Millennial Notes Sarah DeLappe Captures Teenage Dynamics by Joan-Kirsti Brennan In “The Wolves,” we get to follow nine teenage girls on their elite indoor soccer field in Middle America. These high school girls dance and weave across the green turf while they talk to each other in rippling flows of conversations that rise and…
Michael Golamco’s Warm-Hearted, Sharp-Tongued Rom-Com by Joan-Kirsti Brennan In “Cowboy vs. Samurai,” Michael Golamco, native to San Mateo, uses humor and sharp dialogue to dig into our cultural taboos on race, love, and activism. At the same time, he gives us characters who are warm, smart, and funny. In Breakneck, Wyoming, against a backdrop…
Stephen Adly Guirgis’ Rollicking Rollercoaster of Sex & Addiction by Joan-Kirsti Brennan In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor E. Frankl describes an “existential vacuum”: people “haunted by the experience of their inner emptiness, a void within themselves.” Searching for answers outside themselves, the characters in Stephen Adly Guirgis’ sharp New York comedy orbit the…
Joan Kirsti-Brennan, a lifelong Bay Area resident, Joan teaches horseback riding and trains horses. She also works with the Terma Foundation, an international healthcare nonprofit. She holds an M.S. in Conservation Biology–but literature classes were always her favorite.