One star amongst the talented last night: Samina Ali
It was quite an amazing collection of smart, talented people at the Grotto event last night. However, Indian-American Muslim Samina Ali especially stole the show with her gripping, powerful, emotional short story about/around the birth of her child, Ishm, who turned 3 years old yesterday. Ishm had taken over the large terrace and celebrating his birthday with over 300 of the Grotto and Samina's fans. The story was written by Samina especially for the Grotto evening at the request of Bronson who organized the event around the theme "The One."
Watch for her novel, Madras on a Rainy Day, that'll be published by powerhouse Farrar Strauss & Giroux in 2004. You can also catch Samina in December at a reading. I will for sure!
One interesting thing about the writing community here as I was discussing with Samina is that unlike LA and New York, it is not as professional -- I don't mean this in a necessarily negative way. I just mean that the writers here don't seem to know the reality of the publishing world -- the necessity of having an agent, of trying to sell a book before you've written 500 pages (like one young writer confided) and what it takes to get published. Maybe San Francisco is a training ground for writers trying to figure it all out and then if they're really serious, many if not most will leave for the big city.