Litseen

Babylon Salon Spring Reading
2017-03-04 18:00 - 20:00 UTC | The Armory Club, 1799 Mission St, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Babylon Solan Spring Reading presents National Book Award-nominated author of seven novels Cristina García, and Best-selling author and editor Josh Mohr.

Bay Area Poets Coalition First Saturday
2017-03-04 15:00 - 17:00 | Strawberry Creek Lodge, 1320 Addison Street, Berkeley, CA, 94702, United States
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 🙂

Eric Puchner
2017-03-02 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Eric Puchner will read from his newest collection of short stories Last Day on Earth.
Praise for Eric Puchner:
“Eric Puchner is an alchemist who captures the joy and danger in everyday life and, with precision, humor, and empathy, turns these moments into gold. These stories allow us to look at our own lives more closely and with more courage and understanding–a poignant and unforgettable collection from a great storyteller.” – Yiyun Li, author of Dear Friend, From My Life I Write to You in Your Life

About Last Day on Earth:
From the award-winning author of Music Through the Floor and Model Home, a riveting and profoundly moving story collection by a writer uncannily in tune with the heartbreak and absurdity of domestic life (Los Angeles Times).
A boy on the edge of adolescence fears his mother might be a robot; a psychotically depressed woman is entrusted with taking her niece and nephew trick-or-treating; a reluctant dad brings his baby to a coke-fueled party; a teenage boy tries to prevent his mother from putting his estranged father’s dogs to sleep. Ranging from a youth arts camp to an aging punk band’s reunion tour, from a dystopian future where parents no longer exist to a ferociously independent bookstore, Last Day on Earth revolves around the endlessly complex, frequently surreal system that is family.

Layli Long Soldier + Truong Tran
2017-03-02 19:00 - 21:00 | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
Poets Layli Long Soldier and Truong Tran read from new work, then engage with one another and their audience in conversation. Free and open to the public.
Layli Long Soldier earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts and an MFA with honors from Bard College. She is the author of the chapbook Chromosomory (2010) and, new this March, the book Whereas (Graywolf Press, 2017), recipient of the prestigious Whiting Award for 2016. She has been a contributing editor to Drunken Boat and is poetry editor at Kore Press. In 2012 her participatory installation, Whereas We Respond, was featured on the Pine Ridge Reservation. In 2015, Long Soldier was awarded a National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Poetry. “I am,” she writes, “a citizen of the United States and an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe, meaning I am a citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation ― and in this dual citizenship I must work, I must eat, I must art, I must mother, I must friend, I must listen, I must observe, constantly I must live.”
Truong Tran is an artist and writer living in San Francisco. His books include Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, The Book of Perceptions, Within The Margins, Four Letter Words, I Meant To Say Please Pass The Sugar and the children’s book Going Home Coming Home. His works have been translated into Dutch, French, Spanish and Vietnamese. He has been twelve years a lecturer at SFSU and is currently The Visiting Assistant Professor at Mills College where he teaches writing workshops at the intersection of poetry and the visual arts. His latest body of exploration, entitled “The PreEmptive Works,” will be forthcoming in 2018.
Because We Come from Everywhere: Poetry and Migration
March 2017 Poetry Center programming appears under the sign of this line by Juan Felipe Herrera, in conjunction with 20+ member organizations from across the country constituting the newly formed Poetry Coalition

Bill Hayes
2017-03-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
A moving celebration of what Bill Hayes calls “the evanescent, the eavesdropped, the unexpected” of life in New York City, and an intimate glimpse of his relationship with the late Oliver Sacks.
“If you are lonely or bone-tired or blue, you need only come down from your perch and step outside. New York—which is to say, New Yorkers—will take care of you.”
Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2008 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.
And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance—“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life,” he tells Hayes early on—is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.
Bill Hayes is the author of The Anatomist, Five Quarts, and Sleep Demons. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and his writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books and Salon, among other publications. His photographs have been featured in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and the New Yorker.

Jennifer Clarvoe
2017-03-02 12:10 - 12:50 | Morrison Library, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Jennifer Clarvoe is the author of Invisible Tender and Counter-Amores. She has received the Poets Out Loud Prize, the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, and the Rome Prize in Literature, as well as a Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writers Conference and a residency from the James Merrill House. She has taught at Kenyon College for twenty-five years.

Pola Oloixarac
2017-03-01 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Argentinian writer Pola Oloixarac in conversation about her first novel translated into English, Savage Theories.

Praise for Savage Theories
“A stunning vibrant maximalist whirlwind of a novel. Oloixarac’s wit and ambition are evident on every page. By comparison, most other contemporary fiction seems a little dull and simple-minded.” — Hari Kunzru, author of “Gods Without Men”

“Monstrously clever and terribly funny. More than a debut, this book is one many of us would spend our lives trying to write.” — Javier Calvo

“Pola Oloixarac’s prose is the great event of the new Argentinian narrative. Her novel is unforgettable, philosophical and very serene.” — Ricardo Piglia

About Savage Theories
A novel of seduction and madness, hate and love, set in the world of Argentinean academia and animated by the spirits of Wittgenstein, Rousseau, Nabokov and Bolano.
Rosa Ostreech, a pseudonym for the novel’s beautiful but self-conscious narrator, carries around a trilingual edition of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, struggles with her thesis on violence and culture, sleeps with a bourgeois former guerrilla, and pursues her elderly professor with a highly charged blend of eroticism and desperation. Elsewhere on campus, Pabst and Kamtchowsky tour the underground scene of Buenos Aires, dabbling in ketamine, sex, video games, and hacking. And in Africa in 1917, a Dutch anthropologist named Johan van Vliet begins work on a theory that explains human consciousness and civilization by reference to our early primate ancestors animals, who, in the process of becominghuman, spent thousands of years as prey.
“Savage Theories” wryly explores fear and violence, war and sex, eroticism and philosophy. Its complex and flawed characters grapple with a mess of impossible, visionary theories, searching for their place in our fragmented digital world.

Liz Cunningham
2017-03-01 19:00 - 20:00 | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
“My mission is to be a voice for the life the seas and the people who are working to save it, to inspire and empower others to join the effort to save our seas and forge a sustainable future. I write and speak about ocean conservation and the traits we need to be effective stewards of our seas and our planet—among others, courage, an engaged hope, and our capacity to work together to implement solutions.” – Liz Cunningham

L.A. Kaufman
2017-03-01 19:00 - 20:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism
from Verso Press
A vibrant, groundbreaking history of American radicalism since the Sixties

What happened to the American left after the Sixties? This engrossing account traces the evolution of disruptive protest over the last 40 years to tell a larger story about the reshaping of American radicalism, showing how the direct-action blockades, occupations, and campaigns of recent activist movements have functioned as laboratories for political experimentation and renewal.
Propelled by more than 100 candid interviews conducted over a span of decades, this elegant and lively history showcases the voices of key players in an array of movements – environmentalist, anti-nuclear, anti-apartheid, feminist, LGBTQ, anti-globalization, racial-justice, anti-war, and more – across an era when American politics shifted to the right, and issue- and identity-based organizing eclipsed the traditional ideologies of the left.
As Kauffman, a longtime movement insider, examines how groups from ACT UP to Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter have used direct action to catalyze change against long odds, she details the profound influence of feminism and queerness on radical political practice and how enduring divisions of race have shaped the landscape of activism. Written with nuance and humor, and revealing deep connections between movements usually viewed in isolation, Direct Action is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding how protest movements erupt — and how they can succeed.
L.A. Kauffman has spent more than 30 years immersed in radical movements, as an organizer, strategist, journalist, and observer. Her writings on grassroots activism and social movement history have been published in The Nation, Mother Jones, n+1, The Baffler, and many other outlets. Kauffman was the mobilizing coordinator for the massive anti-war marches of 2003-2004; she has been called a “virtuoso organizer” by journalist Scott Sherman for her role in saving community gardens and public libraries in New York City from developers. Visit L.A. Kauffman’s twitter-feed
What has been said of L.A. Kauffman’s work:
“It is impossible to overstate the importance of this book. Chances are that even if you know something about the recent history of the left in America, you probably only know a few isolated parts. L.A. Kauffman has connected a vast field of dots to create an overview, and she has done with dispatch, clarity, and elegance. Her book is essential reading for today, and will be for tomorrow.”
– Luc Sante
“You could not ask for a better guide through recent social movement history than L. A. Kauffman. A champion of radical causes with decades of experience on the frontlines of civil disobedience, she chronicles the fascinating evolution of a set of protest tactics today’s activists take for granted. Kauffman has done a tremendous public service: by helping us better understand the past, in all its glory and folly, we can be more effective dissidents and rabble rousers tomorrow. This startling, inspiring book is for anyone who has ever felt the urge to put their body on the line and shut things down for something they believe in.”
– Astra Taylor, author of The People’s Platform and co-founder of the Debt Collective

Bill Hayes
2017-02-28 19:30 - 21:00 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Bill Hayes presents Insomniac City: New York, Oliver, and Me.

“A love story to New York and the people we cherish, for Bill Hayes, the late Oliver Sacks. With prescience and tenderness, written with a sharp eye and a camera attuned to life on the streets, Hayes has composed a gorgeous memoir on why place matters to the soul of our humanity. I loved every single sentence in this quiet night-book, erotic and evocative, at once.”–Terry Tempest Williams

Tuesday, February 28, 2017 – 7:30pm

Bill Hayes came to New York City in 2009 with a one-way ticket and only the vaguest idea of how he would get by. But, at forty-eight years old, having spent decades in San Francisco, he craved change. Grieving over the unexpected death of his partner, he quickly discovered the profound consolations of the city’s incessant rhythms, the sight of the Empire State Building against the night sky, and New Yorkers themselves, kindred souls that Hayes, a lifelong insomniac, encountered on late-night strolls with his camera.
And he unexpectedly fell in love again, with his friend and neighbor, the writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose exuberance–“I don’t so much fear death as I do wasting life,” he tells Hayes early on–is captured in funny and touching vignettes throughout. What emerges is a portrait of Sacks at his most personal and endearing, from falling in love for the first time at age seventy-five to facing illness and death (Sacks died of cancer in August 2015). Insomniac City is both a meditation on grief and a celebration of life. Filled with Hayes’s distinctive street photos of everyday New Yorkers, the book is a love song to the city and to all who have felt the particular magic and solace it offers.
Bill Hayes is the author of The Anatomist, Five Quarts, and Sleep Demons. He is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction and was a visiting scholar at the American Academy in Rome. He is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, and his writing has appeared in The New York Review of Books and Salon, among other publications. His photographs have been featured in Vanity Fair, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. He lives in New York. Visit his website at billhayes.com

Ari Banias, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano + Cintia Santana
2017-02-28 19:00 - 21:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Ari Banias, Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, and Cintia Santana read at Alley Cat Books, Saturday, January 28, 2017 at 7:00 pm, in support of Ari Banias’s new book, Anybody (W.W. Norton). This event is organized by San Francisco poet and novelist Kevin Killian.
Ari Banias is the author of the book Anybody (W.W. Norton, 2016), and the chapbook What’s Personal is Being Here With All of You (Portable Press @ Yo-Yo Labs). His poems have appeared in Boston Review, Poetry, A Public Space, and the anthology Troubling the Line: Trans & Genderqueer Poetry & Poetics. The recipient of fellowships from the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown & Stanford University, he lives in Berkeley & works at Small Press Distribution.Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano is the author of the poetry collections, Amorcito Maricón; Santo de la Pata Alzada; and, Tragic Bitches, which he co-wrote with Adelina Anthony and Dino Foxx. Lorenzo is the editor of Queer Codex: Chile Love; Queer Codex: Rooted; and, the forthcoming Joto: An Anthology of Queer Chicano Poetry. A member of the Macondo Writers community and former writer for Change.org’s “Race in America” and “Gay Rights” blogs, his work appears in Mariposas: A Modern Anthology of Queer Latino Poetry; For Colored Boys Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Still Not Enough; Queer in Aztlán; as well as the journals, ZYZZYVA; and, Yellow Medicine Review. Lorenzo is the founder of Kórima Press, a queer Chicana/o Press; and, Publisher and Executive Director of Justice Matters Press, a multiracial social and racial justice press.
Cintia Santana’s poems, fiction, and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, Michigan Quarterly Review, Narrative, Pleiades, RHINO, Spillway, The Threepenny Review, and other journals. Santana received her MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and her MA and PhD in Romance Languages and Literatures from Harvard University. She is the recipient of a CantoMundo Fellowship and a Djerassi Resident Artist Program Fellowship. Mary Szybist selected Santana’s poetry for inclusion in the Best New Poets 2016 anthology. Currently, Santana teaches poetry and fiction workshops in Spanish, as well as literary translation courses at Stanford University.

Juan Pablo Villalobos
2017-02-26 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Mexican writer Juan Pablo Villalobos dicusses his new novel, I’ll Sell You a Dog, with Mauro Javier Cardenas.
Praise for I’ll Sell You a Dog
“I’ll Sell You A Dog is a reminder of how effortless literature should be to love. This unexpected ride through a character’s second childhood, his building, neighbourhood and history is so magically twisted that it could be real. As ever Villalobos writes a peephole through politics and time, to simply watch us dance in all our lurid whimsy.”—DBC Pierre
“Short, dark, comic, ribald and surreal . . . manic-impressive.”—Dwight Garner, New York Times
‘One of the wittiest, most whimsical, most enjoyable novels to have been published in Spanish for a long time.’ Alberto Manguel, The Guardian
About I’ll Sell You a Dog
Long before he was the taco seller whose ‘Gringo Dog’ recipe made him famous throughout Mexico City, our hero was an aspiring artist: an artist, that is, till his would-be girlfriend was stolen by Diego Rivera, and his dreams snuffed out by his hypochondriac mother. Now our hero is resident in a retirement home, where fending off boredom is far more gruelling than making tacos. Plagued by the literary salon that bumps about his building’s lobby and haunted by the self-pitying ghost of a neglected artist, Villalobos’s old man can’t help but misbehave.

He antagonises his neighbours, tortures American missionaries with passages from Adorno, flirts with the revolutionary greengrocer, and in short does everything that can be done to fend off the boredom of retirement and old age . . . while still holding a beer.

A delicious take-down of pretensions to cultural posterity, I’ll Sell You a Dog is a comic novel whose absurd inventions, scurrilous antics and oddball characters are vintage Villalobos.

Vanessa Hua, Shanthi Sekaran + Ali Eteraz
2017-02-26 13:00 - 15:00 | Oakland Public Library, 125 14th Street, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Join three local authors as they read from their latest work and discuss issues of immigration and identity.
Ali Eteraz is the author of the memoir Children of Dust and the recent novel Native Believer, which was a New York Times Editors Choice selection. His work has appeared in the New York Times, NPR and the Guardian.
Vanessa Hua is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and author of Deceit and Other Possibilities. She received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the San Francisco Foundation’s James D. Phelan Award, and a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, The Atlantic, FRONTLINE/World, Washington Post, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere.
Shanthi Sekaran’s newest novel is Lucky Boy, an Indie Next Pick for January. She teaches creative writing at California College of the Arts, and her work has appeared in Best New American Voices and Canteen, and online at Zyzzyva and Mutha Magazine.
Books will be available for purchase from Laurel Book Store.

Bawdy's 'Best of Bawdy' 10 Year Anniversary Show
2017-02-25 22:00 - 23:55 | Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Bawdy Storytelling – the Original Sex + Storytelling series – celebrates TEN YEARS in San Francisco – Yes, a Decade of Sex and Storytelling! We feature Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits Live Onstage; think of us as an award-winning One Night Stand with the Moth & Savage Love. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of Authors, Porn Stars, Sex Educators, Comics & More, along with Regular Joes just like you who submitted their true stories online and were chosen for their panache and sense of (Mis)Adventure.
Bawdy Storytelling features tales of Carnal Wins & Epic Fails with No Scripts, No Nets, and No Holds Barred. These folks aren’t reading from cue cards: this is honest-to-badness story time with true sexcapades and poignant, transformational tales at each and every show. Join Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour & sex-positive Locals as they share their own stories of Love, Lust, and making you feel funny in your bathing suit area. Hey, you may even go home with a few new tricks for your boudoir arsenal!
* Line-up subject to change
* No refunds or exchanges
* General Admission seating is limited. Doors open at 9:30 PM; we recommend you arrive early for good seating. Stories start at 10:00 PM

Embodying Spaces: LIMINAL's 2nd Annual Soiree
2017-02-25 19:00 - 22:00 | LIMINAL, 3037 38th Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94619, United States
This event is a fundraiser and celebration of the closing of our second year and the opening of a third as a community writing space that centers women. Featured performers and writers are Oakland Poet Laureate Alison Luterman, spoken word artist Audacious, experimental poet and Kelsey Street Member Mg Roberts and the author of New York Times best selling children’s novels Rad Women Worldwide and Rad Women A-Z, Kate Schatz.
Get your tickets now as seating is limited!
This space does not have an ADA complient rest room but is accessible to people in wheel chairs. It is located at street level, no stairs. We are working on figuring out a solution for this event, such as the use of a nearby complient bathroom. This is not a scent-free or animal free space. Cats live here.
If you are interested in SOCIAL HOUR tickets, these can only be purchased through our indiegogo campaign. Go to indiegogo dot com and search “liminal.” The SOCIAL HOUR is an exlusive networking opportunity with performers from the show.

Bawdy's 'Decadent' 10 Year Anniversary Show
2017-02-25 19:00 - 21:00 | Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Our theme: ‘Decadent!’
Bawdy Storytelling – the Original Sex + Storytelling series – celebrates TEN YEARS – a decade of Sex and Storytelling – in San Francisco! We feature Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits Live Onstage; think of us as an award-winning One Night Stand with the Moth & Savage Love. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of Authors, Porn Stars, Sex Educators, Comics & More, along with Regular Joes just like you who submitted their true stories online and were chosen for their panache and sense of (Mis)Adventure.
Bawdy Storytelling features tales of Carnal Wins & Epic Fails with No Scripts, No Nets, and No Holds Barred. These folks aren’t reading from cue cards: this is honest-to-badness story time with true sexcapades and poignant, transformational tales at each and every show. Join Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour & sex-positive Locals as they share their own stories of Love, Lust, and making you feel funny in your bathing suit area.
Hey, you may even go home with a few new tricks for your boudoir arsenal!
* Line-up subject to change
* No refunds or exchanges
* General Admission seating is limited. Doors open at 6:30 PM; we recommend you arrive by 7:00 for good seating

Deborah Crombie
2017-02-25 19:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In Garden of Lamentations, Scotland Yard detectives Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James are drawn into separate investigations that hold disturbing and deadly complications for their own lives in this powerful mystery in the bestselling series.
On a beautiful morning in mid-May, the body of a young woman is found in one of Notting Hill’s private gardens. To passersby, the pretty girl in the white dress looks as if she’s sleeping. But Reagan Keating has been murdered, and the lead detective, DI Kerry Boatman, turns to Gemma James for help. She and Gemma worked together on a previous investigation, and Gemma has a personal connection to the case: Reagan was the nanny of a child who attends the same dance studio as Toby, Gemma and Kincaid’s son.
Gemma soon discovers that Reagan’s death is the second tragedy in this exclusive London park; a few months before, a young boy died in a tragic accident. But when still another of the garden residents meets a violent end, it becomes clear that there are more sinister forces at play. Boatman and Gemma must stop the killer before another innocent life is taken.
While his wife is consumed with her new case, Kincaid finds himself plagued by disturbing questions about several previous and seemingly unrelated cases involving members of the force. If his suspicions are correct and the crimes are linked, are his family and friends in mortal danger as well? Kincaid’s hunch turns to certainty when a Metropolitan Police officer close to him is brutally attacked. There’s a traitor in the ranks, and now Kincaid wonders if he can trust anyone.
As Gemma begins to see a solution to her case, she realizes she holds a child’s fate in her hands. Can she do the right thing? And can Kincaid rely on his friends, both inside and outside the Scotland Yard force, to stand beside him as he faces the deadliest challenge of his career?
Deborah Crombie’s fifth novel, Dreaming of the Bones, was a New York Times Notable Book in 1997, was named by the Independent Mystery Booksellers as one of the 100 Best Crime Novels of the Century, was an Edgar nominee for Best Novel, and won the Macavity award for Best Novel. Subsequent novels have been published to critical acclaim and in a dozen languages.

Alex George
2017-02-25 16:00 - 18:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
From the author of the “lyrical and compelling” (USA Today) novel A Good American comes Setting Free the Kites, the powerful story of the unintended consequences that friendship, hope, and obsession impose on two families in crisis.
Haverford, Maine, is a town that’s easily overlooked. So is Robert Carter, an eighth-grader in 1976 who’s a ready target for the class bully. That is, until the first day of school and a new kid appears: Nathan Tilly. Nathan is fearless, impetuous, and obsessed with kites and flying. As Robert and Nathan become friends, they’re drawn into each other’s families, where they witness unexpected tragedy and learn that all families can harbor secrets. When summer arrives, both boys work at the local amusement park owned by Robert’s family, and it’s there that Robert and Nathan begin to learn some harsh truths about family, desire and revenge. Honest and heartfelt, with echoes of novels by Wally Lamb and John Irving, Setting Free the Kites is both a poignant coming-of-age story and a moving family drama that explores the terrible costs of misplaced hope.
Alex George is an Englishman who lives, works, and writes in the middle of America. He studied law at Oxford University and worked for eight years as a corporate lawyer in London and Paris before moving to the United States. He lives in Missouri with his family.

Mariana Ruybalid
2017-02-25 14:00 - 15:30 | Claremont Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Mariana Ruybalid reads her poems, followed by an interview and discussion at Claremont Branch as part of our guest poet series, Clearly Meant.
Mariana Ruybalid has published two novels, A Pattern of Silent Tears and Coyote Healer, Coyote Curandero, as well as a book of poems, Daring to Write. Her first novel, A Pattern of Silent Tears, is based on the years Ruybalid spent in Costa Rica working as a psychologist with disabled women and children. She has two bachelors and three master’s degrees. “I’ve never let cerebral palsy stop me from doing much,” Mariana Ruybalid says. She has lived in Berkeley since 1976. All of her books are owned by the Berkeley Public Library. Be sure to check them out.

Sigrid Carter
2017-02-25 13:00 - 15:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Sigrid Carter’s life story, contained in Amazing Women: 4 German Girls, 25,000+ of Miles, 18 Months 0 Money, is worthy of becoming a movie. This was true before she even turned thirty. As an adventurous girl in her twenties, she and two girlfriends from Germany hitchhiked from Colorado to the Pacific coast of Mexico, where the trio took a canoe into the ocean, got lost, and found themselves surrounded by sharks just as bad weather set in. Somehow, they survived. The tide carried them to the shores of Peru, where they spent time living with Indians in the Amazon and working for biologists researching the rainforests, one of whom later became Carter’s husband.
A Peruvian filmmaker did, in fact, turn the ordeal into a television movie, but Carter professes not to know the title or release date. She has no time for such things—she’s too busy continuing to live a life most of us can only imagine.
It was her adventurous spirit that led Carter to set up her agency, Envoyé Travel, in 1971 in Lubbock, Texas, where her husband has established himself as an associate dean at Texas Tech University. Lest you think married life and operating a thirty-six-year-old business has tamed her, Carter kayaks every morning, and a few days after we spoke, she was on her way to a polar bear expedition in Churchill, Canada.
“Whatever you do in life is a big commitment, so it needs to be fun,” says Carter, who’s been to all seven continents. “I love this business. There is nothing more fun in life than talking about destinations.”
And Carter has a lot of stories to tell—so much so that she landed the cover of Travel Agent in 1992 and in 1995 self-published a book, Travel Like a Millionaire Without Being One, which is being updated for a second printing.
Her zest for life is infectious. She personally runs select small group trips, leading people on a pilgrimage to Santiago, Spain, and taking others to the Arctic Circle to stay with Eskimos. Many of the local operators she uses have been discovered – and vetted – through her own travels.
“Wherever I go, I make friends,” Carter says, who also works with such suppliers as Abercrombie & Kent, Butterfield & Robinson, and Clipper Adventures. “I went to India, and my goal was to experience yoga with the best teacher there. I checked the prices, and it was $850 a night! I thought, ‘I’m not going to spend that kind of money.'”
She left for India and, on the way, met a yoga teacher who invited her to dinner. “It turned out that the family is the number-one yoga family in India—even the Clintons have studied with them,” Carter shares. “They live very, very basic, but the simplicity of their lifestyle.

Daniel Handler
2017-02-24 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Daniel Handler discusses Three Masquerades, a collection of novellas by Rachel Ingalls. Daniel Handler assembled this collection for Pharos Editions, a press that is dedicated to bringing to light out-of-print, lost or rare books of distinction.

Praise for Rachel Ingalls

So deft and austere in its prose, so drolly casual in its fantasy… – John Updike

Shortly after beginning each of the novellas in this remarkable collection, I was seized with a haunting conviction that I was reading works I would not easily forget. – Joseph Heller

Rachel Ingalls ‘ elegantly written tales mix reality and fantasy in surprising ways, casting a dark light on the conventions of our lives, our ideas about marriage, youth and age… she deserves to be as well-known in America as she is in England.” —Alison Laurie

About Three Masquerades
“I See a Long Journey” and “On Ice,” novellas that Mr. Handler considers basically perfect, originally appeared with a third, “Blessed Art Though,” a story that he considers to be in an entirely different tone. He felt that “Friends in the Country” from Ms. Ingalls later collection, “The End of a Tragedy,” was a more natural companion to the two earlier works. The author happily agreed.

“I See a Long Journey” introduces us to Flora who is induced by her husband, James, to take a vacation only because his chauffeur Michael, custodian of their persons and their purse, will accompany them. Things, as they so often do in Ingalls world, will go appalling awry. “Friends in the Country” wherein a young couple drive outside of London for a Friday dinner and find themselves trapped for the weekend in a manner that surpasses Stephen King, if not in outright horror then certainly in subtlety and suggestiveness. “On Ice” finds Beverley with her fiance at an elegant hotel where she is introduced to a grande dame whose funeral Beverley’s convinced she had witnessed 10 years before.

Tim Dorsey
2017-02-24 19:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
A (Serge A.) Storm is brewing for a cabal of bad guys gaming the Florida state lottery in Clownfish Blues, an insanely funny novel from the maestro of mayhem, Tim Dorsey.
If you’re loud and proud Floridian Serge A. Storms, how do you follow up your very own remake of Easy Rider? You shoot your own “episodes” of your favorite classic television show, Route 66!
With Coleman riding shotgun, Serge is rolling down the highway of his dreams in a vintage silver convertible Corvette just like the snazzy car Martin Milner drove. It doesn’t matter that the actual Route 66 didn’t pass through Florida, for Serge discovers that a dozen episodes near the series’ end were filmed (really!) in his beloved home state. So for Serge and the always toked and stoked Coleman, the Sunshine State is all the road you need to get your kicks.
But their adventure traveling the byways of the Sunshine State’s underbelly is about to take a detour. Someone is trying to tilt the odds in the state lottery amidst a conga line of huge jackpots spinning off more chaos than any hurricane season. With this much at stake, of course every shady character wants in. Crooked bodega owners, drug cartels laundering money through the lottery, and venture capitalists are all trying to game the system—and lining up to get their cut. They’re also gambling with their lives, because when Serge and Coleman get hip to this timely (and very lucrative) trip, there’s no telling whose number is up next.
Throw in Brooke Campanella, Serge’s old flame, as well as the perpetually star-crossed Reevis, and it’s a sure bet that the ever lucky Serge will hit it big. Winning has never been this deadly—or this much fun!
Tim Dorsey was a reporter and editor for the Tampa Tribune from 1987 to 1999, and is the author of nineteen novels: Coconut Cowboy, Shark Skin Suite, Tiger Shrimp Tango, The Riptide Ultra-Glide, When Elves Attack, Pineapple Grenade, Electric Barracuda, Gator A-Go-Go, Nuclear Jellyfish, Atomic Lobster, Hurricane Punch, The Big Bamboo, Torpedo Juice, Cadillac Beach, The Stingray Shuffle, Triggerfish Twist, Orange Crush, Hammerhead Ranch Motel, and Florida Roadkill. He lives in Tampa, Florida.

Bryan Stevenson
2017-02-24 12:00 - 14:00 | Hammer Theater Center, 101 Paseo De San Antonio Walk, San Jose, CA, 95113, United States
In conjunction with the SJSU Campus Reading Committee, the CLA presents Bryan Stevenson discussing the #1 New York Times bestseller Just Mercy, a powerful true story about the potential for mercy to redeem us, and a clarion call to fix our broken system of justice–from one of the most brilliant and influential lawyers of our time. Mr. Stevenson’s work fighting poverty and challenging racial discrimination in the criminal justice system has won him numerous awards including the ABA Wisdom Award for Public Service, a MacArthur Fellowship, the Olaf Palme International Prize, the ACLU National Medal Of Liberty, the National Public Interest Lawyer of the Year Award, the Gruber Prize for International Justice, and the Ford Foundation Visionaries Award. In 2015, he was named to TIME‘s 100 Most Influential People list. Recently, he was named in Fortune’s 2016 World’s Greatest Leaders list. He is a graduate of the Harvard Law School and the Harvard School of Government, has been awarded 26 honorary doctorate degrees and is also a Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law.
Co-sponsored by NAACP.

Calder G. Lorenz
2017-02-23 19:30 - 21:00 | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
The Booksmith is excited to host Calder G. Lorenz for the launch of his debut novel, One Way Down (Or Another), just out from Civil Coping Mechanisms. Calder will be in conversation withMicah Ballard – please join us!
Hell, if I stay in San Francisco, I’ll end up worse than dead, I’ll end up working just so that I can afford to be broke. I’ll end up like the men who stood in line to build the Golden Gate Bridge, only to fall from the heavens, replaced by the next man in line, just another asshole caught in a net, suspended there, broken back and all, dangling, hung out halfway to hell.
The voice above belongs to a young man who will cross every barrier he’d promised himself was un-crossable. He will have fistfights, soul fights. He will relapse. He will try to go home. He will try his best to ruin his life and the question is this: will he succeed?

Tom Zaniello
2017-02-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Palo Alto, 74 Town & Country Village, Palo Alto, CA, 94301, United States
Film and cultural studies professor Tom Zaniello discussses California’s Lamson Murder Mystery: The Depression Era Case That Divided Santa Clara County. On Memorial Day 1933, Stanford executive David Lamson found his wife, Allene, dead in their Palo Alto home. The only suspect, he became the face of California’s most sensational murder trial of the century. After a judge sentenced him to hang at San Quentin, a team of Stanford colleagues stepped in to form the Lamson Defense Committee. The group included poets Yvor Winters and Janet Lewis, as well as the Sherlock Holmes of Berkeley, criminologist E.O. Heinrich. They managed to overturn the verdict and incite a series of heated retrials that gripped and divided the community. Was Lamson the victim of aggressive prosecutors, or was he a master of deception whose connections helped him get away with murder? Author and Stanford alum Tom Zaniello meticulously examines the details of a notorious case with a lingering legacy

Meg Elison
2017-02-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
About The Book of Etta
In the gripping sequel to the Philip K. Dick Award-winning novel The Book of the Unnamed Midwife, one woman undertakes a desperate journey to rescue the future.
Etta comes from Nowhere, a village of survivors of the great plague that wiped away the world that was. In the world that is, women are scarce and childbearing is dangerous yet desperately necessary for humankind’s future. Mothers and midwives are sacred, but Etta has a different calling. As a scavenger. Loyal to the village but living on her own terms, Etta roams the desolate territory beyond: salvaging useful relics of the ruined past and braving the threat of brutal slave traders, who are seeking women and girls to sell and subjugate.
When slavers seize those she loves, Etta vows to release and avenge them. But her mission will lead her to the stronghold of the Lion a tyrant who dominates the innocent with terror and violence. There, with no allies and few weapons besides her wits and will, she will risk both body and spirit not only to save lives but also to liberate a new world’s destiny.
About the Author
Meg Elison is the author of THE BOOK OF THE UNNAMED MIDWIFE, a post-apocalyptic feminist speculative novel, Tiptree recommendation, and winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. Her sequel, THE BOOK OF ETTA, will be published in early 2017. She has also been published in McSweeney’s, The Establishment, The Mary Sue, Tor.com, Compelling Science Fiction, Motherboard, and many other places. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. Find her online, where she writes like she’s running out of time.

Daphne Merkin
2017-02-23 19:30 - 21:00 | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Daphne Merkin reads from This Close to Happy: A Reckoning with Depression.

“Belongs on the shelf with William Styron’s Darkness, Visible and Andrew Solomon’sThe Noonday Demon. It brings a stunningly perceptive voice to the forefront of the conversation about depression, one that is both reassuring and revelatory.”–Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice
“D. W. Winnicott wrote that depression is the fog over the battlefield. In this extraordinarily lucid and moving book, Daphne Merkin illuminates the dark and desperate battle that depression can be. This is a book for all those who know nothing about depression and for those who know too much. “–Adam Phillips

A gifted and audacious writer confronts her lifelong battle with depression and her search for release. This Close to Happy is the rare, vividly personal account of what it feels like to suffer from clinical depression, written from a woman’s perspective and informed by an acute understanding of the implications of this disease over a lifetime. Taking off from essays on depression she has written for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine, Merkin casts her eye back to her beginnings to try to sort out the root causes of her affliction. She recounts the travails of growing up in a large, affluent family where there was a paucity of love and of basics such as food and clothing despite the presence of a chauffeur and a cook. She goes on to recount her early hospitalization for depression in poignant detail, as well as her complex relationship with her mercurial, withholding mother. Along the way Merkin also discusses her early, redemptive love of reading and gradual emergence as a writer. She eventually marries, has a child, and suffers severe postpartum depression, for which she is again hospitalized. Merkin also discusses her visits to various therapists and psychopharmocologists, which enables her to probe the causes of depression and its various treatments. The book ends in the present, where the writer has learned how to navigate her depression, if not “cure” it, after a third hospitalization in the wake of her mother’s death.

Daphne Merkin, a former staff writer for The New Yorker, is a regular contributor to Elle. Her writing frequently appears in The New York Times, Bookforum, Departures, Travel + Leisure, W, Vogue, Tablet, and other publications. Merkin has taught writing at the 92nd Street Y, Marymount, and Hunter College. Her previous books include Enchantment, a novel, which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme, and two essay collections, Dreaming of Hitler and The Fame Lunches; the latter was one of The New York Times Book Review s Hundred Notable Books of the Year. She lives in New York City.

Hank Lazer + Andrew Maxwell
2017-02-23 19:00 - 21:00 | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
Poets Hank Lazer and Andrew Maxwell present recent work, then engage in conversation with one another and their audience. This event is free and open to the public.
Hank Lazer has published twenty-four books of poetry, including Poems Hidden in Plain View (2016, in English and in French), Brush Mind: At Hand (2016), N24 (2014) and N18 (2012), Portions (2009), The New Spirit (2005), Elegies & Vacations (2004), and Days (2002). Selected Poems and Essays of Hank Lazer, completed by a group of translators, was published by Central China Normal University Press in 2015. Lazer’s Selected Poems have also been published in Italy and will be appearing shortly in Cuba (including 11 tracks for jazz-poetry improvisations with soprano saxophonist Andrew Raffo Dewar). Readings and interviews can be accessed through PennSound, as well as in special issues of Plume #34 and Talisman #42. In 2015, Lazer was selected to receive Alabama’s most prestigious literary prize, the Harper Lee Award, for lifetime achievement in literature. His books of criticism include Opposing Poetries (two volumes, 1996) and Lyric & Spirit: Selected Essays 1996-2008 (2008). With Charles Bernstein, he edits the Modern and Contemporary Poetics Series for the University of Alabama Press. Lazer retired from the University of Alabama in January 2014 from his positions as Associate Provost for Academic Affairs, Executive Director of Creative Campus, and Professor of English.
Andrew Maxwell‘s recent collections include Candor is the Brightest Shield (Ugly Duckling, 2015), Peeping Mot (Apogee, 2013) and the ongoing Beggars of Life, a collaboration with artist Nathan Gelgud. Increasingly interested in short-form literature, much of Maxwell’s current work is epigrammatic in nature. A selection of his aphorisms is currently on display as an LED scroll in the installation THIS KNOWN WORLD at MOCA Los Angeles, and Conversion Table, a collection of small remarks without propositional attitudes, was issued in September on Mindmade Books. He runs the Poetic Research Bureau with Joseph Mosconi in Los Angeles, where he also hosts a weekly radio show of international roots music on KXLU 88.9FM, “The Dream of Harry Lime.”

Literary Speakeasy: A Toast to Sylvia Plath
2017-02-23 19:00 - 20:30 | Martuni’s, 4 Valencia St, San Francisco , CA, 94103, United States
This month Literary Speakeasy pays tribute to one of the greatest poets of the 20th Century –Sylvia Plath. Please join us as we raise a glass and celebrate the words of this iconic poet. Five Bay Area powerhouses will be on hand to read the poems of Sylvia Plath as well as their own original work. Our poets for the evening include Annah Anti-Palindrome, Christian Gullette, Robert Andrew Perez, July Westhale, and Maw Shein Win. Your host and curator each month is James J. Siegel
As always, Literary Speakeasy is absolutely FREE with NO drink minimum. Also, everyone in attendance will get a FREE raffle ticket for their chance to win the secret Speakeasy prize at the conclusion of the show. Please come out and celebrate Sylvia Plath with an evening of beautiful words and fantastic martinis!
Annah Anti-Palindrome is a queer/working-class/hard- femme/JewWitch sound-artist & writer currently living in the SF bay area. She is a Lambda Literary Fellow, a staff writer for Everyday Feminism, and a member of Oakland’s Deviant Type Press collective. Annah’s first book, DNA Hymn, is a collection of poems about rural, working-class, queer-femme survivor identity. Annah’s poems are performed through live, musical soundscapes made w/ a loop pedal, kitchen utensils, gas-masks, raw eggs, blood pressure cuffs, found objects, her body (mostly my throat), and more! For more info about her, see www.annahantipalindrome. com.
Christian Gullette’s poems and translations have appeared or are forthcoming in journals such as New England Review, Smartish Pace, Meridian, Colorado Review, and Cimarron Review. He was recently a finalist for the Iowa Review Poetry Prize. Currently Christian is a doctoral candidate in Swedish literature and language at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a poetry editor for the Cortland Review.
Robert Andrew Perez lives in Berkeley and is an associate editor and book designer for speCt! in Oakland, where he also curates readings. He is an alum of the Lambda Literary fellowship and a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for poetry. His poetry has appeared in print and online in publications such as DIAGRAM, The Awl, The Laurel Review, Vinyl and The Cortland Review. His First collection, the field, was published with Omnidawn. He is currently writing a movie about a divorce and wine tasting; it’s a comedy.
July Westhale is a poet and essayist living in Oakland, CA. She is the author of the chapbook The Cavalcade, (Finishing Line Press), and the children’s book, Occasionally Accurate Science (Nomadic Press, 2017). She has poems in Cimarron, burntdistrict, and Quarterly West, among others. Her essays have appeared in the Huffington Post, Autostraddle, The Establistment, and have been nominated for Best American Essays. She has been awarded grants and residencies from the Vermont Studio Center, Sewanee, Dickinson House, Tin House and Bread Loaf. www.julywesthale.com.
Maw Shein Win is a poet, editor, and educator who lives and works in the Bay Area. Her writing has appeared in various journals, including Cimarron Review, Fanzine, Eleven Eleven, the Fabulist, and the anthology Cross-Strokes: Poetry Between Los Angeles and San Francisco (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions). She is a poetry editor for Rivet: The Journal of Writing that Risks and a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. Her most recent poetry chapbook Score and Bone (Nomadic Press) was nominated for a CLMP Firecracker Award. She is the first poet laureate of El Cerrito. http://www.el-cerrito.org/poets
James J. Siegel is the author of the poetry collection “How Ghosts Travel” published year by Spuyten Duyvil Press. He is also the host and curator of Literary Speakeasy at Martuni’s Piano Bar in San Francisco, which brings together poets, writers, and musicians for a night of performance and martinis. His work has appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Assaracus, The Cortland Review, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and Divining Divas: 100 Gay Men On Their Muses.

Rachel Aspen
2017-02-23 19:00 - 20:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of her new book
Generation Revolution: On the Front Line
Between Tradition and Change in the Middle East
from Other Press
In 2011 during the Arab Spring, the government of Egypt transformed
from a dictatorship to a democratic presidency. The chaos that
resulted during this time erupted from a decade of social and
political unrest among the Egyptian people. GENERATION REVOLUTION is
the story of the millennial generation in Egypt during the Arab
Spring, from the perspective of several different young men and women
whose different views explore the way Egypt has been shaped before,
during, and after the 2011 end of Hosni Mubarak’s presidency.
Aspden spent years in Egypt during the beginning of unrest in 2003 and
moved back again during the years following post-revolution in 2011.
Aspden offers a window into the world of the Middle East during the
Arab Spring, before, during, and after Egypt’s chaotic overthrow of
their President Mubarak and his successor, the democratically elected
Muslim Brotherhood President Mohamed Morsi.
Through Aspden’s curious and unbiased gaze, readers hear the Egyptian
voices of Amr, an atheist university-educated software engineer, Amal,
a fiercely independent young woman who lives on her own in Cairo which
is practically unheard of, Ayman, a devout Muslim teenager who chooses
to follow ultraconservative Salafi Islam to the surprise of his
middle-class parents, and Mazen, a fan of TV preacher Amr Khaled who
finds himself on the front lines during the revolution. With these
perspectives along with others’, readers learn that from atheists to
ultra-religious, from conservative young men to liberal young women,
the growing generation of Egypt is vastly different, struggling to
find a place for various voices during chaotic government upheaval.
Aspden writes from the front lines of this new generation, sharing
their stories and harbouring their own doubts, resentments, and hope
for what is to come.
Rachel Aspden became literary editor of the New Statesman in 2006, at
the age of 26. She now works at the Guardian, and also writes on a
freelance basis for the New Statesman, Observer, Prospect and Think
magazine (Qatar). She lived in Cairo in 2003-4 and worked as an editor
and reporter on the English-language Cairo Times. Since then, from her
UK base, she has travelled to and reported from across the region and
the wider Muslim world: Yemen, the UAE, Turkey, Lebanon, Syria,
Jordan, the Palestinian territories, Egypt, Morocco, Sudan, Pakistan
and north India. In 2010, she was awarded a year-long travelling
fellowship by the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust to research
activists working to fight extremism within Islam.Following the Arab
spring uprisings in 2011, she moved back to Egypt to research this book.
She is currently based in London and reports for the Guardian.
