Telegraph Hill Books hosts Writers Grotto readers seasonally, four times a year. The summer reading is: OUT OF FURY INTO GRACE: Stories of Reckoning & Renewal. Each reading includes 3-4 Grotto members with books published in 2026 and 2-3 Rooted & Written alums. Rooted & Written is a free conference for BIPOC writers sponsored by the Writers Grotto.
The reading takes place Saturday, June 6, 6:30-8:30pm at Telegraph Hill Books, 1501 Grant Ave. San Francisco. There will be a raffle and refreshments in this high-ceiling, spacious book store on the corner of Grant & Union. You can register here: https://telegraphhillbooks.com/pages/events
Bios:
Sabina Khan-Ibarra is a Pashtun Muslim American poet, writer, educator. Her work appears in Anomaly, SWWIM, Rising Phoenix, and iO Literary, and has been recognized by CRAFT and SmokeLong Award for Flash Fiction. Her poetry collection, What My Mouth Holds, is a two- time semifinalist, and she’s working on a short story collection. She teaches at The Writers Grotto, Litquake, and San Diego Writers Ink, and serves as Director of Rooted & Written. She lives in Half Moon Bay with her family.
Lisa Rosenberg is a poet, essayist, and former space program engineer. She served as Poet Laureate of San Mateo County, and has received a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, Djerassi Residency, and MOSAIC America Fellowship. Her essays span craft, satire, science, and memoir. Her poems explore interconnectedness across disparate aspects of nature and culture. She is the author of Weeds and Stars (just released from The Word Works) and A Different Physics (2018), poetry collections that reflect decades of polydisciplinary inquiry.
Lauren C. Johnson attributes her upbringing in Florida–America’s weirdest state–to her interest in the ecological and surreal. She's the interviews editor for The Racket Journal and is a co-ounder and editor of Club Chicxulub, a speculative fiction journal and reading series. She also co-hosts Babylon Salon, one of the longest-running reading series in the Bay Area. Her short stories, interviews, and essays have appeared in numerous journals, including The Rumpus and Orion Magazine online. The West Façade is her debut novel.
Eirinie Carson is an award-winning Black British writer living in California. She writes about sexual taboos, death and dying, illegal substances and hauntings both real and imagined. Her work has appeared in LitHub, Electric Literature, The Sonora Review, The Los Angeles Review, and others. Eirinie's first book, The Dead Are Gods (Melville House, 2023), was critically acclaimed by Oprah Daily, Nylon Magazine, Shondaland, Kirkus Reviews and The Washington Post. Eirinie’s first book of fiction is a maternal gothic novel called Bloodfire, Baby (2026).
Arely Miranda González is a trailblazing expert in technology and media. Her experience on the digital frontlines deeply informs her debut novel, The Platform, a chilling exploration of social media’s dark underbelly and the invisible labor behind content moderation. Arely is also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, political essayist for the Mexican magazine Contralínea, and an alum of Rooted & Written, the Writer’s Grotto acclaimed program for BIPOC writers.
Dr. Lama Rimawi is a pediatrician and writer. She co-founded the Institute for the Understanding of Anti-Palestinian Racism and is a Board Member of the Sisterhood of Salaam Shalom. A 2023 SF Writer’s Grotto Rooted and Written Fellow and 2024 Mesa Refuge Fellow, she was interviewed by Judy Woodruff on the PBS NewsHour Reframe Festival for her advocacy work. She is completing her first book, You Would Die in Lifta: A Palestinian American Doctor's Story of Betrayal, Racism and Hope.