Featured Reader:

           Michelle Richmond                              

 Michelle Richmond is the author of the San Francisco Chronicle bestseller The Year of Fog, which is currently in development with Newmarket Films; the novel Dream of the Blue Room; and the award-winning story collection The Girl in the Fall-Away Dress. Her third novel, No One You Know, will be published in July. A native of Mobile, Alabama, she followed a native San Franciscan to the West Coast (by way of Arkansas, Miami, and New York City) nine years ago, and she doesn't plan to leave. Ever. Having been raised Southern Baptist, she experiences frequent bouts of paralyzing guilt and self-loathing, and she she has discovered that there is very little she won't do for a really special pair of shoes.

Opium Magazine editor Skiles Hornig brought in Lisa K. Buchanan, a finalist in their 500 word memoir contest. Lisa K. Buchanan's work has appeared in various literary magazines. Her audio essay about being married to - and divorced from - herself won an award from The Missouri Review. Despite spending innumerable hours alone in a room with her computer, she considers herself qualified to dispense social advice. In her essay, Tips for the Busy Conversationalist (Florida Review/ Spring 2008), she offers a strategy by which the entire complex human organism of another person can be sized up in just sixty seconds. She also warns that a sense of humor is not necessary for effective social intercourse.

 Julie Bifano finished her MFA in 2007.                      Eileen Reynolds is a San     She's drawn to the bizarre: circus freaks,                           Francisco writer who had a story sex pots, rogues. She loves champagne                             published somewhere and was  and carbombs. She lives by one motto:                              nominated for something, and if LIVE THE DREAM. Always hanging by her                            you want more details, you have to coattails or a sliver of moon, she flies                                 ask nicely, because she prefers through the night, stealing other people's                           juicy fiction over personal         lives for her stories.                                                          anecdotes.

     Herb Sandhu is a matriotic Texan who was born at a        very young age. He is currently working on his first novel in        the USF MFA program, where he co-edits the Segment zine        and liberates characters and situations from any published        work he can get his hands on - he's a hip-hop Robin Hood       like that. He is naive enough to believe that art can                    affect policy and will remain an avowed foe of the status quo      until the day he sells out.

 Michelle Richmond and host Tim Rien

Hosts Lindsay Holland (above) and Maury Zeff (right)