The Ruby presents a night of stories on the theme of SECRETS: the ones that thrill us, the ones that haunt us, the ones that we share, and the ones we take to our graves. The Ruby is an arts & letters-focused collective and gathering space for women, trans women, and nonbinary creatives. We call our members — who include writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, podcasters, and other creatives — "Rubies." Rubies are multifaceted, and share a common desire to expand their world views and communities, share their passions, and make meaningful connections. And Rubies are strong: as resilient as sapphires and only a little bit softer than diamonds. Almost all rubies have flaws, and that’s what makes them interesting: we wear ours proudly.
FREE, $5-10 suggested donation.
5-6pm
Location: Manny’s, 2092 16th Street in the Mission
Julián Delgado Lopera is the author of The New York Times acclaimed novel Fiebre Tropical (Feminist Press 2020), the Winner of the 2021 Ferro Grumley Award and a 2021 Lambda Literary award; a finalist of the 2020 Kirkus Prize in Fiction and the 2021 Aspen Literary Prize. Julián is also the author of Quiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017) and ¡Cuéntamelo! (Aunt Lute 2017) an illustrated bilingual collection of oral histories by LGBT Latinx immigrants which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. Julián's received fellowships and residencies from Hedgebrook, California Arts Council, San Francisco Arts Commission, Headlands Center for The Arts, Brush Creek Foundation of the Arts, Lambda Literary Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and The SF Grotto. Their work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Granta, Teen Vogue, The Kenyon Review, McSweeney's, The Rumpus, The White Review, LALT, Four Way Review, Broadly, TimeOut Mag to name a few. They are the former executive director of RADAR Productions a queer literary non-profit in San Francisco. Born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, Julián currently resides in San Francisco.
Noor Al-Samarrai’s fieldwork-derived poetry collection, EL CERRITO (2018) was recognized by the Arab American Book Awards and named "the best piece of literature I have read in a long time," by poet and filmmaker Jonas Mekas. A stubborn Mesopotamian and Californian, she also produces podcasts and is infusing somatic practices into her writing.
Heather D'Angelo is a musician in the Brooklyn-based indie pop band Au Revoir Simone and a perfumer for Carta Fragrances. Heather released four studio albums with her band and over a dozen singles, EPs, and remix albums. Au Revoir Simone was featured in David Lynch's 2017 revival of "Twin Peaks: the Return," and scored an episode of the "Storybound" podcast with author Tamara Winfrey Harris in 2021. For this performance for Litquake, Heather is joined by her friends, Jon Lee and Ed Baskerville.
Jon Lee is a pianist who has performed in concert halls throughout the United States, including Boston, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, and has performed as a soloist with the Fort Worth Symphony, Boston Pops Orchestra, and Utah Symphony.
Ed Baskerville is a cellist who enjoys playing with musicians from many different traditions. His current projects include soul, jazz and traditional Arabic music with Naima Shalhoub and Tarik Kazaleh, and a live improvised score for the 1924 silent horror film, “The Hands of Orlac.”
Rocky Rivera is a musician, journalist and author from San Francisco. Prior to becoming a recording artist, she graduated from SF State with a degree in journalism, writing for The Source, Mass Appeal, and Rolling Stone. She is now celebrating a decade+ as an artist with four albums under her belt, her most recent being Rocky’s Revenge, in collaboration with Women’s Audio Mission. Snakeskin: Essays by Rocky Rivera, chronicles the past ten years of her rap career along with lyrics to all of her songs and was crowdfunded on Patreon during global lockdown in 2020. She is now working on her latest album with Beatrock Music and her 10th and final mixtape with DJ Roza.
Celeste Chan is a writer and filmmaker, schooled by Do-It-Yourself culture and immigrant parents from Malaysia and the Bronx. She founded and directed Queer Rebels (a queer and trans people of color arts project), created and curated experimental films, joined Foglifter Literary Journal as an editor and board member, and toured with legendary feminist road show, Sister Spit. Her writing can be found in The Rumpus, cream city review’s genrequeer folio, Gertrude, Citron Review, and elsewhere. In 2016, she launched QTPOC Free School, a monthly writing workshop for LGBTQ people of color. Following that, in 2017, she launched writing workshops for LGBTQ youth at the Queer Ancestors Project. Her work has also been supported by CA Arts Council, Bread Loaf/Rona Jaffe, Lambda Literary, Hedgebrook, Hypatia, Mesa Refuge, Soaring Gardens, and beyond. Celeste is now focused on writing her memoir, examining intergenerational trauma and how her family survived WWII.
Consuelo Tupper Hernández is an interdisciplinary artist and writer born and raised in Chile. After receiving her Bachelor in Fine Arts, she specialized in the areas of Social Practice, Latin American Art, and artistic education. Always looking for connections between visual literacy, critical thinking, and community development, Consuelo has spent the past ten years organizing and supporting projects that use art as a tool for social transformation. In 2019, she came to the Bay Area under a Fulbright Scholarship to pursue a Master in Fine Arts at CCA, where she focused on issues around migration and epistemological justice. She currently works as Programming and Marketing Associate at La Peña Cultural Center, in Berkeley.
Cecilia Rabess is a novelist and data scientist in San Francisco. Her first novel Everything’s Fine is forthcoming from Simon & Schuster.
As a photographer specializing in portraits, Gabriela Hasbun’s work highlights the marginalized and unexplored communities around her. Growing up between Miami and her native El Salvador, which was in the grips of a devastating civil war, Hasbun learned the importance of documenting the humanity in people others have overlooked. Her fundamental belief in the radical power of storytelling has led her to subjects like Black cowboys, fat activists, queer skateboarders, and the people of the Mission district in San Francisco. At the heart of her photography is a celebration of the complexities of identity and the human spirit. Reveling in the unexpected, Hasbun’s work makes visible that which has gone unnoticed, and challenges how we see the world. She is always searching for projects that make a difference, question existing narratives, and subvert expectations.