VIRTUAL: Launch for Lara Bazelon / A Good Mother
2021-05-11 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CA
Booksmith and The Bindery are thrilled to host the virtual launch for Lara Bazelon and her debut novel A Good Mother! More to be announced soon, but won’t you save the date and join us?
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order A Good Mother here – we’re currently offering free shipping throughout San Francisco and the East Bay.
About the book
When young decorated combat veteran Travis Hollis is found stabbed through the heart at a U.S. Army base in Germany, there is no doubt that his wife, Luz, is to blame. But was it an act of self defense? A frenzied attempt to save her infant daughter from domestic abuse? Or the cold blood murder of an innocent man?
As the case heads to trial in Los Angeles, hard-charging attorney Abby Rosenberg is eager to return from maternity leave—and her quickly fracturing home life—to take the case and defend Luz. Abby, a new mother herself, is committed to ensuring Luz avoids prison and retains custody of her daughter. But as the evidence stacks up against Luz, Abby realizes the task proves far more difficult than she suspected – especially when she has to battle for control over the case with her co-counsel, whose dark absorption with Luz only complicates matters further.
As the trial careens toward an outcome no one expects, readers will find themselves in the seat of the jurors, forced to answer the question – what does it mean to be a good mother? A good lawyer? And who is the real monster?
About the author
Lara Bazelon is an attorney, journalist, MacDowell Fellow, former public defender, and professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where she holds the Phillip and Muriel C. Barnett Chair in Trial Advocacy. She is also the author of Rectify: The Power of Restorative Justice After Wrongful Conviction, as well as the upcoming nonfiction book, Ambitious Like a Mother: Women, Ambition, and Motherhood, and her writing has been published widely in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Washington Post, and many others. Photo by Richard Gilligan.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.

Policies

Refund Policy:
No refunds or returns. Contact events@booksmith.com with any questions.
Cancellation Policy:
If we have to cancel an event, you will be refunded within 4 business days of the event date.

This Is Now: Friendship in the Age of Loneliness
2021-05-11 18:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
How do you make and keep friendships of a lifetime? Angie Coiro interviews Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky on Friendship in the Age of Loneliness.

About this Virtual Event

Research has shown that people with close friends are happier, healthier, and live longer than people who lack strong social bonds. Despite this, the average American hasn’t made a new friend in the past five years.
Why— when we are seemingly more connected than ever before— can it feel so difficult to create and maintain strong friendships? Why do we spend only four percent of our time with friends?
Millennial workplace expert and friendship visionary Adam “Smiley” Poswolsky proposes a new solution for the mounting pressures of this modern life: focus on your friendships.
In an hour-long interview with journalist-in-residence Angie Coiro about Friendship in the Age of Loneliness, this wonderful author offers practical habits and playful reminders on how to create meaningful connections, make new friends, and deepen relationships. Smiley will help you revisit your relationship with technology, encourage you to prioritize real-world experiences, send snail mail, and really see your friends. In doing this, he shares the key to a good life—a happier, healthier, longer, richer life.

Stress and Resilience with Elissa Epel & Dacher Keltner
2021-05-11 18:00 - 19:00 | online
City Arts & Lectures presents: Stress and Resilience
with Elissa Epel & Dacher Keltner
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
6:00pm Pacific Time

TICKETS
This event appears in the series
Conversations on Science & Health: A Miniseries
Elissa Epel, Ph.D, is a Professor and Vice Chair in the Department of Psychiatry at University of California, San Francisco. Her research aims to elucidate mechanisms of healthy aging, and to use this science to help vulnerable populations. She studies psychological, social, and behavioral processes related to chronic psychological stress that accelerate biological aging, with a focus on overeating and metabolism. With her colleagues, Epel develops and tests interventions that combine behavioral, psychological, and mindfulness training, in order to improve stress resilience and physiological homeostatic capacity and slow aging. Epel is the Director of the Aging, Metabolism, and Emotions Center, and the Consortium for Obesity Assessment, Study, & Treatment, (COAST), and Associate Director of the Center for Health and Community. She is also the co-author of The Telomere Effect: The New Science of Living Younger Longer, which integrates the science of cell aging with practical daily tips.
Dacher Keltner is a professor of Psychology at UC Berkeley and faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. His research focuses on the biological and evolutionary origins of compassion, awe, love, beauty, and humility, as well as power, social class, and inequality. He is the author of several books, including Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox: How We Gain and Lose Influence. He has also consulted for Apple, Pinterest, Google, the Sierra Club, and served as a scientific consultant for Pixar’s Inside Out and for the Center for Constitutional Rights in its work to outlaw solitary confinement. Keltner is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Francisco Goldman in conversation with Valeria Luiselli
2021-05-11 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
discussing his new book
Monkey Boy: a novel
published by Grove Atlantic Press
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
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Event is free, but registration is required.
(CLICK HERE) to register.
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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book.
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Goldman’s first novel since his widely acclaimed, national bestselling Say Her Name (winner of the Prix Femina Etranger), Monkey Boy is a sweeping story about the impact of divided identity – whether Jewish/Catholic, white/brown, native/expat – and one misfit’s quest to heal his damaged past and find love.
Our narrator, Francisco Goldberg, has been living and working in Mexico City as a journalist for over a decade, but has recently returned to New York City in hopes of “going home again.” It’s been five years since the end of his last relationship and he is falling in love again. Soon he is beckoned back to Boston by the high school girlfriend who was witness to his greatest youthful humiliations, and his mother, Yolanda, around whom his story orbits like a dark star. Backdropping this five day trip to his childhood home is the specter of Frank’s recently deceased father, Bert, an immigrant from Ukraine, volcanically tempered, pathologically abusive, yet also at times infuriatingly endearing; as well as the high school bullies who gave him the moniker “monkey boy” and his estranged, larger-than-life sister, Lexi.
Told in an open, irresistibly funny and passionate voice, this extraordinary portrait of growing up outside the dominant culture unearths the hidden cruelties in a predominantly white, working-class Boston suburb where Francisco – aka Paco, aka Frankie Gee – came of age. A crowning achievement from one of the most important American voices in the last 40 years.
Francisco Goldman has published four novels and two books of non-fiction. The Long Night of White Chickens was awarded the American Academy’s Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. His novels have been finalists for several prizes, including, twice, The Pen/Faulkner Prize. The Ordinary Seaman was a finalist for The International IMPAC Dublin literary award. The Divine Husband was a finalist for The Believer Book Award. The Art of Political Murder won The Index on Censorship T.R. Fyvel Book Award and The WOLA/Duke Human Rights Book Award. The Interior Circuit: A Mexico City Chronicle, published in 2013, was named by the LA Times one of 10 best books of the year and received The Blue Metropolis “Premio Azul” 2017. His most recent novel, Say Her Name, won the 2011 Prix Femina Etranger. His books have been published in 16 languages.

Valeria Luiselli was born in Mexico City and grew up in South Korea, South Africa and India. An acclaimed writer of both fiction and nonfiction, she is the author of the essay collection Sidewalks; the novels Faces in the Crowd and The Story of My Teeth; Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions and Lost Children Archive. She is the recipient of a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship and the winner of two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, The Carnegie Medal, an American Book Award, and has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Kirkus Prize, and the Booker Prize. She has been a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35” honoree and the recipient of a Bearing Witness Fellowship from the Art for Justice Fund. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, and McSweeney’s, among other publications, and has been translated into more than twenty languages. She is a Writer in Residence at Bard College and lives in New York City.

Advance Praise for Monkey Boy
“Francisco Goldman . . . Francisco Goldberg? . . . Frankie Gee!—crafter of the tenderest dirtiest love scenes!—the wisest and spookiest children!—the fathers whose monstrosity breaks our hearts with compassion for them—who else can do all this? Francisco Goldman is uncategorizable, as is this book which made me grow a second heart just to contain all its fierce tenderness. Goldman has been my literary hero from his first entrancing Long Night of White Chickens to this latest take-no-prisoners Monkey Boy. He is a true original, that rarest of writers, the kind we cannot live without.”—Susan Choi

Virtual Event: Linda Rui Feng and Meng Jin with The Ruby
2021-05-11 18:00 - 20:00 | CA
PRESENTED BY THE RUBY

JOIN US TUESDAY, MAY 11 AT 6PM PT WHEN LINDA RUI FENG IS JOINED BY MENG JIN TO DISCUSS HER DEBUT NOVEL, SWIMMING BACK TO TROUT RIVER!
Click the link here to register for this event!
If you would like a signed copy of this book, click here and write “signed” in your order comment.
About this Event
[This is a Virtual Ruby event. Nonmembers are welcome to join; please donate if you are able! This event will take place over Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82204356202 ]
In partnership with Green Apple Books, join us in celebrating the launch of Linda Rui Feng‘s debut novel, Swimming Back to Trout River, a Most-Anticipated selection from Electric Literature, The Millions, and Paperback Paris, and hailed by award-winning author Garth Greenwall as“gorgeously orchestrated” and possessing “astonishing emotional force.” Linda will be in conversation with our very own Meng Jin, author of Little Gods.
Support the author and beloved SF indie bookstore, Green Apple Books by purchasing a signed copy of the book here (just indicate you’d like a signed copy in the “order comments” section)!

About Swimming Back to Trout River
How many times in life can we start over without losing ourselves?
In the summer of 1986 in a small Chinese village, ten-year-old Junie receives a momentous letter from her parents, who had left for America years ago: her father promises to return home and collect her by her twelfth birthday. But Junie’s life exists in the idyllic countryside with the beloved grandparents who raised her. Junie’s growing determination to stay put with her grandparents threatens to derail her family’s shared future.
What Junie doesn’t know is that her parents, Momo and Cassia, are newly estranged from one another in their adopted country, each holding close private tragedies and histories from the tumultuous years of their youth during China’s Cultural Revolution. While Momo grapples with his deferred musical ambitions and dreams for Junie’s future in America, Cassia finally begins to wrestle with a shocking act of brutality from years ago. In order for Momo to fulfill his promise, he must make one last desperate attempt to reunite all three members of the family before Junie’s birthday—even if it means bringing painful family secrets to light.
Swimming Back to Trout River weaves together the stories of Junie, Momo, and Cassia while depicting their heartbreak and resilience, tenderly revealing the hope, compromises, and abiding ingenuity that make up the lives of immigrants.

About Linda Rui Feng
Born in Shanghai, Linda Rui Feng has lived in San Francisco, New York, and Toronto. She is a graduate of Harvard and Columbia Universities and is currently a professor of Chinese cultural history at the University of Toronto. She has been twice awarded a MacDowell Fellowship for her fiction, and her prose and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Fiddlehead, Kenyon Review Online, Santa Monica Review, and Washington Square Review. Swimming Back to Trout River is her first novel. Visit LindaRuiFeng.com to learn more.
About Meng Jin
Meng Jin was born in Shanghai and currently lives in San Francisco. She is a Kundiman Fellow and graduate of the Hunter College MFA. Her novel, Little Gods, was released to critical acclaim in 2020. See more at www.mengj.in
About The Virtual Ruby
*While we shelter in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, The Ruby’s physical location will be closed. As a collective, we’ll continue to gather online for virtual workshops, events, and discussions. All are welcome to join us for these events. * For those who can afford it and would like to support The Ruby during this uncertain time, we are offering 3 tiers of virtual membership: $5/week, $15/week, and $25/week. (Though we have some money in our emergency savings account to get us through the next little while, we’re pretty nervous about the future, and how long this might go on for.) Please help only if it’s feasible for you. If you’re in a tough time financially right now, we absolutely get it. Please, take care of yourself and stay connected to this community so we can help.
Here are the tiers of virtual membership (use these links to sign up):
$5/week – https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/aRsJyABygL4FvvEJT
$15/week – https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/o56ggrnNNx9rzn6AA
$25/week – https://www.joinit.org/o/the-ruby/q37HfmWSQMoLzPt4p
Want to make a one-time donation of more or less? We can still accept donations through last year’s GoFundMe. Link is here.
Our Virtual Ruby calendar will be updated as events are added.
You can register for this event here.

THE NINE LIVES OF ROSE NAPOLITANO by Donna Freitas | GGP Online Book Club
2021-05-11 19:00 - 21:00 | CA
Please join us on Tuesday, May 11, 2021 at 7 PM PDT for a GGP Online Book Club discussion of THE NINE LIVES OF ROSE NAPOLITANO by Donna Freitas.
The Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84073803712.
You can order a print copy at http://bit.ly/ggp9Lives or in audiobook from Libro.fm, GGP’s audiobook partner, at http://bit.ly/9LivesAB,
Description

A deeply moving novel about a woman who thought she never wanted to be a mother–and the many ways that life can surprise us
In every woman there are many stories . . .
Rose Napolitano is fighting with her husband, Luke, about prenatal vitamins. She promised she’d take them, but didn’t. He promised before they got married that he’d never want children, but now he’s changed his mind. Their marriage has come to rest on this one question: Can Rose find it in herself to become a mother? Rose is a successful professor and academic. She’s never wanted to have a child. The fight ends, and with it their marriage.
But then, Rose has a fight with Luke about the vitamins–again. This time the fight goes slightly differently, and so does Rose’s future as she grapples with whether she can indeed give up the one thing she thought she knew about herself. Can she reimagine her life in a completely new way? That reimagining plays out again and again in each of Rose’s nine lives, just as it does for each of us as we grow into adulthood. What are the consequences of our biggest choices? How would life change if we let go of our preconceived ideas of ourselves and became someone completely new? Rose Napolitano’s experience of choosing and then choosing again shows us in an utterly compelling way what it means, literally, to reinvent a life and, sometimes, become a different kind of woman than we ever imagined.
A stunning novel about love, loss, betrayal, divorce, death, a woman’s career and her identity, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano is about finding one’s way into a future that wasn’t the future one planned, and the ways that fate intercedes when we least expect it.
About the Author

This is Donna Freitas’s first adult novel. She is the author of Consent: A Memoir of Unwanted Attention, as well as books for young adults. Donna has written for The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, and has appeared on NPR and the TODAY show. She’s on the faculty at Fairleigh Dickinson University’s MFA program and lives in Brooklyn and Connecticut.
Praise For…

Praise for The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano:
“Freitas’s prose is engaging and precise, and her what-if format proves ideal for elegantly unpacking the tensions of the plot. She balances tightly written scenes of confrontation with Rose’s poignant reflections on how much she can compromise without losing herself completely. This isn’t one to miss. “
—Publishers Weekly (starred)
