Zyzzyva Issue 127 Launch Celebration
Join City Lights in celebrating another fine issue from San Francisco’s premier journal of letters.
Moderated by Oscar Villalon with appearances by James Cagney, Rose Himber Howse, and Hannah Kingsley-Ma
About the readers
James Cagney is poet and the author of Black Steel Magnolias In The Hour of Chaos Theory, (Nomadic Press, 2018), winner of the PEN Oakland 2019 Josephine Miles Award. His second collection, Martian: The Saint Of Loneliness, (Nomadic Press) was awarded the 2021 James Laughlin Award. James is a Cave Canem fellow who lives in Oakland.
Rose Himber Howse is a queer writer from North Carolina and a 2021-2023 Wallace Stegner fellow in fiction at Stanford University. She is a recent graduate of the MFA program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she served as fiction editor of The Greensboro Review. Rose’s fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Joyland, The Carolina Quarterly, Hobart, YES! Magazine, Sonora Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies at the Millay Colony, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Monson Arts.
Hannah Kingsley-Ma is a writer, radio producer, and former bookseller. Her writing has been published widely, including in The New Republic, The Believer, and BOMB Magazine.
Oscar Villalon is the managing editor at ZYZZYVA. His writing has been published in Stranger’s Guide, Freeman’s, The Believer, Literary Hub, and other publications. A former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle, he lives with his family in San Francisco.
About Zyzzyva
ZYZZYVA was founded in 1985 in San Francisco with the goal of publishing a superb literary journal shining a spotlight on West Coast poets, writers, and artists from a wide range of backgrounds, many of whom were otherwise overlooked by established publications, and providing them with a much needed platform. Since then, the organization has evolved: the journal is now a nationally distributed, widely acclaimed publication showcasing contributors from across the country and around the world, and ZYZZYVA’s impact extends far beyond the printed page. They host or participate in more than two dozen readings, panels, book festivals, and other events each year, and publish dozens of book reviews, author interviews, and original works of poetry and prose on our website annually. Zyzzyva also offer writing workshops, talk with college and graduate classes, and donate back issues to schools. They celebrate more than three decades of enriching contemporary literature and supporting literary communities in the Bay Area and beyond.
Reflecting the values that make San Francisco a cultural beacon, ZYZZYVA publishes a literary journal defined by its risk-taking and egalitarianism, and by its focus on inclusivity and excellence. With each issue, ZYZZYVA offers a meaningful consideration of the most urgent ethical concerns of our time, in part via themed issues on topics ranging from resistance, the border, and art to the environment, labor, and technology. They create substantial space for poetry, nonfiction, interviews, fiction, and art from an array of voices, resulting in a lively, thoughtful conversation in print, online, and in-person, across genres and generations, answering the need for a unique kind of engagement.
This event made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation