Diane di Prima - Excelsior Salon on July 21st

So, you've been writing, painting, dancing. You've got a band, or a performance piece. How do you reach out to others? Find folks of like mind? Get the work out there? How do you create a community of artists & friends who will support each other?

In this informal reading/talk, Diane di Prima, San Francisco's Poet Laureate, will talk about making your art and getting it into the world "by any means necessary"—whatever comes to hand—in good times and bad. She will also address the importance of creating a sense of community.

Diane will speak from her own life experiences on the practicalities of survival as an artist during the red-baiting and repressed 1950s. She will tell us how she self-published her first book, and distributed it around New York from the back of a baby stroller. She will trace how some of the artists of the 50s became activists in the 1960s: how a sense of community led to the early communes.

Diane’s presentation will be a rare opportunity to glimpse an important and seldom-acknowledged part of Bay Area cultural history through the eyes of someone who lived it. Dialogue with the audience will be invited and encouraged throughout the presentation.

Wednesday, July 21st - 7 - 8:30 p.m.