October 7

Unsung Opera Panel at CHSA's "Branching Out the Banyan Tree" Conference
With Nancy Hom and Bob Hsiang

As part of the Chinese Historical Society of America's "Branching out the Banyan Tree" Conference, co-hosted by San Francisco State University's Asian American Studies Department, Kearny Street Workshop presents a panel on the Unsung Opera project.

Unsung Opera panelists are Nancy Hom, Genny Lim, and Bob Hsiang

Date: Friday, October 7, 2005

Time: 1:45 - 3PM

Location: Radisson Miyako Hotel, 1625 Post Street, SF

Registration required. "Branching out the Banyan Tree: Chinese American Studies Conference" runs October 6 -9, 2005 in San Francisco. For more information or to register, please click here, or contact Leonard Shek at CHSA at 415-391-1188, ext. 107, or email conference2005@chsa.org.

Conference banner image above courtesy of Chinese Historical Society of America.

October 7

Poetry Reading with Truong Tran's writing workshop

Join Kearny Street Workshop for an evening of poetry from Truong Tran's writing workshop, which ran for 8 weeks in July - September 2005. Featuring Jessica Tan, Arturo D. Ocampo, Stanford Chen, Eleanore Fernandez, Jenny Kwak, Nancy Hom, David Lu, and Lincoln Wheeler.

Light refreshments will be available.

Date: Friday, October 7, 2005

Time: 7 -9PM

Location: 180 Capp Street, @17th Street (San Francisco)

Cost: $5 suggested donation

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

STANFORD CHEN works at UCSF as a researcher.  He is always trying to devote his free time to writing and visual arts, but he is usually distracted.

NANCY HOM, former director of Kearny Street Workshop, is an artist, writer, organizer, and arts consultant. Widely known for her silkscreen artwork, she has devoted her career to the non-profit sector, creating images for numerous political, social, and community events. She is also a published writer and children’s book illustrator. Her writing has been published in Mixed Blessings: New Art in a Multicultural America (Pantheon Books 1990), Writings From the Long Table  (Kearny Street Workshop 1999, 2000), Asian Americans: The Movement and The Moment (UCLA 2001), So Luminous the Wildflowers: an Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach 2003) and The Other Side of the Postcard (Citylights Foundation, 2005). She continues to enjoy Kearny Street Workshop’s writing clesses.

ELEANORE FERNANDEZ is semi-native of San Francisco, a daughter of a Naval Officer who resided on various military bases in Guam, Germany, the Philippines, the Gulf Coast of Florida and the seacoast of Virginia before her family finally settled in SF on what was formerly Naval Base, Treasure Island.  She attended Everett Middle School in SF’s Mission district, Lowell High School in the Sunset district, and graduated summa cum laude with a Bachelor’s in English Literature from Notre Dame de namur University in Belmont, CA.  One thing she learned early on, while road tripping around the country with her family (in their 70’s tri-colored blue van, no less), is that change is the only constant thing.  As a young girl, Eleanore would listen to her Lola, mother or father’s stories of growing -up, eating, laughing, dancing, crying, enjoying, cooking, farming, fishing, swimming, hustling, “good-fun-loving” and basically, living “da Barrio” life in the Philippines.  Those stories inspire her to this day and she hopes learning the homemade art of weaving a good story taught to her by her “familia” shines through in her pieces. Eleanore currently lives in SF despite short runs as a “Marketing Slave” to numerous tech ventures in the late 90’s through early 2001. Presently, she poses as a mild-mannered city civil service worker for a SF-city run agency.

In 1980, ARTURO OCAMPO, a civil engineer in Manila, Philippines, tried the religious life including monastic in a Trappist community in Guimaras province. The monastery was founded in 1972 by five American monks. Having learned foundations, he went solitary in the tradition of Christian hermits. With little success. Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk in India invited him to his ashram. After six months, Fr. Bede sent him to the Camaldoli hermitage in Big Sur, California to balance Indian samadhi with western Night. From Big Sur, he went back to the monks of Guimaras. Four ;,years later in '91, having thank the monks, he set out again to_go solo. '02, he migrated to the U.S.. A career carpenter he works remodeling houses.

JESSICA TAN spent much of her teens and twenties struggling, striving and flying to "be creative" on her terms.   She hopes to spend the rest of her thirties learning some formal 'art forms' but, of course, continuing to be creative- on her terms.

LINCOLN WHEELER is 17 years old and has been writing for about six monthes, his favorite poet is Langston Hughes. He plays lacrosse throughout the year. I am a die hard Red Sox fan.

October 23

Face Forward Masquerade Gala

A benefit for Kearny Street Workshop and space180, a new Asian American arts
venue in San Francisco.

Featuring:

comedian KEVIN SHEA (of "Kims of Comedy")

and highly proclaimed spoken word artist SHAILJA PATEL

Silent Auction Featured Items Include:

Custom Masks by artists Marilyn Yu and Sharline Chiang, and work from Internationally known artist Binh Danh

Come in costume for cocktails and cuisine!

Date: Sunday, October 23rd, 2005

Time: 6-9PM

Location: The New Delhi Restaurant in Union Square (San Francisco)

Cost: $75 general; $60 ksw members

Seating is limited. Email: ly@kearnystreet.org for ticket sales info, or purchase your tickets now via paypal:

For KSW members, please click here to purchase your ticket(s) ($60 each):

For non-members, please click here to purchase your ticket(s) ($75 each):

about the artists

Kenyan Indian poet Shailja Patel has appeared at the Lincoln Center, New York and venues across the US and UK. Her work has been broadcast on NPR, KQED, Pacifica Radio, and the BBC (UK). Published in numerous journals and anthologies, her awards include an Outwrite Poetry Prize and a Voices Of Our Nations Scholarship. Winner of national and Bay Area slam championships, Shailja was Featured Literary Artist for APAture 2004, the nation's largest showcase of emerging young Asian Pacific artists. Her current work-in-progress, a one-woman spoken word show titled Migritude, has already attracted considerable attention, and was the highlighted theatre presentation for Artwallah 2005. visit shailja at shailja.com.

Kevin Shea is a well-known comedian, recently based in the San Francisco Bay Area but now residing in Los Angeles, who has performed around the country. Originally born in Seoul, Korea, Kevin was adopted into the United States by a nice White Irish family. Even at age seven, Kevin realized he was a bit different than the rest of the family. He knew that there was no way he could be that sensitive to light, especially in the dark.

Kevin grew up outside of Philadelphia and went to college near Pittsburgh. After college and two "real" jobs later, he decided to try and hit the
comedy scene in San Francisco. In his short career as a comic, he has become one of the fastest rising comics in the Bay Area. With his thought provoking jokes about his family life and social behavior, he has been able to perform with San Francisco favorites such as, Robert Hawkins, Tom Rhodes, and Arj Barker. He most recently toured as part of the Kims of Comedy along with Steve Bryne, Bobby Lee, and Dr. Ken.