Ridin', Ropin', & Writin' Western Novels: Readings & Discussion
2019-03-11 19:00 - 20:00 UTC | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
The long history of writing novels about the West ranges from Zane Grey to Louis L’Amour to Bill Vlach, David Watts, and Bill Yenne–the three authors reading at “Ridin’, Ropin’, and Writin’ Western Novels,” the Odd Mondays for March 11, 7pm at Folio Books San Francisco, 3957 24th St. in Noe Valley. Join them afterward for a discussion of the place of Western novels in American literature and history. Free admission and free refreshments. A book signing follows the discussion.
This event is part of Word Week 2019, Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For information on all 9 events March 8 to March 16, 2019, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
Read more about the authors:
Bill Vlach’s poetry is published in the United States and the UK. Both his playwriting and parody have won writing awards. His debut novel, The Golden Chalice of Hunaphú: A Novel of the Spanish Attack on the Maya, was named the 2015 best novel by BAIPA. The Gospel According to Father Coffee, Vlach’s second novel, is composed of comic tales informed by global trickster stories. His Western satiric saga, The Guns of Revenge, was on Amazon’s best-selling classic Westerns list for over three months. He is excited that his Western short stories, Ambush of the Vigilante, have recently been published. The Golden Chalice of Hunahpu: The Spanish Attack on the Maya
David Watts is a doctor, professionally trained musician, inventor, radio and television personality, and an accomplished writer. His literary credits include seven books of poetry, two collections of short stories, two mystery novels, five western novels, and several essays. He has received awards in academics, medical excellence, television production, and for his writing. David is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the University of California at San Francisco and Professor of Poetry at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco.
Bill Yenne is the award-winning author of several dozen nonfiction books and 10 novels, including the Bladen Cole Western series. A Noe Valley resident for four decades, he grew up in the mountains of western Montana, where he spent a great deal of time on horseback in the rugged backcountry. His nonfiction works include a critically acclaimed biography of Sitting Bull and a recent one about the siblings of George Armstrong Custer. He has appeared in numerous documentaries airing on the likes of the History Channel and National Geographic Channel. Bill Yenne, Author

Luis Alberto Urrea / The House of Broken Angels
2019-03-11 19:30 - 21:30 | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith hosts Luis Alberto Urrea in celebration of the paperback release of his widely acclaimed novel The House of Broken Angels. Please join us!

“All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death.”

In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel’s half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life.

Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home.

Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank.

A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his landmark work of nonficiton The Devil’s Highway, Luis Alberto Urrea is also the bestselling author of the novels The Hummingbird’s Daughter, Into the Beautiful North, and Queen of America, as well as the story collection The Water Museum, a PEN/Faulkner Award finalist. He has won the Lannan Literary Award, an Edgar Award, and a 2017 American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, among many other honors. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, he lives outside of Chicago and teaches at the University of Illinois-Chicago.

This is a free, all-ages event.
RSVP is appreciated, but not required.

Tangled Paths: True Stories from Latin America
2019-03-12 18:30 - 20:00 | Noe Valley Library, 451 Jersey Street, San Francisco, 94114
Join us for an evening with local nonfiction authors Mary Jo McConahay and Chris Feliciano Arnold, spanning World War II to the modern Amazon basin, Tuesday, March 12 in the ground floor meeting room of the Noe Valley/Sally Brunn Library, 451 Jersey St., between Castro and Diamond Streets. Moderated by Brandon Brown. Free admission and free wine reception at 6:30pm. The readings and discussion begin at 7pm.
This is a Word Week 2019 event. Word Week is Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For a full listing of Word Week 2019 events, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
CHRIS FELICIANO ARNOLD has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Harper’s, Foreign Policy, Vice News and more. The recipient of a 2014 creative writing fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, he teaches writing in the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. Chris Arnold
MARY JO MCCONAHAY is an award-winning reporter and documentary filmmaker who covered the wars in Central America and economics in the Middle East. Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Salon.com, and other outlets. Her previous books include Maya Roads and Ricochet.
BRANDON BROWN is Professor of Physics and department chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department at the University of San Francisco. He is the author of Planck: Driven by Vision, Broken by War and the forthcoming The Apollo Chronicles: Engineering America’s First Moon Mission. Brandon R. Brown’s author page

Happy Endings: Bad Advice and Lucky Breaks
2019-03-12 19:00 - 20:30 | Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
HAPPY ENDINGS is a monthly reading series that showcases new writing and offers a little sunshine for your soul.
What’s gonna happen? Five writers will come with a piece they’ve prepared in response to a single prompt. (“Happy Endings” is a loooose directive for each writer to do with what they will.) A panel of judges will be selected from the audience, and the panel will pick a winner!
$10/Pay what you can
This month’s prompt: Bad Advice and Lucky Breaks
This month’s participating writers: TBDs, and February’s winner

Nina Revoyr
2019-03-12 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
reading from her latest novel
A Student of History
from Akashic Books
A contemporary Los Angeles story of uncrossable social lines, allegiance and betrayal, immeasurable power, and the ways the present is continuously shaped by the past.
Rick Nagano is a graduate student in the history department at USC, struggling to make rent on his South Los Angeles apartment near the neighborhood where his family once lived. When he lands a job as a research assistant for the elderly Mrs. W—, the heir to an oil fortune, he sees it at first simply as a source of extra cash. But he grows closer to the iconoclastic, charming, and feisty Mrs. W—, he gets drawn into a world of privilege and wealth far different from his racially mixed, blue-collar beginnings.
Putting aside his half-finished dissertation, Rick sets up office in Mrs. W—’s grand Bel Air mansion and begins to transcribe her journals—which document an old Los Angeles not described in his history books. He also accompanies Mrs. W— to venues frequented by the descendants of the land and oil barons who built the city. One evening, at an event, he meets Fiona Morgan—the elegant scion of an old steel family—who takes an interest in his studies. Irresistibly drawn to Fiona, he agrees to help her with a project of questionable merit in the hopes he’ll win her favor.
A Student of History explores both the beginnings of Los Angeles and the present-day dynamics of race and class. It offers a window into the usually hidden world of high society, and the influence of historic families on current events. Like Great Expectations and The Great Gatsby, it features, in Rick Nagano, a young man of modest means who is navigating a world where he doesn’t belong.
NINA REVOYR is the author of five previous novels, including The Age of Dreaming, which was nominated for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Southland, a Los Angeles Times best seller and “Best Book” of 2003; and Wingshooters, which won an Indie Booksellers’ Choice Award and was selected by O, The Oprah Magazineas one of “10 Titles to Pick Up Now.” Revoyr lives and works in Los Angeles.

Mitchell S. Jackson / Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family
2019-03-12 19:30 - 21:30 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Mitchell S. Jackson for his new book Survival Math: Notes on an All-American Family. Please join us!

In a thrillingly alive, candid new work, award-winning author Mitchell S. Jackson takes us inside the drug-ravaged neighborhood and struggling family of his youth, while examining the cultural forces—large and small—that led him and his family to this place.
With a poet’s gifted ear, a novelist’s sense of narrative, and a journalist’s unsentimental eye, Mitchell S. Jackson candidly explores his tumultuous youth in the other America. Survival Math takes its name from the calculations Mitchell and his family made to keep safe—to stay alive—in their community, a small black neighborhood in Portland, Oregon blighted by drugs, violence, poverty, and governmental neglect.
Survival Math is both a personal reckoning and a vital addition to the national conversation about race. Mitchell explores the Portland of his childhood, tracing the ways in which his family managed their lives in and around drugs, prostitution, gangs, and imprisonment as members of a tiny black population in one of the country’s whitest cities. He discusses sex work and serial killers, gangs and guns, near-death experiences, composite fathers, the concept of “hustle,” and the destructive power of drugs and addiction on family.
In examining the conflicts within his family and community, Jackson presents a microcosm of struggle and survival in contemporary urban America—an exploration of the forces that shaped his life, his city, and the lives of so many black men like him. As Jackson charts his own path from drug dealer to published novelist, he gives us a heartbreaking, fascinating, lovingly rendered view of the injustices and victories, large and small, that defined his youth.

Mitchell S. Jackson is the author of Survival Math. His debut novel The Residue Years was praised by publications, including The New York Times, The Paris Review, and The Times(London). The novel won the Ernest Gaines Prize for Literary Excellence, and it was also a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction, and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Jackson’s honors include fellowships from the Whiting Foundation, TED, the Lannan Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Center for Fiction. His writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review, Salon, and Tin House, among other publications. He serves on the faculty at New York University and Columbia University.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event with mature themes. The bar opens at 7pm; event starts at 7:30pm.

As 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.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

Poetry Santa Cruz
2019-03-12 19:30 - 21:30 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Poetry Santa Cruz is dedicated to nurturing the poetry community and bringing poetry to the larger community in Santa Cruz County. They present poetry readings at Bookshop Santa Cruz and other locations in Santa Cruz County, and the Poet/Speak open reading. They also provide free information on other poetry-related events in the area.
This free event will take place in Bookshop Santa Cruz. Chairs for opening seating are usually set up an hour before the event begins.

H O L L O W A Y : R E A D I N G : S E R I E S presents Aditi Machado with Lindsay Choi
2019-03-13 18:30 - 20:30 | Maude Fife Room, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Aditi Machado with Lindsay Choi
READINGS ARE FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
Readings begin at 6:30pm unless otherwise noted. 2018-2019 Holloway events will be held in the MAUDE FIFE ROOM (315 Wheeler Hall)
For updates and event announcements, join the Holloway Facebook group

Small Publishers Night book exhibition & readings
2019-03-13 19:00 - 20:00 | Umpqua Bank Noe Valley, 3938 24th Street, San Francisco, 94114
The consolidation of publishing house after publishing house into five mega book businesses foretold a future where reading choices for the many would be controlled by the few. In addition, the kind of books being published changed. Small-run and medium-sized sellers fell by the wayside. But, good news! Small presses began to abound, startups and labors of love, which published what editors felt needed to be published, rather than what might make the executives and shareholders mega bucks.
At Word Week’s Small Publishers Night, we feature four of the best Bay Area small presses: Manic D Press, Nomadic Press, Two Lines Press, and Why There Are Words Press. Join us at 7pm, Wednesday, March 13, at Umpqua Bank Noe Valley, 3938 24th St., for an exhibition of books from these excellent publishers and readings by a few of their authors. Free admission and free refreshments provided by Umpqua Bank Noe Valley.
This is a Word Week 2019 event. Word Week is Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For a full listing of Word Week 2019 events, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
About the publishers and their authors:
Manic D Press
Founded in 1984, Manic D Press is a critically acclaimed, internationally distributed, award-winning independent literary press based in San Francisco. D Manic Press
Jon Longhi has published four books of hilarious fiction with Manic D, all having to do with the absurdities of life in San Francisco.
Nomadic Press
Nomadic Press collectively weaves together platforms for intentionally marginalized voices to take their rightful place within the world of the written and spoken word through publications, events, and active community participation.
James Cagney is a Cave Canem fellow and author of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory (Nomadic Press, 2018). He has authored five self-produced chapbooks.
Two Lines Press
Two Lines Press and its Two Lines journal specialize in presenting exceptional new writing and overlooked classics that have not previously been translated into English. The Center for the Art of Translation
Senior Editor Emily Wolahan works to bring great international literature, often previously untranslated, to a wider audience. She will read from their spring journal, Two Lines 30: The Future of Translation.
WTAW Press
WTAW Press is a non-profit, woman-run publisher that supports the artistic development of writers and fosters a thriving literary community with its national reading series, Why There Are Words.
Sarah Stone is the author of the novels Hungry Ghost Theater and The True Source of the Nile (Doubleday). She teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program and Stanford Continuing Studies.

Ali Liebegott with special guests: Doddie Bellamy and Kevin Killian
2019-03-13 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Ali Liebegott reads from
The Summer of Dead Birds
published by Feminist Press
joined by special guests: Doddie Bellamy and Kevin Killian
“A fierce, funny, agonized, cracked-open aria in homage to the presence and passing of fiercely loved things.” —Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
how does a person dislodge the scenes
that burn inside them like arsoned cars?
Ali Liebegott is reeling from a fresh, painful divorce. She wallows in grief and overassigns meaning to everyday circumstance, clinging to an aging Dalmatian and obsessing over dead birds. Going through the motions of teaching and walking her dog, she eventually decides to hit the road: Ali and Rorschach at the Center of the World.
This autobiographical novel-in-verse is a chronicle of mourning and survival, documenting depression and picking apart failed intimacy. But Ali Liebegott’s poetry is laced with compassion, for herself and the reader and the world, as she learns to balance the sting of death with the tender strangeness of life.
Ali Liebegott is the author of three books, and the recipient of two Lambda Literary Awards and a Ferro-Grumley Award. She currently live in Los Angeles and writes for Transparent.

Carolyn Burke, Foursome
2019-03-13 19:00 - 21:00 | Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz , CA, 95060, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz welcomes author Carolyn Burke for a discussion and signing of her new book, Foursome, a captivating, spirited account of the intense relationship among four artists whose strong personalities, passionate feelings, and aesthetic ideals drew them together, pulled them apart, and profoundly influenced the very shape of twentieth-century art. This event is cosponsored by The Humanities Institute UC Santa Cruz.
New York, 1921: Alfred Stieglitz, the most influential figure in early twentieth-century photography, celebrates the success of his latest exhibition—the centerpiece, a series of nude portraits of the young Georgia O’Keeffe, soon to be his wife. It is a turning point for O’Keeffe, poised to make her entrance into the art scene—and for Rebecca Salsbury, the fiancée of Stieglitz’s protégé at the time, Paul Strand. When Strand introduces Salsbury to Stieglitz and O’Keeffe, it is the first moment of a bond between the two couples that will last more than a decade and reverberate throughout their lives. In the years that followed, O’Keeffe and Stieglitz became the preeminent couple in American modern art, spurring each other’s creativity. Observing their relationship led Salsbury to encourage new artistic possibilities for Strand and to rethink her own potential as an artist. In fact, it was Salsbury, the least known of the four, who was the main thread that wove the two couples’ lives together. Carolyn Burke mines the correspondence of the foursome to reveal how each inspired, provoked, and unsettled the others while pursuing seminal modes of artistic innovation. The result is a surprising, illuminating portrait of four extraordinary figures.
“The lives of a quartet of some of the most influential painters and photographers of the early 20th century are chronicled in this intimate and exhaustively researched group biography. [Foursome] offers detailed insight into one of the most important periods in American art.” —Publishers Weekly
CAROLYN BURKE is the author of No Regrets: The Life of Edith Piaf, Lee Miller: A Life (finalist for the NBCC), and Becoming Modern: The Life of Mina Loy. Born in Sydney, Australia, she now lives in Santa Cruz, California.
This free event will take place at Bookshop Santa Cruz. Chairs for open seating are usually set up about an hour before the event begins. If you have any ADA accommodation requests, please email info@bookshopsantacruz.com by March 11th.

Sophia Shalmiyev with Shanthi Sekaran, Melissa Stein, and Matthew Zapruder / Mother Winter: A Memoir
2019-03-13 19:30 - 21:30 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Sophia Shalmiyev for her debut book Mother Winter: A Memoir. Joining her for readings and conversation are Shanthi Sekaran (Lucky Boy), Melissa Stein (Terrible Blooms), and Matthew Zapruder (Sun Bear). Please join us!

Russian sentences begin backward, Shalmiyev tells us on the first page of her striking, lyrical memoir. To understand the end of her story we must go back to her beginning.

Born to a Russian mother and an Azerbaijani father, Shalmiyev was raised in the stark oppressiveness of 1980s Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). An imbalance of power and the prevalence of antisemitism in her homeland led her father to steal Shalmiyev away, emigrating to America, abandoning her estranged mother, Elena. At age eleven, Shalmiyev found herself on a plane headed west, motherless and terrified of the new world unfolding before her.

Now a mother herself, in Mother Winter Shalmiyev depicts in urgent vignettes her emotional journeys as an immigrant, an artist, and a woman raised without her mother. She tells of her early days in St. Petersburg, a land unkind to women, wayward or otherwise; her tumultuous pit-stop in Italy as a refugee on her way to America; the life she built for herself in the Pacific Northwest, raising two children of her own; and ultimately, her cathartic voyage back to Russia as an adult, where she searched endlessly for the alcoholic mother she never knew. Braided into her physical journey is a metaphorical exploration of the many surrogate mothers Shalmiyev sought out in place of her own–whether in books, art, lovers, or other lost souls banded together by their misfortunes.

Mother Winter is the story of Shalmiyev’s years of travel, searching, and forging meaningful connection with the worlds she occupies–the result is a searing observation of the human heart and psyche’s many shades across time and culture. As critically acclaimed author Michelle Tea says, “with sparse, poetic language Shalmiyev builds a personal history that is fractured and raw; a brilliant, lovely ache.”

“Vividly awesome and truly great.” – Eileen Myles

“I love this gorgeous, gutting, unforgettable book.” – Leni Zumas

“A rich tapestry of autobiography and meditations on feminism, motherhood, art, and culture, this book is as intellectually satisfying as it is artistically profound. A sharply intelligent, lyrically provocative memoir.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred)

Sophia Shalmiyev emigrated from Leningrad to NYC in 1990. An MFA graduate of Portland State University, she was the nonfiction editor for The Portland Review and is a recipient of the Laurels Scholarship and numerous Kellogg’s Fellowship awards. She has a second master’s degree in creative arts therapy from The School of Visual Arts, previously counseling survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking. Her work has appeared in Vela Magazine, Entropy, Electric Lit, The Seattle Review of Books, Ravishly, and The Literary Review, among others; all with a feminist lens. She lives in Portland with her two children. Mother Winter is her first book.

Shanthi Sekaran is a writer and educator from Berkeley, California. Her recent novel, Lucky Boy, was named an IndieNext Great Read and an NPR Best Book of 2017. It won the Housatonic Book Award and was a finalist for Stanford University’s Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Her essays and stories have also appeared in The New York Times, Salon.com, and the LA Review of Books. She’s a member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, an AWP mentor, and teaches writing at Mills College.

Melissa Stein is the author of the poetry collections Terrible Blooms (Copper Canyon Press) and Rough Honey, winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize. She’s received awards and fellowships from the NEA, Pushcart Prize, Bread Loaf, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She lives in San Francisco.

Matthew Zapruder’s most recent book is Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017). His fifth collection of poetry, Father’s Day, is forthcoming from Copper Canyon in fall 2019. He is Associate Professor in the MFA at Saint Mary’s College of California, and editor at large at Wave Books.

Please note: This event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.

This is an all ages event. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm.

As with all of our events, seating is limited and may be reserved by purchasing a book in advance. To reserve a seat, order with the link below and be sure to include your request in the comments field.

If you cannot attend the event but would like to requeset a signed copy of Mother Winter, and/or any of the authors’ books, order below and put your request in the comments field.

RSVP appreciated but not required.

Chip Conley The Modern Elder and the Intergenerational Workplace
2019-03-13 19:30 - 21:30 | SFJAZZ Center, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Chip Conley is a hospitality entrepreneur, founding boutique hotel brand Joie de Vivre Hospitality at 26 and running it as CEO for 24 years. He then served as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy for 4 years, and remains involved as a strategic advisor. He is author of 5 books including his most recent, Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.

Chip Conley’s Homepage
Chip Conley’s Wikipedia page

Chip Conley is a hospitality entrepreneur, founding boutique hotel brand Joie de Vivre Hospitality at 26 and running it as CEO for 24 years. He then served as Airbnb’s Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy for 4 years, and remains involved as a strategic advisor. He is author of 5 books including his most recent, Wisdom @ Work: The Making of a Modern Elder.
Tickets will go on sale one month before the Seminar; you can follow Long Now on Twitter, Facebook and through our blog for updates on our live events, podcasts and videos on long-term thinking.

Story Time with Christian Robinson
2019-03-14 18:00 - 19:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
In Another, his eagerly anticipated debut as author-illustrator, Caldecott and Coretta Scott King honoree and store favorite Christian Robinson brings young readers on a playful, imaginative journey into another world.

A wordless picture book, Another recounts the dream journey of a little girl and her cat, a thought-provoking celebration of imagination and wonder that is wide open to interpretation and a joy to read. What if you saw yourself in a book – literally? What might happen?
What if you…
Encountered another perspective?
Discovered another world?
Met another you?
What might you do?
Christian Robinson is a 2016 Caldecott Honoree, a Newbery Medalist, and also received a Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor for his art in Last Stop on Market Street, a #1 New York Times bestseller. His picture books include the Gaston and Friends series; Carmela Full of Wishes; Leo: A Ghost Story; School’s First Day of School; The Smallest Girl in the Smallest Grade; Josephine: The Dazzling Life of Josephine Baker; and many more. Robinson is also an animator and has worked with The Sesame Street Workshop and Pixar Animation Studios.
Don’t miss this chance to meet Christian Robinson and fall in love with Another

Cara Black Takes Us to Paris! reading & talk
2019-03-14 18:30 - 20:00 | La Boulangerie de Noe, 3898 24th Street, San Francisco, 94114
Each year, Noe Valley author Cara Black takes a few lucky readers on a real tour of the Paris she writes about in her bestselling Aimee Leduc mysteries. She has set her novels in 18 of the 20 Paris arrondisements, or, en anglais, districts. Her latest book, Murder on the Left Bank, was set in the 13th Arrondisement, which, as Cara tells it, is not all Left Bank coffee houses and famous bookstores. It’s also home to Paris’ Quartier Asiatique, including the homes and businesses of many of the city’s Chinese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Lao residents. It is in this part of the 13th that Cara’s novel is situated and to which on Thursday, March 14, Cara will take us in words and photos and excerpts from her book. The 60-minute tour starts at 7pm at La Boulangerie, 3898 24th St.
Admission to the reading is free, but La Boulangerie de San Francisco is staying open late for us, so come early and buy yourself une café and a dessert before we fasten our seatbelts and we’re off to Paris!
This is Word Week 2019 event. Word Week is Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For a full listing of Word Week 2019 events, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
About the author:
Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 17 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, and Hebrew.

Voz Sin Tinta: Our monthly bilingual poetry series and open mic.
2019-03-14 18:30 - 21:00 | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Thu, March 14, 6:30pm – 9:00pm
DescriptionSponsored by Alejandro Murguia, curated by Marguerite Munoz and Rene Vaz. This month’s readers TBD.

Sally Wen Mao
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
reading and in conversation with Jennifer S. Cheng
celebrating the release of
Oculus: Poems
published by Graywolf Press
In Oculus, Sally Wen Mao explores exile not just as a matter of distance and displacement, but as a migration through time and a reckoning with technology. The title poem follows a girl in Shanghai who uploaded her suicide onto Instagram. Other poems cross into animated worlds, examine robot culture, and haunt a necropolis for electronic waste. A fascinating sequence speaks in the voice of international icon and first Chinese American movie star Anna May Wong, who travels through the history of cinema with a time machine, even past her death and into the future of film, where she finds she has no progeny. With a speculative imagination and a sharpened wit, Mao powerfully confronts the paradoxes of seeing and being seen, the intimacies made possible and ruined by the screen, and the many roles and representations that women of color are made to endure in order to survive a culture that seeks to consume them.
Sally Wen Mao is the author of a previous poetry collection, Mad Honey Symposium. She has received fellowships from the New York Public Library Cullman Center, the George Washington University, and Kundiman. Visit: http://www.sallywenmao.com/
Jennifer S. Cheng is the author of MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems, selected by Bhanu Kapil as winner of the Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize and named one of the Best Books of 2018 by Publishers Weekly; HOUSE A, selected by Claudia Rankine as winner of the Omnidawn Poetry Book Prize; and Invocation: An Essay (New Michigan Press), A U.S. Fulbright scholar, Kundiman fellow, and Bread Loaf work-study scholar, she is the recipient of the Academy of American Poets Harold Taylor Award, the Ann Fields Poetry Award, the Mid-American Review Fineline Prize, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her poetry, lyric essays, and image-text work appear in Tin House, AGNI, Conjunctions, Black Warrior Review, The Normal School, DIAGRAM, The Volta, Sonora Review, Seneca Review, Hong Kong 20/20 (a PEN HK anthology), and elsewhere.

Eleanor Burke on Walking Manhattan's Neighborhoods
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Eleanor Burke, author of A Walker’s Sketchbook of San Francisco, discusses her new book Walking Manhattan’s Neighborhoods.

About Walking Manhattan’s Neighborhoods
Walking Manhattan’s Neighborhoods is a chronicle, with sketches and commentary, by local artist Eleanor Burke, who brought us Sketching San Francisco’s Neighborhoods and Walker’s Sketchbook of San Francisco. Here is her description of the creative process behind her latest book:
“I’ve walked the streets of Manhattan (not as ambitiously as I did in SF, where I walked every step of every street…in NY I think I walked every street but not every inch of every one) with my notebook and my camera and noted what I saw. I did it over time, but the heaviest walking was in the past year and a half. Walking, especially in New York, has become popular – one fellow is walking all 5 boroughs, I think 5 or 8,000 miles in all, and will be at it for a while longer, but a movie has been made about him. No one has hounded me for movie rights, but I had a great time walking and got a lot of terrific exercise. I met lots of wonderful and generous people, never came close to getting mugged, stopped at dozens of wonderful local cafes, and explored neighborhoods I knew nothing or next to nothing about, like Inwood, Harlem, Washington Heights. These three were particularly delightful: Inwood, a chic neighborhood lined with parks and children playing in them, has single family homes amid the greenery. Harlem has become trendy over the years and not is downright lovely, and yet still with its own history. Lin-Manuel Miranda lived in Washington Heights and in Inwood, so I was drawn to those neighborhoods much as I was determined to see Hamilton, which I did three times! Manhattan is like a gift – you start exploring and you find much more than you thought you would.”

In Common Writers Series: Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, reading and in conversation with Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:00 | The Poetry Center, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94132, United States
…collectivity as a part of speech: come again.
The radio channeling an exaltation of larks: what it is
to be euphonious. In a dream I was an organ tuner knifing the pipes
to make the building run. This well tempering as the articulation
as the maladjustment of the details: …
—from “I hold it towards you,” Maryam Ivette Parhizkar
The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series features poet, musician and scholar Maryam Ivette Parhizkar, reading from her writings and in conversation with poet, performer and visual artist Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, in the first event of a two-evening program. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, this event is free and open to the public.
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar, occasional musician, and author of the chapbooks Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014) and As For the Future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), the latter originating from a talk at Naropa speculating on Clarice Lispector and Sun Ra. Her recent writings have been published by Omniverse, Social Text Online, Amerarcana/Shuffle Boil (on musician/composer Matana Roberts — check Coldfront for a prefatory note to Roberts’ Coin Coin project), The Daily Gramma, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. Born and raised in Houston, Texas by Iranian and Salvadoran immigrants, she lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her current poetics circles around diasporic myth-making, family histories, the sociopolitical entanglements that bring people together, and the relationship between spirit(s), possession, and American history and identity. More here.
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her artwork and performances of experimental texts have been reviewed by the LA Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in Not That But This, Obsidian Journal, and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics. She is the author of an artist book, Kentifrications: Convergent Truth(s) & Realities, published by Occidental College and Sming Sming Books. SIR, a relection on naming as a tool for undefining the defined, is her first book of poetry, and is newly published by Litmus Press. Hinkle is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice. Her visual art and performance works are on view at kachstudio.com.
Related event:
In Common Writers Series
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle
reading from their work
Friday MARCH 15
7:00 pm @ University Press Books
2430 Bancroft Avenue, Berkeley, free and open to the public
supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center

Why There Are Words Presents: Witness
2019-03-14 19:00 - 21:30 | Studio 333, 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito , CA, 94965, United States
Join Why There Are Words on March 14, 2019, at Studio 333 in Sausalito and bear witness to a spectacular evening of readings, as six acclaimed authors read on the theme of “Witness.”

Doors open at 7pm; readings begin at 7:15. $10 entry fee at the door. Cash bar. For more details, including the authors’ full bios, see the website, www.whytherearewords.com. For more details about WTAW Press, of which the reading series is a program, visit www.wtawpress.org.

Tim Fitts is the author of two collections of short stories, Hypothermia (MadHat Press, 2017) and Go Home and Cry for Yourselves (Xavier Review Press, 2017), and his work has been published by Granta, The Gettysburg Review, Shenandoah, and Fugue, among many others.

Stephen D. Gutierrez is the author of The Mexican Man in His Backyard, Stories & Essays (Roan Press, 2014), and Elements, Live from Fresno y Los (Bear Star Press, 2009), which won an American Book Award. He is currently a Pushcart nominee for recent work that appeared in Chicago Quarterly Review and The Nasiona. www.stephendgutierrez.com

Susan Hayden is the author of the novel, Cat Stevens Saved My Life, a finalist in the inaugural Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award with Penguin Press. Her poetry, stories, and plays have been featured in Los Angeles in the 1970s (Rare Bird Lit, 2016), I Might Be The Person You Are Talking To: Short Plays From The Los Angeles Underground (Padua Playwrights Press, 2015); and The Black Body (Seven Stories Press, 2009).

Keenan Norris’s chapbook By the Lemon Tree was recently published by Nomadic Press in September of 2018. His novel Brother and the Dancer (Heyday, 2013) won the 2012 James D. Houston award. His essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books as well as Boom: a journal of California. www.keenannorris.com

Soma Mei Sheng Frazier’s third prose chapbook, Don’t Give Up on Alan Greenspan (Cutbank, 2019), was selected as the winner of CutBank’s 2018 contest. Her previous chapbooks include Salve (Nomadic Press, 2016) and Collateral Damage: A Triptych (RopeWalk Press, 2013). somafrazier.com

Tracy Winn is the author of Mrs. Somebody Somebody (2010) from SMU Press and Random House, which won the Sherwood Anderson Foundation. Her most recent stories can be found in the Harvard Review and Waxwing Magazine, and have been honored with nominations for the Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prizes. www.winnwriter.com

Why There Are Words (WTAW) is an award-winning national reading series founded in Sausalito in 2010 by Peg Alford Pursell, now expanded to seven additional major cities in the U.S. The series draws a full house of Bay Area residents every second Thursday to Studio 333, located at 333 Caledonia Street, Sausalito, CA 94965. The series is a program of the 501(c)(3) non-profit WTAW Press. For more information see the website www.whytherearewords.com or email whytherearewords@gmail.com. Phone: Studio 333 at (415) 331-8272.

Mesha Maren and Randal O'Wain
2019-03-14 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Mesha Maren discusses her new novel, Sugar Run with Randal O’Wain.

Praise for Sugar Run
“A heady admixture of explosive plot and taut, burnished prose . . . Mesha Maren writes like a force of nature.” —Lauren Groff, author of Florida
“Strong and insightful . . . Maren puts stories to lives that are ordinarily overlooked, exploring damaged souls and damaged land, the need for that redemptive sense of connection to places and people. Maren writes prose that moves us ever deeper into her world without strain, but with sureness and vivid details.”—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone
“Sugar Run is a joyride—an intoxicating, headlong exploration of the hazards of freedom and the deadly consequence of desire. Maren’s blistering prose will take your breath away.”—C. Morgan Babst, author of The Floating World

About Sugar Run
In 1989, Jodi McCarty is seventeen years old when she’s sentenced to life in prison. When she’s released eighteen years later, she finds herself at a Greyhound bus stop, reeling from the shock of unexpected freedom but determined to chart a better course for herself. Not yet able to return to her lost home in the Appalachian Mountains, she heads south in search of someone she left behind, as a way of finally making amends. There, she meets and falls in love with Miranda, a troubled young mother living in a motel room with her children. Together they head toward what they hope will be a fresh start. But what do you do with your past—and with a town and a family that refuses to forget, or to change?
Set within the charged insularity of rural West Virginia, Mesha Maren’s Sugar Run is a searing and gritty debut about making a break for another life, the use and treachery of makeshift families, and how, no matter the distance we think we’ve traveled from the mistakes we’ve made, too often we find ourselves standing in precisely the place we began.

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE: POETRY, PROSE & EVERYTHING GOES...
2019-03-14 19:30 - 22:30 | The Lost Church, 65 Capp Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
Thurday, February 14, 2019
7:30 PM 10:30 PM
The Lost Church (map)

You’re Going to Die: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes Open Mic at The Lost Church w/Ned Buskirk
$10 in advance and at the door.
Tickets: http://bit.ly/YG2D_Feb13
Venue: The Lost Church – San Francisco
The Lost Church is Cash Only at the door (at this time).
Doors at 7:30pm.
Show at 8:15pm.
All performances end at 10:30pm.
Seating is first come, first served.
We recommend you buy in advance to ensure being a part of the event (parlor shows often sell out), but you can also try purchasing at the door on the night of the show (although, we do NOT set aside a block of tickets for door purchase)
Ages 10 and over are welcome. (Parental discretion is advised for some events).
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
You’re Going to Die: Poetry, Prose & Everything Goes…
is an open mic event, the communal offering for us to explore the conversation of death & dying, to embrace our losses & mortality,
to grieve, bereave & honor those we’ve lost & love… while all the while making room for simply being ALIVE.
Sign-ups will be the night of & the list fills up quickly, so if you want to perform, you’d better get there early…
If you’re going to perform, keep it under 5 MINUTES. That’s right: 5 MINUTES. WE WILL TIME YOU. And we will hug you when we have to stop you [just to make it easier on you (or harder – depending on your propensity for intimacy)].
Poetry, prose, music, dancing, comedy, drama, happy, sad, & on & on & on… Remember: EVERYTHING GOES… so do whatever you want.
You don’t have to perform anything; the audience is as essential as the performers.
Please don’t perform anything with a setup that takes much more time than the time it takes for you to walk onstage. Honestly, plugging things in is endlessly boring. If you need to borrow an instrument, figure it out before you’re called to the stage.
IMPORTANT ::: DON’T TAKE YOURSELF SO SERIOUSLY. Come and have fun. The end. Remember. Someday, we won’t exist and neither will the English language. If you choose to take yourself seriously, then take yourself so seriously that it’s stupid. Ridiculousness is encouraged.
You’re Going to Die. No. Really. You are.

Word for Word Reads "The Widow Dreams"
2019-03-15 19:00 - 20:00 | Folio Books, 3957 24th St, San Francisco , CA, 94114, United States
Members of the Charter Group of Word for Word, a program of Z Space will present a reading of “The Widow Dreams,” a narrative of transformation, at 7pm on Friday, March 15 at Folio Books San Francisco, 3957 24th St. in Noe Valley. In women’s voices, the piece chronicles the author’s journey through loss, grief, and anger, to the restoration of wholeness, creativity, and new life. The dreams will be read by Sheila Balter and Jeri Lynn Cohen, along with the author, Nancy Selby. Admission is free.
This is a Word Week 2019 event. Word Week is Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For a full listing of Word Week 2019 events, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
WORD FOR WORD Performing Arts Company is an ensemble whose mission is to tell great stories with elegant theatricality, staging performances of classic and contemporary fiction. Co-Artistic Directors JoAnne Winter and Susan Harloe founded Word for Word Performing Arts Company in 1993 as part of the Artists in Residence program at The Z Space Studio (Z Space’s original name).
In its vibrant history, Word for Word has performed over 70 stories by some of the world’s best writers. Many of these stories have been performed in front of the authors themselves. The ensemble performs regularly at Z Space and since 1996 has toured annually throughout California and France.
The following writers have had their work performed by Word for Word and lend their names in support of the work of our company: Daniel Handler, Edward P. Jones, Barbara Kingsolver, Armistead Maupin, George Saunders, Octavio Solis, Amy Tan, Tobias Wolff, Greg Sarris | Honorary President, Julia Alvarez, T.C. Boyle, Sandra Cisneros, Siobhan Fallon, Paul Fleischman, Richard Ford, Ellen Gilchrist, Joanne Greenberg, and Andrew Sean Greer.
More about the readers:
Sheila Balter, Word for Word charter member, is an actor, director, teacher. Recent work: directed Octavio Solis’ RETABLOS for Litquake. Also performed her original piece OLAM (Objects, Loss, Attachment, Memory) in San Francisco and internationally. She is proud to support Nancy in this exciting endeavor.
Jeri Lynn Cohen is a Charter Member of Word for Word Performing Arts Company celebrating 25 years of critically acclaimed productions. She has appeared at theatre companies throughout the Bay Area and she has toured internationally with Word for Word and the San Francisco Mime Troupe.
Nancy Shelby is an actor and director and has appeared in fifteen of Word for Word’s award winning productions. Most recently she and JoAnne Winter directed Lucia Berlin: Stories. She is currently working on the manuscript of a book, The Widow Dreams, based on the one hundred dreams she had after the 2009 death of her husband, Luke Cole.

In Common Writers Series: Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, reading from their work
2019-03-15 19:00 - 21:00 | University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Avenue, Berkeley, CA
Friday, March 15 – 7:00 pm

University Press Books, 2430 Bancroft Avenue, Berkeley

I am always haunted by the wise words of my great great Uncle Tony when a family heirloom was lost. He said, “You got to look where it ain’t.”… I make work that allows the dead to talk.
—Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, KACH Studio

The Poetry Center’s In Common Writers Series presents Maryam Ivette Parhizkar and Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle, in the second event of a two-evening program, reading their work at amazing University Press Books on Bancroft Avenue in Berkeley. Supported by the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, this event is free and open to the public.
Kenyatta A.C. Hinkle is an interdisciplinary visual artist, writer and performer. Her artwork and performances of experimental texts have been reviewed by the LA Times, Artforum, The Huffington Post and The New York Times. Her writing has appeared in Not That But This, Obsidian Journal, and Among Margins: Critical & Lyrical Writing on Aesthetics. She is the author of an artist book, Kentifrications: Convergent Truth(s) & Realities, published by Occidental College and Sming Sming Books. SIR, a relection on naming as a tool for undefining the defined, is her first book of poetry, and is newly published by Litmus Press. Hinkle is currently Assistant Professor of Painting at UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice. Her visual art and performance works are on view at kachstudio.com.
Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar, occasional musician, and author of the chapbooks Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014) and As For the Future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016), the latter originating from a talk at Naropa speculating on Clarice Lispector and Sun Ra. Her recent writings have been published by Omniverse, Social Text Online, Amerarcana/Shuffle Boil (on musician/composer Matana Roberts — check Coldfront for a prefatory note to Roberts’ Coin Coin project), The Daily Gramma, and the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies and African American Studies at Yale University. Born and raised in Houston, Texas by Iranian and Salvadoran immigrants, she lives in Jersey City, New Jersey. Her current poetics circles around diasporic myth-making, family histories, the sociopolitical entanglements that bring people together, and the relationship between spirit(s), possession, and American history and identity. More here.
In Common Writers Series Thanks to a generous grant from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Poetry Center will present six double-programs (twelve events in all) during 2018–19, featuring a series of remarkable writers from across the US, paired in conversation and performance with (for the most part) local area writers with whom they share strong affinities. Each featured guest writer appears at The Poetry Center—we’re doing outreach in particular to students and faculty in SF State’s College of Ethnic Studies—reading and in conversation with their paired guest writer and the audience. Then, moving off-campus, both writers read their work at one of the Bay Area’s local bookstores. We want to recognize our bookstores as crucial cultural centers and, paradoxically maybe, among the most long-lived and durable cultural sites in this violently gentrified region. Details on our six 2018-19 programs and featured artists here.

Event contact:

The Poetry Center

Event email:

poetry@sfsu.edu

Event phone:

415-338-2227

Event sponsor:

The Poetry Center and University Press Books

Helen Oyeyemi and Stephen Sparks
2019-03-15 19:30 - 21:30 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Helen Oyeyemi discusses her new novel, Gingerbread with Stephen Sparks.

About Gingerbread
The prize-winning, bestselling author of Boy, Snow, Bird and What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours returns with a bewitching and inventive novel.
Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories—equal parts wholesome and uncanny, from the tantalizing witch’s house in “Hansel and Gretel” to the man-shaped confection who one day decides to run as fast as he can—beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.
Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. The world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.
Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.

Praise for What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

“Magical and show stopping.” —Elle.com

“Oyeyemi so expertly melds the everyday, the fantastic, and the eternal, we have to ask if the line between ‘real’ and ‘unreal’ is murkier than we imagined—or to what extent a line exists at all. . . .The deeper one descends into the fabulist warrens of these stories, the more mystery and menace abound, and with each story I had the delightful and rare experience of being utterly surprised. . . .Transcendent.” —The New York Times Book Review

“It is, in a word, flawless. . . .Oyeyemi seems to be incapable of writing anything that’s not wholly original. . . .Oyeyemi manages to make the story both realistic and fantastical, and the characters are rendered with grace and compassion. . . .What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours is a lot of things: dreamy, spellbinding, and unlike just about anything you can imagine. It’s a book that resists comparisons; Oyeyemi’s talent is as unique as it is formidable.” — Michael Schaub, NPR
“Oyeyemi’s fictional world is scintillating and eccentric, an ‘implosion of memory,’ as one character puts it.”—The New Yorker

“What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours. . . boasts ambitious stories written masterfully by an adventurous author, and is another example of Oyeyemi’s skill at finding inspiration in the smallest and most ephemeral details.” —Women in the World, in association with The New York Times

Amber Tamblyn / Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution
2019-03-15 19:30 - 21:30 | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts a special evening with Amber Tamblyn, to celebrate her new book of essays Era of Ignition: Coming of Age in a Time of Rage and Revolution. We had a packed house for Amber when she came through town for Any Man, so if you want to make sure you get a seat we strongly recommend you purchase advance tickets. Join us!

Please note: This is a ticketed event, with the price of admission equal to the cost of Era of Ignition, which is included with each ticket. Advance tickets can be purchased here. If available, tickets will be for sale at the door.

In her late twenties, Amber Tamblyn experienced a crisis of character while trying to break out of the confines of the acting career she’d forged as a child in order to become the writer and director she dreamed of being as an adult. After a particularly low period fueled by rejection and disillusionment, she grabbed hold of her own destiny and entered into what she calls an Era of Ignition — namely, the time of self-reflection that follows in the wake of personal upheaval and leads to a call to action and positive change. In the process of undergoing this metaphysical metamorphosis, she realized that our country was going through an Era of Ignition of its own. She writes: “No longer stuck in a past we can’t outrun and a future we must outgrow, we are a nation that is actively confronting our values and agitating for change. We are in an age when activism becomes direct action, when disagreement becomes dissention, when dissatisfaction becomes protest, when accusations become accountability, and when revolts become revolutions.”

Through her fierce op-eds and tireless work as one of the founders of the Time’s Up organization, Amber has emerged as a bold, outspoken, and respected advocate for women’s rights. In Era of Ignition, she addresses gender inequality and the judgment paradigm, misogyny and discrimination, trauma and the veiled complexities of consent, white feminism and pay parity, reproductive rights and sexual assault — all told through the very personal lens of her own experiences, as well as those of her Sisters in Solidarity. At once an intimate meditation and public reckoning, Era of Ignition is a galvanizing feminist manifesto that is required reading for everyone attempting to understand the world we live in and help change it for the better.

Amber Tamblyn is an author, actor, and director. She’s been nominated for an Emmy, Golden Globe, and Independent Spirit Award for her work in television and film, including House M.D. and Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. Most recently, she wrote and directed the feature film Paint It Black. She is the author of three books of poetry, including the critically acclaimed bestseller Dark Sparkler, and a novel, Any Man, as well as a contributing writer for the New York Times. She lives in New York.

Please note:
– This event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
– This is an all-ages event, with mature themes. The bar opens at 7, event begins at 7:30pm..
– Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable. 1 ticket = 1 book, no exceptions. The book must be purchased from Booksmith. If you already have a copy of Era of Ignition, remember that books make great gifts! If you have any questions or concerns about this, please write events AT booksmith DOT com.
– If you cannot attend the event but would like to requeset a signed copy of Era of Ignition, and/or any of Amber’s books, order below and put your request in the comments field.
– RSVP appreciated but not required.

San Francisco Shakespeare Festival "Did Shakespeare Really Write That?"
2019-03-16 13:30 - 14:30 | Noe Valley Library, 451 Jersey Street, San Francisco, 94114
It is estimated that William Shakespeare used 31,000 different words in his writing and that some had hidden meanings. He also invented over 30 new words which are now in our vocabulary. What is the true meaning of his words? Join Word Week 2019 as the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival players act out 400 of his most famous words for us. Adults and children are welcome at this event, which will be held on Saturday, March 16 from 1:30pm-2:30pm in the ground floor community room of the Noe Valley/Sally Brunn Library, 451 Jersey Street (between Castro and Diamond streets). Free admission.
This is a Word Week 2019 event. Word Week is Noe Valley’s annual literary festival. For a full listing of Word Week 2019 events, go to http://bit.ly/2WXT09H.
About San Francisco Shakespeare Festival:
Founded in 1983, the mission of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival is to make the works of Shakespeare accessible to everyone, regardless of age, ethnicity, geography, economic status, or level of education. The San Francisco Shakespeare Festival brings Shakespeare’s greatest works to over 30,000 people in the Bay Area each summer with Free Shakespeare in the Park. Free Shakespeare in the Park has become as much a part of summer in the Bay Area as a backyard barbecue — bringing professional, free performances of the Bard’s greatest works to diverse audiences for over 25 years. And each year the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival reaches a new audience of over 70,000 kids throughout California with its unique arts education programs — Shakespeare on Tour, Midnight Shakespeare, and Bay Area Shakespeare Camps.

Lisa Moore Ramee with Sabaa Tahir
2019-03-16 15:00 - 17:00 | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Join us to celebrate the launch of Lisa Moore Ramee’s highly anticipated, funny and big-hearted debut middle grade novel A Good Kind of Trouble, about friendship, family, and standing up for what’s right – a book that Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give) calls “full of heart and truth”
“Ramée effectively portrays the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement and the difficulty of navigating complex social situations while conveying universal middle school questions about friendship, first crushes, and identity. Shay’s journey is an authentic and engaging political and personal awakening.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review))

Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. But in junior high, it’s like all the rules have changed. Now she’s suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she’s not black enough. Wait, what? Shay’s sister, Hana, is involved in Black Lives Matter, but Shay doesn’t think that’s for her. After experiencing a powerful protest, though, Shay decides some rules are worth breaking. She starts wearing an armband to school in support of the Black Lives movement. Soon everyone is taking sides. And she is given an ultimatum. Shay is scared to do the wrong thing (and even more scared to do the right thing), but if she doesn’t face her fear, she’ll be forever tripping over the next hurdle. Now that’s trouble, for real.
Lisa will be in conversation with Sabaa Tahir, author of An Ember in the Ashes, A Torch Against the Night, and A Reaper at the Gates. This is a book we are sure to keep talking about, a book I am evangelizing for. Come celebrate with us.

Helen Oyeyemi - - Gingerbread
2019-03-16 19:00 - 21:00 | East Bay Booksellers, 5433 College Avenue, Oakland, 94618
EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Helen Oyeyemi to discuss Gingerbread, on Saturday, March 16th at 7pm.
Influenced by the mysterious place gingerbread holds in classic children’s stories, beloved novelist Helen Oyeyemi invites readers into a delightful tale of a surprising family legacy, in which the inheritance is a recipe.
Perdita Lee may appear to be your average British schoolgirl; Harriet Lee may seem just a working mother trying to penetrate the school social hierarchy; but there are signs that they might not be as normal as they think they are. For one thing, they share a gold-painted, seventh-floor walk-up apartment with some surprisingly verbal vegetation. And then there’s the gingerbread they make. Londoners may find themselves able to take or leave it, but it’s very popular in Druhástrana, the far-away (or, according to many sources, non-existent) land of Harriet Lee’s early youth. The world’s truest lover of the Lee family gingerbread, however, is Harriet’s charismatic childhood friend Gretel Kercheval —a figure who seems to have had a hand in everything (good or bad) that has happened to Harriet since they met.
Decades later, when teenaged Perdita sets out to find her mother’s long-lost friend, it prompts a new telling of Harriet’s story. As the book follows the Lees through encounters with jealousy, ambition, family grudges, work, wealth, and real estate, gingerbread seems to be the one thing that reliably holds a constant value. Endlessly surprising and satisfying, written with Helen Oyeyemi’s inimitable style and imagination, it is a true feast for the reader.
* * *

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Helen Oyeyemi is the author of the story collection What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours, along with five novels– most recently Boy, Snow, Bird, which was a finalist for the 2014 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. She received a 2010 Somerset Maugham Award and a 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. In 2013, she was named one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists.

Event date:

Saturday, March 16, 2019 – 7:00pm

Event address:

East Bay Booksellers
5433 College Avenue

Oakland, CA 94618

Alice Pettway
2019-03-17 16:00 - 18:00 | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Alice Pettway is the author of three books of poetry: The Time of Hunger (2017), Moth (2019) and Station Lights (forthcoming 2021). Her poetry, nonfiction and fiction have appeared or are forthcoming in The Bitter Oleander, The Colorado Review, The Miami Herald, The Progressive, Teaching Tolerance, The Threepenny Review, WomenArts Quarterly and many others. Currently, Pettway lives and writes in Shanghai, China.
https://www.alicepettway.com
