Something old, something new

Bay Area Generations is a Bay Area literary community and reading series founded by Charles Kruger and Sandra Wassilie in the summer of 2013. Both founders were writers over 50 years of age who had attended and participated in many readings around the San Francisco Bay Area.

Because…

Our founders recognized that as writers there was a need for a literary reading series that would bring together different generations of readers- into a literary conversation and in community. While some poetry and literary reading series include multiple generations, our founders observed that a large number of these literary events seemed to feature either mostly younger or mostly older writers with a large gap in generational attendance and participation at either.

Thus: Bay Area Generations was born

Our goal at Bay Area Generations has been to build a literary community designed to bring the generations together; both on stage and in the audience.

The format of our flagship reading series was to present each “reader” as an intergenerational creative couple who perform as a pair. Each subsequent show included three or more pairs of readers and a musical guest. This format currently survives as our literary reading show.

Bay Area Generations encourages its literary contributors to be creative within this format, stipulating only that they propose a combined performance lasting no more than 10 to 15 minutes.

We produce each “Generations” without poet or author introductions, nor banter. Instead, we do produce a show program which provides narrative statements from each pair of readers.

Our hope, as a bay area literary reading series, is to provide writers, poets, authors, musicians and audiences of different generations and communities a format in which to honor one another in performance as conversation, offering an opportunity to mix it up. in a format that allows for maximum creativity, but with enough structure to avoid boredom and distraction in performance.

We welcome you to join this great bay area literary community or poets, writers, authors, playwrights and musicians at an upcoming readings and shows.