Lenore Kandel

Lenore Kandel was explosive -- she was the only woman to give a speech at the 1967 Human Be-In, became immortalized by Jack Kerouac in Big Sur, and just like her buddy Allen Ginsberg, had a pamphlet of her work seized by police because of its extreme erotic content. Did we mention she was also an excellent belly dancer? Kandel was an important female voice in the predominantly male Beat movement and an activist during the counterculture San Francisco of the 1960s. Her most controversial work, The Love Book, explores female sexuality and gave voice to a generation of repressed women.

Although she has since passed, a tribute to Kandel's life is celebrated with a new release, Collected Poems of Lenore Kandel on Thursday (May 10), at the Beat Museum.

The book features previously unpublished poetry as well as some of Kandel's more iconic works, such as "To Fuck with Love," a descriptive and provocative take on a woman's sexual experience and desire. The tribute also includes a reading from Peter Coyote -- founder of the Diggers, an anarchist theater group notable for providing food, housing, transportation, and medical supplies to the influx of runaways living in Haight Ashbury in the 1960s and '70s.

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Pioneer for freedom of speech

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was a pioneer in the business of bookselling (City Lights was the nation's first all-paperback retailer), and he turned the literary world on its head by publishing the likes of Kerouac, Ginsberg, Cassady, Burroughs, Bukowski, and himself among others. Any good San Franciscan knows this.

What we might not know (or remember) is Ferlinghetti -- who turned 93 in March -- has never strayed from the principles that drove him and the other writers and artists of the beat movement, and he has influenced generations of writers who came after him through writing and activism. In recent years he has spoken out in support of progressive initiatives such as demolishing the Central Freeway and limiting the number of chain stores in the city. He has derided the "ludicrously named" Blue Angels and their "annual attack on the city" during Fleet Week as antithetical to the local poetic culture he helped foster. Hear from the man himself -- in interviews and poetry -- as well as those around him tonight in Christopher Felver's 2009 documentary Ferlinghetti/Ferlinghetti, tonight (Tuesday) at Meridian Gallery.

The film includes footage of some of the original cast members who populated North Beach in the 1940s and '50s, as well as modern-day literary icons.

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Ashleigh Reddy

First place winner Nya McDowell of Richmond.

It was a huge mistake to forget to bring tissues to the Youth Speaks Teen Poetry Slam Grand Slam Finals over the weekend at Nob Hill Masonic Auditorium. Expectations of being dazzled by the stunning wordplay and vocal deliveries made by the finalists were more than met, the sentiment echoed by snaps ricocheting throughout the building.

Unforeseeable, however, was how moving and gut-wrenchingly honest the overwhelming majority of the poems would be, as kids around age 16 revealed unimaginable personal stories of conflict and violence. Of the 13 competing, five will advance to the 15th Annual Brave New Voices International Youth Poetry Slam Festival on July 17-21.

The students' unflinching presentations embodied the motto of the spoken word education nonprofit: "Because the next generation can speak for itself."

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Rory O'Connor

If Glenn Beck keeps a J. Edgar Hoover-esque blacklist under his bed pillow, journalist Rory O'Connor is probably on it, his name appearing near those of Nancy Pelosi and George Soros. O'Connor's progressive bona fides are extensive: Alternet reporter, Huffington Post blogger, media watchdog, and author of Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, a 2008 book that took populist demagogues such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to task for trading in sexist, racist, and homophobic hate-mongering. Four years later, the rabble-rousers of broadcast radio may seem a dying breed -- angry old men fomenting their way to irrelevance through a fading medium -- but their dubious tactics and principles live on, and their vitriol can be broadcast around the world in an instant.

For O'Connor, who appears tonight (Tuesday) at City Lights Books, the tools that enable this present an opportunity but also a threat to civil society. In his new book Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media Are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands, and Killing Traditional Media, O'Connor turns a skeptical yet pragmatic eye to the likes of Facebook.

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Can you envision a "live magazine?" How about an event that combines the best parts of your favorite magazine, like great writing, unusual and illuminating topics, and beautiful, challenging images, with the spontaneity, ephemerality, and added sensory elements such as live music? Pop-Up Magazine is that event, and in its short existence (it has produced six issues in three years) it has become one of the city's most exciting cultural happenings. Tickets to the production sell out in minutes, and presenting at the event has become something like appearing on Saturday Night Live for intellectuals, a high-profile career touchstone earned on stage. Photography and recording is prohibited, so we give you what we can with images from a party associated with the event.More >>

Charlie Jane Anders

The big thing you need to know about the monthly series Writers with Drinks is this: Arrive super early, maybe even an hour before, for your chance at a stool or a booth. The Make Out Room is a pretty big space, but Saturday's installment still felt packed to a fire-hazard-y degree.

For good reason! As organized by Charlie Jane Anders, a writer and science-fiction nerd, five authors brought all the literary cred you'd want. With or without drinks, they read their work while most of the audience stood (and many others sprawled on the floor). Some were making out!

Overall, the evening's tone was a grab bag of comic-book geekery (Los Angeles' Sarah Kuhn), memories of a precocious childhood (local Glen David Gold), plain old storytelling (L.A.'s Amber Benson, who, from her three-season stretch acting on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, boasts a platinum-clad geek quotient), semi-erotic fiction (San Francisco's Malinda Lo), and fully erotic fiction (New York's Rachel Kramer Bussel).

A sex writer by profession, Bussel read her harrowing story of a woman who loves getting smacked by her lover. When the two end up doing it in an alley, one's panty-less-ness is revealed; things get drippy; Handi Wipes are proffered, "because she was a top who came prepared."

Whoa.

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A True Hero Gone Unnoticed.

Bayard Rustin was a fervid orator and incisive rhetorician who served as a key figure in the civil rights movement for more than 60 years. He introduced Mahatma Gandhi's principles of nonviolence to American activists, and he organized the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. So why doesn't Bayard Rustin receive equal standing with King in American history? It's a question of considerable debate, but Rustin's status as an openly gay man who served jail time as a conscientious objector during World War II guaranteed his marginalization during the 1960s among civil rights leaders, who feared such traits could be used by opponents to discredit their movement.

Religious studies professor, activist, and author Michael Long delves into Rustin's legacy in I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin's Life in Letters, a collection that provides intimate insight into the relationships and principles that fueled Rustin's work for social justice until his death in 1987. Long reads from his work and talks about Rustin's legacy Wednesday night at City Lights.

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Mike Doughty answers questions from the question jar.

Mike Doughty will be at the Swedish American Hall on Tuesday, but don't expect any Soul Coughing. He's in town to promote his new memoir The Book of Drugs. If the book about some rough years is consistent with Doughty's demeanor, we're not expecting any apologies -- or self-congratulation.

"I think I came into it wanting to tell an addiction story without any bad-assery. I think most addicts aren't like, you know, bloody-fisted, thrown-in-and-out-of-jail, bad-asses. My story is kind of like, I'm Buster Keaton as a dope fiend," Doughty last week told our sister publication, Denver Westword.

Doughty's drug-addled years in Soul Coughing are behind him. He's not so inclined to play the old classics, but he'll thank you for asking. The show does feature his solo work, though. And his "question jar" engages the audience (and inspired a 2012 live release). See a bit of that hysteria in the video clip below.

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Susie Bright, veteran.

Between them, Rachel Kramer Bussel and Susie Bright have probably edited or written 100 books relating to sex, and they've contributed to almost as many publications or websites. (We started to count but stopped when we reached "a lot.") So if anyone on the planet is qualified to present the Best Sex Writing 2012 (the title of their latest anthology), it's them. They appear tonight (Monday) at Booksmith.

For people who know sex writing, a look at the list of contributors (including Bussel and Bright themselves) is impressive. For those who know nothing about it, the titles of the works speak for themselves.

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Michelle Tea founded Sister Spit.

"I've been thinking a lot about Adrienne Rich," began the legendary queer author Dorothy Allison. The crowd was hushed, the silence nurturing reverence. "I've been thinking about the stories we all share." Allison's Southern cadence rolled off her tongue as she opined, "Leave something behind." And Allison definitely left something behind on Sunday -- tales involving sex, porcelain, childbirth, and (maybe) orgasm.

But before we get there, we should tell you Allison was the final reader at Sunday's Sister Spit event at the San Francisco Public Library. And if you don't know (yet), Sister Spit is a vanload of chanteuses and luminaries, queer legends and performance artists, who travel the country in a sort of literary roadshow every April. Sunday's edition inaugurated the 2012 tour with a special SF appearance by Ali Liebegott and Hilary Goldberg's short film adaptation of a chapter from Michelle Tea's Valencia.

The vivacious Tea, host extraordinaire and founder of Sister Spit, welcomed the crowd with two announcements. The first (which we already knew) was that her book Valencia is being made into a film with each chapter adapted by a different director and cast. The second was that Sister Spit is getting its own imprint with City Lights Publishers. Tea is indeed a busy, busy lady (did anyone catch her hosting Balderdash the other week at Intersection for the Arts?), and now she's on the road with her traveling cabaret, moving between Southern California, Arizona, and back up to Oakland on Sunday, April 8, for a different show with Beth Lisick and Annie Danger.

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