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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191231T204508Z
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SUMMARY:Paul Lisicky / Later: My Life at the Edge of the World with Ryan Van Meter
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith welcomes Paul Lisicky back to the store for his new book\, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World. Please join us! \nWhen Paul Lisicky arrived in Provincetown in the early 1990s\, he was leaving behind a history of family trauma to live in a place outside of time\, known for its values of inclusion\, acceptance\, and art. In this idyllic haven\, Lisicky searches for love and connection and comes into his own as he finds a sense of belonging. At the same time\, the center of this community is consumed by the AIDS crisis\, and the very structure of town life is being rewired out of necessity: What might this utopia look like during a time of dystopia? \nLater dramatizes a spectacular yet ravaged place and a unique era when more fully becoming one’s self collided with the realization that ongoingness couldn’t be taken for granted\, and staying alive from moment to moment exacted absolute attention. Following the success of his acclaimed memoir\, The Narrow Door\, Lisicky fearlessly explores the body\, queerness\, love\, illness\, and belonging in this masterful\, ingenious new book. \n\nPaul Lisicky is the author of five books\, including The Narrow Door (a New York Times Editors’ Choice selection). He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment of the Arts\, among others. He teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Brooklyn. \n  \nRyan Van Meter is the author of If You Knew Then What I Know Now\, as well as other essays published in magazines and selected for anthologies including The Best American Essays. He is an associate professor of creative writing at the University of San Francisco. Author photo by Bennett Honson. \n\nThis event is free and all ages. \nRSVP appreciated but not required. \nAs with all of our events\, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book here — when checking out\, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Later\, order below and be sure to put your request in the comments field. \nAccessibility is important to us! If you have special needs please let us know and we’ll do our absolute best to accommodate you: events@booksmith.com.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/paul-lisicky-later-my-life-at-the-edge-of-the-world/
LOCATION:The Booksmith\, 1644 Haight St\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Later.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200126T013255Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200312T200629Z
UID:55110-1584644400-1584651600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:CANCELED: “I am deliberate / and afraid / of nothing” Poetry and Protest: a day in honor of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker (Part Two): with Arisa White\, Leila Weefur\, and Angela Hume
DESCRIPTION:Featuring Arisa White\, Leila Weefur\, and Angela Hume \nThis event\, supported in part by a grant to the Academy of American Poets from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Poetry Coalition programs\, is free and open to the public. \nPhoto: video stills\, Audre Lorde and Pat Parker\, reading at The Women’s Building\, San Francisco\, February 7\, 1986. \nDetails soon \n\n\n\n\n\n\nRelated event: \n“I am deliberate / and afraid / of nothing” Poetry and Protest\na day in honor of Audre Lorde and Pat Parker (Part One)\nThursday March 19\, 2020\n1:00 pm Judy Grahn\, Jewelle Gomez\, and Avotcja\n@ The Poetry Center\nHumanities 512\, San Francisco State University\nfree and open to the public\nsupported in part by a grant to the Academy of American Poets from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of Poetry Coalition programs \nFeatured: \nPat Parker and Audre Lorde\, reading at The Women’s Building\, San Francisco: February 7\, 1986 \nAudre Lorde\, Poetry Center reading at San Francisco State: September 26\, 1974 \n\n\n\n\nEvent contact:\n\nThe Poetry Center\n\n\n\nEvent email:\n\npoetry@sfsu.edu\n\n\n\nEvent phone:\n\n415-338-2227\n\n\n\nEvent sponsor:\n\nThe Poetry Center and The Poetry Coalition
URL:https://litseen.com/event/i-am-deliberate-and-afraid-of-nothing-poetry-and-protest-a-day-in-honor-of-audre-lorde-and-pat-parker-part-two-with-arisa-white-leila-weefur-and-angela-hume/
LOCATION:The Poetry Center\, San Francisco State University\, 1600 Holloway Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94132\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Audre-Lorde-Pat-Parker-1986-WB-banner_0.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200319T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200207T194719Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200207T194719Z
UID:55600-1584644400-1584651600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Chris Carlsson at City Lights Books
DESCRIPTION:Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes\, Unsung Heroes and Radical Histories \nfrom Pluto Press \nSan Francisco is an iconic and symbolic city. But only when you look beyond the picture-postcards of the Golden Gate Bridge and the quaint cable cars do you realise that the city’s most interesting stories are not the Summer of Love\, the Beats or even the latest gold rush in Silicon Valley. \nHidden San Francisco is a guidebook like no other. Structured around the four major themes of ecology\, labour\, transit and dissent\, Chris Carlsson peels back the layers of San Francisco’s history to reveal a storied past: behind old walls and gleaming glass facades lurk former industries\, secret music and poetry venues\, forgotten terrorist bombings\, and much more. Carlsson delves into the Bay Area’s long prehistory as well\, examining the region’s geography and the lives of its inhabitants before the 1849 Gold Rush changed everything\, setting in motion the clash between capital and labour that shaped the modern city. \nFrom the perspective of the students and secretaries\, longshoremen and waitresses\, San Francisco uncovers dozens of overlooked\, forgotten and buried histories that pulse through the streets and hills even today\, inviting the reader to see themselves in the middle of the ongoing\, everyday process of making history together. \nChris Carlsson\, co-director of the “history from below” project Shaping San Francisco\, is a writer\, publisher\, editor\, photographer\, public speaker\, and occasional professor. He was one of the founders in 1981 of the seminal and infamous underground San Francisco magazine Processed World. In 1992 Carlsson co-founded Critical Mass in San Francisco\, which both led to a local bicycling boom and helped to incubate transformative urban movements in hundreds of cities\, large and small\, worldwide. In 1995 work began on “Shaping San Francisco;” since then the project has morphed into an incomparable archive of San Francisco history at Foundsf.org\, award-winning bicycle and walking tours\, and more than a decade of Public Talks covering history\, politics\, ecology\, art\, and more (see shapingsf.org). Beginning in Spring 2020\, Carlsson hosts “City Front” Bay Cruises leaving from Pier 40.\nCarlsson has written three books\, the most recent being Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes\, Unsung Heroes\, and Radical Histories (Pluto Press: 2020). His 2004 novel is set in a future “post-economic” San Francisco (After the Deluge\, Full Enjoyments Books: 2004)\, and his groundbreaking look at class and work in Nowtopia (AK Press: 2008) which uniquely examined how hard and pleasantly we work when we’re not at our official jobs. He has also edited six books including three “Reclaiming San Francisco” collections with the venerable City Lights Books. He redesigned and co-authored an expanded Vanished Waters: A History of San Francisco’s Mission Bay after which he joined the board of the Mission Creek Conservancy; he is on the board of the San Francisco Community Land Trust\, and also serves as an advisor to the Shipyard Trust for the Arts at Hunter’s Point. He has given hundreds of public presentations based on Shaping San Francisco\, Critical Mass\, Nowtopia\, Vanished Waters\, and his “Reclaiming San Francisco” history anthologies since the late 1990s\, and has appeared dozens of times in radio\, television and on the internet. \nvisit: http://www.chriscarlsson.com/ \nPraise for Hidden San Francisco \nSan Francisco is long overdue for a history like this! Smart and accessible\, this is a book that everyone who has left a piece of their heart in the city needs to read. Its vibrant stories of the past are invaluable tools for charting a sustainable\, inclusive future’ —Barbara Berglund Sokolov\, historian at Presidio Trust \n‘The history of San Francisco I’ve been waiting for. It not only reorients our conceptions of the past\, it gives us walking tour itineraries so we can viscerally experience how we are participants in the region’s remaking.’ —Sean Burns\, author of ‘Archie Green: The Making of a Working Class Hero’ (University of Illinois Press\, 2011) \n‘Brings erudition\, curiosity and passionate progressivism to a remarkably wide range of subjects – from the city’s profaned natural glories\, to little-known episodes in its labor history\, to a Homeric list of people\, organizations and movements that have tried to throw a spoke in the grinding cogs of various incarnations of The Establishment.’ —Gary Kamiya \n‘Every city needs and deserves a Chris Carlsson. San Francisco is fortunate to have him and Hidden San Francisco not just because history from below is worth remembering\, but more importantly because it is full of possibilities we should never forget for the present and future of The City’ —Jon Christensen\, adjunct assistant professor in the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability\, the Department of History\, and the Center for Digital Humanities at the University of California\, Los Angeles. \n‘Few people know the streets of San Francisco as well as Chris Carlsson. Sadly\, gentrification is fast ripping the heart out of a city that generations of artists\, immigrants\, and working-class radicals have made into a unique and wondrous place. This book\, thus\, can be read as an obituary for his beloved home or\, perhaps\, a call to arms to renew the city again’ —Peter Cole\, Professor of History\, Western Illinois University \n‘Unlike your conventional guide books telling you where to shop\, eat\, and be entertained\, this is a dissenter’s guidebook that invites you into a holistic view of the City – bringing to life the stories of everyone from the hot politicians and their corporate paymasters to the streetcar conductors\, secretaries\, and construction workers who built the city and keep it running’ —Peter Booth Wiley\, publisher and author \n‘Scores of sparkling vignettes – from Mission Rock to the Haight\, Balmy Alley to Telegraph Hill – illuminate the city with the torch of social criticism and the sharp lens of a local sage. This is history from below at its best and a guidebook through the byways of collective memory’ —Richard Walker\, author of ‘Pictures of a Gone City: Tech and the Dark Side of Prosperity in the San Francisco Bay Area’ (PM Press\, 2018). \n‘An original\, vivid people’s history of the nation’s ‘Left Coast City’. Photos\, maps\, and self-guided tours of over one hundred of the most important and iconic historic places and spaces bring to life the authors’ beautifully crafted and well-informed San Francisco stories’ —Bill Issel \n‘With the city awash these days with more and more newcomers\, Hidden San Francisco is more vital than ever for keeping us all connected to the wild\, weird\, and radical histories that make this place so special. Dig into it\, it’s full of gold’ —Susan Stryker\, director of ‘Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton’s Cafeteria’
URL:https://litseen.com/event/chris-carlsson-at-city-lights-books/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/ChrisCarlsson.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200320T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200320T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200221T194521Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200221T194521Z
UID:56060-1584730800-1584738000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Representation in 2020: A Night of Artists Focusing on Equitable Representation
DESCRIPTION:Representation in 2020: A Night of Artists Focusing on Equitable Representation featuring Paolo Bicchieri\, reading from his new book Sword in the Darkness\, Nesley Rojo\, Rose Heredia and sh vogl.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/representation-in-2020-a-night-of-artists-focusing-on-equitable-representation/
LOCATION:Alley Cat Books\, 3036 24th St\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94110\, United States
CATEGORIES:San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/paolo.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200320T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200320T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200214T014242Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200214T014242Z
UID:55771-1584732600-1584738000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Dennis Phillips & George Albon
DESCRIPTION:Dennis Phillips and George Albon read from their latest works\, Mappa Mundi and Lyric Multiples. \nAbout Mappa Mundi \nLike the medieval maps from which MAPPA MUNDI takes its title\, Dennis Phillips’ 16th volume of poetry is a survey of territory as subjective as it is tangible. Riffing off the unstable certainty of medieval world maps\, MAPPA MUNDI builds on\, refracts\, distills\, distorts and reexamines Phillips’ past works and recurring themes\, relying on\, among other techniques\, repeated motifs\, narrative tensions and lyrical condensations. Its three parts charting the key elements of city\, desert and islands\, MAPPA MUNDI sets a predicate to be expanded in its sequel\, The Cartographer’s Lament. \nAbout Lyric Multiples \nLyric Multiples comprises four essays written over the last decade. The subject is poetry but the essays range over such topics as the evolution of the human call\, ascensional modes of thinking\, pop songs\, the built environment and its discontents\, the post-punk moment\, its fruitful aftermath\, and much else. Throughout this book\, Albon explores unencountered varieties of aesthetic experience and the contributions they make to an ideal of social interconnectivity.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/dennis-phillips-george-albon/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Mundi-and-Albon.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200321T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200321T190000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200216T041329Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200216T041329Z
UID:55906-1584817200-1584817200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:ALAN KAUFMAN\, JOE CLIFFORD\, AND JOSHUA MOHR – NEW FICTION AT THE BEAT MUSEUM
DESCRIPTION:ALAN KAUFMAN\nAlan Kaufman is a novelist and memoirist known for his storytelling power and who’s been not only praised by everyone from Dave Eggers\, Etgar Keret and Sapphire to David Mamet\, Hubert Selby Jr. and Thane Rosenbaum but has been compared by critics to such prose masters as Henry Miller\, I.B. Singer and Jack Kerouac. His books include The Berlin Woman\, Matches\, Jew Boy\, Drunken Angel and several anthologies\, including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry and The Outlaw Bible of American Art. \n\nJOE CLIFFORDJoe Clifford is the author of several books\, including Skunk Train\, The One That Got Away\, Junkie Love\, and the Jay Porter thriller series\, as well as editor of the anthologies Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen; Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash; and Hard Sentences\, which he co-edited. Joe’s writing can be found at joeclifford.com. \n\nJOSHUA MOHRJoshua Mohr is the author of five novels\, including Damascus\, which The New York Times called “Beat-poet cool.” He’s also written Fight Songand Some Things that Meant the World to Me\, one of O Magazine’s Top 10 reads of 2009 and a San Francisco Chronicle best-seller\, as well as Termite Parade\, an Editors’ Choice in The New York Times. His novel All This Life won the Northern California Book Award. He’s written a memoir\, Sirens\, and is under contract with FSG for the second installment. His next novel\, Get Rich\, will be published by FSG in winter 2021 and has already been optioned by Circle of Confusion Television Studios. Recently\, AMC bought his noir show.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/alan-kaufman-joe-clifford-and-joshua-mohr-new-fiction-at-the-beat-museum/
LOCATION:The Beat Museum\, 540 Broadway\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/beat.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200322T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200322T180000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191231T204636Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191231T204636Z
UID:54832-1584892800-1584900000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:My Life\, My Stories / Real life. Told by SF seniors.
DESCRIPTION:Join us for an evening of learning and listening\, hosted by My Life\, My Stories! The theme is Family. \nMy Life\, My Stories is a local non-profit that preserves the life legacies of older adults in our community. We match a volunteer with one older adult\, and over the course of several months\, the senior’s memories are recorded and transcribed into memoirs. We focus on helping underserved populations in the Bay Area including minorities\, immigrants\, homeless seniors\, vets\, and LGBTQ elders. \nOur volunteers hear inspiring\, heartbreaking\, and touching stories that\, otherwise\, would be left untold and lost forever. My Life\, My Stories wants to give older adults a public platform to share their amazing memories with the young SF community in a live event. You may be surprised with what you learn and how much you can relate to someone who may be decades older than you. \nCheck back soon for bios of each of our speakers. \nAll ticket sales go directly back to the organization. \n\nPlease note: this event will be held at The Bindery\, 1727 Haight. \nBar opens with the store at 2pm. Show starts at 4pm. \nRSVP appreciated but not required.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/my-life-my-stories-real-life-told-by-sf-seniors-4/
LOCATION:The Bindery\, 1727 Haight St\, San Francisco \, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/MLMS.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200323T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200323T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191220T063517Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191220T063517Z
UID:54426-1584991800-1584997200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Robert Reich with Astra Taylor
DESCRIPTION:TICKETS \nTo purchase over the phone: 415-392-4400 \nThis event appears in the series\nSocial Studies \n\n\nRobert Reich is Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley and Senior Fellow at the Blum Center for Developing Economies. Former Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration\, he has written fifteen books\, including Aftershock\, The Work of Nations\, and Saving Capitalism. In The System\, Reich shows how wealth and power have interacted to install an elite oligarchy\, eviscerate the middle class\, and undermine democracy. \nAstra Taylor’s engagement with philosophy\, democracy\, and political organizing transcends form\, emerging through documentary films\, books\, essays\, and social activism. Her feature documentaries include What is Democracy? (2018)\, Zizek! (2005)\, and An Examined Life (2008). Taylor is also the author of Democracy May Not Exist\, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone\, and the American Book Award-winning The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/robert-reich-with-astra-taylor/
LOCATION:Sydney Goldstein Theater\, 275 Hayes St\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94102\, United States
CATEGORIES:San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Reich.square.png
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200324T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200324T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025840Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025840Z
UID:54548-1585076400-1585081800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Hilary Moore & James Tracy
DESCRIPTION:celebrating the release of \nNo Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements \nby Hilary Moore and James Tracy (forward by Robin D.G. Kelley) \npublished by City Lights Books \n\nThe story of how a national grassroots network fought a resurgence of the KKK and other fascist groups during the Reagan years\, laying the groundwork for today’s anti-fascist/anti-racist movements. \nIn June 1977\, a group of white anti-racist activists received an alarming letter from an inmate at a New York state prison calling for help to fight the Ku Klux Klan’s efforts to recruit prison staff and influence the people incarcerated. In response\, the activists founded the first chapter of what would eventually become a nationwide grassroots network\, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee\, dedicated to countering the rise of the KKK and other far-right white nationalist groups\, and to building support for movements fighting for self-determination. \nNo Fascist USA! tells the story of that network and how its members emerged from the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s to combat racism and state repression throughout the 1980s. Featuring dozens of graphics\, posters\, and materials from the time\, the book follows the group’s trajectory through its political actions\, engagement with punk rock youth culture\, and involvement with underground splinter groups\, concluding with an exploration of what tactical lessons their efforts offer those dedicated to fighting white supremacy today. \nHilary Moore is an anti-racist political education trainer and teaches with generative somatics. She works on the Leadership Team of Showing Up for Racial Justice\, and is the co-author of Organizing Cools the Planet: Tools and Reflections to Navigate the Climate Crisis (PM Press\, 2011). \nJames Tracy is an author\, organizer\, and an Instructor of Labor and Community Studies at City College of San Francisco. He is the co-author of Hillbilly Nationalists\, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times and the author of Dispatches Against Displacement: Field Notes From San Francisco’s Housing Wars. \nPURCHASE NOW \nPraise for No Fascist USA!: \n“Smash fascism! Read this book!”––Tom Morello\, songwriter and guitarist with Rage Against the Machine \n“Studying the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee will give readers an understanding of the complexity of deconstructing the weapon of white supremacy from the inside out. Thank you Hilary and James for the precision of this analysis\, and the true north of this star.”––adrienne maree brown\, author of Pleasure Activism and Emergent Strategy \n“Hilary Moore and James Tracy have written a magnificent book that not only corrects the record but helps explain the mercurial rise of white supremacist organizations in the 1970s\, how the Klan was (temporarily) defeated\, and why this period has been largely ignored. No Fascist USA! radically shifts our perspective\, challenging the prevailing wisdom that racist terrorism rises in response to economic downturns\, white downward mobility\, or in a vacuum created by progressive alternatives. I love this book.”––Robin D.G. Kelley\, from the foreword \n“No Fascist USA! is not only timely\, but also essential in the present period of accelerated white supremacist activity and anti-racist organizing to combat it. In telling the story of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee\, the authors\, without romanticizing or condemning\, draw important lessons from the fifteen-year history of the group.”––Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz\, author of Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment
URL:https://litseen.com/event/hilary-moore-james-tracy/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-No-Fascist-USA.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025714Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025714Z
UID:54544-1585162800-1585168200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Alexandra Mattraw with Tiff Dressen and Mah Shein Win
DESCRIPTION:celebrating the release of Alexandra Mattraw’s new poetry collection \nWe fell into Weather \nPublished by Cultural Society \nWhat has been said about We fell into Weather: \n“What you can’t see is what brings you\,” Alexandra Mattraw writes: “We throttle out of rent\, ash CFC storming lung shifts.” An uncanny\, raw awareness embodies the space of perception and opening. Mattraw’s primary language becomes action\, becomes our phenomenology\, our neurodivergence\, our fullness: “When allergies heave and blister. When CFC wind. Decibels shake cinder pink jostling pink pill.” There is surprise everywhere in these poems. This is a magical book. \n–Joseph Lease\, author of Broken World and The Body Ghost \n“Alexandra Mattraw’s We fell into weather is not only essential reading for its presentation of how an individual’s experiences can offer insight into some of the most critical challenges we face today. Her use of image\, detail\, the placement of language on the page\, her diction choices\, and her variations regarding syntax—each formal choice contributes to creating a constellation of difference that exposes not only unexpected revelations regarding the speaking agent’s interior perceptions\, but also the social environment in which these scenes of intimacy and obsession\, history and fantasy\, are set. While one tends to see forms as abstract organizing principals\, in Mattraw’s poems forms become actors in the drama and members of a chorus offering insight. They can be received in what I’ll call a language of physical dimension\, of gesture\, of shape and spatial relations. Thus\, as we read\, we can begin to perceive how\, in our own lives\, the forms which we each use to create our understanding of ourselves and our place in the culture we inhabit are as active in opening or limiting our lives as anything in the world we face today.” \n–Rusty Morrison\, Omnidawn editor and author of the true keeps calm biding its story \n“At heart conceptual and formally experimental\, Alexandra Mattraw’s We fell into weather creates visual and sonic textures that link toxicity — environmental\, historical\, domestic — with neurodivergence and disease. These poems are alive with musicality and internal rhyme\, “the way hay rips scars into wrists the way granite / field bloom back bruises\,” while offering glimpses into the stuff of everyday life – the toddler’s cough\, the broken lamp taped back together. In Mattraw’s spare and elegant lines\, an image will crystallize briefly as a family drives away from California wildfires\, but then disperse like vapor\, like “ash . . . Rend[s] the visibility of air.” Attuned to the sublime in nature and in language\, this is a poet who invites our close and sustained attention\, who invites us to improve ourselves.” \n–Mary-Kim Arnold\, writer and visual artist\, author of Litany for The Long Moment \nAbout the readers: \nTiff Dressen lives in the Portola neighborhood of San Francisco. Songs from the Astral Bestiary\, a (slender) full length collection of poetry emerged from lyric& Press in 2014. In 2019\, they played the role of Earl of Kent in the Milkwood Theater’s production of King Lear. In their spare time\, they enjoy playing the role of urban flâneur as well as setting type and printing at the SF Center for the Book. \nAlexandra Mattraw is Berkeley poet and critic who has authored several books. small siren is available at Cultural Society (2018)\, and two of her chapbooks can be found at Dancing Girl Press (2013\, 2017). Other poems and reviews have appeared in Denver Quarterly\, Jacket2\, Interim\, VOLT\, and elsewhere. A mother and ecofeminist\, Alexandra curates an art-centric writing and performance series called Lone Glen\, now in its ninth year. We fell into weather is her second full-length book of poems. \nMaw Shein Win is a Burmese American poet and and educator who lives and teaches in the Bay Area. Her poetry chapbooks are Ruins of a glittering palace (SPA/Commonwealth Projects\, 2013) and Score and Bone (Nomadic Press\, 2016). A full-length collection Invisible Gifts: Poems was published by Manic D Press in 2018. Maw is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito (2016 – 2018)\, and her full-length book of poetry Storage Unit for the Spirit House will be published by Omnidawn in Fall 2020. Win often collaborates with visual artists\, musicians\, and other writers. She was a 2019 Visiting Scholar in the Department of English at UC Berkeley and is a member of The Writers Grotto. mawsheinwin.com \n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/alexandra-mattraw-with-tiff-dressen-and-mah-shein-win/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Alexandra-Mattraw.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200214T013838Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200214T013838Z
UID:55766-1585164600-1585170000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:The Penelope Poems
DESCRIPTION:Poet Patti Trimble and musician and composer Peter Whitehead merge their considerable skills to present a one-night theater-length spoken-word piece: The Penelope Poems. At The Marsh San Francisco main theater on Wednesday\, March 25 at 7:30 pm. A beautifully smart re-imagining of Homer’s Penelope. The Penelope Poems runs approximately 80 minutes. Tickets are limited; ($15); available at themarsh.org. \nHere’s more description if you are interested: \nTrimble’s delightful text—debuted last year at the SF Commonwealth Club— reimagines Homer’s Odyssey for the 21st century\, bridging millennia\, celebrating Penelope as a beloved literary collage. Here is a Penelope who’s been written\, again and again. And she’s clearly a woman who reads\, with muses such as Judith Butler\, Socrates\, Ovid\, Virginia Woolf\, Aristophanes\, James Joyce\, and Ferlinghetti. \nFive artists bring Penelope alive; Trimble tells the spoken-word story; voice-over artist/vocalist Julia Norton and poet Maya Kohsla deconstruct and elaborate the tale; and Peter Whitehead\, music director and musician\, weaves his evocative improvisations on flutes and strings. The set is arranged in collaboration with artist Lauren Elder. \nPenelope speaks from her experience\, and she speaks to us personally. She’s savvy on heroism\, Sirens\, gender\, monsters\, childbirth\, faithfulness\, and murder. Also about unweaving as a form of reparation\, and about the art of living on this wild Earth. \nThe Penelope Poems runs approximately 80 minutes. \nTickets ($15) are limited; available at themarsh.org. \n  \nWriter and Director: Patti Trimble \nMusic Director: Peter Whitehead \nSet Arrangement: Lauren Elder and Patti Trimble \nSpoken-Word Penelope: Patti Trimble \nSpoken-Word Chorus and song: Julia Norton \nSpoken-Word Chorus: Maya Khosla \nInstrumental Music\, Composition\, Song: Peter Whitehead \nalso songs by Leonard Cohen and Tim Buckley \nThe Penelope Poems presents an exciting collaboration among these Bay Area artists: \n  \nSince the 90s Patti Trimble (original text and spoken word) has mesmerized audiences with smart lyric spoken word\, performing in USA and Europe—with support from Lannan Foundation\, Poets&Writers\, Djerassi Foundation\, Adirondack Review\, INDA Italy\, and a Pushcart nomination. Her writings speak to our lives in publications\, and recordings. theater and dance productions\, clubs and festivals\, museum installations. New York poetry impressario Bob Holman writes\, “with her skilled blend of poesy and music\, there’s no other journey so worth taking”. Patti lives half-time in Europe; she teaches in the Bay Area and writes for the SF Ethnic Dance Festival. www.pattitrimble.com \nPeter Whitehead (musical arrangment and improvisation) is a San Francisco composer\, performer\, songwriter and instrument builder. He performs solo and creates scores for film\, television\, radio\, and dance\, including for Mikhail Baryshnikov\, Susan Marshall\, Anna Halprin\, Charles Moulton and Sarah Shelton Mann & Contraband. His music is available online and from out of round records. He is also a painter & photographer\, his most recent project a book of photographs of Treasure Island. website \nJulia Norton (spoken word and song)  is an award-winning singer\, actor\, composer and storyteller\, for 20 years teaching others how to use their whole voice. Her podcast ‘Dark and Twisty Tales’ combines grim folk tales with improvised song. Her album ‘Lullaby Island’ mixes Celtic style vocals\, traditional lullabies and Victorian poems. www.julianorton.com \nMaya Khosla (spoken word) is a wildlife biologist and currently Poet Laureate of Sonoma County. Her poems have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and featured in The Literary Review\, River Teeth\, Poem\, and other journals. Her books are All the Fires of Wind and Light\, Sixteen Rivers Press; Web of Water: Life in Redwood Creek\, a guide book; Keel Bone\, winner Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize; and Heart of the Tearing\, Red Dust Press. mayakhosla website \nLauren Elder (set design) is an American artist and designer. Throughout the mid-1980s to early 1990s she worked with the interdisciplinary performance ensemble\, Contraband\, as a set designer and performer. Currently\, she lives and works in California\, teaches at California College of the Arts\, and works with environmental art\, as well as continuing in set design. www.laurenelder.com \n  \ncontact: Patti Trimble 707 360 8189 \npmtrim@gmail.com
URL:https://litseen.com/event/the-penelope-poems/
LOCATION:The Marsh\, 1062 Valencia St\, San Francisco\, 94110
CATEGORIES:San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/DT264.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200325T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200214T014324Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200312T011245Z
UID:55774-1585164600-1585170000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Cancelled: Adrienne Miller: In the Land of Men
DESCRIPTION:Please note: this event has been cancelled. \n  \nAdrienne Miller discusses her new memoir\, In the Land of Men\, with Dave Eggers. \nPraise for In the Land of Men \n“Adrienne Miller did not merely find herself in the midst of a bright\, innovative\, challenging\, unforgettable moment in literary culture: she made it happen. It was easy to miss that then\, given all the attention paid to the brilliant writers\, mostly men\, that she discovered\, nurtured\, and endured. But now\, with ferocious humor and honesty she conjures once more that Narnia-like world of books before blogs\, magazines before the internet—capturing all its giddy verve\, and all its frank injustices with her own unmatchable taste and wit at the dead center\, where it always belonged.”— John Hodgman\, author of Medallion Status \n“In The Land of Men is about being the only woman in the room. But\, beyond that\, it’s about the magic of rooms themselves. It’s a revisiting of life before the age of ubiquitous screens\, when we shared physical space—sometimes uncomfortably and sometimes ecstatically—with our heroes and our nemeses alike. I was thrilled to make the trip.”— Meghan Daum\, author of The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through The New Culture Wars\n“Adrienne Miller’s voice is lucid and remorseful\, and she’s brought us a beautiful\, painful book\, a tender dissection of elusive subjects up to and including the passage of time and youth itself.”— Jonathan Lethem \n“An incredible guide to a ridiculous era and its outrages. Many will praise Miller’s ability to bring a time and place to life\, but I would also like to add that this book is very\, very funny.”— Gary Shteyngart\, author of Lake Success \nAbout In the Land of Men \nA fiercely personal memoir about coming of age in the male-dominated literary world of the nineties\, becoming the first female literary editor of Esquire\, and Miller’s personal and working relationship with David Foster Wallace \nA naive and idealistic twenty-two-year-old from the Midwest\, Adrienne Miller got her lucky break when she was hired as an editorial assistant at GQ magazine in the mid-nineties. Even if its sensibilities were manifestly mid-century—the martinis\, powerful male egos\, and unquestioned authority of kings—GQ still seemed the red-hot center of the literary world. It was there that Miller began learning how to survive in a man’s world. Three years later\, she forged her own path\, becoming the first woman to take on the role of literary editor of Esquire\, home to the male writers who had defined manhood itself— Hemingway\, Mailer\, and Carver. Up against this old world\, she would soon discover that it wanted nothing to do with a “mere girl.” \nBut this was also a unique moment in history that saw the rise of a new literary movement\, as exemplified by McSweeney’s and the work of David Foster Wallace. A decade older than Miller\, the mercurial Wallace would become the defining voice of a generation and the fiction writer she would work with most. He was her closest friend\, confidant—and antagonist. Their intellectual and artistic exchange grew into a highly charged professional and personal relationship between the most prominent male writer of the era and a young woman still finding her voice. \nThis memoir—a rich\, dazzling story of power\, ambition\, and identity—ultimately asks the question “How does a young woman fit into this male culture and at what cost?” With great wit and deep intelligence\, Miller presents an inspiring and moving portrayal of a young woman’s education in a land of men.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/adrienne-miller-in-the-land-of-men/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Miller.jpg
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T190000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200221T182756Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200312T212026Z
UID:56023-1585249200-1585249200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Canceled: Geometry of Shadows: Stefania Heim on Giorgio de Chirico
DESCRIPTION:Poet and translator Stefania Heim joins Olivia Sears to talk about Giorgio de Chirico’s Italian poetry\, visual and verbal juxtapositions\, and interlingual negotiations. \n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR\nGiorgio de Chirico\n\n\nGiorgio de Chirico (1888-1978) was born in Greece to Italian parents. A gifted and prolific painter\, de Chirico is considered the founder of the metaphysical school of art and a significant influence on the surrealists. Over the course of his long career\, he was involved with many of the twentieth century’s major art-world figures: he designed costumes for Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and set productions for Luigi Pirandello; he was photographed by Irving Penn. De Chirico was also a prolific writer. His French writing has been translated by John Ashbery\, Louise Bourgeois\, and others. Geometry of Shadows compiles for the first time in translation the entirety of de Chirico’s Italian poems.\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR\nStefania Heim\n\n\nStefania Heim is a poet\, scholar\, translator\, editor\, and educator. She is author of the poetry collections HOUR BOOK\, chosen by Jennifer Moxley as winner of the Sawtooth Prize and published in 2019 by Ahsahta Books and A Table That Goes On for Miles (Switchback Books\, 2014). Geometry of Shadows\, her book of translations of metaphysical artist Giorgio de Chirico’s Italian poems\, was published in October 2019 by A Public Space Books. Stefania is the recipient of a 2019 Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts for her work on Giorgio de Chirico.\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR\nOlivia E. Sears\n\n\nOlivia E. Sears is the founder of the Center for the Art of Translation and served as editor of Two Lines for twelve years. She is a translator from Italian.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/geometry-of-shadows-stefania-heim-on-giorgio-de-chirico/
LOCATION:Center for the Art of Translation office\, 582 Market St #700\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94104\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/image-82.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025536Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025536Z
UID:54541-1585249200-1585254600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Robert Glück
DESCRIPTION:celebrating the new edition of \nMargery Kempe \nby Robert Glück\, introduction by Colm Toibin \npublished by New York Review Books \nFirst published in 1994\, Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe is one of the most provocative\, poignant\, and inventive American novels of the last quarter century. The book tells two stories of romantic obsession. One\, based on the first autobiography in English\, the medieval Book of Margery Kempe\, is about a fifteenth-century woman from East Anglia\, a visionary\, a troublemaker\, a pilgrim to the Holy Land\, and an aspiring saint\, and her love affair with Jesus. It is complicated. The other is about the author’s own love for an alluring and elusive young American\, L. It is complicated. Between these two Margery Kempe\, the novel\, emerges as an unprecedented exploration of desire\, devotion\, abjection\, and sexual obsession in the form of a novel like no other novel. Robert Glück’s masterpiece bears comparison with the finest work of such writers as Kathy Acker and Chris Kraus. \nRobert Glück is a poet\, fiction writer\, critic\, and editor. With Bruce Boone\, he founded the New Narrative movement in San Francisco. His poetry collections include Reader and\, with Boone\, La Fontaine. His fiction includes the story collection Denny Smith\, and the novel Jack the Modernist. Glück edited\, with Camille Roy\, Mary Berger\, and Gail Scott\, the anthology Biting The Error: Writers Explore Narrative\, and his collected essays\, Communal Nude\, appeared in 2016. Glück served as the director of San Francisco State’s Poetry Center\, co-director of the Small Press Traffic Literary Center\, and associate editor at Lapis Press. He lives in San Francisco. \nPraise for Margery Kempe  \n\nBy the bold device of telling two stories in terms of each other (one of Margery Kempe and Jesus\, and the other of a twentieth-century love affair)\, Robert Glück has produced a book without precedent. This novel brings to mind the huge wings of a painted angel—a texture of brilliant richness covered regularly with small\, detailed shadows of implication.\n—Thom Gunn \nAt once embracing and thwarting two worlds\, two centuries\, two sensibilities\, what a subtle and powerful amalgam is Margery! Gluck’s exquisitely controlled\, sensuously textured writing evokes a deeply integrated ecstatic vision that in the end spares us nothing—being nuanced and brutal\, passionate and colored with levity\, elegant and outrageous.\n—Lydia Davis \nI\, for one\, find much to admire in contemporary gay authors. One of my favorites is Robert Gluck.\n—Edmund White \n\n\n\n\n\n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/robert-gluck/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-Margery-Kempe.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T172811Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T172811Z
UID:54685-1585251000-1585256400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Jordan Kisner
DESCRIPTION:Jordan Kisner discusses her new essay collection\, Thin Places: Essays From In Between. \nPraise for Thin Places \n“Jordan Kisner’s essays are like intricate tattoos: etched with a sharp and exacting blade of intellect\, but made of flesh; richly drawn in their details; comprised of equal parts pleasure and pain. Like tattoos\, their natural habitat is that strange borderland where our skin meets the world—where we confront our edges\, or everything we can’t keep out. Always\, and thrillingly\, they look inward and outward with exacting grace.” —Leslie Jamison\, author of The Empathy Exams \n“Jordan Kisner’s essays are a bewitchingly original and highly personal synthesis of incisiveness\, gracefulness\, thoughtfulness\, and selflessness. She is an intellectual empath with the deepest moral instincts and a willingness to consider herself alongside her subjects\, as a person no more or less worthy of attention. Her work gives me the feeling that I’m being told an urgent secret about humanity that is meant to be savored\, then shared.” —Heidi Julavits\, author of The Folded Clock \n“Jordan Kisner is a pilgrim for our times. She ventures into the operating room where a surgeon inserts an electrode into a patient’s brain. She mingles with the debutantes of Laredo\, Texas as they navigate the fraught space between Wasp and Hispanic privilege. Wherever she is\, Kisner probes the ambiguities that we live and dream\, exploring the spaces where\, in her words\, ‘Distinctions between you and not-you\, real and and unworldly\, fall away.’ She is a tender but fierce writer; rigorous and wise.” —Margo Jefferson\, author of Negroland: A Memoir \nAbout Thin Places \nIn this perceptive and provocative essay collection\, an award-winning writer shares her personal and reportorial investigation into America’s search for meaning \nWhen Jordan Kisner was a child\, she was saved by Jesus Christ at summer camp\, much to the confusion of her nonreligious family. She was\, she writes\, “just naturally reverent\,” a fact that didn’t change when she—much to her own confusion—lost her faith as a teenager. Not sure why her religious conviction had come or where it had gone\, she did what anyone would do: “You go about the great American work of assigning yourself to other gods: yoga\, talk radio\, neoatheism\, CrossFit\, cleanses\, football\, the academy\, the American Dream\, Beyoncé.” \nA curiosity about the subtle systems guiding contemporary life pervades Kisner’s work. Her celebrated essay “Thin Places” (Best American Essays 2016)\, about an experimental neurosurgery developed to treat severe obsessive-compulsive disorder\, asks how putting the neural touchpoint of the soul on a pacemaker may collide science and psychology with philosophical questions about illness\, the limits of the self\, and spiritual transformation. How should she understand the appearance of her own obsessive compulsive disorder at the very age she lost her faith? \nIntellectually curious and emotionally engaging\, the essays in Thin Places manage to be both intimate and expansive\, illuminating an unusual facet of American life\, as well as how it reverberates with the author’s past and present.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jordan-kisner/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-Thin-Places.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200326T213000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200207T204303Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200207T204303Z
UID:55633-1585251000-1585258200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Jordan Kisner and Esmé Weijun Wang at Green Apple Books
DESCRIPTION:Jordan Kisner discusses her new essay collection\, Thin Places: Essays From In Between with Esmé Weijun Wang. \nPraise for Thin Places \n“Jordan Kisner’s essays are like intricate tattoos: etched with a sharp and exacting blade of intellect\, but made of flesh; richly drawn in their details; comprised of equal parts pleasure and pain. Like tattoos\, their natural habitat is that strange borderland where our skin meets the world—where we confront our edges\, or everything we can’t keep out. Always\, and thrillingly\, they look inward and outward with exacting grace.” —Leslie Jamison\, author of The Empathy Exams \n“Jordan Kisner’s essays are a bewitchingly original and highly personal synthesis of incisiveness\, gracefulness\, thoughtfulness\, and selflessness. She is an intellectual empath with the deepest moral instincts and a willingness to consider herself alongside her subjects\, as a person no more or less worthy of attention. Her work gives me the feeling that I’m being told an urgent secret about humanity that is meant to be savored\, then shared.” —Heidi Julavits\, author of The Folded Clock \n“Jordan Kisner is a pilgrim for our times. She ventures into the operating room where a surgeon inserts an electrode into a patient’s brain. She mingles with the debutantes of Laredo\, Texas as they navigate the fraught space between Wasp and Hispanic privilege. Wherever she is\, Kisner probes the ambiguities that we live and dream\, exploring the spaces where\, in her words\, ‘Distinctions between you and not-you\, real and and unworldly\, fall away.’ She is a tender but fierce writer; rigorous and wise.” —Margo Jefferson\, author of Negroland: A Memoir \nAbout Thin Places \nIn this perceptive and provocative essay collection\, an award-winning writer shares her personal and reportorial investigation into America’s search for meaning \nWhen Jordan Kisner was a child\, she was saved by Jesus Christ at summer camp\, much to the confusion of her nonreligious family. She was\, she writes\, “just naturally reverent\,” a fact that didn’t change when she—much to her own confusion—lost her faith as a teenager. Not sure why her religious conviction had come or where it had gone\, she did what anyone would do: “You go about the great American work of assigning yourself to other gods: yoga\, talk radio\, neoatheism\, CrossFit\, cleanses\, football\, the academy\, the American Dream\, Beyoncé.” \nA curiosity about the subtle systems guiding contemporary life pervades Kisner’s work. Her celebrated essay “Thin Places” (Best American Essays 2016)\, about an experimental neurosurgery developed to treat severe obsessive-compulsive disorder\, asks how putting the neural touchpoint of the soul on a pacemaker may collide science and psychology with philosophical questions about illness\, the limits of the self\, and spiritual transformation. How should she understand the appearance of her own obsessive compulsive disorder at the very age she lost her faith? \nIntellectually curious and emotionally engaging\, the essays in Thin Places manage to be both intimate and expansive\, illuminating an unusual facet of American life\, as well as how it reverberates with the author’s past and present.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jordan-kisner-and-esme-weijun-wang-at-green-apple-books/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books 9th Avenue\, 1231 9th Avenue\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/9780374274641.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200328T110000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200328T220000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200216T043021Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200216T043021Z
UID:55911-1585393200-1585432800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:EVES AT THE BEAT: Womxn Reading at The Beat Museum Celebrate Women's History Month
DESCRIPTION:During Women’s History month 2019\, a constellation of events brought together a group of fabulous womxn+ writers. The meeting of these hearts and minds exploded into something powerful and a new monthly reading series concept was born\, “Eves at the Beat”. \nEves at the Beat has been running for a year now\, gaining momentum and new community as it goes. On March 28th 2020 we are having a celebratory marathon reading to uplift the curators and readers who have shared their hearts and poetic spirits at The Beat Museum in San Francisco throughout the past year. \nThis event will showcase approximately fifty womxn identified writers across eleven hours and will go down in history (at least The Beat Museum History) as one of the largest Womxn identified literary readings in San Francisco. Mark your calendars and stay tuned for the reader lineup and schedule of events for the day! \nMore info about “Eves at the Beat”:\nEves at the Beat is a monthly first Thursday reading series at The Beat Museum with occasional readings in Kerouac Alley featuring womxn and non-binary people. Each first Thursday there will be a new curator and MC invited from previous months. This will give many people the opportunity to step into these roles and make the culture of the readings more equitable and circular\, rather than hierarchal. \nContact: Cassandra Rockwood Rice Ganem Cassandra@cca.edu for more information.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/eves-at-the-beat-womxn-reading-at-the-beat-museum-celebrate-womens-history-month/
LOCATION:The Beat Museum\, 540 Broadway\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/image-60.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200328T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200328T160000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200206T035753Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200206T035753Z
UID:55540-1585411200-1585411200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Inter•Col•Lab: A Reading and Film Screening with Valerie Witte\, Sarah Rosenthal\, and Ayana Yonesaka
DESCRIPTION:The Bindery hosts a special afternoon of interrelated\, genre-crossing collaborations: a book of sonnets and letters\, an essay collection\, and a film\, all of which investigate postmodern dance. \nIn their book The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow\, poets Valerie Witte and Sarah Rosenthal engage with the work of dancer-choreographers Simone Forti and Yvonne Rainer. Through research into these innovative women’s dances\, ideas\, and lives\, Witte and Rosenthal use language from and about the choreographers to create a series of co-written sonnets that are interwoven with letters between the two poets. These letters describe the process of composing the poems and branch into discussions of dance\, poetics\, gender\, transgression\, and the unfolding disaster of the current political scene. Together\, the poems and letters construct an environment of reflection\, intimacy\, and vulnerability\, one that is both challenging and invitational. \nWitte and Rosenthal will read from The Grass Is Greener\, and briefly describe the essay project which their book has spawned. Rosenthal and dancer-choreographer Ayana Yonesaka will then introduce and screen their short film\, We Agree on the Sun\, which draws on one of the essays to explore the intersection of dance and houselessness. A Q&A will follow. The event will feature hors d’oeuvres and a cash bar. \n\nSarah Rosenthal is the author of several books and chapbooks including The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System\, 2019; a collaboration with Valerie Witte) Lizard (Chax\, 2016)\, and Manhatten (Spuyten Duyvil\, 2009). She edited A Community Writing Itself: Conversations with Vanguard Poets of the Bay Area (Dalkey Archive\, 2010). She has done grant-supported writing residencies at Vermont Studio Center\, Soul Mountain\, Ragdale\, New York Mills\, Hambidge\, and This Will Take Time\, and has been a Headlands Center Affiliate Artist. She lives in San Francisco where she works as a Life & Professional Coach\, develops curricula for the Center for the Collaborative Classroom\, and serves on the California Book Awards jury. More at sarahrosenthal.net. Author photo by Denise Newman. \nValerie Witte is the author of a game of correspondence (Black Radish Books\, 2015) and The Grass Is Greener When the Sun Is Yellow (The Operating System\, 2019; a collaboration with Sarah Rosenthal)\, as well as two chapbooks. She is a founding member of the Bay Area Correspondence School\, and for eight years\, she helped produce many innovative books by women as a member of Kelsey Street Press. In her daytime hours\, she edits education books in Portland\, OR. Read more at valeriewitte.com. Photo by Andrew Hedges. \nBorn and raised in Sapporo\, Japan\, Ayana Yonesaka moved to San Francisco in 2009 to pursue her career in dance. Since graduating summa cum laude with a BA in Dance from San Francisco State University in 2013\, she has worked in the Bay Area as a dance instructor\, performer\, and choreographer. In addition to teaching at San Francisco Youth Ballet Academy\, RoCo Dance & Fitness\, and ODC\, she also directs ayanadancearts\, a company she founded in 2017. Ayana aims to create highly innovative choreography that is rooted in contemporary dance aesthetics with a strong Japanese cultural narrative. Her work seamlessly navigates her Japanese and American identities\, choreographing through a unique cross-Pacific framework. Photo by jGuerzonPictorials. \n\nPlease note: this event will be held at The Bindery\, 1727 Haight. \nThis is a free\, all-ages event. The bar opens with the store at 2pm; event starts at 4pm. \nRSVP appreciated but not required. \nAs with all of our events\, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out\, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of The Grass is Greener When the Sun is Yellow\, order below and be sure to put your request in the comments field. \nAccessibility is important to us! If you have special needs please let us know and we’ll do our absolute best to accommodate you: events@booksmith.com.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/inter%e2%80%a2col%e2%80%a2lab-a-reading-and-film-screening-with-valerie-witte-sarah-rosenthal-and-ayana-yonesaka/
LOCATION:The Bindery\, 1727 Haight St\, San Francisco \, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/image-43.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T160000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200203T205455Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200203T205455Z
UID:55376-1585497600-1585497600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Silent Book Club SF
DESCRIPTION:Bring a book\, bring a friend\, and join Silent Book Club for an afternoon of reading! At Silent Book Club\, there’s no assigned reading. All books and all ages are welcome. \nWe’ll kick off introvert happy hour at 4pm with some light chatter and informal book recommendations before settling in to read quietly\, but if you’d rather just pull up a chair and read\, by all means do so. No one will be shushed or shamed. The bar will be open for late afternoon libations. \nHappy reading and hope to see you there! \nPlease note: this event will be at The Bindery\, 1727 Haight. \nRSVP appreciated but not required. \nPhoto by Cody Pickens for O Magazine
URL:https://litseen.com/event/silent-book-club-sf-8/
LOCATION:The Bindery\, 1727 Haight St\, San Francisco \, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/image-2.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T160000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T173000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T064746Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T064746Z
UID:54593-1585497600-1585503000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Silent Book Club SF
DESCRIPTION:Bring a book\, bring a friend\, and join Silent Book Club for an afternoon of reading! At Silent Book Club\, there’s no assigned reading. All books and all ages are welcome. \nWe’ll kick off introvert happy hour at 4pm with some light chatter and informal book recommendations before settling in to read quietly\, but if you’d rather just pull up a chair and read\, by all means do so. No one will be shushed or shamed. The bar will be open for late afternoon libations. \nHappy reading and hope to see you there! \nPlease note: this event will be at The Bindery\, 1727 Haight. \nRSVP appreciated but not required. \nPhoto by Cody Pickens for O Magazine
URL:https://litseen.com/event/silent-book-club-sf-7/
LOCATION:The Bindery\, 1727 Haight St\, San Francisco \, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Silent-Book-Club-at-The-Bindery-in-San-Francisco-by-Cody-Pickens-2.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T183000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200329T183000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200312T214828Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200312T214846Z
UID:56381-1585506600-1585506600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Seen and Heard
DESCRIPTION:
URL:https://litseen.com/event/sean-and-heard/
LOCATION:THE LAUNDRY\, 3359 26th Street\, San Francisco\, 94110
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Screen-Shot-2020-03-12-at-2.48.09-PM.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200330T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200330T190000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200203T205813Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200203T205813Z
UID:55380-1585594800-1585594800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Jon Mooallem / This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City\, a Voice That Held It Together
DESCRIPTION:Booksmith hosts Jon Mooallem (Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying\, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America) for his new book This Is Chance!: The Shaking of an All-American City\, a Voice That Held It Together. Please join us! \nIn 1964\, Anchorage\, Alaska\, was a modern-day frontier town yearning to be a metropolis — the largest\, proudest city in a state that was still brand-new. But just before sundown on Good Friday\, the community was jolted by the most powerful earthquake in American history\, a catastrophic 9.2 on the Richter Scale. For four and a half minutes\, the ground lurched and rolled. Streets cracked open and swallowed buildings whole. And once the shaking stopped\, night fell and Anchorage went dark. The city was in disarray and sealed off from the outside world. \nSlowly\, people switched on their transistor radios and heard a woman’s familiar voice explaining what had just happened and what to do next. Genie Chance was a part-time radio reporter and working mother who’d play an unlikely role in the wake of the disaster\, helping to put her fractured community back together. Genie’s tireless broadcasts over the next three days would transform her into a legendary figure in Alaska and bring her fame worldwide — but only briefly\, before her story faded away as quickly as it had surfaced after the quake. That Easter weekend in Anchorage\, Genie and an entire cast of endearingly eccentric characters — from a mountaineering psychologist to the local community theater group staging Our Town — were thrown into a jumbled world they could not recognize. Together\, they would make a home in it again. \nDrawing on thousands of pages of unpublished documents\, interviews with survivors\, and original broadcast recordings\, This Is Chance! is the hopeful\, gorgeously told story of a single catastrophic weekend and proof of our collective strength in a turbulent world. There are moments when reality instantly changes — when the life we assume is stable gets upended by pure happenstance. This Is Chance! is an electrifying and lavishly empathetic portrayal of one community rising above the randomness\, a real-life fable of human connection withstanding chaos. \n\n“Jon Mooallem is one of the most intelligent\, compassionate\, and curious authors writing today. I would go on any adventure that his mind embarks upon\, knowing that I was being led by the ablest of guides. In This is Chance!\, he draws us into the depths of a disaster only to unearth an intimate\, moving story about our capacity to care for one another when things fall apart — and\, just maybe\, on all the ordinary days\, too.”  – Elizabeth Gilbert \n\n“This Is Chance is the riveting story of a town on the brink of its own existence\, broken and held together by an unbelievable natural disaster. With grace and command\, Jon Mooallem illuminates the near-divine existential interchange between wonder and horror\, fate and self-determination. I teared up reading it\, getting to know Genie Chance\, a perfectly-named hero — grateful to brush up against the extraordinary and unforgotten.” – Jia Tolentino\, bestselling author of Trick Mirror \n“Jon Mooallem is one of the most delightful nonfiction writers working today. This is Chance! is funny\, poignant and surprising: It takes an all-too-familiar story of a woman whose work is fundamental but long forgotten and turns it on its head. With his signature wit\, depth\, and gift for storytelling\, Mooallem brings to life a strong\, fascinating character who played a crucial role in the aftermath of a disaster — and whose story shows not just how deeply women’s voices matter\, but how often they have been silenced by history.”  — Rebecca Skloot\, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks \n\nJon Mooallem is a longtime writer at large for The New York Times Magazine and a contributor to numerous radio shows and other magazines\, including This American Life and Wired. His first book\, Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying\, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America was chosen as a notable book of the year by The New York Times Book Review\, The New Yorker\, NPR’s Science Friday\, and Canada’s National Post\, among others. He lives on Bainbridge Island\, outside Seattle\, with his family. Photo by Meghann Riepenhoff. \n\nThis event is free and all ages. \nRSVP appreciated but not required. \nAs with all of our events\, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out\, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of This Is Chance!\, order below and be sure to put your request in the comments field. \nAccessibility is important to us! If you have special needs please let us know and we’ll do our absolute best to accommodate you: events@booksmith.com.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/jon-mooallem-this-is-chance-the-shaking-of-an-all-american-city-a-voice-that-held-it-together/
LOCATION:The Booksmith\, 1644 Haight St\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94117\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/png:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/image-3.png
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025355Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025355Z
UID:54538-1585681200-1585686600@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Archive 48 Release Party: The Earthly Days of Jose Revueltas
DESCRIPTION:Binational publisher Archive 48\, dedicated to Mexican and U.S. literature\, launches its U.S. wing with the first-ever English translation of an important work by  Jose Revueltas. Join us to celebrate its release. \n  \nTranslator Matthew Gleeson and publisher Pedro Jiménez celebrate the publication of Earthly Days by José Revueltas. \n \nMexican author Revueltas was a lifelong militant whose political activities stretched from the 1930s Communist Party to the 1968 student movement—and sent him to prison several times. His important writing career included prize-winning novels that lay bare the underbelly of Mexican society\, as well as screenplays for noir films during Mexican cinema’s Golden Age. But most of his dark and complex work still remains neglected in English. \nEarthly Days\, originally published in 1949\, is a quintessential Revueltas novel that marries Communist struggle\, noir narrative\, and psychological depth exploration. It also turned out to be his most controversial: it was withdrawn from circulation when Mexican Marxist circles attacked it as politically heretical\, and this is its first appearance in English. \nMatthew Gleeson is a writer and translator based in Mexico. With Audrey Harris\, he co-translated The Houseguest and Other Stories by Amparo Dávila (New Directions\, 2018). With Giada Diano\, he co-edited Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1960-2010 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (Norton/Liveright\, 2015). \nPedro Jimenez is an editor\, translator and essayist. He has translated Etel Adnan’s Seasons into Spanish—to be published in Mexico by Archive48 in 2019. He has written various articles and art reviews in English and Spanish for digital outlets and print journals. He is the founder of Archive48\, a bilingual publishing project based in San Francisco. \nArchive 48‘s goal is the publication of compelling literary works in affordable editions. Like the face of Janus\, Archivo 48 looks north and south to bring the best of contemporary and modernist literature from Mexico and the United States cross borders. They seek books that have not been fully recognized by the literary status quo of each country\, in an effort to open new conversations.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/archive-48-release-party-the-earthly-days-of-jose-revueltas/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Jose@typewriter.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T172633Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T172633Z
UID:54682-1585683000-1585688400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Alexandra Chang
DESCRIPTION:Alexandra Chang discusses her debut novel\, Days of Distraction. \nPraise for Days of Distraction \n“A startlingly original and deeply moving debut—kaleidoscopic\, funny\, heart-rending\, beautifully observed\, and formally daring.  It struck me as a new variety of novel…. Chang here establishes herself as one of the most important of the new generation of American writers.”— George Saunders \n“A wholly engaging joy to read. Chang writes with wit and sharpness as she curates moments\, observations and histories that together make something of beautiful depth and significance. It takes great bravery to make art of so many of those things we fear and love. An important\, gratifying read.”— Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah\, author of Friday Black \n“Days of Distraction seized my attention like no other novel\, distracting me entirely from my own life. The magic of this book is that its scale seems small\, fixating on the minute details that make up our days: the anxieties\, the obsessions\, the observations made in the office\, the neighborhood\, the coffee shop. And yet inside Alexandra Chang’s brilliant narrator is a grand\, restless consciousness…. This is a book about America\, and also an American love story\, one that will leave you achingly awakened.” — Eleanor Henderson\, author of Ten Thousand Saints \nAbout Days of Distraction \nA wry\, tender portrait of a young woman—finally free to decide her own path\, but unsure if she knows herself well enough to choose wisely—from a captivating new literary voice \nThe plan is to leave. As for how\, when\, to where\, and even why—she doesn’t know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication\, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires and start-up bros while her own request for a raise gets bumped from manager to manager. And when her longtime boyfriend\, J\, decides to move to a quiet upstate New York town for grad school\, she sees an excuse to cut and run. \nMoving is supposed to be a grand gesture of her commitment to J and a way to reshape her sense of self. But in the process\, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in an interracial relationship. Captivated by the stories of her ancestors and other Asian Americans in history\, she must confront a question at the core of her identity: What does it mean to exist in a society that does not notice or understand you? \nEqual parts tender and humorous\, and told in spare but powerful prose\, Days of Distraction is an offbeat coming-of-adulthood tale\, a touching family story\, and a razor-sharp appraisal of our times.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/alexandra-chang/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-Days-of-Distraction.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200331T213000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200207T204558Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200207T204558Z
UID:55636-1585683000-1585690200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Alexandra Chang at Green Apple Books
DESCRIPTION:Alexandra Chang discusses her debut novel\, Days of Distraction. \nPraise for Days of Distraction \n“A startlingly original and deeply moving debut—kaleidoscopic\, funny\, heart-rending\, beautifully observed\, and formally daring.  It struck me as a new variety of novel…. Chang here establishes herself as one of the most important of the new generation of American writers.”— George Saunders \n“A wholly engaging joy to read. Chang writes with wit and sharpness as she curates moments\, observations and histories that together make something of beautiful depth and significance. It takes great bravery to make art of so many of those things we fear and love. An important\, gratifying read.”— Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah\, author of Friday Black \n“Days of Distraction seized my attention like no other novel\, distracting me entirely from my own life. The magic of this book is that its scale seems small\, fixating on the minute details that make up our days: the anxieties\, the obsessions\, the observations made in the office\, the neighborhood\, the coffee shop. And yet inside Alexandra Chang’s brilliant narrator is a grand\, restless consciousness…. This is a book about America\, and also an American love story\, one that will leave you achingly awakened.” — Eleanor Henderson\, author of Ten Thousand Saints \nAbout Days of Distraction \nA wry\, tender portrait of a young woman—finally free to decide her own path\, but unsure if she knows herself well enough to choose wisely—from a captivating new literary voice \nThe plan is to leave. As for how\, when\, to where\, and even why—she doesn’t know yet. So begins a journey for the twenty-four-year-old narrator of Days of Distraction. As a staff writer at a prestigious tech publication\, she reports on the achievements of smug Silicon Valley billionaires and start-up bros while her own request for a raise gets bumped from manager to manager. And when her longtime boyfriend\, J\, decides to move to a quiet upstate New York town for grad school\, she sees an excuse to cut and run. \nMoving is supposed to be a grand gesture of her commitment to J and a way to reshape her sense of self. But in the process\, she finds herself facing misgivings about her role in an interracial relationship. Captivated by the stories of her ancestors and other Asian Americans in history\, she must confront a question at the core of her identity: What does it mean to exist in a society that does not notice or understand you? \nEqual parts tender and humorous\, and told in spare but powerful prose\, Days of Distraction is an offbeat coming-of-adulthood tale\, a touching family story\, and a razor-sharp appraisal of our times. \n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/alexandra-chang-at-green-apple-books/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books 9th Avenue\, 1231 9th Avenue\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/9780062951809.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200401T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200401T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025159Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025159Z
UID:54535-1585767600-1585773000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Beth Lisick
DESCRIPTION:reads from \nEdie On The Green Screen: A Novel \npublished by 7.13 Books \nCity Lights welcomes back Beth Lisick to celebrate her debut novel from 7.13 Books. \nEdie Wunderlich was the It girl\, on the covers of the city’s alt-weeklies\, repping the freak party scene on the eve of the first dot-com boom. Fast-forward twenty years\, and Edie hasn’t changed\, but San Francisco has. Still a bartender in the Mission\, Edie now serves a seemingly never-ending stream of tech bros while the punk rock parties of the millennium’s end are long gone. When her mother dies\, leaving her Silicon Valley home to Edie\, she finds herself mourning her loss in the heart of the Bay Area’s tech monoculture\, and embarks on a last-ditch quest to hold on to her rebel heart. New York Times bestseller Beth Lisick’s first novel EDIE ON THE GREEN SCREEN chronicles Silicon Valley’s rapidly changing culture with biting observational humor\, an insider’s wisdom\, and disarming pathos\, while asking\, “What comes after It?” \nBeth Lisick is a writer and actor from the San Francisco Bay Area\, currently living in Brooklyn. She is the author of five previous books\, including the New York Times bestseller Everybody Into the Pool\, and co-founder of the Porchlight Storytelling Series. Beth has also worked as a baker\, a promotional banana mascot\, a background extra for TV and film\, and an aide to people with developmental disabilities and dementia. This is her first novel.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/beth-lisick/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-Edie-on-the-Green-Screen.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200401T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200401T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191231T203025Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191231T203025Z
UID:54746-1585769400-1585774800@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Hilary Leichter\, Mary South\, Rita Bullwinkel\, & R.O. Kwon
DESCRIPTION:Hilary Leichter and Mary South discuss their new works\, Temporary and You Will Never Be Forgotten\, with Rita Bullwinkel and R.O. Kwon. \nPraise for Temporary \n“A narrative so deliciously allusive and disarmingly literal that this reader kept thinking maximum glee had been attained\, only for the glee to somehow grow even more maximal just a few sentences later.” —Helen Oyeyemi \n“Temporary took me by storm. Each short chapter is a wallop of topsy-turvy wisdom and humor\, and together they build a strange and sparkling universe. The novel is about work and identity and the masks we wear\, but it’s also about our weird little human hearts and what they can bear. I am a Hilary Leichter superfan.”—Ramona Ausubel \n“In Temporary\, the quest for gainful employment is epic; operatic; deliciously\, sunnily\, terrifyingly entertaining. Hilary Leichter is a conjurer of rare talent.” —Kelly Link \nAbout Temporary \nIn Temporary\, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness\, connection\, and something\, at last\, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes\, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship\, assisting an assassin\, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board\, for the mythical Temporary\, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” \nThis riveting quest\, at once hilarious and profound\, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work\, even when the work is only temporary. \nPraise for You Will Never Be Forgotten \n“Mary South gets it. With dark humor\, she knocks down like so many lined-up ducks all the consoling pieties that nurture humanist fiction\, and sets up in their place a vision of subjects irremediably mediated\, strung out along networks that far exceed them. Her universe is glitchy\, full of weakly-encrypted memory\, open-source desire\, self-replicating fantasy: the human in hock to the algorithm.” —Tom McCarthy\, author of Satin Island \n“Mary South’s stories are a vital mix of wry humor\, cunning provocation\, disturbing prophecy and deep feeling. A brilliant and brilliantly strange and strangely funny and menacing debut!” —Sam Lipsyte\, author of Hark \n“Mary South’s wickedly\, exquisitely hilarious collection dwells in the intimate aches of modern life\, writ large in strange\, delightful stories that include\, but are not limited to\, clones\, brain surgery\, internet trolls\, and warehouses full of spare men. Dazzlingly imagined and full of wit\, You Will Never Be Forgotten is a gift to readers everywhere\, a ferocious transmission from one of the most audacious\, most original new voices in fiction.” —Alexandra Kleeman\, author of Intimations \nAbout You Will Never Be Forgotten \nIn this provocative\, bitingly funny debut collection\, people attempt to use technology to escape their uncontrollable feelings of grief or rage or despair\, only to reveal their most flawed and human selves \nAn architect draws questionable inspiration from her daughter’s birth defect. A content moderator for “the world’s biggest search engine\,” who spends her days culling videos of beheadings and suicides\, turns from stalking her rapist online to following him in real life. At a camp for recovering internet trolls\, a sensitive misfit goes missing. A wounded mother raises the second incarnation of her child. \nIn You Will Never Be Forgotten\, Mary South explores how technology can both collapse our relationships from within and provide opportunities for genuine connection. Formally inventive\, darkly absurdist\, savagely critical of the increasingly fraught cultural climates we inhabit\, these ten stories also find hope in fleeting interactions and moments of tenderness. They reveal our grotesque selfishness and our intense need for love and acceptance\, and the psychic pain that either shuts us off or allows us to discover our deepest reaches of empathy. This incendiary debut marks the arrival of a perceptive\, idiosyncratic\, instantly recognizable voice in fiction—one that could only belong to Mary South.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/hilary-leichter-mary-south-rita-bullwinkel-r-o-kwon/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Leichter-South.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T190000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20200221T182938Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20200312T212031Z
UID:56026-1585854000-1585854000@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Canceled: Cowboy & Other Poems: Alejandro Albarrán Polanco and Rachel Galvin
DESCRIPTION:Mexican poet Alejandro Albarrán Polanco joins poet and translator Rachel Galvin to talk about his chapbook\, Cowboy & Other Poems\, from Ugly Duckling Presse. \nAbout Cowboy & Other Poems\, Maricela Guerrero writes “Prosthesis poems raising questions about the means by which the discourse of terror erodes our conversations. Piles of poems bursting into piles of words\, crashing against the univocal: Albarrán’s work is an ensemble of voices resonating from the most sincere tenderness to the most terrible and terrifying ways in which the contemporary world of crime and horror is narrated. In this book a cowboy gallops on a thousand prairies of senseless sense\, carrying us mounted on the rump\, expectant.” \n\n\nCONTACT:\n\nLeslie-Ann Woofter\nlwoofter@catranslation.org\n415.512.8812\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAUTHOR\nAlejandro Albarrán Polanco\n\n\nAlejandro Albarrán Polanco (b. Mexico City) is the author of Algunas personas no son caballos\, which won the Premio Internacional Manuel Acuña in 2018. He is a founding editor of the press Canón Accidental and co-director of the radio program Radio Rara. He is also a musician and conceptual artist whose performances\, installations\, and artist’s books have been featured in numerous art exhibitions.\n\n\n\n\n\nTRANSLATOR\nRachel Galvin\n\n\nRachel Galvin is an award-winning poet\, translator\, and scholar. Her books include two collections of poetry\, Pulleys & Locomotion and Elevated Threat Level; a work of criticism\, News of War: Civilian Poetry 1936-1945; and Hitting the Streets\, a translation from the French of Raymond Queneau. She is a co-founder of the Outranspo\, an international creative translation collective\, and assistant professor at the University of Chicago.
URL:https://litseen.com/event/cowboy-other-poems-alejandro-albarran-polanco-and-rachel-galvin/
LOCATION:Alley Cat Books\, 3036 24th St\, San Francisco\, CA\, 94110\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T190000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T203000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191227T025041Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191227T025041Z
UID:54532-1585854000-1585859400@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
DESCRIPTION:reading from \nThe Mountains Sing \nfrom Workman Publishing Company \n“An epic account of Việt Nam’s painful 20th century history\, both vast in scope and intimate in its telling . . . Moving and riveting.” —VIET THANH NGUYEN\, author of The Sympathizer\, winner of the Pulitzer Prize \nWith the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan\, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping\, multigenerational tale of the Trần family\, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan\, who was born in 1920\, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội\, her young granddaughter\, Hương\, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore not just her beloved country\, but her family apart. \nVivid\, gripping\, and steeped in the language and traditions of Việt Nam\, The Mountains Sing brings to life the human costs of this conflict from the point of view of the Vietnamese people themselves\, while showing us the true power of kindness and hope. \nThe Mountains Sing is celebrated Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai’s first novel in English. \nBorn into the Viet Nam War in 1973\, Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai grew up witnessing the war’s devastation and its aftermath. She worked as a street seller and rice farmer before winning a scholarship to attend university in Australia. She is the author of eight books of poetry\, fiction and non-fiction published in Vietnamese\, and her writing has been translated and published in more than 10 countries\, most recently in Norton’s Inheriting the War anthology. She has been honored with many awards\, including the Poetry of the Year 2010 Award from the Ha Noi Writers Association\, as well as many grants and fellowships. Married to a European diplomat\, Quế Mai is currently living in Jakarta with her two teenage children. \nFor more information about Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai\, visit her at www.nguyenphanquemai.com
URL:https://litseen.com/event/nguyen-phan-que-mai/
LOCATION:City Lights Bookstore\, 261 Columbus Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94133\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://litseen.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/front-cover-of-The-Mountains-Sing.jpg
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DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T193000
DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles:20200402T210000
DTSTAMP:20260411T020530
CREATED:20191231T203056Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20191231T203056Z
UID:54748-1585855800-1585861200@litseen.com
SUMMARY:Monica Sok: A Nail the Evening Hangs On
DESCRIPTION:Monica Sok discusses her debut poetry collection\, A Nail the Evening Hangs On\, with Barbara Jane Reyes. \nPraise for A Nail the Evening Hangs On \n“Sok’s reflective debut teases out how the trauma of the Khmer Rouge is remembered and retained in the fabric of the country and within her own family… Weaving the threads of her family’s stories\, history\, place\, and identity\, these poems glimmer with strength and presence.” —Publishers Weekly  \n“An unsettling\, powerful\, important debut.” —Booklist \n“The poet is able to offer quiet wisdom without sentimentality. Ultimately this poet refuses to surrender to victimhood. The chapbook ends optimistically in the borough of Brooklyn\, where the young speaker lives happily\, sometimes seen in the neighborhood eating bagels with friends and writing new poems. She has found her way to ‘the healing fields.’” ―Marilyn Chin \nAbout A Nail the Evening Hangs On \nIn this staggering poetry debut\, Monica Sok illuminates the experiences of Cambodian diaspora and reflects on America’s role in escalating the genocide in Cambodia. A Nail the Evening Hangs On travels from Phnom Penh to Siem Reap\, where Tuol Sleng and other war museums reshape the imagination of a child of refugees; to New York City and Lancaster\, where the dailiness of intergenerational trauma persists on the subway or among the cornfields of a small hometown. Embracing collective memory\, both real and imagined\, these poems move across time to break familial silence. Sok pieces together voices and fragments—using persona\, myth\, and imagination—in a transformative work that builds towards wholeness. \n 
URL:https://litseen.com/event/monica-sok-a-nail-the-evening-hangs-on/
LOCATION:Green Apple Books on the Park\, 1231 9th Ave\, San Francisco \, CA\, 94122\, United States
CATEGORIES:Free,San Francisco
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