(Nicole McFeely)

Featured Event: Wednesday, 9/21-Sunday, 9/25 – 47th Annual Big Book Sale

We’re talking the West Coast’s largest book sale, here. Fort Mason’s Festival Pavilion welcomes over 500,000 books, DVDs, CDs, books on tape, vinyl and other forms of media, 10,000 boxes of materials and a whole lot of volunteers for this book lover’s dream come true. Everything is $4 or less and items on Sunday are only $1. Not to mention the fact that proceeds go to benefit the San Francisco Public Library’s literacy programs for children, teens and adults. Buying books to promote literacy in more ways than one!

Also this week:

Tonight, The Booksmith invites Will Boast + Josh Rolnick to share selections from new works: Pulp and Paper, in which Rolnick excavates the small steps people take to move beyond grief, heartbreak, and failure, and Boast’s linked stories in Power Ballads devoted to the working musician.

Have you ever been to the Herbst Theatre? It’s beautiful. This Tuesday, September 20th, join City Arts and Lectures there as they present On Arts 2011-12. Bob Mould will be in conversation with Shepard Fairey this week in the first of a series of conversations with proceeds benefiting the 826 Valencia College Scholarship Program. Bob Mould is a musician, singer-songwriter, producer, and DJ most widely known for this band, this band, and other awesome things including a solo career and an autobiography. Shepard Fairey is an artist, designer, and illustrator known for this, this and even more notably to many, this. Or, hear a different panel of writers, editors and publishers discuss The Future of Journalism in the Digital Age and what it might mean for writers, book and periodical publishers.

The Booksmith is busy this week. On Wednesday, September 21st, they present An Evening with Neal Stephenson to celebrate his newest work, REAMDE, a high-stakes thriller centered around a wealthy tech entrepreneur caught in the very real crossfire of his own online fantasy war game. You could also check out First Person Singular as they flip the switch on gender with Stealing the Leads: Women read Glengarry Glen Ross. The show puts seven of the Bay Area’s finest women actors in roles originally made famous by Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Joe Mantegna, Alan Arkin, Stacy Keach, Alfred Molina, and Jonathan Pryce among others.

Thursday, September 22nd isn’t as crowded as usual, but its got some quality options. First up, Litquake hosts a feast of words and French cuisine at Cafe Bastille, as they welcome three authors heralded for the Parisian settings in their fiction: Cara Black, Diane Johnson and Ellen Sussman. Get tickets for Americans in Paris here. They’re 90$ but include a three-course meal and unlimited wine and literary entertainment. If you can’t swing 90$, don’t worry! Join Press: Works on Paper for A Monstrous Reading which celebrates the starving writer, the independent bookstore, the small press and the monster inside us all with Fia Maxwell, Diana Salier and Lizzy Acker. Or, check out Tony Robles and Lisa Gray-Garcia at Thursdays at Readers.

Quite a bit of focus on food this week. I’m so into this. On Friday, September 23rd, Litquake kicks off Eat Real Oakland with an Eat Real Lit Fest, tales of food-related adventures and misadventures.

On Saturday, September 24th head to Berkeley where Moe’s and Poetry Flash co-present a reading by Gloria Frym, Joeph Lease + Donna de la Perriere in conjunction with 100 Thousand Poets for Change, a day of demonstration/celebration of poetry around the world to promote serious social and political change. Check out that link for more information about specific events. Or, check out the Condensery w/Norma Cole and Michael Nicoloff. Cole is a poet, painter and translator and Nicoloff is a poet, audio artist, and informal urban planner.

Why do books get banned? Authors Jewelle Gomez, Michelle Tea, Rebecca Solnit, Alejandro Murguia and Oscar Villalon want to know. Join them on Sunday, September 25th for the Banned Book Expose, where they’ll read from their favorite banned books and discuss the rationale for censorship.