++Small Press Distribution Hosts Holiday Open House++

**Gardening & Writing To Be Featured at December 4th Event**



SPD warehouse, 1341 7th St. (off Gilman), Berkeley, Noon to 4pm



Free & Open to the Public



Join hundreds of book lovers and gardeners at the only non-profit literary book distributor and:



++SHOP amid more than 12,000 independently published titles, on sale at a 10-50% discount!



++CONSUME free food & drink from Bay Area culinary outlets, and



++ENJOY a reading of literary works and gardening ideas (program begins at 2 PM):



Cole Swensen, Guest of Honor

The author of nine books of poetry, Cole Swensen's most recent title, GOEST, from Alice James Books, is currently a finalist for the National Book Award. She also translates contemporary French poetry, prose, and art criticism.



Richard Harris

The Manager of Water Conservation of East Bay Mud Utility District will talk about the popular new gardening book PLANTS AND LANDSCAPES FOR SUMMER-DRY CLIMATES (of the San Francisco Bay Region). This beautifully photographed 320-page book features more than 650 native Californian and Mediterranean plants suited to the climate and microclimates of the Bay Area. 



Jacques Depelchin reading Ayi Kwei Armah

Jacques Depelchin will be reading from the fiction of Ayi Kwei Armah, Ghanaian novelist and poet whose first novel, THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN, 1968, is considered a modern African classic.  He lives in Popenguine, Senegal where he is a member of the Dakar Writers' Workgroup SESH.  Jacques Depelchin, a current visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, is the author of From the Congo Free State to Zaire (1885-1974).



Robert Glück

Robert Glück is the author of nine books of poetry and fiction, including the two novels, MARGERY KEMPE and JACK THE MODERNIST and a new book of stories, DENNY SMITH.  He teaches at San Francisco State.  For some years he wrote a garden column under the name Mr. Plantier for the SAN DIEGO READER, and he wrote about gardens and decorative arts for METROPOLITAN HOME and NEST.



Laynie Browne

Laynie Browne's fourth and fifth collections of poetry are both forthcoming in 2005.  Her previous works are POLLEN MEMORY (Tender Buttons 2003), THE AGENCY OF WIND (Avec 1999), REBECCA LETTERS (1997), and the novel ACTS OF LEVITATION (2002 Spuyten Duyvil).  Currently she is teaching at Mills College.



www.spdbooks.org



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WHAT:	POETRY and its ARTS: Bay Area interactions 1954-2004

WHEN:	Exhibit opening:  Saturday December 11, 2004 (noon to 4:30 pm)

		Closing date:  Saturday April 16, 2005

		Galleries open to the public Wed.-Sat., noon to 4:30 pm

WHERE:	@ California Historical Society, 678 Mission St. (4 doors

east of 3rd St., downtown San Francisco, near Montgomery BART), 415-357-1848

CONTACT: The Poetry Center, telephone: 415-338-2227, email: poetry@sfsu.edu



The exhibit POETRY and its ARTS: Bay Area interactions 1954-2004 will open to the public on Saturday December 11, 2004, and will occupy the galleries at California Historical Society in downtown San Francisco's museum district for 17 weeks, until April 16, 2005.  More than 100 original works --many never publicly exhibited-- by over 80 individuals will be on display.  This first-of-its-kind exhibit represents a collaboration between the Poetry Center at San Francisco State University, currently observing its 50th anniversary with poetry programs throughout the city, and the California Historical Society.  The exhibit offers a multi-faceted window onto the rich interactions that have taken place over the past half-century, centered around San Francisco's celebrated poetry community.