Lucia Berlin and Douglas Woolf: February 24, 1984

The Poetry Center presents Lucia Berlin and Douglas Woolf, each reading from their work, with introductions by Poetry Center Director Jim Hartz. Berlin, on this rare video-recorded occasion, reads six stories, most soon to be collected in Phantom Pain (Tombouctou Books, 1984), and the story then recently published, with illustrations by Frances Butler, as Legacy (Poltroon Press, 1983), later retitled "Dr. H.A. Moynihan." Woolf reads stories and longer prose from a span of three decades, from his first novel The Hypocritic Days (The Divers Press, 1955), the novel Wall to Wall (Grove Press, 1962) and the first of his paired novels Ya! and John-Juan (Harper & Row, 1971), plus two new unpublished works. The event took place at Newspace, on the campus of New College of California, San Francisco, as a co-presentation of New College and The Poetry Center. Note: racist language (later excised in published version) in this version of Berlin's story "Macadam."

Marginalia from the original tape includes a camera- and soundcheck for the event by Poetry Center staff, Gordon Craig and friend, featuring Terry Allen's "The Pink and Black Song," from the album Lubbock (On Everything), Fate Records, 1979.

Note: due to poor color-retention on the original color video, a black & white rendition for this program has been substituted.