Gigi Pandian presents The Alchemist’s Illusion, a story of the centuries-old alchemist Zoe Faust who is tired of running from her past. She’s finally got her life on track in Portland, Oregon, gardening and cooking in her fixer-upper house with her mischievous best friend, Dorian the gargoyle chef. It seems like the perfect life for Zoe―until she discovers that her old mentor Nicolas Flamel, who she thought had abandoned her, has been imprisoned. Book Passage San Francisco 1 Ferry Building San…

Writers specialize in carefully chosen words. But when it comes time to share their work, they must learn to think on their feet, compose with their tongues, and look their readers in the eye. Sponsored by the Bay Area Authors Guild, this program will provide practical tips for writers seeking to make their readings, interviews and other public appearances as compelling as their texts.   A National Best-Selling author and Hall of Fame Speaker with a Ph.D. in communications, Bay Area Authors Guild…

Join the Tenderloin Museum for the opening reception of our Matchbook Map Exhibit, featuring a searchable, interactive touchscreen map that connects matchbook imagery to historical info on the associated business and address, and links to information about the present day site. We’ll be presenting this new permanent exhibit in conjunction with a temporary exhibit, the Tenderloin Ephemera Exhibition, featuring historical Tenderloin ephemera from the 1920’s-1950’s — including bar signs, glassware, postcards, menus, matchbooks et al. These small, seemingly ordinary mementos…

Pushcart Prize-nominee Jenn Stroud Rossman shares her witty debut novel, The Place You're Supposed to Laugh. It's 2002 in Silicon Valley. 9/11's still fresh, the dot-com bubble has burst, and holy calamity is raining down on 14-year-old Chad Loudermilk. His father is about to lose his job, his mother isn't the same since Chad's grandma died, and as one of the few black kids at tony Palo Alto High School, Chad's starting to wonder about his birth parents. Next door lives dot-com mogul…

Norma Cole and Forrest Gander discuss and read from the work of one of Latin America's most celebrated and controversial poets, Raúl Zurita celebrating the release of INRI by Raúl Zurita, translated by William Rowe, forward by Norma Cole published by New York Review Books In 2001, the president of Chile publicly acknowledged that many of the bodies of the people who had disappeared under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet would never be recovered. The victims had been flown…

Brittany Ackerman discusses her new memoir, The Perpetual Motion Machine, with Francesca Bell. About The Perpetual Motion Machine Inspired by a brother's high school science project--a perpetual motion machine that could save the world--the Perpetual Motion Machine is a memoir in essays that attempts to save a sibling by depicting the visceral pain that accompanies longing for some past impossibility. The collection has been a science project in its study of memory, in the calculation and plotting of the moments that make up a…

Join internationally exhibited artist Ana Aranda in celebration of her delightful new bilingual picture book, ¡Our Celebración!: ¡la Celebracion! (Ages 5+) It's a sunny summer day. Come join the crowd headed for the parade! Marvel at the people riding motorcycles, bicycles, tricycles, and unicycles. Duck out of the way as firefighters spray water on hot spectators. Clap to the music as bands of musicians playing clarinetes, saxophones, flautas, trumpets, and drums march by. Feast on lemonade, watermelon, tacos, and ice cream. Wave to the corn…

discussing the subject of her new book Segregation by Design: Local Politics and Inequality in American Cities from Cambridge University Press Segregation by Design draws on more than 100 years of quantitative and qualitative data from thousands of American cities to explore how local governments generate race and class segregation. Starting in the early twentieth century, cities have used their power of land use control to determine the location and availability of housing, amenities (such as parks), and negative land…

The Bindery hosts Jeremy N. Smith for Breaking and Entering: The Extraordinary Story of a Hacker Called "Alien". Please join us!   When she arrived at MIT in the 1990s, Alien was quickly drawn to the school’s tradition of high-risk physical trespassing: the original “hacking.” Within a year, one of her hallmates was dead and two others were arraigned. Alien’s adventures were only just beginning.   After a stint at the storied, secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory, Alien was recruited by a top…

Stevan Allred discusses his new novel, The Alehouse at the End of the World with Renee Macalino Rutledge. About The Alehouse at the End of the World When a fisherman receives a mysterious letter about his beloved's demise, he sets off in his skiff to find her on the Isle of the Dead. The Alehouse at the End of the World is an epic comedy set in the sixteenth century, where bawdy Shakespearean love triangles play out with shapeshifting avian demigods and a…

Rachel Roy & Ava Dash: 96 Words for Love 01/17/2019 - 6:00pm Fiction Reading/Talk Ever since her acceptance to UCLA, 17-year-old Raya Liston has been quietly freaking out. She feels simultaneously lost and trapped by a future already mapped out for her. Then her beloved grandmother dies, and Raya jumps at the chance to spend her last free summer at the ashram in India where her grandmother met and fell in love with her grandfather. Raya hopes to find her…