Parakeet, a year-long intensive writing program that helps writers finish their books, is run by Beth Pickens, a Los Angeles-based consultant for artists and arts organizations. She is the Managing Director of LA-based queer press, Dopamine Books, which is led by legendary writer Michelle Tea. Pickens is the author of Make Your Art No Matter What (Chronicle Books, 2021). Her previous book is Your Art Will Save Your Life (Feminist Press, 2018).  Her popular podcast, “Mind Your Practice,” is widely available, as is her artist service platform, Homework Club. 

Today’s reading at Bird & Beckett brings together five writers in the program to read their work: 

Michelle Ott is a visual artist and writer working on Outer Space is Closer Than Antarctica, an illustrated memoir (with science) about the four seasons she spent working at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Her artists’ book, Current Occupant, was recently acquired by the Smithsonian Postal History Museum’s Library. Michelle’s The Postcard Machine (possibly from the future)  began in 2007 as a performance mail art project, and now delivers a freshly illustrated postcard each month to subscribers. She lives and works in Northern California.

Patricia Zaballos is a writer, former third-grade teacher, and veteran homeschooling parent from Oakland. Forever obsessed with how people learn, her essays on the subject have appeared in Salon, Literary Mama, Mothering Magazine, and in a column at home/school/life magazine. She’s at work on a mashup of memoir and cultural history exploring how much independence children have lost in the last thirty years—and how, as a mother, she pushed back against that culture while also being shaped by it. 

Jane Hargrave is an artist and writer based in Oakland, CA, with particular interest in craft, ecology, and storytelling. She is currently working on Dreamer’s Ballet, a collection of illustrated short stories about dreaming, monsters, and connection.

Sarah McColl is the author of the memoir Joy Enough. Since January 2021, she has published Lost Art, a monthly newsletter about the creative work of (mostly) dead women, which was a 2023 finalist for the Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant. Her essays have appeared in the Paris Review, McSweeney’s, and StoryQuarterly, and her work has been supported with fellowship awards from the Millay Colony, Ucross, Vermont Studio Center, and MacDowell. She lives in small-town Northern California.

Stephany Joy Ashley is a writer, organizer and advocate living in San Francisco. She has led several ground-breaking initiatives including co-founding the Transgender Cultural District, serving as Executive Director of the St. James Infirmary, drafting legislation to create the largest “buffer zone” in the nation- protecting patients and doctors from harassment outside reproductive health clinics, and launching the Flexible Housing Subsidy Pool, which opened up thousands of units of market rate housing for people experiencing homelessness. Her first novel, Locomotion is a love letter to San Francisco and a journey through the magical realism of our survival mechanisms.