the Elliot Cades Emerging Writer award from the Hawai’i Literary Arts Council.

Vicki VictoriaVicki Victoria will read an excerpt from Shawna Yang Ryan’s novel Green Island. Victoria’s first great adventure was living in Taiwan for a year, teaching English conversation to finance her backpack travels through Asia. She is an actor and singer who enjoys performing in Bay Area regional and community theaters. She has acted in roles such as Cornwall in King Lear, Sycorax in The Tempest, and in Penthelsilea with Inferno Theatre/Actors Ensemble of Berkeley. Her musical roles include Christmas Eve in Avenue Q (Missouri St. Theatre, Tri Valley Repertory Theatre), Bloody Mary in South Pacific (Pittsburg Community Theatre), Stepmother in Into the Woods (PCT), and Les Misérables (MST). She was also featured in the comedy web series The Smiths and is currently filming Sloppy Seconds. This July she will spend her fourth summer in the John Hinkel Amphitheatre with Actors Ensemble of Berkeley’s The Caucasian Chalk Circle.