Living Room: Reading Series & Salon (2023)

Join us in the living room at Syzygy SF on the Fourth Friday of each month for intimate performances of writing, ideas, and conversation on a central theme.

Based in the Mission district of San Francisco, each 90 minute event features two sets of writers, 15 minute intermission of open discussion about a question that affects Bay Area residents or the world at-large, and some music. Every quarter, we support a community partner who uplifts the community that we spotlight to help raise awareness and solicit donations of funds or time for their cause.

Join us on May 26 for the "Travel" show featuring:

Jack Boulware

Zakiyyah G.E. Capehart

Mark Flores

Julian Mithra

You can see previous themes and get more information about the shows at https://thelivingroomsf.com.

Some upcoming themes include: Hot, Ekphrastic, Play, & Plastic.

We are proudly a member of Intersection for the Arts. Intersection for the Arts is a historic arts nonprofit that provides people working in arts and culture with fiscal sponsorship and resources to grow.

The Living Room is but one part of a larger vision to develop an incubator and community-building program for writers with the intent to make being a full-time writer accessible to anyone and not a privilege. *Said another way,* the idea is to dismantle the idea of the full-time writer as a solitary and privileged individual with graduate education and a professorship to sustain their writing. Instead, a full-time writer is a community-uplifting, politically-engaged, financially supported culture bearer who crafts their work, publishes & performs it, is a part of contributing their creative & technical skills to build communities connected to their own passions while also being able to afford housing, dining, and other bills as well as radical self-care like massages and travel. The Living Room serves to help writers develop the necessary skills and to be a conduit for connecting writers into established communities through partnerships and its own programming in scholarship-funded workshops (education), reading series & salons (community & political advocacy), youth mentoring and support through creative writing activities (youth outreach), elder support and capturing of stories from seniors in their own voices while also helping to combat isolation with creativity (senior outreach), support in building all of these writers' careers through a community press and advising for finding and applying to grants and residencies (publishing and advocacy), and getting writers into non-traditional spaces such as business lunch hours (service-learning & corporate accountability). The aim is to prioritize serving BIPOC, formerly incarcerated, survivors of trauma experienced through military service, houselessness, or sexual assault, and neurodivergent writers, but it is a space to build up all.

Host or Publisher The Living Room