This is the playbill for Action Fiction!, Stories Performed -- Two-Year Anniversary, with Cake! -- on Thursday, March 6, 2014. 

"Ice Fishing"

written by Shruti Swamy, performed by Jen Terry

Shruti Swamy lives and writes in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district. Her work has been published in Black Warrior Review, New American Writing, Kartika Magazine, and elsewhere. In 2012, she was named Vassar College's 50th W.K. Rose Fellow in the Creative Arts, and has been awarded residencies at the Millay Colony for the Arts and Hedgebrook. She holds an MFA in fiction from San Francisco State. Read more at shrutiswamy.com.

Jen Terry considers herself a Jen-of-All-Trades, master of some. She has lived in the Area for over a dozen years, but still visits the plains bi-annually to make sure and water her roots. She credits many successes in her life as coming from her driving desire to understand deeply the people and world around her. Being nice helps, too. When not hamming it up for the delight of Action Fiction, she spends her working days adrift among hordes of San Francisco teenagers and being relieved that high school is much easier in her 30s.

"The Red Lights of San Francisco"

written by Benjamin Wachs, performed by Jim Lynch and Meghan Rutigliano

Jim Lynch had a review published in the mid-1970s in a suburban New York newspaper and decided that he would pursue a career as a music journalist, as his own chances at rock stardom were doomed by a disturbingly relative relationship to pitch. In college, he wrote often for Columbia University’s newspaper and many indie magazines around the country. Soon after that he detoured into concert promotion and artist management. Always comfortable onstage, he emceed many of the events he produced, and hosted the Transfigured Night radio program on WKCR-FM for over six years. After Columbia he was hired by The Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, and began to immerse himself in the dual tracks of music and technology that would guide the rest of his career. He’s built several startups, managed developers at major enterprise-class companies, and consulted for several cutting edge music technology firms here in the Bay Area.

Meghan "Megs" Rutigliano is a story-teller, character actress, singer, and art community organizer. She's been with Action Fiction since the first reading. Megs loves bringing stories to life through song and spoken word. Megs is the "Meg" in MegaFlame Big Band and Cabaret, a 9-piece big band jazz and cabaret ensemble with frequent sexy, feathery, and 1920s inspired shows in the Bay Area. To catch their next gig, visit http://www.facebook.com/megaflame.

"The Ravine"

written by Nona Caspers, performed by Mantra Plonsey

Nona Caspers recent nonfiction book coauthored with Joell Hallowell, LAWFULLY WEDDED WIVES, has been featured in San Francisco Weekly and Curve Magazine among others.  She is also the author of LITTLE BOOK OF DAYS and HEAVIER THAN AIR, awarded the Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction and a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice.  Her work has been honored with an NEA Fellowship, Cultural Equity Grant, and a LAMBDA nomination.  She teaches creative writing at San Francisco State University and tromps around the city with her little dog.  www.nonacaspers.com     http://www.spuytenduyvil.net/lawfully-wedded-wives.html

Mantra Plonsey's play ARTHUR IN UNDERLAND was produced in 2011 at CounterPulse. Several collaborative projects in residency were created and premiered at Baryshnikov Arts Center, PS 122 and The Joyce Theater, and at The Garage, ODC and Noh Space. She wrote the libretto and performed in the opera "Leave Me Alone", with graphic novelist Harvey Pekar. Plonsey's extended vocal technique appears on soundtracks by Maurice Jarre and Jerry Garcia. She provides the theme vocal for City Arts and Lectures, and acted in several films for directors Rob Nilsson and William Farley. She sang with Kitka, collaborated and performed with George Coates and Dandelion Dancetheater and was the chief editor and feature writer for the 'zine which became the SF Weekly. She is honored to have assisted the irascible visionary Les Blank for two years-- (sort of a record.) She is Artistic Director of Sugarglass Consort. Withinward, the first entry in her live action film anthology THE INNER ROOM will premiere July 27 2013 at Foundry Nights #10 in Berkeley. Make friends at facebook.com/mantra.plonsey.

Intermission & Cake

"Almost Bird"

written by Beth Hersh, performed by Joy Brooke Fairfield

Beth... 

Joy Brooke Fairfield is a performance-maker and scholar based in SF.  www.joybrookefairfield.org

"An Unsafe Place"

written by Mũthoni Kiarie, performed by Gray

Mũthoni Kiarie is an Oakland-based Kenyan writer. She is an MFA graduate of Mills College and an alumna of both the Voices of Our Nations Arts Foundation and the Las Dos Brujas Writers’ Workshop.  Her work has been published in Narrative Magazine, where she was one of the top five stories of 2012 to 2013 and a finalist in the Spring 2012 Short Story Contest and has also appeared in The Weeklings and Generations Literature Magazine. Read more here: http://www.narrativemagazine.com/issues/stories-week-2012%E2%80%932013/what-we-left-behind

Gray does both on-stage and off-stage improv performances with central themes of identity, vulnerability, transparency… and believes in creative enlightenment through first-hand trial-and-error. She performs regularly  with Mortified! San Francisco, Berkeley and New York, with other appearances at Foundry Nights in Berkeley, Action Fiction! in SF. She also appeared in “Joy of Lex,” a documentary on language for The Discovery Channel. Read more at grayperforms.com.

"Bobby McGraw's Incredible Teeth"

written by John Haggerty, performed by Anthony Villafuete, Robert Thomas, and Jimmey Cross

John Haggerty's work has appeared in, or is forthcoming from, Confrontation, Nimrod, Salon, and the Santa Monica Review. He was the recipient of the 2013 Pinch Literary Award for fiction, and is currently working to finish his first novel, Saline Springs, which was among the finalists for the 2013 James Jones First Novel Fellowship. Visit him at www.john-haggerty.com. 

Anthony... 

Robert Thomas, when not bringing short fiction to life at Action Fiction, dons his secret identity as One Of Those Dot-Com Assholes Who Is Ruining San Francisco.  A resident for just long enough to feel possessive of the City, yet trapped in a gilded cage of rent control, he lives in the Sunset with his girlfriend, their two cats and two parrots.

Jimmy Cross is useful. His horn needs no tooting. It has been tooted. Read about his usefulness at Jimmycross.wordpress.com.