6-9 PM
Join us for a seminar on the art of crafting a humorously entertaining piece of literature. Moderator Jory John, programs coordinator of 826 Valencia and co-creator of bigstonehead.net, will engage an expertly comical group of panelists in a discussion about how to be funny in writing.
About the panelists:
Jon Carroll is a beloved columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, where he has written five columns a week since 1982. He is featured on the back page of the highly read Datebook section. Carroll has released a collection of his columns— Near-life Experiences—that was published by Chronicle Books. Before his long stint at the Chronicle, Carroll acted as a writer and editor at Rolling Stone, The Village Voice, WomenSports Magazine, and New West Magazine, where he guided that publication to a National Magazine Award.
Beth Lisick is the author of several stories, poems, and essays, and the New York Times nonfiction bestseller Everybody Into The Pool. She has also written, directed, and starred in a number of short films, including the internationally acclaimed Diving for Pearls. Lisick co-organizes the Porchlight Storytelling Series in San Francisco. Her latest work, Helping Me Help Myself: One Skeptic, Ten Self-Help Gurus, and a Year on the Brink of the Comfort Zone, came out in early January.
Dan Kennedy is the author of Loser Goes First. His essays appear in GQ and his work is anthologized in the Los Angeles Times Bestseller, "Created In Darkness By Troubled Americans: The Best of McSweeney's, Humor Category," "Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists," Insomniac Reader. His next book, Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, is in stores now.
Eric Spitznagel has written and edited for numerous publications, including Playboy, Esquire, Maxim, Spy, Harper's, Blender, and Salon.com. He is also a contributing editor for The Believer magazine, the website editor for Monkeybicycle, and the author of six books, one of which is "available in German and features a cat on the cover for no apparent reason."