Litseen

Susie Linfield discusses The Lions' Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky
2019-05-22 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Cultural critic Susie Linfield presents her lively intellectual history of the political left, The Lions’ Den: Zionism and the Left from Hannah Arendt to Noam Chomsky. In conversation wtih Steve Wasserman, publisher and executive director of Heyday.

About The Lions’ Den:
In this lively intellectual history of the political Left, cultural critic Susie Linfield investigates how eight prominent twentieth-century intellectuals struggled with the philosophy of Zionism, and then with Israel and its conflicts with the Arab world. Constructed as a series of interrelated portraits that combine the personal and the political, the book includes philosophers, historians, journalists, and activists such as Hannah Arendt, Arthur Koestler, I. F. Stone, and Noam Chomsky. In their engagement with Zionism, these influential thinkers also wrestled with the twentieth century’s most crucial political dilemmas: socialism, nationalism, democracy, colonialism, terrorism, and anti-Semitism. In other words, in probing Zionism, they confronted the very nature of modernity and the often catastrophic histories of our time. By examining these leftist intellectuals, Linfield also seeks to understand how the contemporary Left has become focused on anti-Zionism and how Israel itself has moved rightward.
Susie Linfield teaches cultural journalism at New York University. A former editor at the Washington Post and the Village Voice, she has written for a wide variety of publications, including the New York Times, the Nation, Dissent, and the New Republic. Her previous book, The Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Steve Wasserman, raised in Berkeley and a graduate of Cal, is Heyday’s publisher and executive director. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press and editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux.

Event date:

Wednesday, May 22, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

GALILEO HIGH SCHOOL & 826 VALENCIA: ‘WE BELONG HERE’ BOOK RELEASE
2019-05-23 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | The Beat Museum, 540 Broadway, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
REFLECTIONS ABOUT BORDERS FROM THE STUDENTS OF GALILEO HIGH SCHOOL
THURS. MAY 23RD, 6:30PM

Join us for readings, book signings, and a celebration of our student authors.

826 Valencia is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting under-resourced students ages six to eighteen with their creative and expository writing skills and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our services are structured around the understanding that great leaps in learning can happen with one-on-one attention and that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success.

THE RACKET!
2019-05-23 19:00 - 20:30 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Details soon!
Hosted by Noah B. Sanders

Edgar Kunz
2019-05-23 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Edgar Kunz joins us to discuss his debut poetry collection, Tap Out .
Praise for Tap Out
“A whirlwind debut.Stories of sclerotic lives told in wrought images, Kunz arrives with real poetic talent…[he] pulls us into his poems and keeps us there through crisp detail…(A hint: trust poets who show back to you the images you’ve seen in glimpses and tucked in the back of your mind.)…Tap Out lives in a bittersweet world, and does so well, but there’s also fine touches here: a mother who has had enough, a son who sees beauty in loss…”—Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions, “Must Read Poetry”

“There is no ground of existence that does not require (or fail to sustain) its poet. This proposition, requiring continual re-proving, has found again its confirmation in Edgar Kunz’s first book. In the lineage of Levine, Jordan, and Laux, Tap Out presents the data of blows received and taken in fully. Yet these poems do not return blow for blow; they offer instead an unflinching, continued allegiance to abiding connection. Without summation or comment, they remind us that all alchemies of being are possible. Kunz’s precision-tool language of memory and witness enlarges, pivots, pieces together the broken into a world made new, survivable, holdable, forgiven.” — Jane Hirshfield, author of The Beauty and Come, Thief

“Tap Out is an ardent and gorgeous refusal to scorn the aches and wounds that bring us closer to mercy. Rippling with both sorrow and wonder, Edgar Kunz’s narratives sift through the intricacies of masculinity, working-class lives, and abandonment. The telling isn’t singed with nostalgia that obscures pain: his muscular lines make visible the scars that tether the self to hurt, to hope. The language is deftly scored on the page—the diction itself is revelatory. ShopRite. Larch. Chamber-throat. This book reminds us the heart has its own intelligence.” — Eduardo C. Corral, author of Slow Lightning

Voice of Witness: Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America
2019-05-23 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Editors Steven Mayers and Jonathan Freedman discuss Solito, Solita: Crossing Borders with Youth Refugees from Central America with Lauren Markham.
About Solito, Solita
They are a mass migration of thousands, yet each one travels alone. Solito, Solita (Alone, Alone) is an urgent collection of oral histories that tells–in their own words–the story of young refugees fleeing countries in Central America and traveling for hundreds of miles to seek safety and protection in the United States.
Fifteen narrators describe why they fled their homes, what happened on their dangerous journeys through Mexico, how they crossed the borders, and for some, their ongoing struggles to survive in the United States. In an era of fear, xenophobia, and outright lies, these stories amplify the compelling voices of migrant youth. What can they teach us about abuse and abandonment, bravery and resilience, hypocrisy and hope? They bring us into their hearts and onto streets filled with the lure of freedom and fraught with violence. From fending off kidnappers with knives and being locked in freezing holding cells to tearful reunions with parents, Solito, Solita‘s narrators bring to light the experiences of young people struggling for a better life across the border.
This collection includes the story of Adri n, from Guatemala City, whose mother was shot to death before his eyes. He refused to join a gang, rode across Mexico atop cargo trains, crossed the US border as a minor, and was handcuffed and thrown into ICE detention on his eighteenth birthday. We hear the story of Rosa, a Salvadoran mother fighting to save her life as well as her daughter’s after death squads threatened her family. Together they trekked through the jungles on the border between Guatemala and Mexico, where masked men assaulted them. We also meet Gabriel, who after surviving sexual abuse starting at the age of eight fled to the United States, and through study, legal support and work, is now attending UC Berkeley.

Poetry at Pegasus: Cooperman | Kaupang | Ronda | George Bagdanov
2019-05-23 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Thursday, May 23, 7:30pm
Pegasus Books Downtown
Pegasus Books Downtown welcomes Matthew Cooperman, Aby Kaupang, Margaret Ronda, and Kristin George Bagdanov, for a night of shared poetry from their collective works.
—
Matthew Cooperman is the author of, most recently, Spool, winner of the New Measure Prize (Free Verse Editions/Parlor Press, 2016), Disorder 299.00, w/Aby Kaupang (Essay Press, 2015), the text + image collaboration Imago for the Fallen World, w/Marius Lehene (Jaded Ibis Press, 2013), and numerous other books. A Professor of English at Colorado State University, he is also co-poetry editor for Colorado Review. He lives in Fort Collins with his wife, the poet Aby Kaupang, and their two children.
Aby Kaupang is the author of Disorder 299.00 (w/Matthew Cooperman), Little “g” God Grows Tired of Me, Absence is Such a Transparent House, and Scenic Fences | Houses Innumerable. She holds Master’s degrees in both Creative Writing and Occupational Therapy and lives in Fort Collins where she served as the Poet Laureate from 2015-2017.
Margaret Ronda is the author of two books of poems, For Hunger (Saturnalia 2018) and Personification(Saturnalia 2019), and a critical study, Remainders: American Poetry at Nature’s End. Her poems have appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal, The Columbia Poetry Review, Pool, Gulf Coast, and other journals. She is an assistant professor of English at the University of California-Davis.
Kristin George Bagdanov earned her M.F.A. in poetry from Colorado State University and is currently PhD candidate in the literature program at U.C. Davis. Her poetry collection, Fossils in the Making was a finalist in the 2017 National Poetry Series and will be published by Black Ocean in March 2019. Her poems have recently appeared in Colorado Review, Boston Review, Zone 3, Ninth Letter, Denver Quarterly, and other journals. She is the poetry editor of Ruminate Magazine.

Event date:

Thursday, May 23, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

Poets Jericho Brown and Dexter L. Booth
2019-05-24 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, BERKELEY, 94704-2322
Friday, May 24, 2019 7:00 PM
Location:
The basement at the store
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley
Website
Jericho Brown reads from The Tradition
Jericho Brown is the recipient of the Whiting Writers’ Award and fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Guggenheim Foundation. His first book, Please (New Issues, 2008), won the American Book Award, and his second book, The New Testament (Copper Canyon, 2014), was named one of the best poetry books of the year by Library Journal and received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. His third collection is The Tradition (Copper Canyon, 2019). His poems have appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Time, and several volumes of The Best American Poetry.
Brown earned a PhD from the University of Houston, an MFA from the University of New Orleans, and a BA from Dillard University. He is an associate professor and the director of the Creative Writing program at Emory University in Atlanta.
Dexter L. Booth
Dexter L. Booth is the author of one poetry collection, Scratching the Ghost , which won the 2012 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. His poems have been published in Grist, Willow Springs, and New Delta Review. Booth teaches poetry and English composition at Arizona State University.

Robert Eastwood & Peter Weltner
2019-05-24 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, 1501 Washington Avenue, Albany, CA, 94706
May 24, 2019: Robert Eastwood & Peter Weltner
Robert Eastwood lives in San Ramon, California. He is the author of Romer (Etruscan Press, 2018), and Snare (Broadstone Books, 2016). His prize-winning poems have appeared in many literary journals and anthologies, such as Oxford Magazine, New Zoo Poetry Review, Ekphrasis, The Dirty Napkin, Wild Goose Poetry Review, Full Of Crow, Legendary, Up The Staircase Quarterly, Literary Yard, Kentucky Review, Bird’s Thumb, The Hartskill Review, Spry, Loch Raven Review, Halfway Down the Stairs, Steel Toe Review and others. His chapbooks include Over Plainsong, The Welkin Gate, and Night of the Moth, published by Small Poetry Press. He is a three-time Pushcart Prize nominee.
Peter Weltner grew up in New Jersey and North Carolina, graduated from Hamilton College, and received a Ph.D. from Indiana University. He taught English Renaissance poetry and prose, and modern and contemporary British, Irish, and American fiction and poetry at San Francisco State University for thirty-seven years, retiring in 2006. He has published six books of fiction, most recently The Return of What’s Been Lost (Marrowstone Press, 2017), and fourteen books or chapbooks of poetry including, most recently, The Light of the Sun Become Sea(BrickHouse Books, 2017), Unbecoming Time (Marrowstone Press, 2017), and You Wait For Me Where Mountain Peaks Are White As Your Hair (Marrowstone Press, 2018). His newest book, Antiquary: Poems and Stories, was release this April by Marrowstone Press. His work has been selected for numerous anthologies, among them two O. Henry’s. He lives with his husband in San Francisco by the Pacific.
The reading will begin at 7:00 p.m. and end at 9:00 p.m. A limited open reading, and a short interview with the featured readers will be included. This is a free event.

Rolling In The Aisles
2019-05-25 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | 1722 Taraval St., between 26th and 27th Avenues San Francisco, San Francisco, CA
Rolling In The Aisles
Saturday, May 25 6 pm
Rolling Out
1722 Taraval St., between 26th and 27th Avenues
San Francisco
Our second annual evening of literary humor, featuring:
Clyde Always, Daniel Ari, Peter Bullen, Michael Crabtree,
B.Lynn Goodwin, Kurt Luchs, Colleen McKee, Maw Shein Win, Jon Sindell, and James Warner.
Submissions closed

About Rolling Writers
Like the baker Rageneau in Cyrano, master baker Bruno Tsé supports the arts. And our pastry-preparing patron of poetry and prose shows love for the muse by giving his Taraval Street café up for lit readings, with themed musical and gustatory accoutrements.
Rolling–Out: 1722 Taraval, between 27th and 28th Avenues,
San Francisco. The L-Taraval streetcar line stops at 26th Avenue.
To submit work for an upcoming theme, please write the host, Jon Sindell, at jsind [at] sbcglobal [net], pasting your work into the body of the email, and marking the subject line as follows: RW [Name Of Show], [Writer’s Name]. You must submit personally—no submissions by representatives will be considered. Unless otherwise indicated on the Upcoming Events page, limit prose submissions to 1,200 words; shorter submissions are preferred. This series primarily features complete works of fiction and memoir, but poetry and reasonably self-contained novel excerpts are presented to a limited extent. Submissions are rolling—we generally consider submissions until a lineup is filled.
Won’t you join us?

Walker Talks!
2019-05-26 14:30 - 16:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
The last Sunday of each month
(except June/July and December)
from 2:30 to 4 pm
The last Sunday of every month (except the summer months and December), Walker Brents III holds his audience spellbound with his wide-ranging investigations into topics literary, mythological and otherwise — in the past, his subjects have ranged from William Blake to Bob Dylan, Shakespeare to the Shahnameh, the Kalevala to the story of Layla and Majnun…

SPANISH LANGUAGE BOOK CLUB MEETING
2019-05-28 19:00 - 21:00, 2019-05-29 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Please join us for a lively discussion about:
(author will not be present)
To join the book group please contact iranyi@me.com

Pablo d'Ors: Biography of Silence
2019-05-28 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Spanish priest and Zen disciple Pablo d’Ors shares insights from his first English translation, Biography of Silence, at Pegasus Books Downtown. A publishing phenomenon in Spain, Biography of Silence is a moving, lyrical, far-ranging meditation on the deep joys of confronting oneself through silence.

ABOUT BIOGRAPHY OF SILENCE
With silence increasingly becoming a stranger to us, one man set out to become its intimate: Pablo d’Ors, a Catholic priest whose life was changed by Zen meditation. With disarming honesty and directness, as well as a striking clarity of language, d’Ors shares his struggles as a beginning meditator: the tedium, restlessness, and distraction. But, persevering, the author discovers not only a deep peace and understanding of his true nature, but also that silence, rather than being a retreat from life, offers us an intense engagement with life just as it is. Imbued with a rare beauty, Biography of Silence shows us the deep joy of silence that is available to us all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Pablo d’Ors is a Spanish priest and writer. He was ordained in 1991 and received a doctorate in theology in 1996. In 2014, he founded the Amigos del Desierto foundation with the aim of
promoting the practice of meditation. In the same year, Pope Francis made him a consultant of the Pontifical Council for Culture. He has published many books, both fiction and nonfiction. This is his first English translation.
PRAISE
“In accessible language reminiscent of Thomas Merton, d’Ors’s enchanting book, a bestseller in Spain, channels his Catholic spiritual heritage into a persuasive meditation guide for Western readers.” —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
“Biography of Silence invites us to stop and catch our breath. Each chapter inspires a hunger for the contemplative silence the author has come to love with such contagious affection. The word ‘God’ is mentioned only a handful of times, but few books have rendered me more vulnerable to a divine encounter. Pablo d’Ors has given us a literary and spiritual gift.” —Brian D. McLaren, The Great Spiritual Migration
“Biography of Silence is a poetic yet baldly honest account of what it means to persevere with meditation.” —Lion’s Roar

Event date:

Tuesday, May 28, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

gh silence.

Roof Books Night with Sara Larsen and Kit Robinson
2019-05-29 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, BERKELEY, 94704-2322
Wednesday, May 29, 2019 7:00 PM
Location:
The basement at Moe’s
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley
Website
Please join us as we celebrate two new titles from Roof Books. Come up to More Moe’s an hour before the basement reading for a glass of wine and to meet the poets.
Kit Robinson was born in Evanston, Illinois, grew up in Cincinnati, went to Yale, and has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area ever since. His new book of poetry is Thought Balloon from Roof Books. Other works include Leaves of Class (Chax, 2017), Marine Layer (BlazeVOX, 2015), A Mammal of Style (with Ted Greenwald, Roof, 2013), Determination (Cuneiform, 2010), The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003 (Adventures in Poetry, 2009) and more than 20 other books.
Sara Larsen is the author of Merry Hell (Atelos, 2016), and All Revolutions Will Be Fabulous (Printing Press, 2014). She is also the author of several chapbooks including Riot Cops En Route To Troy and The Hallucinated, among others. With David Brazil, she edited over sixty issues of the literary zine TRY! from 2008 to 2011. She lives in the Bay Area.

He’s back! John Waters presents his new book Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder
2019-05-30 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | McRoskey Mattress Company, Inc, 1687 Market St, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The man in the pencil-thin mustache, auteur of the transgressive movie classics Pink Flamingos, Polyester, the original Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates, and in Mr. Know-It-Allhe serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth: “Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all.”
Tickets available mid–April.
Watch this space for more information.

Chia-Chia Lin
2019-05-30 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Chia-Chia Lin discusses her debut novel, The Unpassing.

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

About The Unpassing
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.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier discusses UNDAUNTED: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back
2019-05-30 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Thursday, May 30, 7:30pm
Pegasus Books Downtown
Congresswoman Jackie Spier discusses her inspiring and powerful memoir, Undaunted: Surviving Jonestown, Summoning Courage, and Fighting Back.
“Few people embody resilience like Jackie Speier. She faced unthinkable trauma with courage—and came through it with an unshakable sense of purpose. UNDAUNTED is a remarkable story of survival and strength.” —Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and founder of LeanIn.org and OptionB.org
“Jackie Speier’s life has been nothing short of harrowing and triumphant. UNDAUNTED will move women to persist and have their voices heard in government. It will inspire young women to be our future leaders who serve with conviction and compassion.”
—Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club
“Jackie Speier has lived an incredible life and has passionately dedicated much of it to public service. UNDAUNTED is honest, eye-opening, and truly inspiring.”
—Congressman John Lewis, civil rights leader

An inspiring and powerful memoir of surviving the Jonestown massacre and becoming a fearless voice against injustice and inequality by California congresswoman Jackie Speier.
Jackie Speier was twenty-eight when she joined Congressman Leo Ryan’s delegation to rescue defectors from cult leader Jim Jones’s Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana. Ryan was killed on the airstrip tarmac. Jackie was shot five times at point-blank range. While recovering from what would become one of the most harrowing tragedies in recent history, Jackie had to choose: Would she become a victim or a fighter? The choice to survive against unfathomable odds empowered her with a resolve to become a vocal proponent for human rights.
From the formative nightmare that radically molded her perspective and instincts to the devastating personal and professional challenges that would follow, Undaunted reveals the perseverance of a determined force in American politics. Deeply rooted in Jackie’s experiences as a widow, a mother, a congresswoman, and a fighter, hers is a story of true resilience, one that will inspire other women to draw strength from adversity in order to do what is right—no matter the challenges ahead.

Event date:

Thursday, May 30, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Ave

Berkeley, CA 94704

Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture
2019-05-31 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Editors Amos Mac and Rocco Kayiatos discuss Original Plumbing: The Best of Ten Years of Trans Male Culture.
Praise for Original Plumbing
“Over the course of its ten-year run, Original Plumbing made thousands of us queer and trans people laugh, cry, and gasp out loud. This is how we talked with each other, inspired each other, and gave each other the strength to keep on living outside the box. This collection is an invaluable, unapologetic archive of a multiplicity of queer and trans experiences.” —Kate Bornstein, author of Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us
“When Original Plumbing burst onto the scene a decade ago, it was an absolute game changer in trans media and representation. Mac and Kayiatos created something revolutionary. This collection is a beautiful tribute to that treasured publication, and an authentic and moving representation of trans male culture. I’ll be revisiting its stories and images for years to come. An essential book for both longtime readers and those diving in for the first time.” —Jill Soloway, creator of Transparent
“More than merely aesthetically inspiring, Original Plumbing is life-saving. It has been at the forefront of the trans revolution, providing thoughtful, cheeky documentation of the vibrancy of queer lives.” —Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir
“For over a decade, Original Plumbing did the Lord’s work of documenting and proliferating the stories of trans men and transmasculine folks. This book is so much more than a retrospective; it is a testament. Rocco and Amos have preserved a brilliant, precious slice of trans history that will be revered and cherished for generations to come.” —Jacob Tobia, author of Sissy: A Coming-of-Gender Story
“A powerful realization of high def and punk rock, Original Plumbing is the kind of book you’ll devour in one sitting, immersing yourself in the beauty of each page.” —C. Riley Snorton, author of Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity
About Original Plumbing
Independently published from 2009 to 2019, Original Plumbing grew from a Bay Area zine to a nationally acclaimed print quarterly dedicated to trans men. For nearly ten years, the magazine was the premier resource focused on their experiences, celebrations, and imaginations, featuring writing on both playful and political topics like selfies, bathrooms, and safer sex; interviews with queer icons such as Janet Mock, Silas Howard, Margaret Cho, and Ian Harvie; and visual art, photography, and short fiction.
In celebration of the magazine’s ten-year run, this essential collection compiles the best of all twenty issues. Selections are reprinted in full color, with an introduction by activist Tiq Milan and a new preface by the founding editors.

BAPC OPEN POETRY READING
2019-06-01 15:00 - 17:00 UTC | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
BAPC OPEN POETRY READING

Upcoming First Saturday Readings in 2019:

June 1

3:00 – 5:00 PM

STRAWBERRY CREEK LODGE
1320 Addison St., Berkeley, CA

Addison is one block south of and parallel to University Ave.
between Acton & Bonar St.
Parking on the street (NOT in the S.C.L. parking lot)

Check in at the front desk and you will be directed to the meeting location
(usually Movie Room, or backyard garden)

All Ages Welcome

Come and enjoy a friendly and informal read-around —
3-5 minutes per poet/reader, or “just listening” is fine too 🙂

Enrique Chagoya: Aliens
2019-06-01 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, BERKELEY, 94704-2322
Saturday, Jun 01, 2019 7:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Location:
Upstairs on the 4th floor, at More Moe’s
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley
Website
Please join us upstairs at More Moe’s as we celebrate the publication of Aliens (Kelly’s Cove Press, paperback, $25.00). Mr. Chagoya will speak and autograph copies of the book.
Aliens is a timely new monograph of art and pithy texts by the eminent San Francisco artist and Stanford professor Enrique Chagoya. The 128-page book features paintings, drawings, lithographs, and twelve of Chagoya’s singular codices, with sixteen foldout pages.
Aliens explores some of the artist’s pioneering themes: “Reverse Anthropology” and “Reverse Modernism,” and is filled with the artist’s brash, spot-on humor. Aliens is divided in halves, with two front covers. One half proceeds from left to right and showcases single-page works, while the other half unfolds from right to left, in the traditional manner of codices. Although the book is printed on heavy stock in a wide, landscape format, it sells for twenty-five dollars.
Chagoya’s art reminds us that we are all aliens; it speaks directly to the absurd and horrifying return to tribalism in our time, as many lives are threatened and numerous freedoms curtailed.

Sharma Shields and Simeon Mills
2019-06-01 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Sharma Shields and Simeon Mills discuss their new novels, The Cassandra and The Obsoletes.
About The Cassandra
Mildred Groves is an unusual young woman. Gifted and cursed with the ability to see the future, Mildred runs away from home to take a secretary position at the Hanford Research Center in the early 1940s. Hanford, a massive construction camp on the banks of the Columbia River in remote South Central Washington, exists to test and manufacture a mysterious product that will aid the war effort. Only the top generals and scientists know that this product is processed plutonium, for use in the first atomic bombs.
Mildred is delighted, at first, to be part of something larger than herself after a lifetime spent as an outsider. But her new life takes a dark turn when she starts to have prophetic dreams about what will become of humankind if the project is successful. As the men she works for come closer to achieving their goals, her visions intensify to a nightmarish pitch, and she eventually risks everything to question those in power, putting her own physical and mental health in jeopardy. Inspired by the classic Greek myth, this 20th century reimagining of Cassandra’s story is based on a real WWII compound that the author researched meticulously. A timely novel about patriarchy and militancy, The Cassandra uses both legend and history to look deep into man’s capacity for destruction, and the resolve and compassion it takes to challenge the powerful.
Praise for The Cassandra
“The Cassandra feels powerfully—chillingly—relevant to our own political moment, even as it unfolds against the bleak splendor of the 1940s American West. It’s a harrowing story, beautifully told, of patriarchy and violence intertwining to make a combustible monster; and of the woman who speaks the truth about this monster, only to be dismissed as unhinged.” –Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
“The Cassandra is a magnificent exploration of the consequences—both incredible and devastating—of human ingenuity and human intuition. This novel is full of magic and hope, even while it brings up to the light some of our darkest past.” –Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and Plenty and Awayland
“The Cassandra is a fantastic achievement of unflinching honesty, psychic power, and sustained empathy. Sharma Shields’s fearless reckoning with American might at the beginning of the nuclear age closes the distance between victor and victim, historical detail and mythic truth. This fevered novel’s seer will infect you with her visions, but her moral candor will work on you long after the dream is over.” –Smith Henderson, author of Fourth of July Creek
About The Obsoletes
Fraternal twin brothers Darryl and Kanga are just like any other teenagers trying to make it through high school. They have to deal with peer pressure, awkwardness, and family drama. But there’s one closely guarded secret that sets them apart: they are robots. So long as they keep their heads down, their robophobic neighbors won’t discover the truth about them and they just might make it through to graduation.
But when Kanga becomes the star of the basketball team, there’s more at stake than typical sibling rivalry. Darryl—the worrywart of the pair—now has to work a million times harder to keep them both out of the spotlight. Though they look, sound, and act perfectly human, if anyone in their small, depressed Michigan town were to find out what they truly are, they’d likely be disassembled by an angry mob in the middle of their school gym.
Heartwarming and thrilling, Simeon Mills’s charming debut novel is a funny, poignant look at brotherhood, xenophobia, and the limits of one’s programming.
Praise for The Obsoletes
“The Obsoletes is inventive, moving, and funny. A perfectly weird and weirdly perfect novel.”— Jess Walter, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Ruins
“What a debut! At turns endearing, funny, and imaginative, while always well written and always with weight. I predict great things for this book and the man who wrote it. A reminder that some stories feel good to read, even while addressing the big stuff. I love it.”— Josh Malerman, New York Times bestselling author of Bird Box
“Alternating between antic comedy, freak-out horror, and existential angst, The Obsoletes does the seemingly impossible: it makes the joys and terrors of adolescence seem fresh and new.”— J. Robert Lennon, author of Broken River and See You in Paradise

Ed Coletti poetry reading
2019-06-02 14:00 - 15:30 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States

Poetry with Kit Robinson and James Sherry
2019-06-02 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Kit Robinson’s newest book of poetry is Thought Balloon from Roof Books. Other works include Leaves of Class (Chax, 2017), Marine Layer (BlazeVOX, 2015), A Mammal of Style(with Ted Greenwald, Roof, 2013), Determination (Cuneiform, 2010), The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003 (Adventures in Poetry, 2009) and more than 20 other books.
James Sherry is the publisher of Roof Books, and has published many books by Bay Area writers, including Brandon Brown, David Brazil, David Buuck, and Caleb Beckwith.
His recent books are Entangled Bank (Chax), an experiment in environmental poetics, and
The Oligarch (Palgrave Macmillan), a rewriting of Machiavelli that addresses current global politics. He will read from his current work-in-progress, Selfie.

Women at the Edges: Books About Women Breaking Creative Boundaries
2019-06-03 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Kristin Kaye, Bridget Quinn, and Beth Winegarner write about women breaking creative boundaries in music, art, drama, and competitive bodybuilding in their nonfiction books IRON MAIDENS: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World, BOLD STROKES: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order), and TENACITY: Heavy Metal in the Middle East and Africa. Hear them read excerpts about their exceptional protagonists at “Women at the Edges,” the Odd Mondays for June 3, 7pm at Folio Books San Francisco, 3957 24th St. in Noe Valley. Free admission and free refreshments. A book signing follows the readings.
Here’s more about the authors:
KRISTIN KAYE is an award-winning author, ghostwriter and teacher. Her most recent book, Tree Dreams, was described as “superbly written…with brilliantly onomatopoeic prose” by Kirkus Reviews and won the Int’l Book Award for YA Fiction. Kristin’s first book was Iron Maidens: The Celebration of the Most Awesome Female Muscle in the World, which details her experience directing twenty-five of the world’s strongest and most muscular women in an off-Broadway show. It was a finalist for the Oregon Book Awards and described by Utne Reader as “one of 5 new titles for women who resist easy definition.”
BRIDGET QUINN is the author of Broad Strokes: 15 Women Who Made Art and Made History (in That Order), an Amazon pick for Best Art & Photography Books 2017 and a 2018 Amelia Bloomer List selection of recommended feminist literature from the American Library Association. Book Authority has named Broad Strokes one of its “Best Art History Books of All Time.” A denizen of The Writers’ Grotto, Bridget is former co-host of The GrottoPod: Writers on Writing. Her forthcoming book is Suffragist States, an illustrated history of the 19th Amendment and what happened next, with Chronicle Books.
BETH WINEGARNER is a journalist, author and essayist whose work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Guardian, Mother Jones, Wired, San Francisco Magazine and many others. Her recent books include The Columbine Effect: How Five Teen Pastimes Got Caught in the Crossfire and Why Teens are Taking Them Back and Tenacity: Heavy Metal in the Middle East and Africa. She lives in San Francisco and is a member of the Writers Grotto.

POETS! - featured readers to be announced followed by an open mic
2019-06-03 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
POETS! – featured readers to be announced followed by an open mic

BINDERY: Silent Reading Party
2019-06-04 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Presented by Lemony Snicket and Radio Silence. Bring a book to read to yourself in silence. Drinks and light snacks will be available. There is no admission cost and no reservations necessary. Proceeds from drink sales will benefit a public school in San Francisco, TBD.
Sign up to receive emails about upcoming Silent Reading Parties here.
See you there, readers!

Beyond the Shortest Month Book Club
2019-06-04 18:30 - 20:30 UTC | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Beyond The Shortest Month is a book club dedicated to reading and celebrating authors of color year round.
Discussions are the first Tuesday of each month at
Green Apple Books and Music
506 Clement Street *Upstairs in our Philosophy Alcove
The Beyond The Shortest Month May title is Ntozake Shange’s Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo.
Meeting and discussion will be on Tuesday, June 4 at 6:30pm.
See you there!
Can’t make this month? Stay tuned for the Beyond The Shortest Month pick for June 2019!

Ilya Kaminsky and Heather Altfeld
2019-06-04 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Osher Marin JCC, 200 North San Pedro Road, San Rafael, CA, 94903, United States
Kurland Lounge, Osher Marin Jewish Community Center
200 N San Pedro Rd, San Rafael
This special event is cosponsored by the Marin JCC. Admission is free, but RSVP is required. To register for a seat, click HERE.

Ilya Kaminsky, a Russian Jew, was born in Odessa (in the former Soviet Union) in 1977 and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He has been awarded both a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Lannan Foundation’s Literary Fellowship.
His last book, Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press), which won the Whiting Writer’s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine.
Poems from his new manuscript, Deaf Republic, were awarded Poetry magazine’s Levinson Prize and the Pushcart Prize. (Kaminsky lost his hearing at an early age.) Recently, he was on the short-list for Neustadt International Literature Prize. His poems have been translated into numerous languages and his books have been published in many countries including Turkey, Holland, Russia, France, Mexico, Macedonia, Romania, Spain and China, where his poetry was awarded the Yinchuan International Poetry Prize.

Heather Altfeld is a poet and essayist. Her first book of poetry, The Disappearing Theatre, won the Poets at Work Prize, selected by Stephen Dunn. Her poems and essays appear in Conjunctions, Narrative Magazine, Pleiades, Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review, and other literary journals. She currently teaches in the Honors Program and for the Comparative Religion and Humanities Department at California State University, Chico.

Finn Brunton
2019-06-04 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of his new book
Digital Cash: The Unknown History of the Anarchists, Utopians, and Technologists Who Created Cryptocurrency
from Princeton University Press

The fascinating untold story of digital cash and its creators—from experiments in the 1970s to the mania over Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies
Bitcoin may appear to be a revolutionary form of digital cash without precedent or prehistory. In fact, it is only the best-known recent experiment in a long line of similar efforts going back to the 1970s. But the story behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and its blockchain technology has largely been untold—until now. In Digital Cash, Finn Brunton reveals how technological utopians and political radicals created experimental money to bring about their visions of the future: protecting privacy or bringing down governments, preparing for apocalypse or launching a civilization of innovation and abundance that would make its creators immortal.
The incredible story of the pioneers of cryptocurrency takes us from autonomous zones on the high seas to the world’s most valuable dump, from bank runs to idea coupons, from time travelers in a San Francisco bar to the pattern securing every twenty-dollar bill, and from marketplaces for dangerous secrets to a tank of frozen heads awaiting revival in the far future. Along the way, Digital Cash explores the hard questions and challenges that these innovators faced: How do we learn to trust and use different kinds of money? What makes digital objects valuable? How does currency prove itself as real to us? What would it take to make a digital equivalent to cash, something that could be exchanged but not copied, created but not forged, and which reveals nothing about its users?
Filled with marvelous characters, stories, and ideas, Digital Cash is an engaging and accessible account of the strange origins and remarkable technologies behind today’s cryptocurrency explosion.
Finn Brunton is assistant professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University. He is the author of Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet and the coauthor of Communication and Obfuscation: A User’s Guide for Privacy and Protest. He has written for the Guardian, Artforum, and Radical Philosophy, among many other publications.

“A fascinating and important book that addresses big questions about cryptocurrency: What is money? How can virtual things have lasting value? And what does the explosion of cryptocurrency mean for the global economy? I can’t think of another book on the subject that accomplishes so much in such a concise and readable way.”—Nathan Ensmenger, author of The Computer Boys Take Over

“A very important book.”—Lana Swartz, coeditor of Paid: Tales of Dongles, Checks, and Other Money Stuff

Catherine deCuir and Robert Schoen present The Rabbi Finds Her Way
2019-06-05 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Pegasus Books on Solano, 1855 Solano Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94707, United States
About the Book:
“This rabbi gig. People have no idea what it’s all about.”
A year after graduating from rabbinical school, Pearl Ross-Levy lands the job of her life. As Associate Rabbi at Lakeshore Temple in Oakland, California, Pearl begins to learn what being a rabbi is all about.
Through compelling, inspiring, and often funny episodes, the young rabbi meets a cast of quirky characters and discovers what it means to become a leader in the synagogue community. As Pearl faces the challenges of her new role, we witness her kindness and compassion as well as her resourcefulness and courage.
Whether it is caring for her high school classmate (the victim of a serious car accident), struggling with the anguish of a man who believes he’s committed a murder, or bringing the community together to help a lonely cancer patient feel not so alone, the rabbi teaches us how a little love and caring can affect people in wonderful ways.
The Rabbi’s strength and faith grow as she continues to see that God does, indeed, work in strange ways.
Author Bios:
Robert Schoen is the author of On God’s Radar—My Walk Across America and the award-winning book What I Wish My Christian Friends Knew About Judaism. He lives in Oakland, California.
Catherine deCuir is a cantorial soloist, jazz vocalist, and fiction writer. She lives in Albany, California.

Event date:

Thursday, July 11, 2019 – 7:30pm

Event address:

Pegasus Books on Solano
1855 Solano Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94707
