K.M. Soehnlein's Blog, page 2

Keith Haring, Political Subversive

I knew Keith Haring’s art before I fully understood there was an artist behind it. As a teenager, I came into New York from the suburbs to drink in bars that didn’t check ID, and I’d spot chalk drawings framed...

Writing about AIDS (Again) (Still) (At Last)

There have been nearly 20,000 AIDS deaths in San Francisco. Compare that to the estimated 3,000 who died in S.F.'s 1906 earthquake (or the 63 in 1989's Loma Prieta quake). Maybe that's why writer / organizer Kirk Read named this...

Adrienne Rich: "...the worst affliction / is not to know who you are or have been..."

When news of the death of the great lesbian poet Adrienne Rich arrived today in the form of a tweet, I was stunned. Stunned that this vital poet—still actively publishing in her 82nd year—could be gone. Stunned because Rich's 50...

Eleven Writers, One Story Cycle

Introducing Temporary Shelter: a collection of interwoven stories that I edited and wrote with ten writers in my seminar at the University of San Francisco's MFA in Writing Program. Buy the book on Lulu.com. If you're in San Francisco, come...

The Safeway

A video has been posted of a reading I did on Sept. 11, as part of an event called Buffet Flats, a salon that mixes queer performance with the San Francisco local food & urban farming movements. The salon was...

Reborn This Way

Robin and Ruby turns one today. It was exactly a year ago that my third novel was published in hardcover. What a great year it's been. I made a book trailer, did readings in SF, LA, NYC, Philadelphia, Boston and...

Jane Smiley, An Appreciation

I delivered these remarks to introduce the writer Jane Smiley at the Lone Mountain Reading Series, held at the University of San Francisco on March 2, 2011. I'm printing them here by request. All writers need models, not just the...

Quoted in the NY Times

Today's New York Times casts a spotlight on the literary scene in San Francisco, with nods to the legendary, the up-and-coming, and the hidden secrets. There's even a quote from yours truly in there, where I come off sounding like...

Letting Franny Speak: Taking Inspiration from Salinger

Everyone knows The Catcher in the Rye, but the J.D. Salinger book that's meant the most to me is Franny and Zooey, in part because it's literature's greatest brother-sister story. Classic fiction gives us plenty of brothers-in-arms; contemporary novels have...

A Knife in the Eye

RedRoom asked writers to blog about their favorite short story. If you've read Jesus' Son—Denis Johnson's collection that follows around a drug-addled drifter named Fuckhead—you probably know "Emergency." It's the one with the guy who walks into an emergency room...