Stories on Stage Sacramento

July 23, 5:00 pm | Live via Zoom | REGISTER TODAY!
Twenty Twenty - 43 stories from a year like no other
A Stories on Stage Anthology | edited by Dorothy Rice
Book Launch | Featured authors/stories/actors listed below

Join us for this special event. Enjoy seven of the amazing pieces from the anthology, performed by actors. Here's the list ... drum roll, please!

Devara Berger | A Letter to Our Loyal Customers
Anita Felicelli | Mother, My Monster
Sands Hall | Surrendered
Pamela Houston | Stamina
p joshua laskey | The Arsonist
Deborah Meltvedt | Mindfulness, 2020
Joshua Mohr | Letting Go)

Performed by Brennan Villados and Kelley Ogden

Actor Brennan Villados

Twenty Twenty: A Stories on Stage Sacramento Anthology (June 30, 2021) includes 43 stories inspired by a year like no other, 2020. Essays and short stories from Northern California authors are organized under the themes Masks, Resilience, Monsters, Kinship, and Time, and touch many aspects of a year that proved catastrophic beyond anyone’s imagining. The devastating toll of Covid-19, life under quarantine, the closure of schools and businesses, the murder of George Floyd, wildfires that swept the West, and more, all are touched on by diverse voices and points of view.

Award-winning, acclaimed authors and friends of SOSS Karen Bender, Anita Felicelli, Joan Frank, Debra Gwartney, Sands Hall, Pamela Houston, Vanessa Hua, Joshua Mohr, and Peter Orner, contributed pieces in the anthology, adding their voices to the Northern California authors who responded to the October 2020 submission call: 2020, You Lived It. Did You Write It?

Thank you donors! The anthology, and our monthly performances would not have been possible
without your support.

order the anthology from Capital books

order from bookshop.org

July 23 Featured Actor and Author Bios

Actor Brennan Villados
Brennan is a performer based out of Sacramento, California. His most recent acting credits include in The Picture of Dorian Gray with Freefall Stage, A Soldier’s Play with Celebration Arts, and Marat/Sade with Falcon’s Eye Theatre. Brennan made his directorial debut in 2019 with Romeo and Juliet for Freefall Stage’s Shakespeare in the park. He attended The American Academy of Dramatic Art and has worked for the UC Davis School of Medicine Standardized Patient Program for the last six years. His other favorite roles include Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet with Falcon’s Eye Theatre, Patrick Stone in Inventing Van Gogh with Big Idea Theatre, Eddie in Fool for Love, and Tom in the one-man show Poster of the Cosmos, both for Blank Canvas Theatre. He is delighted to be a part of this production and looks forward to discovering new ways of connecting and storytelling in this unprecedented time.

Actor Kelley Ogden
Kelley is an accomplished performer, director, and producer whose work has been seen throughout the area. Co-founder of acclaimed fringe theater company KOLT Run Creations, she has performed with Capital Stage, Davis Shakespeare Festival, Sacramento Shakespeare Festival, Main Street Theatre Works, and Theater Galatea, among others. Ogden earned her BFA in performance from The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago.

Devara Berger has worked as an editor and a writer for a variety of organizations. Her nonfiction articles were published in magazines and newspapers and her poetry has appeared in journals in Australia and the United States. She lives in Sacramento with two dogs acting as her probation officer.

Anita Felicelli is the author of Chimerica: A Novel (WTAW Press) and the short story collection Love Songs for a Lost Continent (Stillhouse Press), which won the 2016 Mary Roberts Rinehart Award. Anita’s stories have appeared in The Normal School, Joyland, The Rumpus, Kweli Journal, Eckleburg, and elsewhere. Her essays, reviews, and criticism have appeared in The New York Times (Modern Love), Slate, Salon, San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Babble, Romper, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She graduated from UC Berkeley and UC Berkeley School of Law. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and a Voices of Our Nations alum. Her work has placed as a finalist in multiple Glimmer Train contests and received a Puffin Foundation grant, two Greater Bay Area Journalism awards, and Pushcart Prize nominations. She lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Sands Hall is the author of the memoir, Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint), finalist for the Northern California Book Award, and a Publishers Weekly Best Book in Religion and Spirituality; the audio book is also available, read by the author. Her novel, Catching Heaven (Ballantine), is a Penguin/Random House Reader’s Circle Selec- tion and a WILLA Literary Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction, Women Writing the West. She is also the author of a book of writing essays and exercises, Tools of the Writer’s Craft. Her produced plays include an adaptation of Alcott’s Little Women, and the comic-drama Fair Use, which takes on the “was it plagiarism?” controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s novel, Angle of Repose.Her stories and essays have been published in such journals as the New England Review, Iowa Review, and Los Angeles Review of Books. Sands has an extensive acting and directing resume, and she recently released a CD of her original songs, Rustler’s Moon. Professor Emeritus at Franklin & Marshall College, she teaches for the Community of Writers and the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, among other conferences. She lives in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California. www.sandshall.com

Pam Houston is the author of the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country; two novels, Contents May Have Shifted and Sight Hound; two collections of short stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness and Waltzing the Cat; and a collection of essays, A Little More About Me, all published by W.W. Norton. Her fiction has been selected for volumes of The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize, Best American Travel Writing, and Best American Short Stories of the Century, among other anthologies. She is the winner of the Western States Book Award, the WILLA Award for contemporary fiction, the Evil Companions Literary Award and several teaching awards.

p joshua laskey, originally from Sacramento, currently writes in Dallas, Texas. His published work includes original, adapted, and translated plays as well as original and award-winning self-translated short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. He is proud to have performed for both Stories on Stage Sacramento and Stories on Stage Davis, where he is also an honorary board member emeritus. www.pjoshualaskey.com.

Deborah Meltvedt is a writer and medical science teacher who lives in Sacramento. Deborah has been published in the American River Literary Review, Under the Gum Tree, Susurrus and the Creative Nonfiction Anthology What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. Her first book of poems, Building a Woman, was published this year by Poetry Box Press. Deborah lives with her husband Rick and their cat, Anchovy Jack.

Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoir Sirens (2017), as well as five novels including Damascus, which The New York Times called “Beat- poet cool.” He’s also written Fight Song and Some Things that Meant the World to Me, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller, as well as Termite Parade, an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times. His novel All This Life won the Northern California Book Award. He is the founder of Decant Editorial.

Stories on Stage Anthology: Twenty Twenty
Krista Minard - July 6, 2021

I am beyond honored to have my written work included among some outstanding talent in Stories on Stage Sacramento’s first anthology: “Twenty Twenty: 43 Stories From a Year Like No Other.” (ISBN 978-0-578-90606-5; $20) The publication includes pieces from 40+ accomplished writers—many of them local to the Sacramento region. It’s a first for the award-winning nonprofit literary performance series, which for the past 11 years has featured authors’ stories read at the mic by professional actors. “Always on stage, now on the page,” says the publishing announcement.

The anthology was the brainchild of local authors and Stories on Stage co-directors Shelley Blanton-Stroud and Dorothy Rice, who had just taken the reins of the series in early 2020 when they then quickly saw their plans for writing workshops and on-stage literary events squashed. Yet they knew writers were, well , writing—alone as they sheltered in place, together in Zoom gatherings, wherever they could wrangle words as a way to make sense of a year that had gone so terribly awry. “We thought about all the stories that needed to be captured and shared,” says Rice. “That was the genesis of our submission call, ‘2020—you lived it. Did you write it?’”

Read the rest of Krista Minard's post here.

Cast your vote for Stories on Stage Sacramento and Capital Books in Sacramento Magazine's "2021 Best of Sacramento." This may be the only year we qualify for this category, but how about best "Virtual Music or Entertainment Experience" under Leisure and Entertainment. Capital Books is easy—best bookstore!

One vote per email! We can do this!

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Out & About
by Jessica Laskey | July 2021

Check out our own Jessica Laskey's Out & About section in the July Inside Sacramento!

Check out our June 25 performance
TOD GOLDBERG | THE LOW DESERT - GANGSTER STORIES
Performed by Philip Jacques

Our 2021 Season

We began the year with a special opening night partnership with 916 Ink and B Street Theater. Followed by performances of new work by authors Ellen Michaelson, Alia Volz, Nancy Johnson, Tod Goldberg, Elizabeth Gonzalez James, David Heska Wanbli Weiden, Natashia Deon, and Julie Metz.
Stories on Stage Sacramento just published its first anthology!
Twenty Twenty—43 stories from a year like no other

order the anthology from capital books

order the anthology from bookshop.org

Find the books featured on Stories on Stage Sacramento at Capital Books on K, our local bookseller partner, and receive postcard-sized art of the bookstore and their neighbor, the Crest Theater. Free with your book(s). Heidi and Ross Rojek have been getting stories to readers in Sacramento and beyond much faster than the big guys during this crisis, so let's reward them for that!

In addition to mail order and curbside pickup, the store is now open, so you can browse again (appropriately masked of course!)

Capital Books & Crest Theater, by Kyle Thaw and his mother, Heidi Rojek. This beautiful artwork FREE with your book purchase!

Visit and subscribe to the Stories on Stage Sacramento youtube channel for recordings of 2020 performances! Sign up to receive our newsletter for announcements of upcoming performances, workshops and more!