Litseen

POETS! - Jerry Ferraz birthday reading! followed by an open mic
2019-05-06 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
POETS! – Jerry Ferraz birthday reading! followed by an open mic

Book Launch of "On Blossoming"!
2019-05-07 18:00 - 21:00 UTC | Manny’s, 3092 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, San Francisco, 94108, United States
Join us to celebrate the launch of Gia Lynne’s first book: On Blossoming!
A bit about the party:
Located in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco, join us for a lively evening of book launching, live music, libations, all things pleasure-positive, and for talks by local activists focusing on the important subject of pleasure-focused education for all. Speakers and artists to be announced.
A bit about the book:
This is not your typical sex ed book. Instead of typically puritanical views on sex and puberty, On Blossoming focuses on incorporating the principles of pleasure into sex education for our youth and creates a new paradigm of human sexuality. This book takes on a taboo topic in our culture, backed with a compelling mixture of research and personal experience.
A bit about the writer:
Gia Lynne is a pleasure-positive writer, educator, and personal coach who is dedicated to researching and teaching the craft of pleasurable living and healthy sexuality. Fascinated by human sexuality and how that connects to our quality of life, she offers a unique perspective on pleasurable living.
Tickets for this event are FREE unless you’d like to reserve a copy of the book to pick up at the event itself (and get it signed by the author!). All tickets reserved through Eventbrite provide admission to the event as well as entrance into the drawing for the door prizes given away during the event.
Light bites will be available throughout the event and drinks will be available for purchase at Manny’s bar.

Chia-Chia Lin
2019-05-07 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of her new novel
The Unpassing
published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

One of Esquire, The Rumpus, The Millions, Literary Hub and Electric Literature‘s Most Anticipated Books of 2019
A searing debut novel that explores community, identity, and the myth of the American dream through an immigrant family in Alaska
In Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, we meet a Taiwanese immigrant family of six struggling to make ends meet on the outskirts of Anchorage, Alaska. The father, hardworking but beaten down, is employed as a plumber and repairman, while the mother, a loving, strong-willed, and unpredictably emotional matriarch, holds the house together. When ten-year-old Gavin contracts meningitis at school, he falls into a deep, nearly fatal coma. He wakes up a week later to learn that his little sister Ruby was infected, too. She did not survive.
Routine takes over for the grieving family: the siblings care for each other as they befriend a neighboring family and explore the woods; distance grows between the parents as they deal with their loss separately. But things spiral when the father, increasingly guilt ridden after Ruby’s death, is sued for not properly installing a septic tank, which results in grave harm to a little boy. In the ensuing chaos, what really happened to Ruby finally emerges.
With flowing prose that evokes the terrifying beauty of the Alaskan wilderness, Lin explores the fallout after the loss of a child and the way in which a family is forced to grieve in a place that doesn’t yet feel like home. Emotionally raw and subtly suspenseful, The Unpassing is a deeply felt family saga that dismisses the American dream for a harsher, but ultimately more profound, reality.
Chia-Chia Lin is a graduate of Harvard College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her stories have appeared in The Paris Review and other journals. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Unpassing is her first novel.
Advance Praise for The Unpassing:

“In this spare, deeply felt debut novel, Lin resists received wisdom about the American dream to craft a family saga about the difficulty of grieving far from home.” —Adrienne Westenfeld, Esquire
“Chia-Chia Lin’s The Unpassing is a searing, open wound of a book, marvelously alive and, quite simply, remarkable. Traversing the oftentimes brutal frontier of an isolated family living in an isolated environment, I can’t think of another novel as of late that relentlessly tackles headlong our deepest struggles for a sense of place, of home, and belonging. How do we push through grief? How do we find peace with not only our loved ones but ourselves? What sacrifices must we endure for friendship and connection? This is a story for our times. And a story unlike any other.” —Paul Yoon, author of The Mountain
“The Unpassing is a devastating debut, igneous, aching as if with the glow of the great northern skies beneath which it is set. More than meditation on grief; more than immigrant saga, or bildungsroman; more than new American gothic: here, Chia-Chia Lin has written a novel of such strange, brittle beauty as to resemble nothing else so much as living, itself. Her prose—at once poetic and lucid, by turns darkly comic and haunting—achieves something like the peculiar grammar of loss. I turned the last page with heartache and wonder, a feeling of having been undone and remade.” —D. Wystan Owen, author of Other People’s Love Affairs

Paul Kerschen reads from The Warm South
2019-05-07 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, BERKELEY, 94704-2322
Tuesday, May 07, 2019 7:00 PM
Location:
In the basement of the store.
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley
Website
Paul Kerschen was born in 1978 and grew up in Arizona. He studied at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he received an Iowa Arts Fellowship and Glenn Schaeffer Fellowship, and earned a doctorate in English literature at UC Berkeley. He has written for Music & Literature, The Times Literary Supplement and others. The Drowned Library (Foxhead, 2011) is a collection of short fiction. The Warm South is his first novel. He lives in California.

Jazz Stories: Live Jazz. Wonderful Stories.
2019-05-07 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books on Solano, 1855 Solano Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94707, United States
Tuesday, May 7, 7:30 pm
This Recurring Event is at Pegasus Books Solano
People love hearing jazz…and hearing about it. Musicians like Miles Davis, Charlie Parker and Buddy Rich were original, colorful characters artists who said and did astonishing things. Fortunately their colleagues cared enough to document these moments in stories and pictures and we now have a rich repository of photos and anecdotes about these artists, and about the American songwriters and composers who created the raw material of jazz.
Jazz Stories is a performance of the songs of jazz from its most creative periods intensified with illuminating, funny and touching true stories of the time.
Come hear music and jazz stories you probably have never heard…but will never forget. Hosted by Richard Leiter.
The first Tuesday of every month at Pegasus Books Solano.

The Saint Mary’s College of California MFA in Creative Writing : Graduate Student Reading
2019-05-07 20:00 - 21:30 UTC | Saint Mary’s College of California, 1928 Saint Mary's Road, Moraga, CA, 94575, United States
Join the SMC MFA program on May 7, 2019, at the SMC campus in Moraga, for a night of electrifying readings from our very own MFA candidates. The evening’s stellar authors include: Emily Alexander, Michael DuBon, Jordan Galerkin, and Joanne Weber.

The event will be hosted on campus at De La Salle Hall in Hagerty Lounge. Doors open at 8:00pm; readings begin at 8:15. The event will include delectable treats and adult beverages.

Emily Alexander is a writer, a novice baker, and a part-time jogger. Her poems have been published or are forthcoming in Hobart Pulp, Crab Creek Review, and Glass.

Michael DuBon is a first-generation Nevada native of Guatemalan descent. He is a MFA candidate in creative nonfiction at Saint Mary’s College of California, graduating in May. His poetry has appeared in The Meadow. He is currently working on his memoir: The DuBonicles: A Guide to Exile.

Jordan Galerkin writes short fiction & is currently working on a novel. She hopes to sell all the books so her pets can live their best lives.

Joanne Weber writes essays and children’s stories. When she’s not reading, she likes to hike and bake bread.

The Graduate Student Reading Series is hosted by the GSR Committee: Victoria Billings, Michael DuBon, Zoë Loos, and Terry Taplin.

The SMC MFA in Creative Writing offers students a campus environment that feels like a writing retreat within the bustling Bay Area. We have a stellar faculty that includes Marilyn Abildskov, Brenda Hillman, Lysley Tenorio and Matthew Zapruder, as well excellent Visiting Writers. Our two-year program combines a studio writing workshop component with an analytical component, offering concentrations in creative nonfiction, fiction, and poetry. For more information visit www.stmarys-ca.edu/mfa-in-creative-writing.

Andrew Ross
2019-05-08 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of his new book
Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel
published by Verso Books

The story of Palestine’s stonemasons and the building of Israel

“They demolish our houses while we build theirs.” This is how a Palestinian stonemason, in line at a checkpoint outside a Jerusalem suburb, described his life to Andrew Ross. Palestinian “stone men,” utilising some of the best-quality dolomitic limestone deposits in the world and drawing on generations of artisanal knowledge, have built almost every state in the Middle East except their own. Today the business of quarrying, cutting, fabrication, and dressing is Palestine’s largest employer and generator of revenue, supplying the construction industry in Israel, along with other Middle East countries and even more overseas.
Drawing on hundreds of interviews in Palestine and Israel, Ross’s engrossing, surprising, and gracefully written story of this fascinating ancient trade shows how the stones of Palestine, and Palestinian labour, have been used to build out the state of Israel—in the process, constructing “facts on the ground”—even while the industry is central to Palestinians’ own efforts to erect bulwarks against the Occupation. For decades, the hands that built Israel’s houses, schools, offices, bridges, and even its separation barriers have been Palestinian. Looking at the Palestine–Israel conflict in a new light, this book asks how this record of achievement and labour be recognised.
Andrew Ross is Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and a social activist. A contributor to the Nation, Village Voice, New York Times, and Artforum, he is the author of many books, including, most recently, Bird on Fire: Lessons from the World’s Least Sustainable City and Nice Work if You Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times. He lives in New York.
Praise for Stone Men:

“Meet ‘Michelangelo of Beit Fajjar’ and the other Palestinian stone-masons whose superb craft has fashioned Israel’s famous ‘white cities.’ Their hidden labor is the starting point for Ross’s brilliantly original exploration of how dispossession and exploitation continue to define the relationship of Israeli and Palestinian societies. This is radical journalism at its best—and I mean Pulitzer-Prize-quality best.”
– Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

“When a writer as original and committed as Andrew Ross turns his attention to Palestine, we know we are up for a unique set of observations. Ross uses the stone quarries of Palestine to weave a story that brings together geology, politics, military occupation, water, and environment. It is a story that is at once specific in its attention to details of matter and place and expansive as it takes us across the tragic history of this late manifestation of colonial domination.”
– Eyal Weizman, author of Hollow Land

“Andrew Ross sheds a brilliant light on what he calls the ‘sweat equity’ of Palestinian laborers who were deprived by Israel’s system of occupation and apartheid of their land and livelihood and pushed as a result to build Israeli housing and infrastructure to survive and to resist ethnic cleansing. Ross enriches us not just with a meticulously researched dose of history and a logical argument for a postcolonial reality of ethical coexistence in historic Palestine. He takes us on a perspicacious journey of human stories, ethical arguments and socioeconomic realities, consciously refraining from speaking on behalf of Palestinians or depicting us as pitiful victims, as many well-meaning white academics still do, and thus contributing to understanding what justice in this land truly means and entails.”
– Omar Barghouti, Palestinian human rights defender

“Just when you thought that there was no other way to amplify the atrocity of the Israeli occupation of Palestine, along comes Andrew Ross with Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel. Here is a refreshingly clear picture of the labour that it takes to produce and reproduce Israeli society and the Israeli occupation. Ordinary Palestinians who break and lay the stones tell Andrew Ross their stories, and he offers them to us as a gift of their resilience.”
– Vijay Prashad, author of the Poorer Nations

Alison Hart at Alameda Authors Series 3
2019-05-08 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | Alameda Free Library, 1550 Oak Street, Alameda, 94501
For the third year, AAUW Alameda presents a spring series of talks featuring authors who live and write in Alameda and nearby, now co-sponsored by the Friends of the Alameda Free Library. Our May author Alison Hart will discuss her novel Mostly White, and her current writing projects.
Biography
Alison Hart studied theater at New York University and later found her voice as a writer. She identifies as a mixed-race African American, Passamaquoddy Native American, Irish, Scottish, and English woman of color.
She was recently introduced by best selling, award winning author Isabel Allende at Book Passage in Corte Madera. Isabel’s response to Mostly White: “So compelling it gave me goosebumps from the very first lines.”
Hart’s poetry collection Temp Words was published by Cosmo Press in 2015, and her poems appear in Red Indian Road West: Native American Poetry from California (Scarlet Tanager Books, 2016) and elsewhere. She lives in Alameda, California.

Book Club
2019-05-08 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Meets the 2nd Wednesday of each month at 7 pm

In Common Writers Series: Tim Z. Hernandez, Marguerite Muñoz, and René Juarez-Vazquez, reading at Voz Sin Tinta
2019-05-09 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
For the concluding program in The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series for Spring 2019, we are very pleased to present poet and novelist Tim Z. Hernandez, visiting from El Paso, Texas, to read from his newest novel, All They Will Call You, and present his research in relation to the Mexican workers who were killed as they were being deported by the U.S. government in the 1942 “plane wreck at Los Gatos, memorialized in Woody Guthrie’s song. Following an early afternoon reading at The Poetry Center, where Hernandez will be joined after reading by poets Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Valdez in conversation, we’ll move to the Mission the same evening for a reading featuring all three writers, presented in conjunction with Voz Sin Tinta (to be followed by the Voz Sin Tinta open mic). Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, both events are free and open to the public.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning writer and performer. His work includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the American Book Award, the Colorado Book Award, and the International Latino Book Award. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Public Radio International hailed his book, Mañana Means Heaven, as one of their top picks of the year in 2013. The book is based on the real life story of Bea Franco, “Terry, The Mexican Girl” in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America, and he was a finalist for the inaugural Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for his research and work on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name. The result of this work is the basis for his latest book, All They Will Call You, the first installment of a trilogy he continues to write and research. Hernandez holds a B.A. from Naropa University and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. He is a full time Assistant Professor with the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual M.F.A. in Creative Writing Online.
Marguerite Muñoz writes “on the border of Berkeley & Oakland.” For the past four years and under the sponsorship of Alley Cat Books and former San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, she has co-curated Voz Sin Tinta, a monthly bilingual showcase and open mic that provides a safe, supportive space for emerging writers and community voices that often go unheard. Marguerite’s work speaks to interconnectedness sensed through spirit, blurred boundaries between inner and outer worlds, and the nameless desires she holds as a woman surviving in today’s modern world. Her poems and creative non-fiction have been featured at Get Lit, Liminal, Poems Under the Dome, Jingletown Reading and Open Mic, City Limits Gallery, and the Cante Jondo Series, and she is honored to have poems published in The Haight Asbury Journal and Cipactli.
René Juarez-Vazquez is a Bay Area Native, writer, and educator. He is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University and holds degrees in English and Creative Writing. With Marguerite Muñoz, he co-curates Voz Sin Tinta, a multilingual reading series in the San Francisco Mission District. His book, The Planet of The Dead, is available from Nomadic Press. Follow him on Twitter @FKA_RENE
Related event:
In Common Writers Series
Tim Z. Hernandez
reading and in conversation with Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Vazquez
Thursday MAY 9
1:00 pm @ The Poetry Center
Humanities 512, SF State, free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with, for the most, local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.
Event contact:
The Poetry Center
Event email:
poetry@sfsu.edu
Event phone:
415-338-2227
Event sponsor:
The Poetry Center and Voz Sin Tinta

In Common Writers Series: Tim Z. Hernandez, reading and in conversation with Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Vazquez
2019-05-09 13:00 - 15:00 UTC | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
For the concluding program in The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series for Spring 2019, we are very pleased to present poet and novelist Tim Z. Hernandez, visiting from El Paso, Texas, to read from his newest novel, All They Will Call You, and present his research in relation to the Mexican workers who were killed as they were being deported by the U.S. government in the 1942 “plane wreck at Los Gatos, memorialized in Woody Guthrie’s song. His reading will be followed by a conversation with poets Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Valdez, who also co-curate Voz Sin Tinta, the community based reading series at Alley Cat Books on 24th Street. After our afternoon event at The Poetry Center, we’ll move to the Mission this same evening for a reading featuring all three writers, presented in conjunction with Voz Sin Tinta. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, both events are free and open to the public.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning writer and performer. His work includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the American Book Award, the Colorado Book Award, and the International Latino Book Award. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Public Radio International hailed his book, Mañana Means Heaven, as one of their top picks of the year in 2013. The book is based on the real life story of Bea Franco, “Terry, The Mexican Girl” in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America, and he was a finalist for the inaugural Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for his research and work on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name. The result of this work is the basis for his latest book, All They Will Call You, the first installment of a trilogy he continues to write and research. Hernandez holds a B.A. from Naropa University and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. He is a full time Assistant Professor with the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual M.F.A. in Creative Writing Online.
Marguerite Muñoz writes “on the border of Berkeley & Oakland.” For the past four years and under the sponsorship of Alley Cat Books and former San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, she has co-curated Voz Sin Tinta, a monthly bilingual showcase and open mic that provides a safe, supportive space for emerging writers and community voices that often go unheard. Marguerite’s work speaks to interconnectedness sensed through spirit, blurred boundaries between inner and outer worlds, and the nameless desires she holds as a woman surviving in today’s modern world. Her poems and creative non-fiction have been featured at Get Lit, Liminal, Poems Under the Dome, Jingletown Reading and Open Mic, City Limits Gallery, and the Cante Jondo Series, and she is honored to have poems published in The Haight Asbury Journal and Cipactli.
René Juarez-Vazquez is a Bay Area Native, writer, and educator. He is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University and holds degrees in English and Creative Writing. With Marguerite Muñoz, he co-curates Voz Sin Tinta, a multilingual reading series in the San Francisco Mission District. His book, The Planet of The Dead, is available from Nomadic Press. Follow him on Twitter @FKA_RENE
Related event:
In Common Writers Series with Voz Sin Tinta
Tim Z. Hernandez, Marguerite Muñoz, and René Juarez-Vazquez
Thursday MAY 9
7:00 pm @ Alley Cat Books
3036 24th St, San Francisco, free and open to the public
co-sponsored by Voz Sin Tinta and The Poetry Center
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with, for the most, local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.
Event contact:
The Poetry Center
Event email:
poetry@sfsu.edu
Event phone:
415-338-2227
Event sponsor:
The Poetry Center

Voz Sin Tinta: Our monthly bilingual poetry series and open mic.
2019-05-09 18:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
In Common Writers Series: Tim Z. Hernandez, Marguerite Muñoz, and René Juarez-Vazquez, reading at Voz Sin Tinta
Thursday, May 9 – 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th Street (at Treat), San Francisco
free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
For the concluding program in The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series for Spring 2019, we are very pleased to present poet and novelist Tim Z. Hernandez, visiting from El Paso, Texas, to read from his newest novel, All They Will Call You, and present his research in relation to the Mexican workers who were killed as they were being deported by the U.S. government in the 1942 “plane wreck at Los Gatos, memorialized in Woody Guthrie’s song. Following an early afternoon reading at The Poetry Center, where Hernandez will be joined after reading by poets Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Valdez in conversation, we’ll move to the Mission the same evening for a reading featuring all three writers, presented in conjunction with Voz Sin Tinta (to be followed by the Voz Sin Tinta open mic). Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, both events are free and open to the public.
Tim Z. Hernandez is an award-winning writer and performer. His work includes poetry, fiction and non-fiction, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, most notably the American Book Award, the Colorado Book Award, and the International Latino Book Award. His work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, C-Span, and NPR’s All Things Considered. Public Radio International hailed his book, Mañana Means Heaven, as one of their top picks of the year in 2013. The book is based on the real life story of Bea Franco, “Terry, The Mexican Girl” in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In 2011, Hernandez was named one of sixteen New American Poets by the Poetry Society of America, and he was a finalist for the inaugural Split This Rock Freedom Plow Award for his research and work on locating the victims of the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon, the incident made famous by Woody Guthrie’s song of the same name. The result of this work is the basis for his latest book, All They Will Call You, the first installment of a trilogy he continues to write and research. Hernandez holds a B.A. from Naropa University and an M.F.A. from Bennington College. He is a full time Assistant Professor with the University of Texas El Paso’s Bilingual M.F.A. in Creative Writing Online.
Marguerite Muñoz writes “on the border of Berkeley & Oakland.” For the past four years and under the sponsorship of Alley Cat Books and former San Francisco Poet Laureate Alejandro Murguia, she has co-curated Voz Sin Tinta, a monthly bilingual showcase and open mic that provides a safe, supportive space for emerging writers and community voices that often go unheard. Marguerite’s work speaks to interconnectedness sensed through spirit, blurred boundaries between inner and outer worlds, and the nameless desires she holds as a woman surviving in today’s modern world. Her poems and creative non-fiction have been featured at Get Lit, Liminal, Poems Under the Dome, Jingletown Reading and Open Mic, City Limits Gallery, and the Cante Jondo Series, and she is honored to have poems published in The Haight Asbury Journal and Cipactli.
René Juarez-Vazquez is a Bay Area Native, writer, and educator. He is a professor of Latina/Latino Studies at San Francisco State University and holds degrees in English and Creative Writing. With Marguerite Muñoz, he co-curates Voz Sin Tinta, a multilingual reading series in the San Francisco Mission District. His book, The Planet of The Dead, is available from Nomadic Press. Follow him on Twitter @FKA_RENE
Related event:
In Common Writers Series
Tim Z. Hernandez
reading and in conversation with Marguerite Muñoz and René Juarez-Vazquez
Thursday MAY 9
1:00 pm @ The Poetry Center
Humanities 512, SF State, free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with, for the most, local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.

ZYZZYVA's Art Issue Celebration
2019-05-09 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Hosted by ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon
with Cate Lycurgus, Dean Rader, Jordan Kantor, Rusty Morrison, and Mira Rosenthal
ZYZZYVA’s newest issue features fiction, nonfiction, and poetry on the theme of art. Come celebrate the release of this stunning issue with an event featuring readings by five of its contributors. Hosted by ZYZZYVA Managing Editor Oscar Villalon.
Cate Lycurgus is the Interviews Editor at 32 Poems and is an instructor at San Jose State University. Her work has appeared in many publications, including Gulf Coast, The Iowa Review, and Tin House.
Dean Rader is the co-editor of Bullets into Bells: Poets and Citizens Respond to Gun Violence (Beacon Press), and also writes about poetry and visual culture for a variety of publications. He is a professor at The University of San Francisco.
Jordan Kantor writes on a wide range of contemporary art subjects, and holds a professorship at California College of the Arts, where he teaches artistic practice and theory and currently serves as Chair of the Painting/Drawing Program.
Rusty Morrison is the co-publisher of Omnidawn. Her most recent book is Beyond the Chainlink (Asahta Press).
Mira Rosenthal’s most recent book is The Local World (Kent State University Press). She is an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Cal Poly.
ZYZZYVA publishes the best prose, poetry, and visual art produced by West Coast writers and artists—along with the occasional piece from east of California. Since 1985, they’ve published such writers as Sherman Alexie, Raymond Carver, Aimee Bender, Po Bronson, F.X. Toole, Haruki Murakami, Richard Rodriguez, and Daniel Handler; poets such as Kay Ryan, Adrienne Rich, Matthew Zapruder, Czeslaw Milosz, W.S. Di Piero, and Francisco X. Alarcon, and have featured work from such artists as Ed Ruscha, Sandow Birk, Laurie Anderson, Richard Diebenkorn, and Wayne Thiebaud. Visit: www.zyzzyva.org

Denise Bergman and Dean Rader
2019-05-09 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Denise Bergman discusses her new poetry collection, Three Hands None, with Dean Rader.
Praise for Three Hands None
“Fearless, unsparing, Denise Bergman probes a violent, sexual assault to expose the personal and social consequences of ungovernable, masculinist culture. ‘Home is the coat that can’t keep me warm or dry / buttons and holes I can’t align, ‘ the poet declares, struggling to rebuild a coherent self. A book-length narrative poem, THREE HANDS NONE reveals how ‘materials for this story’ also account for domestic and international tragedies: ‘the single-eyed babies born in Fallujah’ and ‘strip-mined flattened hills.’ A single sequence–of narrative, fragment, and image–this original work will leave you breathless, changed.”–Robin Becker

“To read Denise Bergman’s THREE HANDS NONE is to inhabit an intimate accounting of a sexual assault in her bed by a stranger that reduced the writer to ‘barebones nothing.’ The accounting is obsessive, almost Steinian in its use of repetition to render the ripping of self that occurred during and after the event, the long days and nights when she ‘sweated inside matted wool terror filthy as a sheep.’ The poems that compose the volume read like the raw data of a mind working nonstop to parse the violence that severed her from ‘a body once her own.’ They collapse the distance between past and present, silence and speech, material and the metaphor, inside and out. The journey is not for the timid; images climb inside and rake your chest. But Bergman’s supple intelligence–whose ‘home is the range of one’s instinct’–and mastery of her craft carry her and her reader through: ‘Word on the street is she still lives there.'”–Lee Sharkey.

Foucault in California: David Wade in Conversation with James Penner
2019-05-09 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Thursday, May 9, 7:30pm
Pegasus Books Downtown
Join David Wade and University of Puerto Rico Rio Pedras professor James Penner for a night of philosophy and discussion of the late Simeon Wade’s last book, Foucault in California.

About the book
In The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking “nostalgically…of ‘an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, [and] nice people.’” This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade—ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death. Led by Wade and Wade’s partner Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychedelic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth.
Foucault in California is Wade’s firsthand account of that long weekend. Felicitous and often humorous prose vaults readers headlong into the erudite and subversive circles of the Claremont intelligentsia: parties in Wade’s bungalow, intensive dialogues between Foucault and his disciples at a Taoist utopia in the Angeles Forest (whose denizens call Foucault “Country Joe”); and, of course, the fabled synesthetic acid trip in Death Valley, set to the strains of Bach and Stockhausen. Part search for higher consciousness, part bacchanal, this book chronicles a young man’s burgeoning friendship with one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.
Simeon Wade (1940-2017)

In all parts of his multi-dimensional life in Southern California, teaching at Claremont Graduate School, Otis College of Art and Design, and Samra Acupuncture School and practicing as a psychiatric nurse at the Ventura County Psychiatric Ward, Simeon stressed the teachings and practices of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, even living his life in a Deleuzian revolutionary framework.
David Wade (born 1951)

Simeon Wade was the life long mentor of his youngest brother David in all things from Foucault and Deleuze to yoga and acupuncture. David took his own “Death Valley Trip” with Simeon in 1977. In his other life, David is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and practiced as a business trial lawyer for 42 years in cities very large (NY, LA) and very small (Eugene).
James Penner

Dr. James Penner is the author/editor of Timothy Leary: The Harvard Years (Park Street Press, 2014) and Pinks, Pansies, and Punks: The Rhetoric of Masculinity in American Literary Culture (Indiana University Press, 2011). He is also a contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books. He will be reviewing Simeon Wade’s Foucault in California (Heyday Books, 2019) for LARB in April of 2019.

Event date:

Thursday, May 9, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

GEARS TURNING w/ Kim Shuck
2019-05-12 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Join us for an afternoon of wonderful poetry by SF Bay Area based poets, artists, and musicians with your host Kim Shuck.
To participate in the open mic session, please arrive by 4 and plan to listen to all of the featured poets. Seating/space is limited.

LOTERIA READING SERIES, No. 2: La Muerte, El Nopal, La Sirena
2019-05-12 16:30 - 17:30 UTC | 3rd Floor McRoskey Mattress Loft, 1687 Market Street, San Francisco, 94103
WILLIE PERDOMO
JOSIAH LUIS ALDERETE
BARABARA JANE REYES
Curated by ➬ MK CHAVEZ

SUNDAY, MAY 12th, 2019
Doors ➬ 4PM | Program ➬ 4:30PM
FREE ENTRY

INSTITUTE OF (advanced) UNCERTAINTY
@ McROSKEY 3RD FLOOR FACTORY LOFT
1687 MARKET STREET (@ GOUGH), S.F., CA
BART ➬ Van Ness Station
MUNI METRO ➬ F | K | L | M | N | 6 | 7

Jo Lendle
2019-05-12 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Seagull Books, in conjunction with City Lights and the Goethe Institut San Francisco present
Jo Lendle
reading from and speaking about
All The Land
by Jo Lendle
Translated by Katy Derbyshire
published by Seagull Books
How, in 1930, did Alfred Wegener, the son of minister from Berlin, find himself in the most isolated spot on earth, attempting to survive an unthinkably cold winter in the middle of Greenland? In All the Land, Jo Lendle sets out to chronicle Wegener’s extraordinary journey from his childhood in Germany to the most unforgiving corner of the planet.
As Lendle shows, Wegener’s life was anything but ordinary. Surrounded by children at the orphanage his parents ran, Wegener was driven by his scientific spirit in search not only of answers to big questions, but of solitude. Though Wegener’s life ended in tragedy during his long winter in Greenland, he left us with a scientific legacy: the theory of continental drift, mocked by his peers and only recognized decades after his death. Lendle gives us the story of this great adventurer, of the experiences that shaped him, resulting in a tale that is both thrilling and tender.
Jo Lendle is a German author and head of Hanser Verlag, Munich.
Seagull Books (estd 1982) has been crafting books with an eye to both exceptional content and radical design. What began as an instinctive and highly risky business of publishing books—books on theatre, visual arts, alternative cinema, philosophy, culture—continues to be a passionately felt need of the hour: manuscripts that need to see the light of day, to reach a readership, to stimulate minds, to change outlooks.
The Goethe-Institut is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange and relations. Around 246,000 people take part in these German courses per year.

Poetry Express presents a reading by John Garry, hosted by Jim Barnard, open mic
2019-05-13 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Himalayan Flavors, 1585 University Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94703, United States
Poetry Express presents a reading by John Garry, hosted by Jim Barnard, open mic, Himalayan Flavors Restaurant, 1585 University Avenue, Berkeley, free, 7:00-9:00 (poetryexpressberkeley.com)

Poetic Tuesdays with Litquake at Jessie Square
2019-05-14 12:30 - 13:30 UTC | jessie Square, 536 Mission Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
The monthly collaboration between Litquake: San Francisco’s Literary Festival and the Yerba Buena Gardens Festival features an array of Bay Area poets and musicians.
Enjoy line breaks during your lunch break, as some of the Bay Area’s best poets and musicians share their work in the great outdoors.

New Queer Books at Perfectly Queer San Francisco
2019-05-14 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro Street, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Charlie Jane Anders, Sara Cahill Marron, Joseph Cassara, and Baruch Porras-Hernandez read from their new books at Perfectly Queer San Francisco on Tuesday, May 14, 7pm at Dog Eared Books Castro, 489 Castro St. Free admission, free wine and donuts, and door prizes at 7 sharp to reward the punctual!
Here’s more info on the authors and their books:
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of THE CITY IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT and ALL THE BIRDS IN THE SKY. Her fiction has won the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, Crawford, Sturgeon and Lambda Literary Awards. She hosts the monthly Writers With Drinks reading series and co-hosts the Hugo nominated podcast “Our Opinions Are Correct”.
Sara Cahill Marron is a writer from New York City currently living in Washington, D.C., studying to become a lawyer. Her book REASONS OF THE LONG T’UM is available through Broadstone Books, independent bookstores, and online. She has been published in the Dark Matter Journal, Chagrin River Review, Foliate Oak Magazine, Gravel, OUT/CAST, Crab Fat Magazine, The Newton Literary Review, FLARE, and others. Read more of her work here: saracahillmarron.com
Joseph Cassara was born and raised in New Jersey. He holds degrees from Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is the author of THE HOUSE OF IMPOSSIBLE BEAUTIES (Ecco, 2018), which is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Fiction, the Edmund White Award for Best Debut Novel, and was the winner of the National Arts & Entertainment Journalism Award for Best Fiction Book of 2018. He has been the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the California State University, Fresno.
Baruch Porras Hernandez is the author of the chapbooks I MISS YOU, DELICATE and LOVERS OF THE DEEP FRIED CIRCLE, both published by Sibling Rivalry Press. He recently had the honor of touring with the legendary Sister Spit Queer Radar Productions 2019 poetry tour. He is a two-time winner of Literary Death Match, a Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry and in Playwriting. He’s been featured with Writers with Drinks, has performed several times LitQuake, Quiet Lightning, and lives in San Francisco.

Elizabeth Acevedo
2019-05-14 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Young Adults 14-17! Elizabeth Acevedo

presents With the Fire on High, a dazzling novel in prose about a girl with talent, pride, and a drive to feed the soul that keeps her fire burning bright.
“Acevedo has done it again: the multi-award-winning author of The Poet X here delivers perfection… This sophomore novel is simply stunning.”–Booklist
To reserve your seat, purchase a copy of With the Fire on High by speaking to a bookseller or ordering through our website.

Tuesday, May 14, 2019 – 7:00pm

Ever since she got pregnant freshman year, Emoni Santiago’s life has been about making the tough decisions–doing what has to be done for her daughter and her abuela. The one place she can let all that go is in the kitchen, where she adds a little something magical to everything she cooks, turning her food into straight-up goodness.
Even though she dreams of working as a chef after she graduates, Emoni knows that it’s not worth her time to pursue the impossible. Yet despite the rules she thinks she has to play by, once Emoni starts cooking, her only choice is to let her talent break free.
Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of The Poet X, which won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Pura Belpré Award, and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award. She is a National Poetry Slam champion and holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland. Acevedo lives with her partner in Washington, DC. You can find out more about her at www.acevedowrites.com.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Book Launch: Aatif Rashid | Portrait of Sebastian Khan
2019-05-14 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
About the Book
Sebastian Khan is 380 days away from the end of college. An art history major who’s as much a connoisseur of members of the opposite sex as he is of Pre-Raphaelite paintings, Sebastian starts dating Fatima, a Muslim American determined to transition smoothly from campus life to a stable white-collar professional career. Sebastian’s membership in Model United Nations, though, takes him to college campuses all around North America, testing his commitment to Fatima and his readiness for adulthood. PORTRAIT OF SEBASTIAN KHAN is a humorous coming-of-age novel about a charismatic but emotionally stunted Muslim American Don Draper, who wins as many hearts as he breaks.
Aatif Rashid is the author of Portrait of Sebastian Khan. He’s published short stories in The Massachusetts Review, Metaphorosis, and Arcturus, and nonfiction in The Los Angeles Review of Books as well as online on Medium. He currently writes weekly for The Kenyon Review Blog about fiction writing and literature.

Event date:

Tuesday, May 14, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

Aysegül Savas
2019-05-14 19:30 - 2019-06-11 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Aysegül Savas discusses her new novel, Walking on the Ceiling.
Praise for Walking on the Ceiling
“Ayşegül Savaş is an enormous new talent who writes with the rigor of Didion and the tenderness of Sebald. Walking on the Ceiling holds the immediacy of youth and the depth of long-earned wisdom at once. Its elegant voice is sure to summon old memories and longings from each reader, relighting them anew.”
—Catherine Lacey, author of The Answers
“In Walking on the Ceiling, Aysegul Savas investigates the inability of any story to accurately evoke lived experience—yet her unconventional narrative succeeds in doing just that. Savas’s celebration of the minutest details of Paris and Istanbul is juxtaposed, to devastating effect, against rising political tensions. This quietly intense debut is the product of a wise and probing mind.”
—Helen Phillips, author of The Beautiful Bureaucrat
“Walking on the Ceiling is an elegant meditation on grief, identity, memory and homecoming. Moving between Paris and Istanbul, the novel captures the tangle of narrative around history, both personal and collective. I fell in love with this book.”
—Katie Kitamura, author of A Separation
“Sensual, fragile, scented with hope and loss, Walking on the Ceiling is a powerful debut and Ayşegül Savaş is an extremely talented rising star.” —Dorthe Nors, author of Mirror, Shoulder, Signal
About Walking on the Ceiling
A mesmerizing novel set in Paris and a changing Istanbul, about a young Turkish woman grappling with her past – her country’s and her own – and her complicated relationship with the famous British writer who longs for her memories.
After her mother’s death, Nunu moves from Istanbul to a small apartment in Paris. One day outside of a bookstore, she meets M., an older British writer whose novels about Istanbul Nunu has always admired. They find themselves walking the streets of Paris and talking late into the night. What follows is an unusual friendship of eccentric correspondence and long walks around the city.
M. is working on a new novel set in Turkey and Nunu tells him about her family, hoping to impress and inspire him. She recounts the idyllic landscapes of her past, mythical family meals, and her elaborate childhood games. As she does so, she also begins to confront her mother’s silence and anger, her father’s death, and the growing unrest in Istanbul. Their intimacy deepens, so does Nunu’s fear of revealing too much to M. and of giving too much of herself and her Istanbul away. Most of all, she fears that she will have to face her own guilt about her mother and the narratives she’s told to protect herself from her memories.
A wise and unguarded glimpse into a young woman’s coming into her own, Walking on the Ceiling is about memory, the pleasure of invention, and those places, real and imagined, we can’t escape.

Namwali Serpell
2019-05-15 18:30 - 20:00 UTC | MoAD, 685 Mission St, San Francisco, CA, 94105
Litquake and MoAD present…
Namwali Serpell’s electrifying debut, THE OLD DRIFT, is the first novel ever to tell the story of Zambia from its very beginnings to the present day—and beyond.
Crossing centuries, borders, and genres, THE OLD DRIFT tells a sweeping tale of a small African country as it comes into being, and the trials and tribulations of its people. Their stories, told by a mysterious swarm-like chorus that calls itself man’s greatest nemesis, form an epic meditation on what it means to be human.
With playful language, Serpell masterfully blends historical fiction, fairy-tale fables, romance, and science fiction. On each page, she turns stereotypes and tropes on their heads, unsettling the stories we think we know about Africa, from colonialism to migration, gender to race, poverty to politics, and nationhood to technology. Through THE OLD DRIFT’s cast of vivid characters—including Zambia, which proves to be a character itself—Serpell shows that, if to err is human, then even the slightest error can still be a powerful force for transformation. Incisive, expansive, and subversive, THE OLD DRIFT announces Namwali Serpell as a major new literary talent.

Authors

Namwali Serpell
Namwali Serpell was born in Lusaka and lives in San Francisco. Her first novel, The Old Drift, is forthcoming with Hogarth (Penguin Random House) in 2019.She won the 2015 Caine Prize for African Writing for her story, “The Sack.” In 2014, she was chosen as one of the Africa 39… Read More →

Wednesday May 15, 2019 6:30pm – 8:00pm
Museum of African Diaspora 685 Mission St, San Francisco, CA 94105
Featured Event

Saskia Vogel
2019-05-15 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of her new novel
Permission
published by Coach House Books

A grieving young woman learns something new about love from a dominatrix in this haunting and erotic debut. When Echo’s father gets swept away by a freak current off the Los Angeles coast, she enters a state of paralysis. The failed young actress seeks solace in the best way she knows: by losing herself in the lives of others. This time it’s with her new neighbor, a dominatrix named Orly who works out of her suburban home, and who introduces Echo to a whole new world of desire. But Orly’s fifty-something houseboy won’t quite let Echo slip into sweet oblivion? Set among the bright colors of L. A., Permission is a kind of love story about three people sick with dreams and expectations who turn to the erotic for comfort and cure. As they stumble through the landscape of desire, they ask themselves: how do I want to be loved?
“Saskia Vogel’s provocative debut novel, Permission, is like a trick box full of sliding panels. Her protagonist, jarred loose from her life by the accidental death of her father, finds that the boundaries she’s always taken as given begin to slide open, revealing secret zones of power and sexuality within the world and within herself. Beautifully written, mysterious and compelling. ” – Janet Fitch
Saskia Vogel grew up in Los Angeles and currently lives in Berlin, where she works as a writer and Swedish-to-English literary translator. She has written on the themes of gender, power, and sexuality for publications such as The White Review, The Offing, and The Quietus . Previously, she worked as Granta magazine’s global publicist and as an editor at the AVN Media Network, where she reported on pornography and adult pleasure products.
visit: saskiavogel.com

David Randall
2019-05-15 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
David Randall discusses his new book, Black Death at the Golden Gate: The Race to Save America from the Bubonic Plague.

Praise for Black Death at the Golden Gate
“David K. Randall has created a meticulously researched history that unfolds like a thriller. I raced through this book in two days (horribly, the span of time it took bubonic plague to fell a victim). The unlikely heroes—bacteriologists and public health officers with long, flowing beards—battle villains most vile: racism, rotten politics, disregard for science, and Yersinia pestis. Black Death at the Golden Gate is both a page-turner and a cautionary tale: those villains still lurk.” —Mary Roach, New York Timesbest-selling author of Grunt
“A haunting detective tale packed with villains and heroes, Black Death at the Golden Gate shows how bigotry and greed almost brought a major U.S. city to ruin—and how science and courage saved it. The events in this book may be a hundred years old, but its message is as urgent as ever.” — Jason Fagone, author of the national bestseller The Woman Who Smashed Codes
“David K. Randall is a spellbinding writer. He has turned a critical chapter of medical history into a riveting tale that reads like a detective novel, chock-full of scandals and intrigue…Read Black Death at the Golden Gatebecause it’s a page-turner, but more important, read this book because the issues Randall spotlights resonate today.” — Randi Epstein, author of Aroused

About Black Death at the Golden Gate
For Chinese immigrant Wong Chut King, surviving in San Francisco meant a life in the shadows. His passing on March 6, 1900, would have been unremarkable if a city health officer hadn’t noticed a swollen black lymph node on his groin–a sign of bubonic plague. Empowered by racist pseudoscience, officials rushed to quarantine Chinatown while doctors examined Wong’s tissue for telltale bacteria. If the devastating disease was not contained, San Francisco would become the American epicenter of an outbreak that had already claimed ten million lives worldwide.
To local press, railroad barons, and elected officials, such a possibility was inconceivable–or inconvenient. As they mounted a cover-up to obscure the threat, ending the career of one of the most brilliant scientists in the nation in the process, it fell to federal health officer Rupert Blue to save a city that refused to be rescued. Spearheading a relentless crusade for sanitation, Blue and his men patrolled the squalid streets of fast-growing San Francisco, examined gory black buboes, and dissected diseased rats that put the fate of the entire country at risk.
In the tradition of Erik Larson and Steven Johnson, Randall spins a spellbinding account of Blue’s race to understand the disease and contain its spread–the only hope of saving San Francisco, and the nation, from a gruesome fate.

Lyrics & Dirges: A Monthly Reading Series
2019-05-15 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Wednesday, May 15, 7:30pm
This Recurring Event is at Pegasus Books Downtown
Lyrics & Dirges: A Monthly Reading Series
Lyrics & Dirges features a mix of prominent, emerging and beginning writers. Its aim is to highlight various forms of writing in an effort to spotlight the diverse literary community of the Bay Area. Hosted and curated by Sharon Coleman and Mk Chavez.
Every third Wednesday of the month at Pegasus Books Downtown.

Event date:

Wednesday, May 15, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

Meet Journalist and Anti-Death Penalty Activist, Michael Kroll
2019-05-16 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | Oakland Public Library – Main Branch, 125 - 14th Street, Oakland, 94612
Michael Kroll is a prolific writer; he has published numerous magazine and newspaper pieces, some award-winning, most of which focus on our own criminal justice system and, in particular, the death penalty. Hear him read from his works and discuss his varied interests and memoir-writing experiences.

Mike Boughn + Sunnylyn Thibodeaux - poets!
2019-05-16 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Mike Boughn + Sunnylyn Thibodeaux – poets!
