(This event has reached its capacity. We are no longer able to take reservations)
City Lights, Dopamine Books, and Semiotext(e) present
Witch: Live Readings and Rituals
with Michelle Tea, Lily Burana, Kathe Izzo, Molly Larkey, Shelley Marlow, Brooke Palmieri, Mia Arias Tsang, and Sarah Yanni
Join us for an evening of enchantment and revelry as we celebrate the publication of
Witch: Anthology
Edited by Michelle Tea
Published by Dopamine/Semiotext(e)
This event will be held offsite at a special undisclosed location in San Francisco. It is free to the public, but seating is limited and available on a first come, first serve basis. Registration is required. You will be sent an email with location coordinates before the event.
Witch: Anthology is an exploration of the Witch, as radical archetype, in ancient and contemporary life.
An adult woman haunted by her childhood muses on the foster system, institutions, and the medieval tale of a girl given to a witch. A genderqueer Brooklynite learns of their past life as a murdered sorceress. An uptight participant at a Northern California witch camp finds community in the kitchen. A professor uses magic to help students under attack by right-wing politicians.
In this collection of manifesto, poetry, playscripts, and prose, the archetype of the Witch is honored and unpacked, poked and prodded, owned and othered. From work centered in antiquity to writing which illustrates how primordial occult energies continue to enliven our world today, WITCH: Anthology lays bare a wilderness of myth, magic, trickery, and power swarming beneath the surface of contemporary life.
With work from CAConrad, Edgar Fabián Frías, Amanda Yates Garcia, Ashley Ray, Brooke Palmieri, Yumi Sakugawa, Kai Cheng Thom, Ariel Gore, Myriam Gurba, Fariha Róisín, and many others.
About the Participants:
Michelle Tea is the author of over a dozen books of memoir, fiction, poetry and children’s lit—including her latest, Knocking Myself Up. Her memoir Valencia won the Lambda Literary Award for Best Lesbian Fiction, even though it was obviously all true. It was also made into a sprawling, feature-length art film using nearly twenty different directors and different Michelles. Her recent-ish essay collection, Against Memoir, was awarded the PEN/America Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She is also the recipient of the legendary Rona Jaffe Awards, and a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow.
Lily Burana has written for over fifty publications including The Washington Post, GQ, The Atlantic, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Self, Glamour, The Advocate, Out, Marie Claire, Entertainment Weekly, Slate, Salon, and The New York Observer, and her reviews and cultural criticism have been picked up by magazines and newspapers around the world. She has been a Contributing Editor at SPIN and New York magazines. Her essays have been included in numerous anthologies. While still in her early 20s, Lily was co-editor of the groundbreaking gender studies anthology, DAGGER: On Butch Women (Cleis Press), a San Francisco LGBTQ bestseller. Lily is the author of four books: STRIP CITY: A Stripper’s Farewell Journey Across America; TRY; I Love A Man In Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles; and GRACE FOR AMATEURS: Field Notes on a Journey Back to Faith.
Kathe Izzo is a poet and conceptual artist whose preferred mediums are the ties that bind: childhood, motherhood, sex, love and community. Her poetry, memoirs and short fiction have been published in numerous journals and anthologies including the recent AROUSED, edited by Karen Finley/Thundersmouth Press, and well as the AMERICAN BIBLE OF OUTLAW POETRY, BLOOD AND TEARS/poems for Matthew Shephard, and THE BEST OF THE BEST LESBIAN EROTICA. Transcripts of some of her early performances have been included in the recent Jack Smith collection of writings, MEET ME AT THE BOTTOM OF THE POOL, published by Serpent’s Tail Press and edited by J. Hoberman, film critic for The Village Voice. She was the recipient of two consecutive Massachusetts Cultural Council awards for her Shadow Writing Project, a collaborative writing program for youth at risk, through which she published FLICKER, a series of teen writing journals and continues to work as a youth advocate.
Molly Larkey (they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer based in Los Angeles. In text, sculpture, painting, and ideas, they explore the productive frictions between word, image, and material. Grounded in a vision of utopian possibility, their work creates openings for radical shifts in perception that change how we see, think, and inhabit our physical selves. They have exhibited widely with museums and galleries internationally, including solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, amongst others. Their writing has been published with Los Angeles Review of Books, Contemporary Art Review Los Angeles (CARLA), and Haunt Journal of Art. In 2019, they co-founded People’s Pottery Project’s, whose mission is to empower formerly incarcerated women, trans and non-binary individuals through meaningful employment in a collective non-profit ceramic business.
Shelley Marlow is author of the novel Two Augusts In a Row In a Row (Publication Studio, 2015); and the art edition of Two Augusts In a Row In a Row with artwork by Marlow (Publication Studio, Hudson, and London Publication Studio, 2017). Marlow was awarded an Acker Award for avant garde excellence in writing. Marlow has read and exhibited extensively and their works appear in publications such as: LTTR (Lesbians To The Rescue), alLuPiNiT, an environmental magazine, Drunken Boat, Zingmagazine, The Brooklyn Rail, and the Saint Petersburg Review. Marlow wrote the lyrics to the musical, UnKnot Turandot, La Mama Theater, NY. Marlow presented a conceptual piece, International Witch Stories, in the Italian Pavilion with Oreste, for the 48th Venice Biennial.
Brooke Palmieri is a writer and artist working at the intersection of memory, history, and gender-bending alternate realities. His writing spans hundreds of years of queer and trans history; the magic, mystery and deep emotion of working in archives; and the past as a supernatural encounter. Brooke is trained as a historian and in 2017 completed a PhD in radical 17th century printing history. In 2018, Brooke founded CAMP BOOKS, an imprint and shop promoting access to queer and trans history through rare archival materials, cheap zines, and workshops/installations. Brooke has lectured and given workshops on queer and trans history widely, from institutions like Harvard, Smith, and NYU, to galleries like Kettle’s Yard, Chelsea Space, and Tate Modern, and most importantly, community spaces like Queercircle and the LGBTQ+ Community Center in London. His book Bargain Witch: Essays on Self-Initiation is about witchcraft, heresy, and working in an occult bookstore in London, and comes out in October 2025. Born and raised in Philadelphia, he spent fourteen years in London and currently lives in Los Angeles.
Mia Arias Tsang is a writer, freelance editor, and former biologist based in Queens, NYC. She has conducted extensive research in evolutionary virology and epigenetics, and has studied with writers such as Chloé Caldwell, Sarah Stillman, Michael Cunningham, and Susan Choi. She is an alum of the 2023 Tin House Summer Workshop. From 2018-2020, she served as the editor-in-chief of Broad Recognition, Yale’s intersectional feminist magazine. She serves as Copy Editor for Identity Theory Magazine and Program Coordinator for House of SpeakEasy, a literary nonprofit which works to expand access to books and book culture throughout New York City. Mia’s work has been published in Autostraddle, Copy, Half Mystic Press, VelvetPark Media, Bullshit Lit, and elsewhere. Less formal, more personal musings on media and sexuality can also be found on her blog, Overripe Peach.
Sarah Sophia Yanni is a Mexican-Egyptian writer, researcher + editor in Los Angeles ✧ She is the author of Hard Crush (Wonder Press, 2024) and ternura / tenderness (Bottlecap Press, 2019) In 2024, she was selected to represent Los Angeles at the Paris Poetic Games, with a delegation of seven other LA poets. She was a Finalist for BOMB Magazine’s Poetry Contest, Kelsey Street Press’ QTBIPOC Book Prize, the Hayden’s Ferry Review Inaugural Poetry Contest, the Letras Latinas Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, among others. A Best of the Net nominee, her work can be found in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Wildness, SPECTRA Poets, Mizna, and elsewhere. She is co-Founding Editor of Lola Goes By Tom, Reviews Editor at Full Stop, the former Managing Editor of TQR + former Poetry Editor of The Dry River.
This event made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation.