Stories on Stage Davis: Anara Guard & Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi

On Saturday, March 9, Stories on Stage Davis will present  at the Pence Gallery in downtown Davis. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the event starts at 7:30. The event is free to attend and donations are welcome at the door. 

The event will follow the series’ usual format of two stories by local authors read aloud by local actors. Copies of the authors’ books, purchased in partnership with Avid Reader, will be available for purchase and signing.

First, an excerpt from Like A Complete Unknown by Anara Guard will be read by Kellie Raines. Fifteen-year-old Katya feels trapped. She glimpses a future life of cleaning offices and her parents already discuss marriage. Will she set aside her dreams of art school for a more practical purpose that her family expects? Or will she venture out into the world, risking things she can’t yet imagine?  

Anara Guard is a fiction writer and poet who has lived in the Midwest, New England, and Sacramento.  She graduated from Kenyon College with a degree in English, and has attended Breadloaf Writers Conference and the Community of Writers. Her debut novel, Like a Complete Unknown, won Honorable Mention by the Chicago Writers Association for their 2022 Book of the Year in indie fiction.  Her writing has been published in The Ear, Gold Man Review, Voices 2020, Under the Gum Tree, the anthology Twenty Twenty: 43 Stories From a Year Like No Other and New York Times’ Tiny Love Stories. She and her sister perform their poetry as “Sibling Revelry.”

Kellie Raines will read the excerpts from Anara Guard’s book, Like A Complete Unknown. Kellie is a local actor, director, writer, and visual artist. She has performed with and directed for local theatre companies, including KOLT Run Creations, Green Valley Theatre, Big Idea Theatre, Theater Galatea, and Resurrection Theatre. She has shown her visual art at Archival Gallery and in the PBS KVIE Art Auction and The Crocker Art Museum’s Big Names, Small Art Auction. She has a bachelor’s degree in Dramatic Art and a minor in English from UC Davis. You can see Kellie on-air from time to time for PBS KVIE. Elle essaie aussi d’apprendre le français. Bonne soirée! kellierainesart.com

Second, two selections from The Book of Kane and Margaret by Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi will be read by Sara Matsui-Colby. Set in the Gila River Japanese internment camp, these strange and beautifully crafted stories follow two internees, Kane and Margaret, who appear in each selection as different people. Stories on Stage Davis will present “whiskey over barbed wire,” about a man who grows wings, and “dissolving newspaper, fermenting leaves,” about a girl and her hungry, magical cricket. 

Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi is the author of The Book of Kane and Margaret (FC2 / UAP). While a graduate student in Davis, he worked as a popcorn popper at Regal Cinemas, a traveling tutor, an after-school teacher, a social media assistant for the Art of Regional Change, a grader for Asian American Studies, a TA for Religious Studies, and an English 5P instructor. He is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Western Washington University in Bellingham.

Sara Matsui-Colby will read the excerpts from Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi’s book, The Book of Kane and Margaret. Sara is a bilingual, mixed Japanese American actor, voice-over artist, and audiobook narrator. She is a member of AEA and SAG-AFTRA. Sara is delighted to share her love of storytelling and to be a part of Stories on Stage. She has performed in theatres all over the Greater Bay Area, most recently in Davis as part of the play development workshop, The Mochi Project, and has also appeared in several local films. Her voice-over credits include dubbing for shows on Disney+ and Netflix. Sara has worked with many authors and publishers including Graphic Audio and Penguin Random House. Her two most recent audiobooks include The Witches of Brooklyn Book 1 and Momo Arashima Breaks the Mirror of the Sun. To learn more about Sara, follow her on Instagram @saramatsuicolby to see all her performances and updates as well as her website www.saramatsuicolby.com.

Stories on Stage Davis is a fiscally sponsored project of YoloArts, a non-profit arts organization, and is supported by the 2022 City of Davis Arts Grant (funded by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, a California Non-Profit Corporation). For more information, including previous podcast episodes and live events, go to the Stories on Stage Davis website: storiesonstagedavis.com. 

Photo clockwise from top left: Anara Guard, Kellie Raines, Sara Matsui-Colby, Kiik Araki-Kawaguchi