Babylon Salon is a quarterly reading & performance series based in San Francisco.
Since 2007, we've featured award-winning authors (including the Booker Prize, the National Book Award, the Philip K. Award and more) and showcased exciting early-career writers and performers.
Laurie Ann Doyle is the author of World Gone Missing, winner of the Nautilus Book Award in fiction, and praised by NY Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki for delivering “astute portrayals of people desiring connection, hope, and renewal.” Laurie’s stories and essays appear in Los Angeles Review, The Millions The Rumpus, Under the Sun, and many other publications. She teaches at The Writers Grotto and UC Berkeley Extension, where she is an honored instructor. www.laurieanndoyle.com
Lauren C. Johnson attributes her upbringing in Florida, America’s weirdest state, to her interest in the ecological and surreal. Her writing has appeared in The Rumpus, Orion Magazine online, and others. She is the interviews editor for The Racket Journal and is a member of The Ruby, a Bay Area collective for women and non-binary artists and creatives. She earned her MFA in creative writing at American University and lives in San Francisco, where she is a co-host of Babylon Salon, a quarterly Bay Area reading series, and Club Chicxulub, a sci-fi and fantasy performance series. Her debut novel, The West Façade, is forthcoming from Santa Fe Writers Project (SFWP) in 2026. www.laurencjo.com
Dominic Lim’s debut, All the Right Notes, was named a best book of 2023 by over fifteen publications, including USA Today, Goodreads, Library Journal, and Entertainment Weekly. His follow-up, Karaoke Queen, is a 2024 Amazon Editor’s Pick. Dominic is a member of the Writers Grotto and co-hosts the long-running Babylon Salon reading series in San Francisco. He holds a Master of Music from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, is an alum of Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, and is a proud Actors’ Equity Association member. He lives in Oakland with his loving husband, Peter, and their whiny cat, Phoebe. www.dominiclim.com
Ryan Sloan is a novelist and essayist. He teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley. A graduate of New York University’s fiction MFA program, his work is published or forthcoming in LA Weekly, Joyland Magazine, Opium Magazine, The Modern Spectator and Painted Bride Quarterly, among other publications. Conferences and residencies include a 2025 & 2023 Dorland Mountain Arts Residency, 2024 Vermont Studio Center Residency, 2022 Writing by Writers Tomales Bay Workshop, 2021 Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, 2021 Tin House Winter Workshop, 2019 Lit Camp Writers’ Conference and the 2019 Arctic Circle Residency on the Summer Solstice Expedition. He lives in Oakland. www.rrsloan.com
Maury Zeff is a San Francisco-based playwright and fiction writer whose work has been performed around the US and in Europe, and published in American Fiction, Southern California Review, bosque, and elsewhere. He has received playwriting commissions and fellowships from PlayGround, the SF Olympians, and the San Francisco Writers Grotto, where he works and teaches. He won the 2021 Clark-Gross Novel Award, was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Fiction Prize, and was a finalist for the 2024 Ink Slinger Playwriting Award, 2022 Acacia Fiction Prize and 2022 Tobias Wolff Fiction Prize. His play Dada Teen Musical: The Play was produced by Central Works in 2025. He earned an MFA in Novel Writing from the University of San Francisco. Maury won third place in the 2024 O. Henry World Championship Pun-off and is a nationally-rated Scrabble player