Featured

• Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield and Marie Howe
  A fundraiser for the Safe House Education Fund for Maasai Girls, which provides girls of the V-Day Safe House in Narok, Kenya with college, university or trade school education in order that they become leaders in their communities and stop the cycles of oppression there, widely acclaimed poets Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield, and Marie Howe […]
• Megan Fernandes with Sam Sax
  The New York-based author of "The Kingdom and After", Megan Fernandes reads from her second poetry collection, "Good Boys." The poems follow a restless speaker who feels cosmically abandoned and has failed at the traditional markers of adulthood as she moves from city to city, from enchantment to disgust. She is propelled by a fury […]
• Garth Greenwell and R.O. Kwon
  In "Cleanness", the anticipated follow-up to his debut novel "What Belongs to You" (longlisted for the 2016 National Book Award), Garth Greenwell revisits the world of an American teacher living in a Bulgaria at the cusp of revolution. Surrounded by crumbling buildings and streets filled with political protesters, he prepares to leave and confronts the […]
• Lidia Yuknavitch
  The Portland, OR-based, nationally bestselling author of the novels "The Book of Joan", "The Small Backs of Children", and "Dora: A Headcase", and the memoir "The Chronology of Water", Lidia Yuknavitch reads from her debut story collection, "Verge." Beloved for her emotionally raw, visceral writing and profound imagination, Yuknavitch focuses here on the beauty and […]
• Marcelo Hernandez Castillo
  Winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize for his book of poems "Cenzontle" and co-founder of the Undocupoets, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo reads from his memoir about growing up undocumented, "Children of the Land." It tells of his childhood encounters with ICE agents; his father's deportation and decade-long denied re-entry; his mother's impossible decision to leave […]
• Jenny Offill: Weather
  Author of the nationally bestselling novel "Dept. of Speculation", also one of the NYT Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2014, Jenny Offill visits San Francisco to read from her anticipated follow-up, "Weather." A librarian embraces her calling as a fake shrink, answering mail for her old mentor's popular podcast "Hell and High Water." She […]
• Obi Kaufmann at Night of Ideas
  Author of the acclaimed "California Field Atlas" (2017), an inventive, 550-page guide to the state's ecologies and histories with hand-painted maps and trail paintings, Bay Area native Obi Kauffman's 2nd book is "The State of Water: Understanding California's Most Precious Resource" (2019). He lectures as part of the 2nd annual Night of Ideas, a 7-hour […]
• Lunch Poems: Robert Hass
  UC Berkeley's long-running Lunch Poems series, which hosts a single author for an extended reading in the middle of the day, features series founder Robert Hass for his new book, "Summer Snow: New Poems." Distinguished Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the university and U. S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997, Hass gives not-to-be-missed readings that […]
• Carmen Maria Machado with Esme Weijun Wang
  peter@citylights.com (Peter Maravelis) Author of the adored "Her Body and Other Parties" (a finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction), Carmen Maria Machado visits the Bay Area for her anticipated memoir "In the Dream House", an innovative account of a relationship gone wrong and a dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of […]