Stir: a seasonal reading series at Cafe Suspiro
STIR CELEBRATES A YEAR OF SEASONAL READINGS
SOUTH OF MARKET ON JULY 2
WHAT? Stir: Seasonal Readings South of Market returns for Foggy Season — Our One-Year
Anniversary
WHERE? Cafe Suspiro and Arc Gallery, 1246 Folsom Street, San Francisco CA 94102
WHEN? 6–8 p.m., July 2
COST? Free / donations welcome
STIR: Seasonal Readings South of Market celebrates a year of FREE literary readings on July 2 at Cafe Suspiro and Arc Gallery at 1246 Folsom Street in San Francisco.
For our one-year anniversary reading (and our second Foggy Season event), we’re thrilled to present live readings and performance by a stellar lineup of Bay Area talent that spans generations, cultures, genres and styles, featuring memoirist and short fiction artist Swetha Amit, speculative literature talent Eboni J. Dunbar, multi-award-winning novelist and fantasist Lisa Goldstein, and performance artist, comedy writer and dramaturg Edna Mira Raia.
STIR is hosted by T.K. Rex (The Wildcraft Drones, Stelliform Press, 2026), and Josh Wilson (editor, The Fabulist Magazine).
Our FREE July 2 reading will also include a panel discussion and audience Q&A about “foggy season” and storytelling as way-finding and truth-telling in a time of dog whistles, disinformation, the fog of war, and mass-media spin. Our readers will discuss how their working creative writing, humor, fantasy and speculative fiction, and performance offers both escape and clarity about the world we live in.
On July 2, stop by Cafe Suspiro from 5-6 p.m. for coffee and vibes, and then join the hosts and authors at Arc Gallery next door from 6pm to 8pm for an evening of local literary adventure in the thriving SoMaWest/Folsom Corridor neighborhood — a longtime home to after-hours art, literary happenings, music and performance. STIR now joins SoMa Nights, new cafes and restaurants, and a resurgent arts and nightlife scene as part of SoMa West's post-pandemic flowering.
STIR is a seasonal event, with four readings per year: Foggy Season, Fire Season, Rainy Season and Flower
Season.
JULY 2 ‘FOGGY SEASON’ LINEUP AND BIOS:
Swetha Amit holds an MFA from the University of San Francisco and is an active member of the Writers Grotto, where
she chairs the Literary Salon series, which takes place every 3rd Friday of the month. She is a Rooted and Written Fellow, and has authored a memoir and three chapbooks. Her stories have appeared in Bending Genres, Ghost Parachute, McNeese Boudin, Gone Lawn, and others. Her works have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best SmallFiction. https://swethaamit.com/
Eboni J. Dunbar lives in Northern California with her wife. She received her BA from Macalester College in English and her MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College. Her work can be found in Stellium Literary Magazine, FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction, Drabblecast, Anathema: Spec from the Margins, Nightlight Podcast and Beneath
Ceaseless Skies. Her novella, Stone and Steel, is out from Neon Hemlock. You can find her on instagram @ebonijdunbar
Lisa Goldstein has written fourteen novels, and a fifteenth novel, Ivory Apples, is forthcoming from Tachyon Press. Her novels include The Red Magician, which won the American Book Award for Best Paperback, and The Uncertain Places which won a Mythopoeic Award. She has also won the Sidewise Award for her short story "Paradise Is A Walled Garden." Her stories have appeared in Ms. Magazine, Asimov's Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction among other places. Many of her novels and short stories have also been finalists for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards. She lives with her husband and their irrepressible Labrador retriever Bonnie in Oakland, California.
https://www.brazenhussies.net/Goldstein/
Edna Mira Raia is a professional comedy writer, director, producer and dramaturg. She is a trained clown, mime, sketch comic and improviser. Edna is locally known for being an award-winning character actor and has internationally toured with comedic plays, such as the raunchy Evangelist revival,“BrotherLove's Goodtime Gospel Hr” and her multi-character solo show, “Altars for my Alters.” https://www.potatoesmashed.com/
HOSTS:
T. K. Rex is a science fiction and fantasy author who first moved to San Francisco for art school in 2002,whose stories can be read in more than forty publications, including Asimov's Science Fiction, Gizmodo, and Strange Horizons. Their debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones, is coming in 2026 from Stelliform Press. They’re an alumni of the Clarion writers workshop, a podcast co-host at the Writers Grotto, and the bookshelf
curator at Cafe Suspiro. T. K.'s stories, socials, and newsletter can be found at tkrex.wtf.
Josh Wilson is an editor, journalist and writer in San Francisco, and publisher of The Fabulist Magazine, a home to fantastical fiction and art in print and digital editions. Stories published in The Fabulist have been finalists for the Pushcart Prize and the Shirley Jackson Awards. He is a recipient of the Society for Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award, and founder of the 501(c)3 organization Independent Arts & Media. https://fabulistmagazine.com/