Babylon Salon

Babylon Salon Babylon Salon is a quarterly reading & performance series based in San Francisco

"A propulsive debut. . . . von Blanckensee pulls the reader in with this voice-driven and heartfelt narrative, and adds ...
09/11/2026

"A propulsive debut. . . . von Blanckensee pulls the reader in with this voice-driven and heartfelt narrative, and adds texture with gritty details of 1990s San Francisco. This delivers the goods."
— Publishers Weekly

An oncology nurse by day and a writer by any available moment! We are simply obsessed with Shoshana von Blanckensee. Her debut novel Girls Girls Girls is set right here in San Francisco, and we cannot think of a better place to hear her read it than The Sycamore!

Check out this Vogue interview and get excited to hear Shoshana read from Girls Girls Girls this Saturday, September 12, at our Babylon Salon Fall 2026 Performance!

“I want to say to young q***r people that throughout the entire history of time, we’ve always been us and we’re always going to be us,” von Blanckensee says.

Beth Winegarner's Swim Poems is a collection of brief, luminous tributes to noticing: sea-birds and tides, fellow swimme...
09/10/2026

Beth Winegarner's Swim Poems is a collection of brief, luminous tributes to noticing: sea-birds and tides, fellow swimmers, and the ever-changing nature of place. It is a love letter to the Bay and our aquatic ecosystems.

Check out this beautiful reflection from Nob Hill Gazette and maybe get inspired to start your own swimming practice?!

We’re excited to hear Beth read from Swim Poems this Saturday, September 12, at our Babylon Salon Fall 2026 Performance!

https://www.nobhillgazette.com/people/the_essay/how-cold-water-swimming-in-the-bay-resets-body-and-mind/article_d520295c-b52e-4276-9cbf-e45f3fe4945a.html

Come early for drinks at 5pm on the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm.

It’s an overcast morning at Aquatic Park as I walk to the edge of the water and step into the small waves. The Bay is bracing, but it feels good

With an undying love of dinosaurs and a practice of wandering the woods and bringing their friends along for nature walk...
09/10/2026

With an undying love of dinosaurs and a practice of wandering the woods and bringing their friends along for nature walks, T. K. Rex is our kind of writer.

Did we mention they’re also a rockstar in the speculative fiction world? They’ve published stories in over 40 presses, and their debut collection, The Wildcraft Drones, was published this spring by Stelliform Press.

Check out this fantastic review from Strange Horizons and get stoked to hear T. K. read from The Wildcraft Drones this Saturday, September 12, at our Fall 2026 Performance at The Sycamore!

https://strangehorizons.com/wordpress/non-fiction/the-wildcraft-drones-by-t-k-rex/

Come early for drinks at 5pm on the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts promptly at 5:30pm.

Speculative fiction is able to imagine interaction with the other not as something horrific but as something positive for all.

"A firecracker. June Martin bursts onto the scene with this surreal comic novel, a book with heart, soul, and viscera. S...
09/09/2026

"A firecracker. June Martin bursts onto the scene with this surreal comic novel, a book with heart, soul, and viscera. She anatomizes a scene the way a Victorian doctor dissects a co**se, and just as thrillingly for the bystander; the organs are bold and strange. A debut to be reckoned with, by a writer you owe it to yourself to read." - Isaac Fellman, author of Dead Collections

A firecracker indeed! We love this blurb and Oakland-based author, June Martin! Her debut novel Love/Aggression was a finalist for Lambda's Best Transgender Fiction of 2025 and earned her The Transfeminine Review's Best Debut Author of 2024.

Check out this fantastic review and get stoked to hear June read from Love/Aggression this Saturday, September 12, at our Babylon Salon Fall 2026 Performance at The Sycamore!

This madcap novel is a sugar-rush of situational absurdity, wicked satire, hallucinatory imagery, and maximally burlesque characters.

The New Yorker calls Coyoteland "tautly woven" and that is such an electric description for Vanessa Hua's storytelling! ...
09/08/2026

The New Yorker calls Coyoteland "tautly woven" and that is such an electric description for Vanessa Hua's storytelling! We are so excited to welcome this nationally bestselling author, NEA Literature Fellow, former San Francisco Chronicle columnist, and all-star literary citizen to our Babylon Salon Fall 2026 Performance!

Check out this gorgeous excerpt in Lit Hub and get stoked to hear Vanessa read from Coyoteland this Saturday, September 12, at The Sycamore!

Come early for drinks at 5pm on the outdoor covered patio in back! Reading starts right at 5:30pm.

Days after Ana Rodriguez started working for the Belles, feeding the chickens had become a part of the morning routine: her bosses’ youngest daughter, Jordan, would fetch a scoop of pellets from th…

"In 'God Made Dirt, & Dirt Ain’t Popeyes,' a meticulously constructed broken sestina, [Bernardo Wade] describes the hung...
06/12/2026

"In 'God Made Dirt, & Dirt Ain’t Popeyes,' a meticulously constructed broken sestina, [Bernardo Wade] describes the hunger of New Orleans as a city where 'someone / simmers the cayenne-soaked grease bucket like / God lit the fire because He felt a mother’s pressure, like / he wanted a day off from feeding these children.' Some of the most haunting moments in these poems are tied closely to their landscape, a place where blue lights and sirens are always 'knifing through the night' after 'hot-blooded men.'"

Bernardo Wade’s poetry stopped us in our tracks and gave us the chills in the best of all possible ways. Bernardo’s going to give a phenomenal reading at our Babylon Salon Summer 2026 Performance and we can’t wait to hear it!

Tomorrow! 6/13 at 5:30pm. Our usual stomping grounds, The Sycamore!

At the core of this collection is Wade’s complex relationship with his father, whose presence is at once both painful and familiar.

Jesus Sierra is such an anchor in the Bay Area literary community. We love his insightful essay and reflection on Manuel...
06/12/2026

Jesus Sierra is such an anchor in the Bay Area literary community. We love his insightful essay and reflection on Manuel Muñoz's short story, “Anyone Can Do It.”

We're so thrilled to welcome Jesus Sierra back for our Babylon Salon Summer 2026 Performance! This Saturday, June 13 at 5:30pm!

The short story “Anyone Can Do It” in Manuel Muñoz’s collection, the February CBC selection, illuminates immigrant hardship.

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