Image above by Audrey Niffenegger

WRITERS IN DRAG Cross-drafting is the new cross-dressing as local literary talents show off works they've written outside of their normal genres. -- Spin Magazine, January 2007

BEST LITERARY DRINKING. Charlie Anders' "Writers With Drinks" continues on, five years strong. What's her secret? Variety! ... You're bound to stay interested if you find yourself listening to revered children's author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) one moment and local comedian W. Kamau Bell the next. Throw in a few cartoonists, sex workers, radio hosts and big-shot authors like Andrew Sean Greer, Vendela Vida and Michelle Tea -- as well as the hostess ... and you've got a seriously (and not so seriously) good time. -- SF Weekly, Best of San Francisco 2006

What happens when you throw two science fiction writers, a sketch comedy troupe, a poet, a memoirist, and a "fetish diva" in a room together and ply them with booze? Even host, founder, and Choir Boy author Charlie Anders can't say for sure, but her monthly events — half salon, half reading — are never boring. -- SF Flavorpill, issue 188

BEST LITERARY NIGHT. Writers with drinks are writers ready to meet the world, and when our readers have a hankering to see these often spectacular mismatches, they turn (yes!) to Writers With Drinks -- a kind of roving public salon and reading series -- to put drinks in writers' hands and thrust them onstage to bring their works to life. For those who equate literary with stuffy, WWD will come as a plesantly relaxed surprise. -- San Francisco Bay Guardian, Best of the Bay, Readers Poll 2005

Literary ringmaster Charlie Anders insists her series of tavern-based readings is set up so that "no one's competing," but she herself is used to being up against stiff competition. "There's a guy doing a striptease on a unicycle, a guy wrestling a fish and Armistead Maupin doing a reading," she says incredulously of the options on any given Saturday night in SF. "Your [event] has to be better than fish wrestling." It's a tough standard to live up to, but over the last four years Writers With Drinks: Spoken Word Varity Show has become the event that everybody's talking about — and talking at, for that matter. Snagging appearances by big- and small-name poets, comedians and authors, Anders also strives to keep the audience diverse... According to Anders: "You can get drunk, take someone home and wake up unable to remember who you slept with — but you'll remember the readings. That's my goal." -- 7x7 Magazine, April 2005

OK, so a stand-up comic, a literary agent, a hostage negotiator, a sex worker and a KALW radio current-affairs personality walk into a bar .... No, this isn't an off-color joke, it's Writers with Drinks, the spoken-word variety show that mixes genres, styles and cocktails, back again with a more-eclectic-than-usual concoction. Hosted by the incisive and very connected writer Charlie Anders, the monthly series celebrates writers from every corner of the literary world, as well as pundits and comedians and a few other sundry performers and intellectuals. -- SFGate.com's Epicks, Jan. 7, 2005

Variety is more that just the name of Prince's favorite girl-singer sidekick. It's more than just having sex dressed as Alien Greenspan every once in a while. It's also a Literary Imperative! Which is why Writers With Drinks combines erotica with literature, stand-up comedy with science fiction and poetry with essays. Plus mystery, romance, memoir, rants and "other."

$3-$5 sliding scale, All proceeds benefit the fight to save rent control and the Center for Sex and Culture. Charlie Anders MCs and vamps.

Upcoming events:

Karen Joy Fowler (Wit's End, The Jane Austen Book Club)
Juvenal Acosta (The Tattoo Hunter)
Elliot Fintushel (Breakfast With The Ones You Love)
Peter Hamilton (The Void Trilogy, the Night's Dawn Trilogy)
Fran Varian (tsuami, Lodestar Quarterly)
Dayvid Figler (Grope, NPR's All Things Considered)

At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Adam Mansbach (Angry Black White Boy, The End of the Jews)
April Sinclair (Coffee Will Make You Black)
Alejanro Murguia (This War Called Love)
Marc Acito (Attack of the Theater People)

At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Sheerly Avni (Salon.com)
Naomi Hirahara (Snakeskin Shamisen, Los Angeles Noir)

At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

For more information, contact Charlie Anders