Bay Poets: Physicality of Language

Experience poetry by Brittany Newell, Malcolm Squire, Sloka Krishnan, Theadora Walsh, and Wren Farrell exploring embodiment, desire, intimacy, and the edges that lead to transformation.

Come early to enjoy KALW's downtown gallery exhibit of sculptures and paintings from Burning Man by Brendan Darby, Matt Elson, David Normal, and Jesse Pemberton.

Bay Poets is a weekly poetry segment that airs on KALW featuring Bay Area poets reading their own poems in their own voices. Listen here, and on 91.7 FM.

This event is donation supported, with no one turned away for lack of funds. Please become a KALW member today and receive your first drink on us at all 220 Montgomery events.

📍 220 Montgomery St., San Francisco, 2 blocks from BART/MUNI
🚪 Doors open at 6:00
🗣️ Poetry begins at 7:00
🍕 Free snacks
🍷 Refreshments for donation (and KALW members get their first one on the house)
🆓 The event is free with an RSVP — and you are welcome to donate what you want

Please note:

• The event space is just to the left of the main entrance to the Mills Building at 220 Montgomery Street
• We recommend taking BART/MUNI, exiting at Montgomery, and walking two blocks north
• Ride-shares can drop off and pick up directly in front of the venue
• If you drive, there are several garages within two blocks of the event location

BRITTANY NEWELL

Brittany Newell (https://rattywrites.com/oola/) is a writer and performer living in San Francisco.

Her debut novel Oola was published in 2017 at the age of 21 by Henry Holt and HarperCollins. It was translated into German by btb, a division of Random House, in January 2020 and published as Ein Sommer in Big Sur. Her second novel SOFT CORE will be published by FSG (US) and HarperCollins (UK) in February 2025. From 2017-18 she wrote a regular column on gender and sexuality for Dazed Digital. You can find her written work in Granta, N+1, Joyland, The New York Times and Playgirl. In 2021 she was a recipient of the San Francisco Arts Commission's Individual Artist grant for artists serving under-represented communities. In addition to writing, she has worked as a professional dominatrix since 2018. She and her wife Silk Worm run a monthly drag and dance party called Angels at Aunt Charlie's Lounge, one of San Francisco's oldest queer bars. You can find her on Instagram at @frottage_industry.

MALCOLM SQUIRE

Malcolm Squire is a multimedia artist specializing in film photography and creative writing. Born and raised in Ames, Iowa, Malcolm has lived and worked in the Bay Area for the past nine years. Across his time spent in the Midwest and in California, Malcolm has been creating through film photography and poetry for over 13 years. Malcolm's photography explores themes of nudity, materiality, nature, identity, intimate friendship and self-portraiture, as a means of engaging with his vulnerabilities. Malcolm’s poetry depicts visceral observations of which he takes note, as a method of searching for deeper meaning through the avenue of his beautiful yet often mundane lived experience.

SLOKA KRISHNAN

Sloka Krishnan is a playwright-lyricist interested in magic, extravagance, ritual, camp, and the disavowal of moral purity and coherent identity. His writing has been described as subversive, multilayered, and eviscerating (by a boy he once slept with) and as darkly surreal comedy (by a legitimate online publication). Now based in San Francisco, he is a 2024-2025 Resident Playwright with Playwrights Foundation. He was previously a 2020 recipient of an Artist Project Grant from the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, a 2017-2018 Horizon Theatre Playwright Apprentice, and a 2017 Lambda Literary Fellow in Playwriting. His work has been developed and performed by Cutting Ball Theatre (San Francisco); Happy Accident Theatre, Horizon Theatre Company, Out Front Theatre, and Working Title Playwrights (Atlanta); Forum Theatre and the Rainbow Theatre Project (DC).

THEADORA WALSH

Theadora Walsh is a writer who makes essays, journalism, poetry, and moving texts with an interest in considering the tension between the physicality of language and its documentation. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Gulf Coast, SFMOMA’s Open Space, Apogee, Vol 1 Brooklyn, and Unbag. Criticism has appeared in Artforum, KQED arts, Art Papers, BOMB, Electronic Book Review, Afterimage, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from Brown University where her thesis won the 2019 Francis-Mason Harris '26 Prize for book length manuscript. Recently, she ran a curatorial project in San Francisco called In Concert.

WREN FARRELL

Wren Farrell is a poet, journalist, and audio producer living in San Francisco. Originally from San Diego, he moved to the Bay Area in 2018, where he got his start in radio at KPFA. He graduated from KALW’s Audio Academy in 2021 and then went on to work for a number of podcasts as an associate producer. In 2023 he joined the inaugural class of UC Berkeley’s California Local News Fellowship, which brought him back to KALW as a full-time emergency and disaster preparedness reporter.

Host or Publisher KALW Public Media