Reading at a Distance: Mary & Vincent
Reading at a Distance: Mary O’Brien & Vincent Chu
Thursday, May 21, 7PM PST.
This event will be live streaming on Zoom and Facebook Live.
We’ve partnered with Booksmith to bring you a series of distanced literary readings with Headlands Artists, curated by Emily Wolahan (AFF ’16–’19). Join Mary O’Brien (AFF ’17–’20) and Vincent Chu (AFF ’20) on Thursday, May 21 at 7PM PST. You can join the event on Zoom, where you will have an opportunity to ask questions, or view the event on Booksmith’s Facebook Live.
About the writers:
Mary O’Brien works as an environmental artist and writes essays that reflect the histories of the lands on which she works. These are stories about public domain lands that take place over several years, and where the events documented, and the places they occur, become indistinguishable from each other. Rooted in the research she develops as an environmental artist, her essays track both historic and current day events, and bridge science, art, and culture. Mapping through geologic time and human history, and with focus on the connectedness of land, water, and human pathways, Mary’s writing is intended to become a catalyst for positive ecological thinking.
O’Brien’s essays have been published in The Solutions Journal, Stanford University’s Millennium Alliance for Humanity and the Biosphere Journal and WEAD Online. Her installation work archived at the Nevada Museum of Art’s Center for Art + Environment. and is featured in the upcoming 2021 Environmental Art Calendar.
Vincent Chu is a Bay Area writer and author of the debut story collection Like a Champion (7.13 Books). His fiction has appeared in STILL Magazine, Fjords Review, Pithead Chapel, PANK Magazine, East Bay Review, The Collapsar, Stockholm Review and elsewhere. He is a Headlands Center for the Arts Affiliate Artist, 2019 Hambidge Center Fellow and member of The Writers Grotto. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. He earned his Bachelor of Arts from UCLA. Vincent lives in San Francisco and can be found online at @herrchu. He is working on his first novel.
Booksmith is an an off-center general interest independent bookstore and legacy business, a flagship of San Francisco’s Haight Street since 1976. Booksmith is the force behind The Bindery, a multi-purpose events parlor established in 2017 that features The Arcana Project: a deep, highly inclusive array of books—fiction and nonfiction, from all over the world—presented in chronological order by the date they were written. Booksmith also organizes Berkeley Arts & Letters, an East Bay speaker series since 2009 that features exceptional authors with new books. Between the three programs, Booksmith produces over 250 events per year.
