LaborFest Writers — San Francisco

Who We Are

"The corporate-controlled media amplifies the voices of the powerful and diminishes the voices of working people. We are dedicated to overcoming that."

The LaborFest Writers grew out of a single afternoon in July 2005 — a writing workshop at the Exit Theatre in San Francisco's Tenderloin, led by labor writer Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz. Eight or nine people sat around a few tables in a dark little café and wrote about their first jobs. By the end of the day they had agreed to exchange email addresses.

Twenty years later, the group still meets — now weekly on Zoom, since the pandemic. We are rabble-rousers, activists, Marxists of one stripe or another, union members, immigrants, and native-born — outside the literary mainstream and committed to staying there. Our writing spans memoir, fiction, and poetry.

This is an unfinished and marvelous history.

The Writers

Prose & Poetry

Margaret Cooley

Co-founder. Her writing draws on a life of activism, travel, and the everyday lives of working people.

Read her work →

Memoir & Fiction

Keith David Cooley

Co-founder. A union printer's son, his writing connects personal history to the broader labor movement.

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Poetry & Prose

Alice Elizabeth Rogoff

Founding member and longtime LaborFest Organizing Committee member. Her poetry and prose explore justice, memory, and community.

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Memoir & Humor

Jerry Path

Union worker and founding member whose vivid, often funny stories capture the texture of working life.

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Poetry & Fiction

Susan Ford

Joined in 2005. Her poetry and fiction are rooted in community and labor history.

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Memoir & Poetry

Robert Eugene Rubino

Born in Greenwich Village, raised in Queens. Air Force veteran, SF State journalism graduate. After 34 years as a newspaper copy editor and sports columnist, he turned to poetry and prose. Published in journals since 2016. He suspects he may have been the model for the Charles Atlas 98-pound weakling ads.

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Prose & Poetry

Barbara Saunders

Born in the Bronx, raised in Westchester. Lured to California at 17 by the legend of the Merry Pranksters. She explores the moments when collective life and inner life converge — through poetry, nonfiction, memoir, and solo performance. When not writing, she goes birding.

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Poetry & Prose

Nellie Wong

A poet of fierce beauty and lifelong dedication to the working class and the Freedom Socialist Party.

1934–2025 · In memoriam

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Fiction & Memoir

Phyllis Holliday

Founding member whose last reading was at the Green Arcade bookstore in July 2017.

In memoriam

Activist & Writer

Adele Kearney

Traveled from Sacramento by bus every second Saturday. Civil Rights activist. Joined 2008, passed 2014.

In memoriam

LaborFest Writers group photo — back row L-R: Susan Ford, Richard Chen, Keith Cooley, Jerry Path, Alice Rogoff; front row L-R: Nellie Wong, Margaret Cooley, Phyllis Holliday — Back row L–R: Susan Ford, Richard Chen, Keith Cooley, Jerry Path, Alice Rogoff · Front row L–R: Nellie Wong, Margaret Cooley, Phyllis Holliday

From Our History

"Roxanne had told us that everyone has the capability to tell a story and write it down — that it is a basic human ability, like singing and dancing... We found strength and power in gathering every second Saturday to read our work, discuss it, and expose it to peers — for their perusal and reflection."

— Keith David Cooley, LaborFest Writers History

Our Story

The LaborFest Writers have been meeting since 2005 — now weekly on Zoom, since the pandemic changed how we gather. We workshop each other's writing, read publicly each July at LaborFest, and have published two anthologies. We are proud to be outside the literary mainstream — our politics are radical, our stories are real, and our voices belong to the working class.

LaborFest itself begins every July 5th, the anniversary of "Bloody Thursday" in 1934, when longshoremen Howard Sperry and Nick Bordoise were shot and killed on the San Francisco waterfront — an event that led to the city's General Strike and hundreds of thousands of workers joining the labor movement.

Read the full history →