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FEATURED for January 2025

Dylan gives Sebastian a ride on Dylan’s Triumph Tiger. Danish Sebastian was praised as a “Donovan-like Dylan.”

 

Poetry in Motion: a Metaphysical Mystery Tour Review of A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. Bob Dylan musical biopic starring Timothée Chalamet.  By Robert Tobin. 

“A Complete Unknown” shows Dylan not so much breaking the mold as conjuring it on the fly…” 

With Mill Valley’s Tam High grad Monica Barbaro as Joan Baez!

Bobby: How does it Feel??? WITHOUT A HOME…. 

Without a home…Drone shot from Pacific Palisades shows entire blocks of homes literally burned to the ground in yet another suspiciously negligent, massive urban fire. 1-8-2025 Courtesy of @KitKarzen

 

Motorcycling Musicians by J.Macon King

Much has been made of Dylan’s motorcycle accident after which his health dictated that he stopped performing and touring — for eight years!? Or did it?  

 

 
RIP Puff the Magic Dragon. Peter Yarrow, the singer-songwriter best known as one-third of Peter, Paul and Mary, recently passed at age 86. Yarrow was MC at the notorious ’65 Newport Jazz Festival, as featured in the movie, A Complete Unknown.
“Our fearless dragon is tired and has entered the last chapter of his magnificent life…” his daughter Bethany said in a statement.

 

 

FEATURED for Winter 2024—2025

Courtesy Alta Journal.
CONGRATULATIONS! MillValleyLit Poetry Editor Jeff Kaliss won First Place at the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts & Entertainment Awards 2024. His interview with singer Linda Ronstadt was published in Alta Journal.
First Place: Jeff Kaliss, Alta Journal, “Alta Q&A: ‘Heart Like a Wheel'” for “Personality Profile, Music and Other Arts – Over 2,500 Words, Print.” Judges’ comment: “Revealing and compelling and riveting, hard to do in a Q&A.”
Jeff’s many other interviews and profiles may be found in MillValleyLit. See:  Salon.   Previous Salons.    Poet Payne.
 
Jeff Kaliss, MillValleyLit editor and music journalist, keeps the hits coming here for his deep dive into the world of Sly Stone and his band, revised & updated for a new edition.
The focused epic recounting the life and times of an icon in American music and pop culture.

 

 

“Denken mit der Hand. Writing by hand is thinking on paper. Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Memories become stories. Ideas are transformed into projects. Notes inspire insight. We write and understand, learn, see and think – with the hand.” Notebook promo – Leuchtturm Gruppe, Deutschland. 

Get LIT and keep us fired up. NEW Free original-design spiral notebook for a donation of $50.00 or more. While supplies last. Donate via Venmo Venmo profile (perry-king-5) or PayPal  Info on donating and free notebook here.

Writers: Submissions now open for Winter. Interesting and well-proofed short memoirs, fiction, travel tales and poetry are being accepted for publication consideration. See Submissions Guidelines here.

FEATURED for Autumn 2024—

Jesse James Ziegler, Sierra Arts Mixer, Reno, 9-26-24. Credit JMK
The hardest working man in the poetry business!
The ULTIMATE GUIDE to Reno’s Poet Laureate Jesse James Ziegler— Replete with Profile, interview and his poetry. 
Profile here.
Interview here.
Poetry here with exclusive publishing premier of Jesse’s “The Perfect Day.”

Was this the start of a Literary “Lakequake”? Lake Tahoe Literary Festival debuted in Tahoe City, CA October 11, 2024

J.Macon King with Perry King lit up the Tahoe Literary Festival opener with theatrical poetry.
The Tahoe Literary Festival weekend kicked off with a free evening of jazz, poetry and prose Oct. 11 at Tahoe Wine Collective in Tahoe City.
Poetry & Prose was enjoyed by about 80 folks at the Boatworks hosted by Scott Green of Tahoe Poetry Collective. An evening with featured poets and writers included Green, Reno Poetry Laureate Jesse James Ziegler, MillValleyLit publisher and novelist J.Macon KingKaren Terrey, Teresa Breeden, Roxy Hankinson, Edward Manzi, John Merryfield, Cheyenne McGregor and others.  

 

Poet Cheyenne McGregor.
Event MC Poet Scott Green.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tahoe Literary Festival founders Priya Hutner and Katherine Hill with Reno Poet Laureate Jesse James Ziegler.

MillValleyLit is a proud sponsor of this exciting inaugural event.

eeeee

 

King read poetry “deconstructed” from his novel at the Tahoe Literary Festival, Tahoe City, Lake Tahoe,  Oct 11. With Jesse James and other presenters.
Circus of the Sun
MillValleyLit publisher J.Macon King’s debut novel of 1979 San Francisco’s cultural, sexual and political maelstrom.  Available from Amazon.
 

 

Penny Bear, 205,000 pennies, 1.5-ton. at Heritage Plaza, Tahoe City, by Lisa and Robert Ferguson. Big hugs from our editor Perry King and writer Tom Fitzmorris, June, 2024. Credit JMK

Looking for previous issue or articles? Click here for recent years or search keyword in magnifying glass on top menu.

Summer 2024 issue’s Literary Latte:

Way Down Upon the Ganges River, 1987 Adventure memoir by Gene “Tarzan” Fischer

“I now head to Varanasi, a city located on the Ganges River where Hindu dead are taken to be burned or cleansed by the river. The 1500-mile river is considered sacred and spiritually pure, although one of the most polluted in the world.”

“Denken mit der Hand. Writing by hand is thinking on paper. Thoughts grow into words, sentences and pictures. Memories become stories. Ideas are transformed into projects. Notes inspire insight. We write and understand, learn, see and think – with the hand.” Leuchtturm Gruppe notebook promo. Deutschland. 

Get LIT and keep us fired up. NEW Free original-design spiral notebook for a donation of $50.00 or more. While supplies last. Donate via Venmo Venmo profile (perry-king-5) or PayPal  Info on donating and free notebook here.

Grant Flint’s prize winning short story: The Night F. Scott, Papa, Tall Tom, and Wee Willy Faulkner Came to Maxwell Perkins’ Birthday Party

“I was there the night of Maxwell Perkins’ party, his 53rd birthday party. Best editor in the last century. ‘Genius editor of geniuses.’ More important was who was at that party— 

Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Giant ol’ Thomas Wolfe. And weird Faulkner. William Faulkner. In one place, altogether. Never before, never again.”

 

 

I Want to Take You Higher: The Life and Times of Sly and the Family Stone

by Mill Valley Literary Review Poetry Editor, Jeff Kaliss 

 
 
 
 
 

TRIPPING WITH A VIPER: The Unexpurgated, True Story Of Neal Cassady & Anne Murphy

Tripping with a Viper author Anne Marie Maxwell (aka Anne Murphy, as she was known in the 1950s and 1960s) tells her autobiographical story of her adventures as a longtime lover and romantic, travel partner of Beat icon Neal Cassady “without fiction, face-lifting or varnish, just as I’ve sometimes painfully and often gratefully recalled it,” says Maxwell.

 

The “Tandem Story” 

by Rebecca and Gary

The English professor told his class one day, “Today we will experiment with a new form called the Tandem Story. The process is simple…

Plus La-te-da * Hooligan * Peekaroony * Switcharoo * Filibuster * Quagmire. What’s your best words ever?

eeeee

Circus of the Sun
MillValleyLit publisher J.Macon King’s debut novel of 1979 San Francisco’s cultural, sexual and political maelstrom. Available from Amazon.

In the wake of his girlfriend leaving him, young musician Jack has sworn off women, yet the reforming bad boy cannot resist the incandescent, liberated artist Bretta and her creative entourage. The pair sense they have found their Masterpiece of Love—until the return of Bretta’s enigmatic friend unveils disturbing secrets.

“…an ambitious and poetic story of love and creativity. At times racy and poignant… King deftly includes details that bring the book’s characters and events to life.” —Pacific Sun.

“More than a love story, this is a portrait of the city of San Francisco… The prose leans towards the poetic, which results in gorgeous, Kerouac-ian vignettes…seeming like a movie played on fast forward…” Kirkus Reviews.

“A great, lyrical portrait of an era…a spot-on recreation about a great time of history…and I enjoyed the sheer trip of it. Beautifully observed writing—the emotions in the story are true and moments of life are rendered with clarity.” —Louis B. Jones, author of four New York Times Notable Books, including Ordinary Money and Particles and Luck.  

“…sets forth a story-within-a-memoir so skillfully that you forget this is a work of fiction. …Captures the ups and downs of an intense relationship deftly. —Rick Dale, The Daily Beat.

Buy Circus of the Sun on Amazon $19.95.

From Spring ’24—The international literary flavors of:

Elemental Skin, book of Irish poetry from Catherine Ronan
review by Jeff Kaliss, Poetry Editor

“Just after midnight
on the outskirts of city,
the moon gave birth
to an everlasting sun.”

 

 

 

Antoinette Vella Payne. Poet Spotlight from Jeff Kaliss.

“Started out in a 1953 red Chevy Bel Air
with red vinyl seats.
brought from my brother’s friend  for five hundred dollars in 1969.”

 

Poet Mary McColley in the West Bank.

“I feel like a shard of glass, or a prism, where I want the place, or the experience, to pass through me and refract into a variety of words, colors, phrases, imagery, that paint a picture for other people.”
With Profile presented by Poetry Editor Jeff Kaliss.

Unfiltered! 

“I once ran away to Germany for a while to live with a girl I had never met…”
Like the Camel straights the author once smoked, this memoir of a first visit to Germany is UNFILTERED. “Mega Bright” excerpt from Thomas-Wolfgang Rohan’s true stories in Got a Cigarette?  

 

 

 

 Poetry by Geoffrey Heptonstall, Cambridge, England.

From his newly published collection of poetry: A Whispering.
“…When I fell for her there was no motion to compare.
The earth was weightless, the moon a madman’s lantern…”

Plus:

Book review: Like a Rolling Stone

Wenner’s obsession with glamorous rock gods and celebrities, and their lifestyle, would give him more intimate knowledge of them than the “Plaster Casters,” to soon transform himself into a certified celebrity.

 

 

 

 

Book review: The Will of the Many by Australian writer James Islington.

From Book Reviewer Nick King. The novel follows the journey of a young orphan who becomes a fugitive after the assassination of his royal patron by the newly established government.

 

 

Previous issues:

April is National Poetry Month.

Book Club of California in San Francisco salutes April’s Poetry Month.

 

2024 Winter Special Edition, Anniversary Celebration of:

“Beat at the Sweet” flyer January 8, 2012. Design by Daniel Yaryan.

And THE BEAT GOES ON… In celebration of the 10th plus 1 Anniversary of “Beat at the Sweet,” we’re telling the INSIDER STORY of this ONCE-IN-A-LIFETIME event for the very FIRST TIME.

And highlighting one of the poets there, the late Jerry Kamstra, our favorite “Literary Outlaw.”

Welcome to the Home of the Literary Latte. Mill Valley Literary Review provides short work, poetry, articles, reviews, interviews, photos and art, from known and soon to be rich and famous creatives alike. Our click-ability allows you to read, for sun-filled days and sleepless nights, our amazing regular offerings as well as changing selections of back issue highlights. 

Previous interviews and stories featured Peter Coyote, Sam Shepard, T.C. Boyle, writer David Harris, Jennifer Egan, The Brotherhood of Love’s trippy LSD Tales, Fantasy Records and CCR backstory, San Francisco’s Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin, Philip K. Dick’s ex-wife Anne, contemporary Irish poets, Marin favorites Catherine Coulter, Susanna Solomon, Christie Nelson and more.  

Jerry Kamstra, The Frisco Kid himself. Photo Ken Collins.

The 10th plus 1 Anniversary of “Beat at the Sweet.” A Beat Poetry Reading (and music) in Tribute to Jack Kerouac & movie release of On the Road at Mill Valley CA. Sweetwater Music Hall Jan. 8, 2013:

T’was a night to remember featuring Kerouac’s pal Al Hinkle, Woodstock’s Wavy Gravy, “literary outlaw” Jerry Kamstra, poets Joanna McClure, Clark Coolidge, North Beach’s Sharon Doubiago, Daniel Yaryan, Beat expert Gerald Nicosia, musician Ramblin’ Jack Elliot,* MillValleyLit publisher\poet J.Macon King, Live Poets Society founder\MillValleyLit poetry editor Ari Maslow, and many more. 

Remembering “Literary Outlaw” Jerry Kamstra by Wallace Baine. 

Jerry Kamstra Obituary by Daniel Yaryan.

THE LAST BOHEMIAN WIZARD (in honor of novelist Jerry Kamstra) by Daniel Yaryan. 

 

And then there was this time…”

Poems and kind words by Ari M. Maslow upon the occasion of 10th plus 1 Anniversary of “Beat at the Sweet.”

 

 

Beat at the Sweet photos by poet and “Sparring Artists” founder Daniel Yaryan.

 

 

The Convoluted Backstory of Beat at the Sweet.

 
 

 
 
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SUBMISSIONS are now open. Send us your best short fiction, memoir, poetry now. Get started by using our GET LIT notebook. 

 

And the Beat Goes On….

 

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