Since we’ve returned to in-person meetings after the pandemic, Noisebridge Hackerspace has provided us a space to hold our weekly meetings, for free.
Noisebridge is a unique space, allowing room for artists, makers, coders, and creatives of all kinds to experiment with their projects. A membership-based organization, it survives based on financial contributions of its paying members, while allowing groups like ours to meet on its premises without any charge.
Due to a series of financial setbacks (including the need to upgrade its infrastructure to code), this organization finds itself in a precarious situation. They lost access to some of the funds they were counting on to make rent. While they have a path toward financial solvency (in part, by growing their membership base), they are asking for our help to fundraise as a stop-gap measure.
For us writers, Noisebridge has been an incredibly welcoming home. While we remain committed to the SFWW being free for all participants, think about what you’d spend on a writing class or working with a coach. Ask yourself, isn’t it worth a few dollars a month to have a place like Noisebridge that I can come to?
This Saturday, we hope to see many of you at our Lit Crawl event on October 25, 2025. Come support the workshop and our amazing writers, and bring your friends!
Our theme this year is “We’ve Got Notes for You!” Five of our current and former regulars will read their work and tell us how workshop feedback has informed their revision process. Then, we’ll offer you all a chance to provide a live critique on a piece of writing.
As many of you know, Lit Crawl is the final night of San Francisco’s annual Litquake festival. Beginning October 9, Litquake is bringing a slew of amazing international and local authors for signings, readings, panels, and parties. Then, it all ends with a literary pub crawl (aka Lit Crawl) through the Mission District. Our event is scheduled for Phase 2 of 3.
We will see you on: October 25, 2025 at 6:30 pm Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street
Our featured readers:
Beverly Parayno is from East San Jose. Her debut story collection WILDFLOWERS (PAWA Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Fiction, winner of a 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal and 2024 National Indie Excellence Award in AAPI Fiction. She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Jo Beckett-King is the author of the Bea Bellerose mysteries published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Her debut middle-grade novel, The House of Found Objects, was published in July 2025, and a sequel is scheduled for release in summer 2026. In addition to her middle-grade fiction, she writes for adults; her work has been listed for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Bridport Prize in the UK.
Peng Ngin left his native Malaysia to attend Vassar College. He moved to the Bay Area for graduate school at UC Berkeley, where he took his first creative writing classes. Peng returned to his lifelong interest in writing and literature during the pandemic. He lives in San Francisco and works as an investment manager.
Tim Sullivan is a San Francisco–based educator and theatre director whose fiction explores reinvention, queer life, class, and labor. He’s writing a debut novel inspired by his time as a toll collector on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Tony Tepper: 1954 Born, lovechild of Audrey Hepburn and Sherlock Holmes, left on doorstep of Tingpangoli Monastery in the Pamir Mountains. 1963 Learns to eat oatmeal. 1995 Listens to Bob and Ray while working for Dickensian firm, accidentally swallows butterfly. 2012 Falls in love with language, but love is unrequited. 2023 Dreams of beauty in eye of storm.
Dear San Francisco Writers Workshop community, we hope to see many of you at our Lit Crawl event on October 25, 2025. Our theme this year is “We’ve Got Notes for You!” Five of our current and former regulars will read their work and tell us how workshop feedback has informed their revision process. Then, we’ll offer you all a chance to provide a live critique on a piece of writing!
As many of you know, Lit Crawl is the final night of San Francisco’s annual Litquake festival. Beginning October 9, Litquake is bringing a slew of amazing international and local authors for signings, readings, panels, and parties. Then, it all ends with a literary pub crawl (aka Lit Crawl) through the Mission District. Our event is scheduled for Phase 2 of 3.
We will see you on: October 25, 2025 at 6:30 pm Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street
Our featured readers:
Beverly Parayno is from East San Jose. Her debut story collection WILDFLOWERS (PAWA Press, 2023) was shortlisted for the 43rd Annual Northern California Book Award in Fiction, winner of a 2024 IPPY Bronze Medal and 2024 National Indie Excellence Award in AAPI Fiction. She lives in the Sierra Nevada foothills.
Jo Beckett-King is the author of the Bea Bellerose mysteries published by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Her debut middle-grade novel, The House of Found Objects, was published in July 2025, and a sequel is scheduled for release in summer 2026. In addition to her middle-grade fiction, she writes for adults; her work has been listed for the Bath Children’s Novel Award, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Bridport Prize in the UK.
Peng Ngin left his native Malaysia to attend Vassar College. He moved to the Bay Area for graduate school at UC Berkeley, where he took his first creative writing classes. Peng returned to his lifelong interest in writing and literature during the pandemic. He lives in San Francisco and works as an investment manager.
Tim Sullivan is a San Francisco–based educator and theatre director whose fiction explores reinvention, queer life, class, and labor. He’s writing a debut novel inspired by his time as a toll collector on the Massachusetts Turnpike.
Tony Tepper: 1954 Born, lovechild of Audrey Hepburn and Sherlock Holmes, left on doorstep of Tingpangoli Monastery in the Pamir Mountains. 1963 Learns to eat oatmeal. 1995 Listens to Bob and Ray while working for Dickensian firm, accidentally swallows butterfly. 2012 Falls in love with language, but love is unrequited. 2023 Dreams of beauty in eye of storm.
Coming up this Friday night, June 6, 2025, at 7 pm. Join us in supporting NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
Our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years, as well as one of the current moderators, Monya Baker, and several of our stellar regulars. (Full list of bios is below.)
We will have a book raffle, a game of SFWW bingo, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. Bring your friends and help us spread the word!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
Mark your calendars for 7 pm on June 6, 2025, at NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
San Francisco Writers Workshop is hosting our annual benefit to support NOISEBRIDGE, the venue that has been generously providing us with a space to meet for the past three years. A legendary anarchist hackerspace in the San Francisco’s Mission district, NOISEBRIDGE doesn’t charge writers to gather every Tuesday night, but the organization certainly has a large rent bill to pay. This is our chance to help ensure their and our own future!
We’re delighted that this year our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years. Tamim will be presenting his new book, TRUTHER NARRATIVES. Alongside Tamim, we’re incredibly proud to introduce a few of our current regulars. We will have a book raffle, a storytelling game, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
Mark your calendars for 7 pm on June 6, 2025, at NOISEBRIDGE, 272 Capp Street!
San Francisco Writers Workshop is hosting our annual benefit to support NOISEBRIDGE, the venue that has been generously providing us with a space to meet for the past three years. A legendary anarchist hackerspace in the San Francisco’s Mission district, NOISEBRIDGE doesn’t charge writers to gather every Tuesday night, but the organization certainly has a large rent bill to pay. This is our chance to help ensure their and our own future!
We’re delighted that this year our list of featured readers includes Tamim Ansary, who moderated our workshop for 22 years. Tamim will be presenting his new book, TRUTHER NARRATIVES. Alongside Tamim, we’re incredibly proud to introduce a few of our current regulars. We will have a book raffle, a storytelling game, food, and an opportunity to tour Noisebridge. PLEASE HELP US SPREAD THE WORD!
Boasting a woodworking space, electronics, sewing, and music rooms, 3D printing and laser cutting equipment, and meetups on everything from philosophy and writing to game design, math, physics, and AI, NOISEBRIDGE is a bustling community. They strive for excellence among their membership as well as consensus on all of their decisions. They are a “do-ocracy,” encouraging members to get engaged on all aspects of running a collaborative space. None of this is easy to achieve, and it’s been inspiring to see this community work through issues that arise.
Tamim Ansary was born in Kabul, Afghanistan, and came to the United States as a junior in high school. His new book, Truther Narratives, looks at conspiracy theory as a special case of a larger issue: the role that narrative plays in shaping social reality. Ansary is the author of The Invention of Yesterday that looks at world history as the story of ever-increasing human interconnectedness, Destiny Disrupted, a history of the world through Islamic eyes, Games without Rules, a history of Afghanistan from an insider’s point of view, West of Kabul, East of New York, a literary memoir about straddling a cultural fault line in the world (Islam and the West), The Widow’s Husband, a historical novel set against the background of the First Anglo-Afghan war, and some 30 nonfiction books for children. In Road Trips, he tells the story of morphing from an Afghan into an American just as the sixties were giving way to the seventies. Ansary’s work has won the Northern California Book Award for nonfiction and was selected as a One City One Book pick by both San Francisco and Waco, Texas. In 2001, an email he sent to 20 friends reputedly became the first viral phenomenon of the Internet Age, reaching tens of millions around the world within days. Ansary directed the San Francisco Writers Workshop for 22 years.
Monya Baker spent close to a decade as a senior editor with Nature magazine. Her reported articles have appeared in the Economist, New Scientist, Slate, Wired, and elsewhere. She has published fiction with Nature Futures and Flash Fiction Magazine. Her novel-in-progress, That They Might Have Joy, placed first in the Mendocino County Writers’ Conference Contest. She is a co-moderator at the San Francisco Writers Workshop.
Lilian Delcid is a local writer born in Maryland and raised in the Mission. She specializes in obsessing over and torturing the people in her head who, strangely, always have the same problems she does. Her inspirations include Matthew McIntosh, Emma Donoghue, and Sidney Gish.
Brian Hurley is the Publishing Director at Sasquatch Books, an independent publisher distributed by Penguin Random House. He has been an editor at Oxford University Press, The Rumpus, and a data-driven startup that was acquired by PRH. Books he edited have been Amazon and Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and have sold over 500,000 copies. Authors he has worked with have won the Pulitzer Prize and been named one of Time’s 100 most influential people. He founded a small press called Fiction Advocate devoted to innovative literary criticism. He was named a Rising Star by Publishers Weekly in 2024. A native San Franciscan, he is working on a novel.
Zero Ramos Laforga is a Filipino queer trans poet, photographer, musician, and educator based in San Francisco. His poetry has previously been published in Ignatian Literary Magazine, The Quarter(ly) Journal, Here: a poetry journal, and most recently The Ana.
Jasper Lydon is a researcher and writer on America’s alternative communities, from anarchist compounds in New Mexico to urban farmer collectives in Detroit. Their work has been featured in HuffPost and Communities Magazine. More notably, they have shucked over 2,000 different types of okra.
We hope to see many of you at Noisebridge this Saturday for our reading at Lit Crawl. This year, this pub crawl of literary readings will feature 60 events in one night all across San Francisco’s Mission neighborhood, and we’re honored to be a part of it. For more on Lit Crawl, check out this article on Mission Local. Here’s more info on our event:
When: Saturday, October 26, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Where: Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street, San Francisco
What: A reading and a participatory literary game!
Writers bios:
Ken Grosserode is an attorney and writer in San Francisco. He lives with his partner in what was once a nunnery. His influences include Iris Murdoch, Donna Tarrt, and the ghosts of various Catholic nuns.
Karen Gu is a software engineer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work explores power, identity and feminism through science fiction, fantasy, and friends.
Jiyoung Han is a writer from Seoul, South Korea. She daylights as a sustainability researcher looking to make carbon reduction easier for everyone. Her writing often uses fantastical elements to examine the impacts of colonialism on people’s day-to-day lives.
Kurt is a fiction writer, focused on strange tales of idiocy and culture, inspired by Northern California.
Judy Viertel has been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Gold Dust Magazine, Identity Theory, and Short Story America: Anthology Five. She’s one of four moderators for that venerable but ornery West Coast institution, the San Francisco Writers Workshop. If you were wondering if she can dance the shim sham, the answer is yes. She certainly can.
San Francisco Writers Workshop is proud to host an event at the annual Lit Crawl festival. Come out to the San Francisco’s Mission district to celebrate literature and our community. Bring friends and help us spread the word!
When: Saturday, October 26, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Where: Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street, San Francisco
What: A reading and a participatory literary game!
Writers bios:
Ken Grosserode is an attorney and writer in San Francisco. He lives with his partner in what was once a nunnery. His influences include Iris Murdoch, Donna Tarrt, and the ghosts of various Catholic nuns.
Karen Gu is a software engineer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work explores power, identity and feminism through science fiction, fantasy, and friends.
Jiyoung Han is a writer from Seoul, South Korea. She daylights as a sustainability researcher looking to make carbon reduction easier for everyone. Her writing often uses fantastical elements to examine the impacts of colonialism on people’s day-to-day lives.
Kurt is a fiction writer, focused on strange tales of idiocy and culture, inspired by Northern California.
Judy Viertel has been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Gold Dust Magazine, Identity Theory, and Short Story America: Anthology Five. She’s one of four moderators for that venerable but ornery West Coast institution, the San Francisco Writers Workshop. If you were wondering if she can dance the shim sham, the answer is yes. She certainly can.
San Francisco Writers Workshop is proud to host an event at the annual Lit Crawl festival. Come out to the San Francisco’s Mission district to celebrate literature and our community. Bring friends and help us spread the word!
When: Saturday, October 26, 6:30 – 7:30 pm
Where: Noisebridge, 272 Capp Street, San Francisco
What: A reading and a participatory literary game!
Writers bios:
Ken Grosserode is an attorney and writer in San Francisco. He lives with his partner in what was once a nunnery. His influences include Iris Murdoch, Donna Tarrt, and the ghosts of various Catholic nuns.
Karen Gu is a software engineer and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her work explores power, identity and feminism through science fiction, fantasy, and friends.
Jiyoung Han is a writer from Seoul, South Korea. She daylights as a sustainability researcher looking to make carbon reduction easier for everyone. Her writing often uses fantastical elements to examine the impacts of colonialism on people’s day-to-day lives.
Kurt is a fiction writer, focused on strange tales of idiocy and culture, inspired by Northern California.
Judy Viertel has been published in Gargoyle Magazine, Gold Dust Magazine, Identity Theory, and Short Story America: Anthology Five. She’s one of four moderators for that venerable but ornery West Coast institution, the San Francisco Writers Workshop. If you were wondering if she can dance the shim sham, the answer is yes. She certainly can.
Dear writers, on Saturday, August 3rd, our venue, Noisebridge Hackerspace, is having a party and a fundraising drive. It has been such a vibrant place to meet for us. Let’s come out to support them!
For this Saturday starting at 7pm, they’re planning a wild 15th year anniversary party:
* Music and dancing with dance lessons! (Krunking, Judy thinks) * Food and Beverages! * Rube Goldberg hackathon award ceremony! * Noisebridge Shark Tank!/Pitch Competition * Sidewalk astronomy! (weather permitting) * Raffle, silent auction, and swag sale! * Member activity showcases!
If you’ve been curious about this place, this is the perfect time to check it out. It’s a fundraiser, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds. Our own Judy Viertel is certainly planning on being there.
San Francisco Writers Workshop 