Featured

• Juliana Spahr
  Poet and Professor of English at Mills College Juliana Spahr celebrates her new book "Du Bois's Telegram: Literary Resistance and State Containment" (Harvard U.) with a discussion at City Lights. The book explores how state interests have shaped U.S. literature; whether writing can be revolutionary; and if art can be autonomous--topics Spahr and David Buuck […]
• M. NourbeSe Philip
  Acclaimed Toronto-based poet, essayist, novelist and dramatist M. NorbeSe Philip visits San Francisco to read from her work as part of The Poetry Center's newly launched Leslie Scalapino 21st Century Innovative Writers Series. Philip is the author of many works, including the poetry cycle "Zong!" (Wesleyan U, 2011) and "Blank: Essays and Interviews" (Bookthug, 2018). […]
• Kiese Laymon with Tongo Eisen-Martin
  Jackson, Mississippi native Kiese Laymon visits San Francisco to read from his astonishing new book "Heavy: An American Memoir." Presented by The Poetry Center at SFSU, Laymon reads and is in conversation with local favorite Tongo Eisen-Martin, author of the poetry collection "Heaven Is All Goodbyes." The only question is what to be more excited […]
• Litquake and Lit Crawl
  San Francisco's annual 10-day festival Litquake returns for its 19th year, taking over the greater Bay Area with readings, panels and literary parties of and for all kinds. Culminating in the world-famous Lit Crawl--some 100 free events in 4 hours, all in the Mission District, which features a healthy sampling of local reading series--the fest […]
• Voice of Witness
  Voice of Witness launches the first in a new series with Haymarket Books, "Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary Confinement", which in trademark VOW style explores the mental, physical and spiritual impacts of America's widespread embrace of solitary confinement through first-person accounts. Editors Mateo Hoke and Taylor Pendergrass will be in conversation with Bay Area […]
• Jennifer Croft
  Winners of the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, Polish author Olga Tokarczuk and translator Jennifer Croft visit San Francisco to discuss "Flights," a hard-to-classify work that spans centuries and interweaves reflections on travel with an in-depth exploration of human anatomy. Sponsored by The Center for the Art of Translation, this promises to be an invigorating […]
• John Sims
  Interdisciplinary conceptual artist John Sims visits City Lights to celebrate the release of his video poem chapbook "A Blazing Grace and the AfroDixieRemixes: The San Francisco Sessions." Part of a 16-year project, the chap confronts the anthem of the Confederacy by remixing and cross-appropriating a wide range of genres of black music, from spiritual and […]
• Reyna Grande
  Mexican author Reyna Grande, who walked across the border at age nine looking for her parents and a home, celebrates her new memoir, "A Dream Called Home," at The Bindery. She's joined in conversation by Carolina De Robertis ("The Gods of Tango"). Grande has received many honors for her work, including an International Latino Book […]
• Evie Shockley
  A finalist for the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry for her fifth collection, "semiautomatic," which the committee called "a brilliant leap of faith into the echoing abyss of language, part rap, part rant, part slam, part performance art, that leaves the reader unsettled, challenged--and bettered," Evie Shockley reads for the Holloway Series, a chance to […]
• Juan Gabriel Vaquez
  Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vasquez reads from and discusses his new novel "The Shape of the Ruins" at Green Apple Books on the Park. A sweeping political thriller concerned with conspiracy theories, actual assassinations that took place in Bogota, and state secrets, the novel is grounded in reality and eerily parallels the current political situation […]