Queer Mystery Writers Panel
2021-06-15 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | San Francisco Public Library – Virtual Library
Five acclaimed queer mystery writers, Michael Nava (moderator), Cheryl A. Head, Greg Herren, Dharma Kelleher and P.J. Vernon discuss the mystery genre and its special attraction to queer writers. Presented by the San Francisco Public Library and the NorCal Chapter of Mystery Writers of America.

Claire Boyles In conversation with Kirstin Valdez Quade
2021-06-16 19:00 - 21:00
Claire Boyles is joined in conversation by Kirstin Valdez Quade to discuss her debut story collection, Site Fidelity (W.W. Norton).
“If we are to survive, even the next several decades, we need to feminize the myth of the American West…Claire Boyle’s stories do just that, the tenacious, unsinkable women who inhabit them no longer content to sit back and let powerful men of industry make us all extinct. For anyone who loves and grieves the West, who isn’t afraid to open their eyes and see her distress, these beautifully forged stories are as essential as water.” — Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Site Fidelity
Set in the western sagebrush steppe, Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.
Firmly rooted in the modern American West, Site Fidelity follows women and families who feel the instinctual, inexplicable pull of a home they must work to protect from the effects of economic inequity and climate catastrophe. A seventy-four-year-old nun turns to eco-sabotage to stop a fracking project. A woman delivers her own baby in a Nevada ghost town. A young farmer hides her chicken flock from the government during a bird flu epidemic. An ornithologist returns home to care for her rancher father and gets caught up trying to protect a breeding group of endangered Gunnison sage grouse.
In lean, lyrical prose, Claire Boyles evokes the bleakness and beauty of our threatened western landscapes. Spanning the decades from the 1970s to a plausible near future, this knockout debut introduces unforgettable characters who must confront the challenges of caregiving and loss alongside the very practical impacts of fracking, water rights law, and other agricultural policies. Site Fidelity is a vivid, intimate, and deeply human exploration of life on the shifting terrain of our changing planet.
About the participants
Claire Boyles is a writer, teacher, and former sustainable farmer. She received her MFA in creative writing from Colorado State University. Her fiction has appeared in Boulevard and the Kenyon Review. She lives in Loveland, Colorado.
Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She is the recipient of a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation, the Rome Prize, and the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer’s Award. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, The O. Henry Prize Stories, and elsewhere. Originally from New Mexico, she now lives in New Jersey and teaches at Princeton University.

Virtual Event: Krys Malcolm Belc and Alex McElroy
2021-06-17 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Thursday, June 17 at 6pm PT when Krys Malcolm Belc discusses his book, The Natural Mother of the Child: A Memoir of Nonbinary Parenthood, with Alex McElroy on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87079245281

Praise for The Natural Mother of the Child
“A formally daring queer memoir about parenthood and inheritance and the way our bodies resist the binaries of the state; The Natural Mother of the Child is brilliant.“ —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

“All memoirs offer a study of a body through time, but my favorites make this fact transparent, refuse to separate the self from its tangible form. This memoir is an embodied story—of non-binary parenthood, of true partnership and the challenge of navigating systems which were not designed with us in mind, but on which our most intimate decisions sometimes depend. Above all, this is a love story, one which tracks the evolution of self through the relationships that define it. I loved this portrait of a queer family’s making, its proof that the ways we love and are loved create us.“ —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me & Girlhood

“This is a gorgeous memoir about families, raising children, and figuring out how to live in a world where intimate matters are both inscribed by individual history and entangled with the workings of the State. A work of solace and communion, this book is destined to be a major addition to the literature of parenthood and selfhood, one that will be read for years to come.” —Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State

“Krys Malcolm Belc’s lyrical memoir brings much-needed nuance to all these old conversations about baby-making, families, parenting, and gender. Belc’s narrative of his conscious creation of self and family is generous, resonant, and powerful—I will be pressing this lovely book into the hands of all the parents and parents-to-be I know!” —Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

About The Natural Mother of the Child
Krys Malcolm Belc’s visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood—conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson—eventually clarified his gender identity.

Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.”

By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir in essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—and addresses his deep ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience.

The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailyness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

Laura Raicovich
2021-06-17 18:00 - 20:00
Laura Raicovich discusses her new book
CULTURE STRIKE: Art and Museums in an Age of Protest
published by Verso Books
A leading activist museum director explains why museums are at the center of a political storm and how they can be reimagined.
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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.
———-
Event is free, but registration is required
———-
(CLICK HERE) to register. (link to be posted soon!)
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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. (link to be posted soon!)
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In an age of protest, culture and museums have come under fire. Protests against museum funding (like the Metropolitan Museum accepting Sackler family money) and boards (such as the Whitney appointing tear gas manufacturer Warren Kanders)—to say nothing of demonstrations over exhibitions and artworks—have roiled cultural institutions across the world, from the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi to the Akron Art Museum. Meanwhile never have there been more calls for museums to work for social change.
In this book, Laura Raicovich shows how art museums arose as colonial institutions bearing an ideology of neutrality that masks their role in upholding capitalist values. And she suggests how museums can be reinvented to serve better, public ends.
Laura Raicovich was President and Executive Director of the Queens Museum. During her tenure, she was a champion of socially engaged art practices that address the most pressing social, political, and ecological issues of our times. She has defined her career with artist-driven projects and programs. She is also the author of At the Lightning Field and A Diary of Mysterious Difficulties.

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

VIRTUAL: Booksmith and Mother Jones present: Rainesford Stauffer with Becca Andrews / An Ordinary Age
2021-06-17 18:00 - 20:00
Booksmith and Mother Jones present an evening of conversation between Rainesford Stauffer, author of the debut An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way in a World That Expects Exceptional, and Mother Jones reporter Becca Andrews.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order An Ordinary Age here. We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact us at events@booksmith.com.
About the book
Featured on Good Morning America
Esquire‘s Book Club Pick
“A meticulous cartography of how outer forces shape young people’s inner lives.” —Esquire, Best Books of Spring 2021
In conversation with young adults and experts alike, journalist Rainesford Stauffer explores how the incessant pursuit of a “best life” has put extraordinary pressure on young adults today, across our personal and professional lives—and how ordinary, meaningful experiences may instead be the foundation of a fulfilled and contented life.
Young adulthood: the time of our lives when, theoretically, anything can happen, and the pressure is on to make sure everything does. Social media has long been the scapegoat for a generation of unhappy young people, but perhaps the forces working beneath us—wage stagnation, student debt, perfectionism, and inflated costs of living—have a larger, more detrimental impact on the world we post to our feeds.
An Ordinary Age puts young adults at the center as Rainesford Stauffer examines our obsessive need to live and post our #bestlife, and the culture that has defined that life on narrow, and often unattainable, terms. From the now required slate of (often unpaid) internships, to the loneliness epidemic, to the stress of “finding yourself” through school, work, and hobbies—the world is demanding more of young people these days than ever before. And worse, it’s leaving little room for our generation to ask the big questions about who they want to be, and what makes a life feel meaningful.
Perhaps we’re losing sight of the things that fulfill us: strong relationships, real roots in a community, and the ability to question how we want our lives to look and feel, even when that’s different from what we see on the ‘Gram. Stauffer makes the case that many of our most formative young adult moments are the ordinary ones: finding our people and sticking with them, learning to care for ourselves on our own terms, and figuring out who we are when the other stuff—the GPAs, job titles, the filters—fall away.
About the authors
Rainesford Stauffer is a freelance writer, Kentuckian, and author of An Ordinary Age, published May 2021 from Harper Perennial. You can find her on Twitter: @Rainesford.
Becca Andrews is a reporter at Mother Jones. A Southerner, she most often writes about the Southeast, gender, and culture. Before joining Mother Jones as an editorial fellow, she wrote for newspapers in Tennessee. Her work has also appeared in Slate, Marie Claire UK, and USA Today. Her first book, No Choice, on the dwindling access to abortion in the United States, is forthcoming from Hachette’s Public Affairs imprint.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.

Virtual Event: Krys Malcolm Belc and Alex McElroy
2021-06-17 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON THURSDAY, JUNE 17 AT 6PM PT WHEN KRYS MALCOLM BELC DISCUSSES HIS BOOK, THE NATURAL MOTHER OF THE CHILD: A MEMOIR OF NONBINARY PARENTHOOD, WITH ALEX MCELROY ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87079245281
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,87079245281# or +13462487799,,87079245281#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcNQA6b476
Praise for The Natural Mother of the Child
”A formally daring queer memoir about parenthood and inheritance and the way our bodies resist the binaries of the state; The Natural Mother of the Child is brilliant.“ —Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House
”All memoirs offer a study of a body through time, but my favorites make this fact transparent, refuse to separate the self from its tangible form. This memoir is an embodied story—of non-binary parenthood, of true partnership and the challenge of navigating systems which were not designed with us in mind, but on which our most intimate decisions sometimes depend. Above all, this is a love story, one which tracks the evolution of self through the relationships that define it. I loved this portrait of a queer family’s making, its proof that the ways we love and are loved create us.“ —Melissa Febos, author of Abandon Me & Girlhood
”This is a gorgeous memoir about families, raising children, and figuring out how to live in a world where intimate matters are both inscribed by individual history and entangled with the workings of the State. A work of solace and communion, this book is destined to be a major addition to the literature of parenthood and selfhood, one that will be read for years to come.“ —Lydia Kiesling, author of The Golden State
”Krys Malcolm Belc’s lyrical memoir brings much-needed nuance to all these old conversations about baby-making, families, parenting, and gender. Belc’s narrative of his conscious creation of self and family is generous, resonant, and powerful—I will be pressing this lovely book into the hands of all the parents and parents-to-be I know!“ —Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
About The Natural Mother of the Child
Krys Malcolm Belc’s visual memoir-in-essays explores how the experience of gestational parenthood—conceiving, birthing, and breastfeeding his son Samson—eventually clarified his gender identity.
Krys Malcolm Belc has thought a lot about the interplay between parenthood and gender. As a nonbinary, transmasculine parent, giving birth to his son Samson clarified his gender identity. And yet, when his partner, Anna, adopted Samson, the legal documents listed Belc as “the natural mother of the child.”
By considering how the experiences contained under the umbrella of “motherhood” don’t fully align with Belc’s own experience, The Natural Mother of the Child journeys both toward and through common perceptions of what it means to have a body and how that body can influence the perception of a family. With this visual memoir in essays, Belc has created a new kind of life record, one that engages directly with the documentation often thought to constitute a record of one’s life—childhood photos, birth certificates—and addresses his deep ambivalence about the “before” and “after” so prevalent in trans stories, which feels apart from his own experience.
The Natural Mother of the Child is the story of a person moving past societal expectations to take control of his own narrative, with prose that delights in the intimate dailiness of family life and explores how much we can ever really know when we enter into parenting.

Sarah Schulman in conversation with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore
2021-06-17 19:00 - 20:00 | San Francisco Public Library – Virtual Library
Sarah Schulman discusses her new book Let the Record Show: A Political History of Act Up New York, 1987-1993. Based on more than two hundred interviews with ACT UP members, Let the Record Show is the most comprehensive political history ever assembled of ACT UP and American AIDS activism. In just six years, ACT UP, New York, a broad and unlikely coalition of activists from all races, genders, sexualities and backgrounds, changed the world. Their activism, in its complex and intersectional power, transformed the lives of people with AIDS and the bigoted society that had abandoned them. Let the Record Show can be purchased from Dog Eared Books Castro at this link: https://www.shopdogearedbookscastro.com/book/9780374185138.

Virtual Speaking Axolotl Reading and Open Mic #36
2021-06-17 20:00 - 22:00 | online, CA, United States
A Latinx poetry reading series y open mic entering into our 3rd consecutive year that happens every third Thursday of the month en el Zoom mundo. Curated y hosted by Josiahluis Alderete.
Sign up for the 10-slot virtual open mic by filling out this form:
https://forms.gle/aHgoJxdUFXZXHjgQA
This month’s features: TBA
If you enjoy spaces like these, please support Nomadic Press by donating via:
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We will be posting the features’ Venmo handles during the event.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Nomadic Press’ Monthly Speaking Axolotl
Time: Jan 21, 2021 08:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Cal Flyn
2021-06-18 12:00 - 14:00
Cal Flyn joins us from the UK for a virtual event to celebrate the publication of her new book, Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape (Viking Books).
“Bracing, eye-opening, comprehensive, and essential, Islands of Abandonment is an energizing and important work. It affirms that nature is resilient, given half a chance, and should motivate all of us to try harder, even for the habitats that seem broken or hopeless.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author of Annihilation and the Southern Reach Trilogy
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Islands of Abandonment
Some of the only truly feral cattle in the world wander a long-abandoned island off the northernmost tip of Scotland. A variety of wildlife not seen in many lifetimes has rebounded on the irradiated grounds of Chernobyl. A lush forest supports thousands of species that are extinct or endangered everywhere else on earth in the Korean peninsula’s narrow DMZ.
Cal Flyn, an investigative journalist, exceptional nature writer, and promising new literary voice visits the eeriest and most desolate places on Earth that due to war, disaster, disease, or economic decay, have been abandoned by humans. What she finds every time is an “island” of teeming new life: nature has rushed in to fill the void faster and more thoroughly than even the most hopeful projections of scientists.
Islands of Abandonment is a tour through these new ecosystems, in all their glory, as sites of unexpected environmental significance, where the natural world has reasserted its wild power and promise. And while it doesn’t let us off the hook for addressing environmental degradation and climate change, it is a case that hope is far from lost, and it is ultimately a story of redemption: the most polluted spots on Earth can be rehabilitated through ecological processes and, in fact, they already are.
About Cal Flyn
Cal Flyn is an author, an investigative journalist, and a MacDowell fellow from the Highlands of Scotland. She has worked as a reporter for TheSunday Times and The Telegraph and has contributed to publications including Granta, The Guardian, The Times,The Observer, and others. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, was one of The Times’s best books of 2016.

diluvium // a bluejay release
2021-06-18 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
A reading to celebrate the release of Isabel Bezerra Balée’s debut book of poetry diluvium // a bluejay, out on Dogpark Collective June 15.
Alongside featured readers Jackie Ess & Violet Spurlock

Nomadic Press' Virtual Open Mic #63
2021-06-18 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States
90 minutes
30 readers
3 minutes each
On Zoom!
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
Sign up to read here:
https://forms.gle/4nYSi5fLNyo229Lj9
If you enjoy spaces like this and can swing it in these tight times, please consider supporting us via:
1) the Cash App to $NomadicPress OR https://cash.app/$NomadicPress;
2) donating via the “ticket” option here:
https://www.eventbrite.com/…/nomadic-press-weekly…; OR
3) donating through the website at www.nomadicpress.org/donate
We have a short goal for the evening of $150.
Pandemic times continue in 2021 and we continue to gather our community virtually across state and country lines. Join us to read, join us to listen. All are welcome.
Hosted by Nazelah Jamison (with Tula Biederman on tech). It’s a continuing experiment, and we hope you can join us!
Our safe space process still applies to our collective virtual space, so please read this by visiting https://www.nomadicpress.org/safespaceprocess.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Nomadic Press’ Weekly Virtual Open Mic
Time: Jan 1, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every week on Fri, until Dec 10, 2021, 50 occurrence(s)
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CWC SPEAKER SERIES: Member Book Launch
2021-06-19 15:00 - 18:00 | Virtual
Register For Free: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkf-2hqzsvH9AX_EGAdbX4n96uLs0VYZxJ
Our annual author showcase on Saturday, June 19th, will feature readings by authors whose books were published in 2020 and 2021.
The California Writers Club is hosting its annual launch party for member authors who were published in 2020-2021. Join us to hear eight fresh voices span genres from women’s fiction to thrillers, and self-help. A unique opportunity to absorb the vibrant local lit scene and get some great new books!
The Zoom will open at 3:00 p.m. on June 19th. We will install the new 2021 board before the reading begins around 3:30.
This year, we are eager to feature:
Paul Corman-Roberts, author of Bone Moon Palace
Bobbie Kinkead, author of Damsels Overcome
Therese Pipe, author of A Life in Cooperatives
Terry Tierney, author of The Poet’s Garage
Keith Mark Gaboury, author of Oakland, I’m Not Dead
Cecilia Johansen, author of Kimsey Rise: A Family of Farmers
Lily Iona MacKenzie, author of No More Kings
Henry Hitz, author of Squirrels in the Wall: A Novel in Stories
Register For Free: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMkf-2hqzsvH9AX_EGAdbX4n96uLs0VYZxJ
Free
https://cwc-berkeley.org berkeley.cwc@gmail.com 510-629-1909

Black Ocean @ City Lights
2021-06-20 15:00 - 17:00
with Carrie Olivia Adams, Zachary Schomburg, Hedgie Choi, and Nathan Hoks

Black Ocean is an award-winning independent publisher based out of Boston, with satellites in Detroit and Chicago. From early silent films to early punk rock, Black Ocean brings together a spectrum of influences to produce books of exceptional quality and content. In conjunction with our book releases we manifest our aesthetic in celebrations around the country. We believe in the fissures art can create in consciousness when, even if just for a moment, we experience a more vital way of operating in the world—and through that moment then seek out more extreme and enlightened modes of existence. We believe in the freedom we find through enlightened modes of existence, and we are committed to promoting artists we firmly believe in by sharing our enthusiasm for their work with a global audience.
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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City Lights celebrates this exemplary independent press with an evening of readings.
Joining us will be:
Carrie Olivia Adams
Carrie Olivia Adams lives in Chicago, where she edits poetry for Black Ocean, publicizes books for the University of Chicago Press, and finds lots of uses for mason jars. She is the author of Intervening Absence (Ahsahta 2009), Forty-One Jane Doe’s (book and DVD, Ahsahta 2013), and the chapbook “Overture in the Key of F” (above/ground press 2013).
Hedgie Choi
Hedgie Choi, is a poet, fiction writer and translator. She writes from a trans-pacific perspective is a fellow at the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Austin, Texas. She co-translated Hysteria by Kim Yideum, which won the 2020 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize and the 2020 National Translation Award in poetry. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in The Iowa Review Online, Washington Square Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, West Branch, and The Journal. She is a 2019 Keene Prize Winner.
Black Ocean just published Hedgie Choi’s translation of Pillar of Books by Moon Bo Young
Nathan Hoks
Nathan Hoks is the author of two books of poetry, Reveilles and The Narrow Circle, which was a winner of the 2012 National Poetry Series and published by Penguin. His chapbook Moony Days of Being was chosen by Matthew Zapruder for the Tomaž Šalamun Prize. His translations, poems, and critical writings have appeared in journals such as The Colorado Review, jubilat, Crazyhorse, Lit, Circumference, Octopus Magazine, and Verse. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Hoks works as an editor and letterpress printer for Convulsive Editions, a micro-press that publishes chapbooks and broadsides.
Black Ocean is publishing his third book, Nests in Air.
Zachary Schomburg
Zachary Schomburg is the father of 35 children, none of which are visible. They are very tiny and live in his hair. They are the ones who wrote these three books: The Man Suit (Black Ocean, 2007), Scary, No Scary (Black Ocean, 2009), and FJORDS vol. I (Black Ocean, 2012) . Zachary Schomburg is a girl. Zachary Schomburg is a refrigerator. Zachary Schomburg is a talking wolf and she co-edits Octopus Magazine andOctopus Books while living in Portland, OR.

sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

TICKETED VIRTUAL EVENT: Stacey Abrams with Cari Champion
2021-06-22 16:00 - 18:00
Bookshop Santa Cruz is honored to partner with Picador to present AN EVENING WITH STACEY ABRAMS to celebrate the paperback launch of the New York Times bestseller Our Time Is Now. Abrams will be joined by Cari Champion on June 22nd at 4:00 PM (Pacific Time) on Zoom Webinar to discuss the urgency of ending voter suppression and how we can empower citizens to use their power to shape the future. The conversation will be followed by moderated audience Q&A.
Click here for your tickets to this virtual event!
Ticketing Options:

Event Entry + paperback copy of OUR TIME IS NOW (select in-store pickup or have the book shipped to you. Domestic and international shipping is available)
Event Entry Only (free ticket; no book included)

Stacey Abrams is the New York Times bestselling author of Lead from the Outside, a serial entrepreneur, nonprofit CEO, and political leader. A tax attorney by training, she served eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives, seven as Minority Leader, and Abrams became the 2018 Democratic nominee for Governor of Georgia, where she won more votes than any other Democrat in the state’s history. She has launched multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at the state, national and international levels. Abrams is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the 2012 recipient of the John F. Kennedy New Frontier Award. Abrams received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School. She is the founder of the New Georgia Project, Fair Fight Action, Fair Fight 2020, Fair Count, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project.
Cari Champion is a broadcast journalist and television personality based in Los Angeles. Champion made history with her move to Vice TV for her show “Cari & Jemele: Stick to Sports,” along with co-host Jemele Hill, as the first Black women to host a late-night cable news and information show. Champion also currently hosts the “NFL Next Live” Thursday Night Football live stream for Amazon, TNT’s studio show, “The Arena”, and recently returned as co-host for Season 2 of NBC’s reality competition series, “The Titan Games.” Champion previously served as anchor and host at ESPN where she spent nearly a decade. She continues to break barriers, paving the way for younger women of color who want to pursue a career in sports television and other areas within broadcasting.

Benjamin Hedin
2021-06-22 18:00 - 20:00
reading from and discussing his new novel
Under The Spell
published by Northwestern University 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.
———-
Event is free, but registration is required.
(CLICK HERE) to register.
———–
(CLICK HERE) to purchase book.
———–
Under the Spell is the first novel by Benjamin Hedin, a dazzling new voice in American fiction. Newly widowed Sandra is searching her husband’s email for financial information when she discovers a correspondence between him and a woman named Ryan. Rather than simply sharing the news of the death, Sandra, who is shocked and hungry for details, instead impersonates her husband as she writes back to Ryan. This bold course of action will expose the secrets and solitude within her marriage, prompting her to reconsider everything she once held dear.
Unmoored and seeking connection, Sandra also meets Lee, a single mother with a drinking problem, and begins babysitting her daughter. But Sandra can’t stop herself from continuing the correspondence with Ryan, in the process uncovering more about her husband—and Ryan herself. A novel that forces us to question how much of a person, even those closest to us, remains obscure, Under the Spell reveals the astonishing, transformative power of grief. This compelling study in bereavement joins classics such as Don DeLillo’s The Body Artist and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking.
BENJAMIN HEDIN is the author of In Search of the Movement: The Struggle for Civil Rights Then and Now and editor of the anthology Studio A: The Bob Dylan Reader. He has written for the New Yorker, Time, the Atlantic, the Oxford American, and the Chicago Tribune, among other publications. Also a Grammy-nominated producer of documentary films, he wrote the films Two Trains Runnin’ about the search for two forgotten blues singers and the multiple award-winning 2021 documentary MLK/FBI—called “eye-opening and jaw-dropping” by Rolling Stone. He lives in Atlanta.
What has been said about UNDER THE SPELL

“It’s impossible not to fall under the spell of this aptly titled novel. I started it compulsively, cleverly lured into thinking I was reading one kind of novel—dangling the revelation of a sensationally secret adulterous affair, beyond the grave—only to realize that I was reading quite a different book: the slower revelation of a relationship more messy and formless and uncharted than I had previously expected. And as the narrative taught me how to slow down (though it never loosens its grip), so I began to admire its richness and the subtlety of its lean but eloquent prose.” —James Wood, book critic, New Yorker

“This novel about a grieving woman who has suddenly lost her husband in a car wreck is a brilliant story that could also be a song. It’s set in the Northwest but could be set in Arkansas. It’s filled with interesting characters and haunting mystery. From page to page, you follow her as she experiences a dark comedy of strange and unsettling emotions that deaths and funerals have a way of bringing out of the people who are left behind. Like the best writers, Ben knows his way around the written word. And like the best stories, Under The Spell is at once contemporary and timeless.” —Lucinda Williams, Grammy Award winner

“A novel that is both a terrific page-turner and a very moving depiction of grief; it really did have me under its spell.” —Roddy Doyle, author of Love: A Novel

Rosecrans Baldwin and Geoff Manaugh
2021-06-22 19:00 - 21:00
Rosecrans Baldwin in conversation about his new book, Everything Now: Lessons from the City-State of Los Angeles (MCD/FSG), with Geoff Manaugh.
“Rosecrans Baldwin has created a sharp, convincing work of acute observation. It is as clearheaded and nuanced as it is timely.” —Mike Davis, author of City of Quartz
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Everything Now
America is obsessed with Los Angeles. And America has been thinking about Los Angeles all wrong, for decades, on repeat. Los Angeles is not just the place where the American dream hits the Pacific. (It has its own dreams.) Not just the vanishing point of America’s western drive. (It has its own compass.) Functionally, aesthetically, mythologically, even technologically, an independent territory, defined less by distinct borders than by an aura of autonomy and a sense of unfurling destiny—this is the city-state of Los Angeles.
Deeply reported and researched, provocatively argued, and eloquently written, Rosecrans Baldwin’s Everything Now approaches the metropolis from unexpected angles, nimbly interleaving his own voice with a chorus of others, from canonical L.A. literature to everyday citizens. Here, Octavia E. Butler and Joan Didion are in conversation with activists and astronauts, vampires and veterans. Baldwin records the stories of countless Angelenos, discovering people both upended and reborn: by disasters natural and economic, following gospels of wealth or self-help or personal destiny. The result is a story of a kaleidoscopic, vibrant nation unto itself—vastly more than its many, many parts.
Baldwin’s concept of the city-state allows us, finally, to grasp a place—Los Angeles—whose idiosyncrasies both magnify those of America, and are so fully its own. Here, space and time don’t quite work the same as they do elsewhere, and contradictions are as stark as southern California’s natural environment. Perhaps no better place exists to watch the United States’s past, and its possible futures, play themselves out.
Welcome to Los Angeles, the Great American City-State.
About the participants
Rosecrans Baldwin is the author of The Last Kid Left, You Lost Me There, and Paris, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down. He is a frequent contributor to GQ, and co-founded the online zine The Morning News. He lives in Los Angeles.
Geoff Manaugh is the author of the New York Times-bestseller A Burglar’s Guide to the City, as well as the architecture and technology website BLDGBLOG. He regularly writes for The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, Wired, and many other publications. His new book, Until Proven Safe: The History and Future of Quarantine, will be published by MCD in July.

THE GUNCLE by Steven Rowley | GGP Online Book Club
2021-06-22 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Tuesday, June 22, 2021 at 7 PM PDT for a GGP Online Book Club discussion of THE GUNCLE by Steven Rowley.
The Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88422889388.
You can order a print copy at https://bit.ly/ggpGuncle or in audiobook from Libro.fm, GGP’s audiobook partner, at https://bit.ly/GuncleAB.
Description

From the bestselling author of Lily and the Octopus and The Editor comes a warm and deeply funny novel about a once-famous gay sitcom star whose unexpected family tragedy leaves him with his niece and nephew for the summer.
Patrick, or Gay Uncle Patrick (GUP, for short), has always loved his niece, Maisie, and nephew, Grant. That is, he loves spending time with them when they come out to Palm Springs for weeklong visits, or when he heads home to Connecticut for the holidays. But in terms of caretaking and relating to two children, no matter how adorable, Patrick is, honestly, overwhelmed.
So when tragedy strikes and Maisie and Grant lose their mother and Patrick’s brother has a health crisis of his own, Patrick finds himself suddenly taking on the role of primary guardian. Despite having a set of “Guncle Rules” ready to go, Patrick has no idea what to expect, having spent years barely holding on after the loss of his great love, a somewhat-stalled acting career, and a lifestyle not-so-suited to a six- and a nine-year-old. Quickly realizing that parenting–even if temporary–isn’t solved with treats and jokes, Patrick’s eyes are opened to a new sense of responsibility, and the realization that, sometimes, even being larger than life means you’re unfailingly human.
With the humor and heart we’ve come to expect from bestselling author Steven Rowley, The Guncle is a moving tribute to the power of love, patience, and family in even the most trying of times.
About the Author

Steven Rowley is the author of The Editor and the national bestseller Lily and the Octopus, which has been translated into nineteen languages. He has worked as a freelance writer, newspaper columnist, and screenwriter. Originally from Portland, Maine, Rowley is a graduate of Emerson College. He lives in Palm Springs, California.
Praise For…

One of O, The Oprah Magazine‘s “32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021”
“A laugh-out-loud heartwarmer.” –O, The Oprah Magazine
“Heartwarming, hilarious…Rowley finds humor and poignancy in the snappy narrative….Readers will find this delightful and illuminating.” –Publishers Weekly

"Look at Him" by Anna Starobinets: Reading and Discussion, curated by Katherine E. Young
2021-06-23 10:00 - 13:00
Location:
Globus Books YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/GlobusBooksSF/videos
Website

Globus Books is honored to invite you to a reading and discussion of “Look at Him” by Anna Starobinets (translated into English by Katherine E. Young). Katherine E. Young will be joined by translators, scholars and writers Jane Bugaeva, Muireann Maguire, Jamie Rann, and Svetlana Satchkova, and Zarina Zabrisky. The program will be moderated by Muireann Maguire.
Anna Starobinets is a writer and scriptwriter. She works in various genres: sci-fi, dystopias and horrors for adults; fairy and detective stories for children. Starobinets received multiple Russian and European literature awards, including the European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) award in the «Best European Sci-fi author» category (EuroCon-2018). Her children’s book series “А Beastly Crimes Book” was a bestseller in Russia and was translated into nine languages. Starobinets’ books are translated and published in the UK, US, Japan, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Sweden, Bulgaria, Poland, Greece, Latvia, Czech Republic, Turkey, and more. Starobinets teaches her own creative writing workshop and she is the author and presenter of educational games “Literary mafia: interactive detective” and “Literary magic: interactive fantasy”.
Her only non-fiction autobiographical book “Look at him” brings to light the inhumane attitude of the Russian healthcare system and society towards women pregnant with fetuses with pathologies. Starobinets wrote it to speak out loud about this traditionally silenced problem in order to force social changes. The book started a broad discussion of the subject in literary and medical circles. Anna is a widow of writer Alexander Garros, and she is raising two kids and a poodle Coconut.

Jane Bugaeva translates Russian children’s literature, as well as illustrated and whimsical texts for all ages. Her prose translations include Anna Starobinets’ Catlantis (Pushkin Press, NYRB) and her four-book middle-grade series Beastly Crimes (Dover Publications). She lives in North Carolina with her husband and daughter.
Muireann Maguire is Senior Lecturer in Russian at the University of Exeter; she is a freelance translator and a researcher in Russian literature from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. She is working on a book-length study of fictional accounts of pregnancy and childbirth in Russian and Western literature called Hideous Agonies, and she irregularly writes a blog on the same topic in global literature, The Pregnancy Test.
James Rann is a scholar and translator of Russian literature, based at the University of Glasgow. He mostly translates contemporary fiction, notably Anna Starobinets, but his research focuses on the avant-garde—the subject of his recent book The Unlikely Futurist: Pushkin and the Invention of Originality in Russian Modernism.
Svetlana Satchkova is a NYC-based writer and journalist. While working as a magazine editor in her native Russia, she published three books of prose. Presently, she is completing her first novel in English and pursuing an MFA in Fiction at Brooklyn College, where she is a Truman Capote fellow.
Katherine E. Young is the author of Woman Drinking Absinthe and Day of the Border Guards. She has translated Look at Him by Anna Starobinets, as well as work by Akram Aylisli, Inna Kabysh, and numerous Russophone poets; she was named a 2017 NEA translation fellow. She served as the inaugural poet laureate for Arlington, Virginia. https://katherine-young-poet.com/
Zarina Zabrisky is the author of three short story collections and a novel “We, Monsters” (Numina Press, 2014). Zabrisky’s work appeared in nine countries in over fifty literary magazines and anthologies, including The Nervous Breakdown, A Capella Zoo, The Rumpus, Guernica, and received nominations and awards, including 2013 Acker Awards for Avant-Garde Excellence. Zabrisky runs literary and cultural programs at Globus Books.
This event is in English and will be held on Zoom on June 23, 2021, at 10.00 am PST (SF), 1.00 pm EST (NY), 20.00 (Moscow.)
There will be a limited number of seats; please contact Globus Books via FB messenger to register. We will also be live streaming the event on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/c/GlobusBooksSF/videos) and later will share the edited version of the program.

Virtual Event: Jonathan Lee and Megha Majumdar
2021-06-23 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Wednesday, June 23 at 6pm PT when Jonathan Lee is joined by Megha Majumdar to discuss his latest novel, The Great Mistake, on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85879379881

Praise for The Great Mistake
“Jonathan Lee’s wily, virtuosic, very beautiful new novel is an intimate portrait of a public man that also serves as an X-ray of America. The Great Mistake is a great novel of New York, in which the shaping of public space becomes inextricable from the loneliness, longing, and ferocious ambition of a single, damaged man.” —Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

“Jonathan Lee is quietly becoming one of the best young novelists on either side of the Atlantic. The Great Mistake is a sweeping historical novel that is also a gripping mystery.” —The Observer (UK)

“Few writers working today have Jonathan Lee’s range or eye for detail. Fewer still are capable of
roaming minds and histories with such bittersweet, richly detailed ease, or taking on with such profound depth all the messy, hilarious, heartbreaking humanity of a person, and a time, and indeed an entire city. The Great Mistake is a wonder and a delight.” —Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife

“Riveting, immersive…An unparalleled feat of elegance and craftsmanship” –Stephanie Danler, author of Sweetbitter

About The Great Mistake
An exultant novel of New York City at the turn of the twentieth century, about one man’s rise to fame and fortune, and his mysterious murder.

Andrew Haswell Green is dead, shot at the venerable age of eighty-three, when he thought life could hold no more surprises. The killing—on Park Avenue in broad daylight, on Friday the thirteenth—shook the city. Born to a struggling farmer, Green was a self-made man without whom there would be no Central Park, no Metropolitan Museum of Art, no Museum of Natural History, no New York Public Library. But Green had a secret, a life locked within him that now, in the hour of his death, may finally break free.
A work of tremendous depth and piercing emotion, The Great Mistake is the story of a city transformed, a murder that made a private man infamous, and a portrait of a singular individual who found the world closed off to him—yet enlarged it.

Emily Rapp Black and Matthew Zapruder
2021-06-23 19:00 - 21:00
Emily Rapp Black discusses her new book, Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg (Notting Hill Editions), with Matthew Zapruder.
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
Registration info coming soon
About Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg
At first sight of Frida Kahlo’s painting The Two Fridas, Emily Rapp Black felt a connection with the artist. An amputee from childhood, Rapp Black grew up with a succession of prosthetic limbs and learned that she had to hide her disability from the world.
Kahlo sustained lifelong injuries after a horrific bus crash, and her right leg was eventually amputated. In Kahlo’s art, Rapp Black recognized her own life, from the numerous operations to the compulsion to create to silence pain. Here she tells her story of losing her infant son to Tay-Sachs, giving birth to a daughter, and learning to accept her body. She writes of how Frida Kahlo inspired her to find a way forward when all seemed lost.
About Emily Rapp Black and Matthew Zapruder
Emily Rapp Black is the author of Poster Child: A Memoir and The Still Point of the Turning World, a New York Times bestseller and an Editors’ Pick. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Vogue; The New York Times; Time; The Wall Street Journal; O, The Oprah Magazine; and the Los Angeles Times. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times Book Review and is the nonfiction editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Rapp is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California, Riverside, where she also teaches medical narratives in the university’s School of Medicine.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry. His poetry, essays, and translations have appeared in publications including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Tin House, and The Believer. An associate professor in the Saint Mary’s College of California MFA program and English department, he is also editor at large at Wave Books and, from 2016 to 2017, was the editor of the poetry page of the New York Times Magazine. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and son.

Author Jamie Brenner Discussing BLUSH in a GGP Online Author Chat
2021-06-23 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Wednesday, June 23, 2021 at 7 PM PDT for a discussion of BLUSH with author Jamie Brenner in a GGP Online Chat.
Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83225997080, and on Facebook Live at https://www.facebook.com/ggpbooks/live/.
Order your copy of BLUSH at http://bit.ly/ggpBlush, or in audiobook from Libro.fm at https://bit.ly/BlushAB.
Description

From acclaimed author Jamie Brenner comes a stunning new novel about three generations of women who discover that the scandalous books of their past may just be the key to saving their family’s future.
For decades, the Hollander Estates winery has been the premier destination for lavish parties and romantic day trips on the North Fork of Long Island. But behind the lush vineyards and majestic estate house, the Hollander family fortunes have suffered and the threat of a sale brings old wounds to the surface. For matriarch Vivian, she fears that this summer season could be their last—and that selling their winery to strangers could expose a dark secret she’s harbored for decades. Meanwhile, her daughter, Leah, who was turned away from the business years ago, finds her marriage at a crossroads and returns home for a sorely needed escape. And granddaughter Sadie, grappling with a crisis of her own, runs to the vineyard looking for inspiration.
But when Sadie uncovers journals from Vivian’s old book club dedicated to scandalous novels of decades past, she realizes that this might be the distraction they all need. Reviving the “trashy” book club, the Hollander women find that the stories hold the key to their fight not only for the vineyeard, but for the life and love they’ve wanted all along.
Blush is a bighearted story of love, family, and second chances, and an ode to the blockbuster novels that have shaped generations of women.
About the Author

Jamie Brenner is the author of five novels, including The Forever Summer and The Wedding Sisters. She grew up in suburban Philadelphia on a steady diet of Jackie Collins and Judith Krantz novels, and later moved to New York City to live like the heroines of her favorite books. Jamie now divides her time between Philadelphia and Provincetown.
Praise For…

“Brenner’s lovely latest begs to be read with a view and a glass of wine….Brenner tackles complex issues including gender equality and the devaluation of women’s interests with a light hand, balancing heavy topics with copious descriptions of wine, cheese, and classic romances. [Blush] is sure to please.” –Publishers Weekly
“Brenner deftly pulls from the canon for steamy encounters and dramatic confrontations—some worthy of a Dynasty reboot. A perfect beach read about a family crisis resolved by women.” –Kirkus Reviews

VIRTUAL EVENT: Helene Wecker, The Hidden Palace
2021-06-23 19:00 - 21:00
VIRTUAL EVENT: Helene Wecker’s debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, was a runaway bestseller that snagged multiple awards. Now, after seven years, she is back with a sequel. In this enthralling historical epic, set in New York City and the Middle East in the years leading up to World War I, Wecker revisits her beloved characters Chava and Ahmad as they confront unexpected new challenges in a rapidly changing human world. This event is cosponsored by Temple Beth El.
Register for this free Crowdcast event by clicking here!
This is a free event. The featured book may be preordered below. You can make a donation to help support Bookshop Santa Cruz here. Thank you!

Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, able to hear the thoughts and longings of the people around her and compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a perpetually restless and free-spirited creature of fire, imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they’ll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and pretend to be human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Having encountered each other under calamitous circumstances, Chava and Ahmad’s lives are now entwined—but they’re not yet certain of what they mean to each other.
Each has unwittingly affected the humans around them. Park Avenue heiress Sophia Winston, whose brief encounter with Ahmad left her with a strange illness that makes her shiver with cold, travels to the Middle East to seek a cure. There she meets a tempestuous female jinni who’s been banished from her tribe. Back in New York, in a tenement on the Lower East Side, a little girl named Kreindel helps her rabbi father build a golem they name Yossele—not knowing that she’s about to be sent to an orphanage uptown, where the hulking Yossele will become her only friend and protector.
Spanning the tumultuous years from the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War I, The Hidden Palace follows these lives and others as they collide and interleave. Can Chava and Ahmad find their places in the human world while remaining true to each other? Or will their opposing natures and desires eventually tear them apart—especially once they encounter, thrillingly, other beings like themselves?
Helene Wecker’s debut novel, The Golem and the Jinni, was awarded the Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature, the VCU Cabell Award for First Novel, and the Harold U. Ribalow Prize, and was nominated for a Nebula Award and a World Fantasy Award. A Midwest native, she holds a B.A. in English from Carleton College and an M.F.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia University. Her work has appeared in literary journals such as Joyland and Catamaran, as well as in the fantasy anthology The Djinn Falls in Love and Other Stories. She currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and children.

Doug Henderson in conversation with K.M. Soehnlein
2021-06-24 18:00 - 20:00
discussing
The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club
published by University of Iowa Press
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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
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(CLICK HERE) to register. Link to be posted.
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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. Link to be posted.
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On Thursday nights, the players assemble in the back of Readmore Comix and Games. Celeste is the dungeon master; Valerie, who works at the store, was roped in by default; Mooneyham, the banker, likes to argue; and Ben, sensitive, unemployed, and living at home, is still recovering from an unrequited love. In the real world they go about their days falling in love, coming out at work, and dealing with their family lives all with varying degrees of success. But in the world of their fantasy game, they are heroes and wizards fighting to stop an evil cult from waking a sleeping god.
But then a sexy new guy, Albert, joins the club, Ben’s character is killed, and Mooneyham’s boyfriend is accosted on the street. The connections and parallels between the real world and the fantasy one become stronger and more important than ever as Ben struggles to bring his character back to life and win Albert’s affection, and the group unites to organize a protest at a neighborhood bar. All the while the slighted and competing vampire role playing club, working secretly in the shadows, begins to make its move.
Doug Henderson is a winner of the 2019 PEN/Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers for his short story, The Manga Artist, which was also runner-up for the 2018 Iowa Review Award for Fiction. His debut novel, The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club, is forthcoming from the University of Iowa Press. Originally from Cleveland, he received his MFA from the University of San Francisco. He lives in the Castro District with his husband, their two children, and a large collection of role playing games.
K. M. Soehnlein is the author of the novels The World of Normal Boys and You Can Say You Knew Me When. He was also part of the band The Cubby Creatures.
What has been said about The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club

“Henderson’s novel is sure to delight proud nerds with its story of a young man searching to belong against a backdrop of mischief and magic.”—Foreword Reviews
“Henderson has created something special—part Hobbit and part Breakfast Club—a bittersweet story of love and friendship that tackles big subjects like homophobia, social anxiety, and coming out with a touch of magic. Even if you can’t tell neutral-chaotic from lawful-good, or a paladin from a druid, you’ll be swept up with Ben and his lovable band of outsiders—where the game becomes a map for real life and real life sets the course for the game.”—K. M. Soehnlein, The World of Normal Boys
“It turns out that you don’t have to be a gay gamer nerd from Ohio to love Doug Henderson’s novel The Cleveland Heights LGBTQ Sci-Fi and Fantasy Role Playing Club. You just need to be someone who likes to laugh, or likes to watch people awkwardly attempt love and friendship, or likes to read a sweet, funny story about that time the geek got the boy. Henderson is a quirky, terrific, entertaining storyteller.”—Lori Ostlund, After the Parade

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in conversation with Alejandro Murguía
2021-06-24 18:00 - 20:00
discussing Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s
Not A Nation of Immigrants: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion
published by Beacon Press
Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States.
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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. (link coming soon!)
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Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In this bold new book, historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the US’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today.
She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity—founded and built by immigrants—was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that this feel good—but inaccurate—story promotes a benign narrative of progress, obscuring that the country was founded in violence as a settler state, and imperialist since its inception.
While some of us are immigrants or descendants of immigrants, others are descendants of white settlers who arrived as colonizers to displace those who were here since time immemorial, and still others are descendants of those who were kidnapped and forced here against their will. This paradigm shifting new book from the highly acclaimed author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States charges that we need to stop believing and perpetuating this simplistic and a historical idea and embrace the real (and often horrific) history of the United States.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma in a tenant farming family. She has been active in the international Indigenous movement for more than 4 decades and is known for her lifelong commitment to national and international social justice issues. Dunbar-Ortiz is the winner of the 2017 Lannan Cultural Freedom Prize, and is the author or editor of many books, including An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, a recipient of the 2015 American Book Award. She lives in San Francisco. Connect with her at reddirtsite.com or on Twitter @rdunbaro.
Alejandro Murguía is the author of Southern Front and This War Called Love (both winners of the American Book Award). His non-fiction book The Medicine of Memory highlights the Mission District in the 1970s during the Nicaraguan Solidarity movement. He is a founding member and the first director of The Mission Cultural Center. He was a founder of The Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade, and co-editor of Volcán: Poetry From Central America. Currently he is a professor in Latina Latino Studies at San Francisco State University. He is the author of the short story “The Other Barrio” which first appeared in the anthology San Francisco Noir and recently filmed in the street of the Mission District. In poetry he has published Spare Poems, and this year a new collection Native Tongue. He is the Sixth San Francisco Poet Laureate and the first Latino poet to hold the position.
Praise for Not A Nation of Immigrants
“In this book, a precious gift drawn from an amazingly rich life and a prodigious life of learning, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz urges us to disavow the violence of the US settler nation-state, its discursive erasures of native peoples and its material relations of dispossession. The struggle for workers’ rights and working-class solidarity, she reminds us, involves the fight against capitalism, imperialism, and colonialism for the liberation of all peoples.”
—Gary Y. Okihiro, author of Third World Studies: Theorizing Liberation
“Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’ challenges to the core one of the most dominant narratives about the United States, as a country founded by and welcoming for immigrants. Dunbar-Ortiz’s captivating and accessible historical account forces a reckoning with the various layers of the US imperialist project, from territorial control to economic and political influence at the expense of Black populations, migrants, and Indigenous peoples. This myth-shattering book addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time by demonstrating the implications of White supremacy across time, across groups and spaces, and the connections between them. If there is hope for transformation, it is through the careful, systematic work that this book exemplifies by examining the roots of racism and structural inequality, and bringing forward alternative narratives and movements. It is a must-read.”
—Alexandra Délano, chair and associate professor of global studies, The New School
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has produced a remarkable, engrossing, and readable reexamination of US history. She unites an analysis of the construction of ‘race’ and racism, with the construction of settler colonialism, demonstrating both the historical inaccuracy as well as the strategic blind spot created by thinking of the USA as a ‘nation of immigrants.’ But she does more. Dunbar-Ortiz links the construction of the US as a racial settler state with the growth of US imperialism, decisively demonstrating that global expansion was not accidental nor a matter of policy alone, but the direct outcome of the DNA of the racial settler state.”
—Bill Fletcher Jr., trade unionist and author of “They’re Bankrupting Us!” And Twenty Other Myths About Unions
“What do the Iroquois or Navajo think of the Statue of Liberty? With characteristic grit and brio, Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates how profoundly the settler colonial history of the United States and the ideology of ‘white nativism’ have shaped both immigration policy and immigrant identity.”
—Mike Davis, author of Prisoners of the American Dream
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is a one-woman wrecking ball against the tower of lies erected by generations of official and television historians—people who make a living glorifying slave traders and exterminators of Native Americans.”
—Ishmael Reed
“This book is meticulously researched and written with eloquence and passion. With it, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, one of our preeminent radical historians, once again delivers a powerful and provocative indictment of settler colonialism and white nationalism, which were foundational in building this country. It could not be more timely. A must-read history for our troubling present.”
—Barbara Ransby, author of Making All Black Lives Matter
“Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s incisive book Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’ challenges the multicultural myth of US nationalist triumphalism and, instead, powerfully exposes settler colonialism, wars of conquest, and white nationalism as central pillars of immigration. This is a must-read to finally discard unquestioning settler American liberalism and patriotism.”
—Harsha Walia, author of Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
“Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz rightly argues that the United States is not ‘a nation of immigrants’ but, more accurately, a nation of colonizers. A must-read.”
—Nick Estes (Lakota), author of Our History Is the Future
“We are here because you were there. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz methodically unravels the pernicious myth of ‘a nation of immigrants,’ standing in the way of collective well-being on this continent and beyond.”
—Manu Karuka, author of Empire’s Tracks: Indigenous Nations, Chinese Workers, and the Transcontinental Railroad
“Once again, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates why she is one of the foremost historical scholars we have today, and Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants’ is her most crucial offering yet, opening new insights on this country’s sordid history of systemic oppression, exclusion, and erasure. If we look honestly at ourselves, as human beings occupying this specific slice of space and time together, we see that Dunbar-Ortiz is giving us a thoroughly researched and genuine road map for what we can become, if we dare. Vital reading for anyone with two eyes, a brain, and a beating heart.”
—Tim Z. Hernandez, author of All They Will Call You
“Simply put, if you read this book and learn its lessons, you will have to change everything you think about the history of the United States and the terms we use to fight for justice. It’s your call, but I suggest you put the book in your basket and head for the check-out counter right now.”
—Walter Johnson, author of The Broken Heart of America: St. Louis and the Violent History of the United States
“From being deeply shaken and disturbed, to ultimately feeling exhilarated and optimistic by Dunbar-Ortiz’s conclusion and ‘call to arms,’ this is a paradigm-shifting work. Dunbar-Ortiz eviscerates ‘the benevolent version of US nationalism’ by showing how the United States has always sought to enlist its new arrivals as accomplices to colonial conquest and mass murder. There is a reckoning on every page of this liberating book.”
—Patrick Higgins, anti-imperialist historian and activist
“Placing settler colonialism at the center, Dunbar-Ortiz untangles the meaning of immigration in a settler state based on the elimination of the Native population. The book traces a ‘self-indigenizing narrative’ by which white immigrants laid claim to the country, turning an aggressive white nationalism into the foundation of US identity. European immigrants became American, and became white, Dunbar-Ortiz shows, by adopting the country’s settler identity. In a tour de force that takes readers from the American Revolution to nineteenth-century New Mexico to contemporary Appalachia to Hamilton and Donald Trump, she shows how different groups of immigrants assimilated into a settler identity that perpetuates US racism and militarism. The book also makes clear that a superficial ‘multicultural’ approach to revising US history still fails to tackle the heart of the problem: colonialism. You will never look at US history the same way after reading Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants.’”
—Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

On Finding the Mother Tree
2021-06-24 19:00 - 20:30 | Virtual
Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence and hailed as a scientist who conveys complex, technical ideas in ways that are dazzling and profound. Her work has influenced filmmakers (the Tree of Souls in James Cameron’s Avatar) and her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide.
Suzanne’s inspiring and accessible work illuminates how trees-living side by side for hundreds of years-have evolved, how they perceive one another, learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, and remember the past. Trees have agency about the future, eliciting warnings and mounting defenses. They compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication-characteristics ascribed to human intelligence and traits that are the essence of civil societies-and at the center of all this complexity and nuance-the Mother Trees, mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them.
In her latest book, Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, Suzanne writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest, and of her own journey-of love and loss, of observation and change, of risk and reward, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology.
Join scholar and CIIS staff member Laura Pustarfi for a conversation about Suzanne’s life and work, her latest book, and learn more about the connectedness of the Mother Tree that nurtures the forest in the profound ways that families and human societies do, and how these inseparable bonds enable our survival.
Free, suggested donation of $10.
https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs/event-calendar/simard-suzanne-june-24-2021 publicprograms@ciis.edu 415-575-6175

Virtual Event: Jenny Bitner
2021-06-25 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Friday, June 25 at 6pm PT when Jenny Bitner discusses her book, Here is a Game We Could Play, on Zoom!

Broadcast live from Green Apple Books
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84868544257

Praise for Here is a Game We Could Play
“Capturing just how much belonging shapes a person, in its absence as much as its presence, the novel strains between those two poles; like any true connection, it is a ‘terrible and beautiful thing.”—Foreword Reviews, starred review

“Tender, yearning, and dangerously imagined. . . A book to pluck you out of your cage and reintroduce you to the wild.”—Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying

“Here Is a Game We Could Play is a piercing and poignant novel with an unforgettable narrator. A haunting debut.”—Vanessa Hua, author of A River of Stars

About Here is a Game We Could Play
This original, funny, and moving novel follows Claudia, a loner with an active fantasy life, as she reckons with past trauma and forms new relationships.

A dreamlike novel set in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, Here Is a Game We Could Play is the story of Claudia, an intelligent eccentric trapped in the rundown industrial town she grew up in—a place plagued with troubling memories and hidden threats. Seeking escape from tedium, loneliness, and her obsessive fear of poisoning, Claudia retreats into books. . . and into a fantasy life with her perfect lover, to whom she addresses letters about her life, all the while imagining outlandish sexual scenarios.

​In each fantasy, her lover takes a different form, ranging from a prison guard in a world where metaphor is forbidden, to a more-than-brotherly Hansel from the Grimms’ fairy tale, to a tentacled mind-reading space alien. All share a desire for a deep intimacy that eludes Claudia, even as she forms new real-life relationships and reconsiders her sexual identity—building a rapport with an elderly volunteer at the library, striking up a friendship with a wily temp at her dead-end job, and embarking on a passionate affair with Rose, the town’s new librarian. When paranoia threatens to ruin her relationship with Rose, Claudia is forced not only to combat her anxiety but to face the unresolved trauma in her past—the disappearance of her father on a night she has long repressed.

Funny, dark, inventive, and moving, Here Is a Game We Could Play is an original debut novel recalling the work of Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, Rebecca Brown, and Margaret Atwood.

About Jenny Bitner
Jenny Bitner’s stories, essays, and poems have been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, PANK, Fence, Mississippi Review, The Fabulist, and The Sun. She works as a hypnotherapist and writing teacher and is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

Nomadic Press' Virtual Open Mic #64
2021-06-25 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States

Virtual Event: Jenny Bitner
2021-06-25 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON FRIDAY, JUNE 25 AT 6PM PT WHEN JENNY BITNER DISCUSSES HER BOOK, HERE IS A GAME WE COULD PLAY, ON ZOOM!
BROADCAST LIVE FROM GREEN APPLE BOOKS
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84868544257
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,84868544257# or +13462487799,,84868544257#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kii5v4tjd
Praise for Here is a Game We Could Play
“Capturing just how much belonging shapes a person, in its absence as much as its presence, the novel strains between those two poles; like any true connection, it is a ‘terrible and beautiful thing.'”—Foreword Reviews, starred review
“Tender, yearning, and dangerously imagined. . . A book to pluck you out of your cage and reintroduce you to the wild.”—Ben Loory, author of Tales of Falling and Flying
“Here Is a Game We Could Play is a piercing and poignant novel with an unforgettable narrator. A haunting debut.”—Vanessa Hua, author of A River of Stars
About Here is a Game We Could Play
This original, funny, and moving novel follows Claudia, a loner with an active fantasy life, as she reckons with past trauma and forms new relationships.
A dreamlike novel set in Pennsylvania in the 1990s, Here Is a Game We Could Play is the story of Claudia, an intelligent eccentric trapped in the rundown industrial town she grew up in—a place plagued with troubling memories and hidden threats. Seeking escape from tedium, loneliness, and her obsessive fear of poisoning, Claudia retreats into books. . . and into a fantasy life with her perfect lover, to whom she addresses letters about her life, all the while imagining outlandish sexual scenarios.
​In each fantasy, her lover takes a different form, ranging from a prison guard in a world where metaphor is forbidden, to a more-than-brotherly Hansel from the Grimms’ fairy tale, to a tentacled mind-reading space alien. All share a desire for a deep intimacy that eludes Claudia, even as she forms new real-life relationships and reconsiders her sexual identity—building a rapport with an elderly volunteer at the library, striking up a friendship with a wily temp at her dead-end job, and embarking on a passionate affair with Rose, the town’s new librarian. When paranoia threatens to ruin her relationship with Rose, Claudia is forced not only to combat her anxiety but to face the unresolved trauma in her past—the disappearance of her father on a night she has long repressed.
Funny, dark, inventive, and moving, Here Is a Game We Could Play is an original debut novel recalling the work of Aimee Bender, Angela Carter, Rebecca Brown, and Margaret Atwood.
About Jenny Bitner
Jenny Bitner‘s stories, essays, and poems have been published in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, PANK, Fence, Mississippi Review, The Fabulist, and The Sun. She works as a hypnotherapist and writing teacher and is a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto.

VIRTUAL: Wall + Response: Youssef Alaoui, Jason Bayani, Genny Lim & Michael Warr
2021-06-25 19:00 - 21:00
Booksmith and The Bindery are proud to host a four-event series presented by Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) called Wall + Response, featuring sixteen Bay Area poets responding to the social/ political/ racial/ justice narratives of four murals on Clarion Alley.
Curated by CAMP artist and organizer Megan Wilson (wall) and poet Maw Shein Win (response), the fourth and final event in the series features Youssef Alaoui, Jason Bayani, Genny Lim and Michael Warr responding to the mural The Will To Live (2018)by Art Forces, Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC), and Arab Youth Organizing (AYO).
The Will To Live (2018)by Art Forces, Arab Resource Organizing Center (AROC), and Arab Youth Organizing (AYO) celebrates and honors the lives of six Arab leaders: Rasmea Odeh, Mehdi Ben Barka, Naji Diafullah, Leila Khaled, Basel Al Araj, and Yasser Mortaja. The mural manifests and expresses the resilience and resistance of the Bay Area community to attacks on freedom and liberties of Arab, Muslim, people of color, immigrants and refugees. The Will To Live is one of five murals on Clarion Alley with messaging in support of Palestine and in solidarity to call an end to Israel’s apartheid and settler colonial state. The five murals have been hit with hate crime vandalism 21 times in the past two years, between September 2018 – September 2020. CAMP and its artists continue to repair the works as an act of resilience and in support of the global movement for the Palestinian right of return.
This virtual event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.
– ABOUT THE PROJECT –
Wall + Response was originally conceived to culminate in four quarterly public events to be presented on Clarion Alley. However, due to the pandemic the poets will instead be filmed by videographer Mahima Kotian reading their work in front of the murals on Clarion Alley. Kotian will be creating videos for each series that will be presented as part of live online events (of which this is the first). All the events are free and open to the public.
The poets are creating new poems in response to the murals, and will be reading those and other selected works at the events. The specific dates for each event will be announced in the month prior to the event.
Wall + Response is made possible by the generous support of the San Francisco Art Commission and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.
– ABOUT THE AUTHORS –
Youssef Alaoui is a Moroccan Colombian American. His family and heritage are an endless source of inspiration for his varied, dark, spiritual and carnal writings. He has an MFA in Poetics from New College of California. His work has appeared in Exquisite Corpse, Big Bridge, 580 Split, Dusie Press, RIVET Journal, Paris Lit Up, The Opiate, and nominated for a Pushcart at Full of Crow. His short story collection “Fiercer Monsters” was published by Nomadic Press of Oakland, CA. His poetry collection “Critics of Mystery Marvel” was published by 2Leaf Press of NYC. www.youssefalaoui.info
Jason Bayani is the author ofLocus (Omnidawn Publishing 2019) and Amulet (Write Bloody Publishing 2013). He’s an MFA graduate from Saint Mary’s College, a Kundiman fellow, and works as the artistic director for Kearny Street Workshop, the oldest multi-disciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization in the country. His publishing credits include World Literature Today, Muzzle Magazine, Lantern Review, and other publications. Jason performs regularly around the country and debuted his solo theater show “Locus of Control” in 2016 with theatrical runs in San Francisco, New York, and Austin.
Genny Lim is San Francisco Jazz Poet Laureate emeritus. Her most recent poetry-music collaboration, Don’t Shoot! Requiem in Black, dedicated to Black Lives Matter, premiered at SF Jazz Center in April 2018 with Marshall Trammell, Francis Wong, and Equipto. Lim’s award-winning play, Paper Angels, was the first Asian American play that aired on PBS’s American Playhouse in 1985 and has been produced throughout the U.S., Canada and China. She is author of five poetry collections, Winter Place, Child of War, Paper Gods and Rebels, KRA!, La Morte Del Tempo, and co-author of Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, winner of the American Book Award and the forthcoming anthology of Senior Asian American memoirs, Window: Glimpses of Our Storied Past.
San Francisco poet Michael Warr is the 2020 Berkeley Lifetime Achievement Awardee. His books include Of Poetry & Protest: From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin (W.W. Norton), The Armageddon of Funk, We Are All The Black Boy, and Power Lines: A Decade of Poetry From Chicago’s Guild Complex. He is a San Francisco Library Laureate and recipient of a Creative Work Fund award for his multimedia project Tracing Poetic Memory, PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence in Literature, Black Caucus of the American Library Association Award, Gwendolyn Brooks Significant Illinois Poets Award, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. His poetry is translated into Chinese as part of “Two Languages / One Community” a collaborative project with poet and translator Chun Yu. Michael is the former Deputy Director of the Museum of the African Diaspora and a board member of the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library.

– OTHER PARTICIPATING AUTHORS + EVENTS –
February 26. 2021: Karla Brundage, Jennifer Hasegawa, Tureeda Mikell, and Kim Shuck responding to the mural We Want Respect, Freedom, Land, Housing, Justice, Peace, Bread by Emory Douglas/Black Panther Party / Remix by CUBA, D8, MACE
April 30, 2021: Celeste Chan, MK Chavez, Paul Corman-Roberts and Tim Xonnelly responding to the mural Affordable Housing/Vivienda Asequible by the SF Print Collective working with the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP)
– ABOUT THE CURATORS –
Megan Wilson is a visual artist, writer, and activist based in San Francisco. Wilson has been a core organizer of Clarion Alley Mural Project (CAMP) since 2001. In 2018 she co-directed and co-organized (with Christopher Statton and Nano Warsono) CAMP’s second international exchange and residency project, Bangkit /Arise between artists from Yogyakarta, Indonesia and San Francisco/Bay Area in collaboration with the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. The second phase of the project will take place 2021-22.
Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press). Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley. Win is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito, California (2016 – 2018), and her poetry collection Storage Unit for the Spirit Housewill be published by Omnidawn in October 2020.

You can read more about CAMP and Wall + Response here.
—
This virtual event is free and open to all ages, but RSVP is required.

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Cancellation Policy:
If we have to cancel an event, you will be refunded within 4 business days of the event date.
