The New Talkies

Featured

• Lisa Locascio with Kate Folk
  Editor of "Golden State 2017: New Writing from California" Lisa Locascio visits San Francisco to read from her debut novel, "Open Me." An American, Roxana, decides to study abroad after graduating high school and ends up in Copenhagen, where she falls in love with her guide. As their relationship deepens, his mood darkens and Roxana […]
• Vanessa Hua with Oscar Villalon
  Author of the acclaimed story collection "Deceit and Other Possibilities," Vanessa Hua launches her debut novel, "A River of Stars," which follows a Chinese woman as she sets off for California to give birth to her married boss's son. Fleeing with her is her housemate, an unmarried mother kept apart from her American boyfriend. Hua […]
• Virgie Tovar
  Beloved local activist Virgie Tovar, who started Babecamp and the hashtag campaign #LoseHateNotWeight and is one of the nation's leading voices on fat discrimination and body image, launches her new book, "You Have the Right to Remain Fat," with a reading and conversation. Tovar is the managing director of Radar Productions and editor of "Hot […]
• Ingrid Rojas Contreras + Carolina De Robertis
  Ingrid Rojas Contreras launches her gorgeous debut novel “Fruit of the Drunken Tree,” set in the turbulence of the Colombian conflict. Chula, 7, and her family live in a gated community in Bogotá; they hire a live-in maid, Petrona, from the city’s guerilla-occupied slum before fleeing the escalating war. Based on Contreras’ life, the story […]
• O. Kwon + Esmé Weijun Wang
  O. Kwon launches her much-anticipated debut novel, “The Incendiaries,” with a reading and conversation with Esmé Weijun Wang (“The Border of Paradise”). “The Incendiaries” follows a Korean American woman at an elite American university as she is drawn into acts of domestic terrorism by a cult tied to North Korea, and the man whose love […]
• InsideStoryTime: Hubrility
  The monthly reading series InsideStoryTime, which alternates between San Francisco and Oakland, this month features performances by Maw Shein Win ("Invisible Gifts"), Natalie Devora ("Black Girl White Skin"), Kitty Costello ("Upon Waking"), Grant Faulkner ("Fissures") and Graham Todd in the intimate space of The Octopus Literary Salon, which also has a healthy variety of food […]
• Pride Poetry Palooza
  The Perfectly Queer Reading Series presents its annual Pride Poetry Palooza, featuring LGBTQ poets reading from new work, followed by a discussion about queer poetic inspiration. This year features readings by Susan Dambroff, Natasha Dennerstein, Michael Tod Edgerton, Europa Grace, David Hathwell, Philip Harris, Randall Mann and Luna Merbruja.
• Ottessa Moshfegh
  Author of the novella "McGlue," the story collection "Homesick for Another World" and the novel "Eileen," Ottessa Moshfegh visits San Francisco to read from her new novel, "My Year of Rest and Relaxation," which follows a woman committed to a reprieve from the ills of the modern world, assisted by a terrible psychiatrist and an […]
• Will Alexander
  As part of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive's Black Life series, which showcases the vitality and range of cultural production in the African diaspora through multidisciplinary works, curators Chika Okoye and David Brazil present poet and musician Will Alexander. Often described as a surrealist, Alexander's unique syntax and use of language defies […]
• Amber Tamblyn + Matthew Zapruder
  Berkeley Arts & Letters presents Amber Tamblyn, the Brooklyn-based author of three poetry collections, including "Dark Sparkler"; here, she discusses her debut novel "Any Man." The book follows a violent serial rapist named Maude, and her male victims, whose suffering is increased by police skepticism and public shame and who eventually come together to speak […]