Litseen

Joyce Carol Oates
2017-02-12 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In this striking, enormously affecting novel, Joyce Carol Oates tells the story of two very different and yet intimately linked American families. Luther Dunphy is an ardent Evangelical who envisions himself as acting out God’s will when he assassinates an abortion provider in his small Ohio town while Augustus Voorhees, the idealistic doctor who is killed, leaves behind a wife and children scarred and embittered by grief.
In her moving, insightful portrait, Joyce Carol Oates fully inhabits the perspectives of two interwoven families whose destinies are defined by their warring convictions and squarely-but with great empathy-confronts an intractable, abiding rift in American society.
A Book of American Martyrs is a stunning, timely depiction of an issue hotly debated on a national stage but which makes itself felt most lastingly in communities torn apart by violence and hatred.
Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Medal of Humanities, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978.

Raphael Block
2017-02-12 13:00 - 15:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
In his poetry, Raphael Block pulls the seen and the unseen together. Strings of Shining Silence reflects empathy for all life — this luminous collection is a love song to the Holy. Here are words that nourish the soul with the ancient music of creation, the songs that are all around us but so easily unnoticed. The poems are simple, unadorned and deeply felt — they will take you back to where you belong.

Writers with Drinks
2017-02-11 19:30 - 21:30 | Make-Out Room, 3225 22nd St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
About the readers/performers:
Tom Tomorrow is the creator of the weekly political cartoon, This Modern World, which appears in approximately 80 newspapers across the U.S., and on websites such as Daily Kos, Truthout and Credo. His work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Spin, Mother Jones, Esquire, The Economist, The Nation, U.S. News and World Report, and The American Prospect, and has been featured on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. In 2011, he ended a 16 year run at Salon to create and edit a new comics section at Daily Kos. He has published nine anthologies of his work: Greetings From This Modern World, Tune in Tomorrow, The Wrath of Sparky, Penguin Soup for the Soul, When Penguins Attack, The Great Big Book of Tomorrow, Hell in a Handbasket, The Future’s So Bright I Can’t Bear to Look, and Too Much Crazy. He is also the author of a book for children, The Very Silly Mayor. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2015. He was also the winner of the 2013 Herblock award, a 2015 Society of Illustrators Silver Medal; the first place AAN award for cartooning in 2015, and the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1998 and in 2003.
Sarah Schulman’s latest book is Conflict is Not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair. Her recent novel The Cosmopolitans was picked as one of the “Best Books of 2016” by Publishers’ Weekly. Her other non-fiction publications include Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, The Gentrification of the Mind: Witness to a Lost Imagination, Ties That Bind: Familial Homophobia and Its Consequences, Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS and the Marketing of Gay America, and My American History: Lesbian and Gay Life During the Reagan/Bush Years. Her novels include The Mere Future, The Child, Shimmer, Empathy, Rat Bohemia, People In Trouble, After Delores, Girls Visions and Everything, and The Sophie Horowitz Story. Her plays include Carson McCullers, Manic Flight Reaction, and the theatrical adaptation of Isaac Singer’s Enemies: A Love Story. Her screenplays include The Owls (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye), Mommy is Coming (co-written with director Cheryl Dunye), and Jason and Shirley. She’s a co-producer of the documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, and Interview. She has won a Guggenheim Fellowship in Playwrighting, a Fullbright in Judaic Studies, two American Library Association Book Awards, and is the 2009 recipient of the Kessler Prize for sustained contribution to LGBT studies. Sarah is Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, College of State Island, and a Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities at New York University.
Sean Carroll is a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of Technology. He’s the author of the books The Particle at the End of the Universe, From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, and Spacetime and Geometry: An Introduction to General Relativity. He has been awarded prizes and fellowships by the National Science Foundation, NASA, the Sloan Foundation, the Packard Foundation, the American Physical Society, the American Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of London. Carroll has appeared on TV shows such as The Colbert Report, PBS’s NOVA, and Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, and frequently serves as a science consultant for film and television.
Jennifer Ouellette is the author of four popular science books for the general public: Me, Myself and Why: Searching for the Science of Self, The Calculus Diaries: How Math Can Help You Lose Weight, Win in Vegas, and Survive a Zombie Apocalypse, The Physics of the Buffyverse, and Black Bodies and Quantum Cats: Tales from the Annals of Physics. She’s formerly the science editor at Gizmodo, and also edited The Best Online Science Writing 2012. Jennifer’s work has appeared in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Book Review, Slate, Smithsonian, Mental Floss, Pacific Standard, Discover, Salon, Nature, BOOM, Physics Today, Symmetry, Physics World, and New Scientist, among other venues. She maintains a personal science-and-culture blog called Cocktail Party Physics, and has also written for Quanta, Discovery News (2008-2012), NOVA’s Nature of Reality blog, and Nautilus’ Facts So Romantic blog. Jennifer was the founding director of the Science & Entertainment Exchange. She was also a Journalist in Residence at the Kavli Institute of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She’s also been an instructor at the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop, and was a journalist in residence at the University of Wisconsin, Madison’s journalism school.
Alia Volz hosted and produced the landmark reading series Literary Death Match – SF, from 2010-12. She is also an LDM champion; her story “Near Unison” brought home the crown from Episode 42. She has been profiled in Dark Sky Magazine, and SF Weekly, and has been a guest on the television show Lady Brain. San Francisco’s Litquake Festival has recruited her to curate and/or host several high-profile events—sometimes in disguise; for the good of literature, she’s taken the stage as Anaïs Nin, Louise Brooks, and even WWF World Champion Slick Ric Flair. In 2014, Alia placed second at The MOTH’s San Francisco GrandSLAM Championship. She also received a 2014 award from SF Weekly for “Best San Francisco Writer Without a Book.” To rectify that situation, she has recently completed her first novel, HOOF, a contemporary western set in urban San Francisco. Alia’s stories and essays are found in Tin House, The New York Times, Threepenny Review (forthcoming), New England Review (forthcoming), Utne Reader, ZYZZYVA, Huizache, The Rumpus, Narratively, Nerve, Literary Orphans, The Normal School, Covered w/ Fur, Dark Sky Magazine, Defenestration, The Writing Disorder’s “Best Nonfiction of 2012” anthology, and elsewhere.
About Writers With Drinks:
Writers With Drinks has won numerous “Best ofs” from local newspapers, and has been mentioned in 7×7, Spin Magazine and one of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City novels. The spoken word “variety show” mixes genres to raise money for local causes. The award-winning show includes poetry, stand-up comedy, science fiction, fantasy, romance, mystery, literary fiction, erotica, memoir, zines and blogs in a freewheeling format.

Bad Book Party
2017-02-11 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Join us on February 11th for a Bad Book Party, hosted by I Don’t Even Own a Television and Friends
– come together and celebrate all things related to Bad Books with America’s Favorite Bad Books Podcast(TM), I Don’t Even Own a Television!
– your hosts, J. W. Friedman and Chris Collision will be bringing a selection of their favorite (and least favorite!) bad books to read from and introducing a fun selection of very special guests (that we’re currently working on and will finalize as soon as we can)
– want to join in the fun? Bring your own favorite bad book to the event and we’ll read from it!

About I Don’t Even Own a Television

I Don’t Even Own a Television is a podcast about bad books. Every two weeks, hosts J. W. Friedman and Chris Collision get together to talk about a book you almost certainly should not read.

28 Kisses Chapbook Release Party
2017-02-11 19:00 - 22:00 | E.M. Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore, 410 13th Street, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Kimberly Kim’s first chapbook, 28 Kisses, will be published by be about it press in February 2017. To celebrate, Kimberly Kim is bringing some friends together for a special evening of poetry and fun. 28 Kisses is the perfect Valentine’s day gift for your person to kiss this holiday.
We will have copies of the chapbook for sale at the event, as well as refreshments. Please stay tuned for more information.
We have two confirmed readers for the night so far:
Adriane Tillman
and
Ivy Johnson
More to be announced soon!

Ellen Bass, Jane Hirshfield + Marie Howe
2017-02-11 19:00 - 21:30 | St. John’s Presbyterian Church, 2727 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Ellen Bass: “Bass shows us that we are as radiant as we are ephemeral, that in transience glistens resilient history and the remarkable fluidity of connection. Following her musings on suicide and generosity, desire and repetition—it becomes lucidly clear that Bass is not only a poet but also a philosopher and a storyteller.” —Briana Shemroske, Booklist
Jane Hirshfield: Jane Hirshfield’s poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence—desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, the many dimensions of our connection with others and the wider community of creatures and objects with which we share our lives. Demonstrating with quiet authority what it means to awaken into the full capacities of attention, her work sets forth a hard-won affirmation of our human fate.
Marie Howe: “Marie Howe’s poetry is luminous, intense, and eloquent, rooted in an abundant inner life. Her long, deep-breathing lines address the mysteries of flesh and spirit, in terms accessible only to a woman who is very much of our time and yet still in touch with the sacred.” —Stanley Kunitz
And Kim Rosen, on behalf of the S.H.E. College Fund

Daphne Evans
2017-02-11 14:00 - 16:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
Beyond Beauty: A Warrior’s Story is a book of triumph, love, tears and laughter – with a shot of “Divatude”.
Daphne Evans is Founder and CEO of Heaven’s Door Cancer Foundation, starting in 2005 after coming home from a double mastectomy. She has also been diagnosed and has survived ovarian cancer in 1998 and metastatic spinal carcinoma in 2009; she has been cancer free since 2010. Daphne has visited hospitals to be with her sisters and has placed cancer patients from the hospital in national magazine photo shoots and fashion runways in the San Francisco Bay Area. Sending thousands of women to spas across the country since 2005 and having girls come with stiletto shoes to take selfies before being wheeled into surgery, her mantra is “We will NOT be defined by our diagnosis.”
Daphne is still a Firm Administrator and Controller Consultant to law firms and eCommerce corporations and has been for nearly 20 years. She is also a fundraiser, public speaker and philanthropist. Nominated for Woman of the Year by Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Member of Ovarian Cancer Research Fund, Ovarian Cancer National Alliance, The Canary Foundation, Italian Make A Wish Foundation and Society for Oncology Massage. Board of Directors Member of Springfield Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Founder of Evans Relief Foundation. Daphne is also an ordained minister, feeling it necessary to be with “her girls” from before surgery and in recovery.
Daphne’s parents, Reverend Donald and Mrs. Ida Evans have been her inspiration. Her parents taught her that to help others was a ministry that was not passé. With this shining example and encouragement, Daphne began to volunteer at an early age to care for cancer patients, sometimes staying for weekends to relieve the overtaxed caregivers. She visited Nicaragua after the Sandinista regime and had trucks bring clothing over the bombed out roads for the villagers while she flew in by a Russian parachute plane. She started Evans Relief Foundation and has hosted clothing drives in San Francisco during the tsunami; finding pilots of private planes to fly the supplies to the victims there. She also found jobs for young professionals stranded by Katrina and paid out of pocket to fly them to their new job locations; opening her vacant home to stranded Joplin, MO tornado refugees. Daphne became a member of the Italian Make-A-Wish Foundation and would visit Genoa and speak directly to the children, encouraging hotels to offer free accommodation for the children and their parents. In 2008, she was nominated as San Francisco’s Woman of the year by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society; devoting 3 months in marathon fundraising. She could never have had the courage or the tenacity to do any of this without her parents showing her that “it is
more blessed to give than to receive.”
All proceeds from this book go towards the purchase Heaven’s Door’s Vacation Home located in Tarpon Springs, FL for women with cancer to have a time away with a loved one. This home will be replete with spa therapy, organic catering restaurants and “Diva counseling” staff, Daphne has promised to make this happen at the request of a number of the cancer divas who have benefited from this charity. She is working toward making this a dream come true. Donations toward this home can be made to: Heaven’s Door Cancer Foundation, 727 Via Casitas, Greenbrae, CA 94904. Heaven’s Door is a 501 (c) 3 charity.

Red Light Lit
2017-02-10 20:00 - 22:00 | h2hotel, 219 Healdsburg, Healdsburg, CA, 95448, United States
Red Light Lit is back at the fabulous h2hotel in Healdsburg, CA for a pre-Valentine’s Day celebration. The show will feature writers Dani Burlison,Scott Keneally, Sarah Kobrinsky alongside live musical scoring by David Williams and musical guests Jeremi Rebecca Hush and Kristopher Taylor Hush from Kinda Hush.
Make a night of it. Dine at h2hotel’s acclaimed Contemporary American restaurant Spoonbar before the show for a special 3-course tasting menu from Co-Executive Chefs Casey and Patrick Van Voorhis for $36.
Red Light Lit’s a collective of writers and musicians who explore love relationships and sexuality through spoken word and song.

Lunada Spring Reading Series
2017-02-10 19:30 - 21:00 | Galería de la Raza, 2857 24th Street, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Featured artists ASHA, Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, and Raphael Cohen.
Open Mic sign-up 7:15pm, hosted by Sandra García Rivera.
The Lunada 2017 Spring season opener features spoken word at it’s finest, with the passion and power of three poets whose work challenges the pueblo to Recognize, Rise, and Resist. We will amplify the poems of South Bay poet ASHA, righteous evolutionary Joseph Jason Santiago LaCour, and an excerpt from the solo performance of Raphael Cohen called Rebel Elegant, about the life of former NBA star Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. The Lunada OPEN MIC invites poets, lyricists, emcees, musicians, storytellers, laureates and first-timers to share their inspiration under the lunar spotlight.

Elan Mastai
2017-02-10 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Alameda, 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA, 94501, United States
Screenwriter Elan Mastai shares his critically-acclaimed debut novel, All Our Wrong Todays. You know the future that people in the 1950s imagined we’d have? Well, it happened. In Tom Barren’s 2016, humanity thrives in a techno-utopian paradise of flying cars, moving sidewalks, and moon bases, where avocados never go bad and punk rock never existed . . . because it wasn’t necessary.
Except Tom just can’t seem to find his place in this dazzling, idealistic world, and that’s before his life gets turned upside down. Utterly blindsided by an accident of fate, Tom makes a rash decision that drastically changes not only his own life but the very fabric of the universe itself. In a time-travel mishap, Tom finds himself stranded in our 2016, what we think of as the real world. For Tom, our normal reality seems like a dystopian wasteland.
But when he discovers wonderfully unexpected versions of his family, his career, and maybe, just maybe his soul mate, Tom has a decision to make. Does he fix the flow of history, bringing his utopian universe back into existence, or does he try to forge a new life in our messy, unpredictable reality? Tom’s search for the answer takes him across countries, continents, and timelines in a quest to figure out, finally, who he really is and what his future our future is supposed to be.
All Our Wrong Todays is about the versions of ourselves that we shed and grow into over time. It is a story of friendship and family, of unexpected journeys and alternate paths, and of love in its multitude of forms. Filled with humor and heart, and saturated with insight and intelligence and a mind-bending talent for invention, this novel signals the arrival of a major talent.

Digging for Pony Release Party
2017-02-10 19:00 - 21:00 | The Liminal Center, 3037 38th Avenue, Oakland, CA, 94619, United States
Come help Justine TenZeldam celebrate my first book of poetry, prose and photographs with some of my favorite people – Gina and the group at LIMINAL! Copies of the book will be on the sale at the event and are also on sale now onAmazon.com with a 25% off DISCOUNT CODE available for pre-orders now: X6XUPBW9
More: Self-published, the book covers a period in the writer’s life when she was breaking loose from old ideas, patterns and from a long career in advertising sales. tenZeldam also has a background in publishing and events promotion/sponsorship.
Most of the work is adult oriented, with the disclaimer of NSFW applicable. Her nickname is “Badd Gramma” after all. (She is a grandmother, actually, and a good one according to said children.)
In the spirit of DIY there will be an open mic for poets and singers and open floor for dancers (must sign up 30 minutes prior. Space limited and be cleared by organizers.)
Gina Goldblatt, Founder and Creative Director of LIMINAL, will be serving tasty beverages to support the community programs they offer. There will also be a raffle, and donations of prizes are currently being sought.
Pre-sale copies of the book are on sale now with a discount code of X6XUPBW9 offering 25% off. Order now and get your copy signed by the author (moi) that night!
For more information contact me directly via facebook or email eastbayjustine@ gmail
(18 and over. Donation optional)

Women of Color Author Panel at Books Inc. Alameda
2017-02-09 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Alameda, 1344 Park Street, Alameda, CA, 94501, United States
In celebration of African American History Month Books Inc. in Alameda proudly presents the Women of Color Author Panel featuring CaT Bobino, author of In the Know: Setting Up Your Child for the Stem World; Brittney Shipp, Emmy-nominated TV meteorologist and author of the picture book The Meteorologist in Me; Yvetta Franklin, author of the middle grade kids book The Code Switch; Marietta Harris, author of Thou Shalt Not Kill, an Emily Jenkins mystery; and Tina Maria Scott, author of the inspiring memoir One Breast to Love and Living Life Victoriously.

Remembering Tom Hayden: A Life of Activism and Radical Reform
2017-02-09 18:00 - 20:00 | San Francisco Mechanics’ Institute, 57 Post Street, San Francisco , CA, 94104, United States
moderated by Steve Wasserman, with Clara Bingham, Willie Brown Jr., and Judy Gumbo
presented by Mechanics’ Institute Library in conjunction with City Lights and Yale University Press
Tom Hayden, the principal author in 1962 of the founding manifesto of Students for a Democratic Society, the Port Huron Statement, led an extraordinary life of organizing, writing, and political reform. He put himself on the line during Mississippi Summer in 1964, was a principal opponent of the Vietnam War, a defendant in the Chicago Seven trial, and served nearly 20 years in the California legislature. His death in Santa Monica at age 76 in October 2016 offers an occasion to think more deeply about the prospects of change and making history in America, past, present, and future.
This evening we celebrate the release of
Hell No: The Forgotten Power of the Vietnam Peace Movement
By Tome Hayden
published by Yale University Press
“Hell no” was the battle cry of the largest peace movement in American history-the effort to end the Vietnam War, which included ?thousands of veterans. The movement was divided among radicals, revolutionaries, sectarians, moderates, and militants, which legions of paid FBI informants and government provocateurs tried to destroy. Despite these obstacles millions? marched, resisted the draft on campuses, and forced two sitting presidents from office. This movement was a watershed in our history, yet today it is in danger of being forgotten, condemned by its critics for everything from cowardice to stab-in-the-back betrayal. In this indispensable ?essay, Tom Hayden, a principal anti-Vietnam War organizer, ?calls to account elites who want to forget the Vietnam peace movement and ?excoriates those who trivialize its ?impact, engage in caricature of protestors and question their patriotism. In so doing, he seeks both a reckoning and a healing of national memory.
Critical Praise for Hello No:

Adam Hochschild
2017-02-09 17:00 - 18:00 | Morrison Library, UC Berkeley, 2000 Carleston Street, Berkeley, CA, 94720, United States
Adam Hochschild is the author of eight books; the latest, Spain in Our Hearts: Americans and the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, appeared in 2016. Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire’s Slaves won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the PEN USA Literary Award, the Gold Medal of the California Book Awards, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. He has twice been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Fireside Storytelling: Surprise!
2017-02-08 20:00 - 22:00 | The Institute of Possibility, 3359 Cesar Chavez St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Life, as they say, is full of surprises … and sometimes it’s “Ohhhh!” and sometimes it’s “Uh ohhhhh.” But one thing’s for sure, a good surprise makes for a great story. Please join us at our next Fireside as six storytellers jump on stage to tell their tales of — wait for it — waaaaait for it — SURPRISE!

Laura Atkins w/ Stan Yogi
2017-02-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Pegasus Books Downtown, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley , CA, 94704, United States
Fred Korematsu Speaks Up
Laura Atkins and Stan Yogi chronicle the real-life story of Fred Korematsu and his fight for justice when his family is forced into internment by the U.S. government during WWII.
About Fred Korematsu Speaks Up
Fred Korematsu liked listening to music on the radio, playing tennis, and hanging around with his friends—just like lots of other Americans. But everything changed when the United States went to war with Japan in 1941 and the government forced all people of Japanese ancestry to leave their homes on the West Coast and move to distant prison camps. This included Fred, whose parents had immigrated to the United States from Japan many years before. But Fred refused to go. He knew that what the government was doing was unfair. And when he got put in jail for resisting, he knew he couldn’t give up.
Inspired by the award-winning book for adults Wherever There’s a Fight, the Fighting for Justice series introduces young readers to real-life heroes and heroines of social progress. The story of Fred Korematsu’s fight against discrimination explores the life of one courageous person who made the United States a fairer place for all Americans, and it encourages all of us to speak up for justice.
Advance Praise
“Atkins and Yogi raise good questions…that will inspire a new generation of activists. This first book in the Fighting for Justice series is a must-read for all civics classrooms.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Brilliant.”—Elizabeth Partridge, award-winning author of Marching for Freedom: Walk Together, Children, and Don’t You Grow Weary

Brandon Brown
2017-02-08 19:30 - 21:00 | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Brandon Brown’s books include THE GOOD LIFE (Big Lucks Books, 2016), TOP 40 (Roof Books, 2014), FLOWERING MALL (Roof Books, 2012), THE PERSIANS BY AESCHYLUS (Displaced Press, 2011), and THE POEMS OF GAIUS VALERIUS CATULLUS (Krupskaya, 2011), and many chapbooks, including Tooth Fairy (2008) and Memoirs of my Nervous Illness (Cy Press, 2006). Since 1998, he has lived in the Bay Area, where he has programmed literary events, edited small press materials under the imprint OMG!, and written about art and culture for Art Practical and Open Space, the blog and magazine of the SFMOMA. He is a co-editor at Krupskaya, organizes with the Bay Area Public School, and lives in Oakland.

Suzun Lucia Lamaina
2017-02-08 19:00 - 21:00 | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
A social documentary photographic essay about former members of the Black Panther Party. Ms. Lamaina spent five years traveling throughout the United States photographing former Party members. The contemporary portraits and stories reflect their time in the Party and how their individual legacies have progressed.
Published in conjunction with the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther Party. These Panthers, who dedicated their lives to community service and were known as “Rank and File” members, are long overdue for recognition in serving the people–body and soul.

Launch Party with Meredith Jaeger
2017-02-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Opera Plaza, 601 Van Ness, San Francisco , CA, 94107, United States
Join local author Meredith Jaeger for a Launch Party celebrating her stunning debut novel, The Dressmaker’s Dowry. For readers of Lucinda Riley, Sarah Jio, or Susan Meissner, this gripping historical debut novel tells the story of two women: one, an immigrant seamstress who disappears from San Francisco’s gritty streets in 1876, and the other, a young woman in present day who must delve into the secrets of her husband’s wealthy family only to discover that she and the missing dressmaker might be connected in unexpected ways.

Veronica Chambers
2017-02-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Books Inc. Palo Alto, 74 Town & Country Village, Palo Alto, CA, 94301, United States
Critically-acclaimed author Veronica Chambers discusses her tribute to Michelle Obama, The Meaning of Michelle: 16 Writers on the Iconic First Lady and How Her Journey Inspires Our Own. Joining Veronica for this panel will be Los Angeles Times reporter Julie Makinen, and Senior Director of Content Partnerships and Business Development at Getty Images Elodie Mailliet.
About The Meaning of Michelle: Michelle Obama is unlike any other First Lady in American History. From her first moments on the public stage, she has challenged traditional American notions about what it means to be beautiful, to be strong, to be fashion-conscious, to be healthy, to be First Mom, to be a caretaker and hostess, and to be partner to the most powerful man in the world. What is remarkable is that, at 52, she is just getting started.
While many books have looked at Michelle Obama from a fashion perspective, no book has fully explored what she means to our culture. The Meaning of Michelle does just that, while offering a parting gift to a landmark moment in American history. In addition to a tribute to Michelle Obama, this book is also a rollicking, lively dinner party conversation about race, class, marriage, creativity, womanhood and what it means to be American today.
Contributors include: Ava DuVernay, Veronica Chambers, Benilde Little, Damon Young, Alicia Hall Moran and Jason Moran, Brittney Cooper, Ylonda Gault Caviness, Chirlane McCray, Cathi Hanauer, Tiffany Dufu, Tanisha Ford, Marcus Samuelsson, Sarah Lewis, Karen Hill Anton, Rebecca Carroll, Phillipa Soo, and Roxane Gay.

Sarah Schulman
2017-02-07 19:00 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
Please join Green Apple Books on Clement street Tuesday, February 7th at 7:00pm as we welcome Author Sarah Schulman, reading from and discussing her book Conflict is Not Abuse.

From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces personal and collective self-criticism, and shows why difference is so often used to justify cruelty and shunning. Rooting the problem of escalation in negative group relationships, Schulman illuminates the ways cliques, communities, families, and religious, racial, and national groups bond through the refusal to change their self-concept. She illustrates how Supremacy behavior and Traumatized behavior resemble each other, through a shared inability to tolerate difference.

This important and sure to be controversial book illuminates such contemporary and historical issues of personal, racial, and geo-political difference as tools of escalation towards injustice, exclusion, and punishment, whether the objects of dehumanization are other individuals in our families or communities, people with HIV, African Americans, or Palestinians. Conflict Is Not Abuse is a searing rejection of the cultural phenomenon of blame, cruelty, and scapegoating, and how those in positions of power exacerbate and manipulate fear of the “other” to achieve their goals.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, nonfiction writer, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and AIDS historian, and the author of eighteen books. A Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellow, Sarah is a Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the City University of New York, College of Staten Island. Her novels published by Arsenal include Rat Bohemia, Empathy, After Delores, and The Mere Future. She lives in New York.

Tim Z. Hernandez
2017-02-07 19:00 - 21:00 | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
Tim Z. Hernandez celebrating the release of
All They Will Call You
from University of Arizona Press
with special guests: Margi Dunlap, Connie Ann Mart, and Lance Canales
All They Will Call You is the harrowing account of “the worst airplane disaster in California’s history,” which claimed the lives of thirty-two passengers, including twenty-eight Mexican citizens—farmworkers who were being deported by the U.S. government. Outraged that media reports omitted only the names of the Mexican passengers, American folk icon Woody Guthrie penned a poem that went on to become one of the most important protest songs of the twentieth century, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee).” It was an attempt to restore the dignity of the anonymous lives whose unidentified remains were buried in an unmarked mass grave in California’s Central Valley. For nearly seven decades, the song’s message would be carried on by the greatest artists of our time, including Pete Seeger, Dolly Parton, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Joan Baez, yet the question posed in Guthrie’s lyrics, “Who are these friends all scattered like dry leaves?” would remain unanswered—until now.
Tim Z. Hernandez will be joined by Margi Dunlap and Connie Ann Mart, two women directly related to the song and the incident, as well as Lance Canales, a musician who helped secure a long-overdue memorial for the Mexican victims of the crash.
Combining years of painstaking investigative research and masterful storytelling, award-winning author Tim Z. Hernandez weaves a captivating narrative from testimony, historical records, and eyewitness accounts, reconstructing the incident and the lives behind the legendary song. This singularly original account pushes narrative boundaries, while challenging perceptions of what it means to be an immigrant in America, but more importantly, it renders intimate portraits of the individual souls who, despite social status, race, or nationality, shared a common fate one frigid morning in January 1948.
Tim Z. Hernandez was born and raised in California’s San Joaquin Valley. An award-winning poet, novelist, and performer, he is the recipient of the American Book Award for poetry, the Colorado Book Award for poetry, the Premio Aztlán Prize for fiction, and the International Latino Book Award for historical fiction. His books and research have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, CNN, Public Radio International, and National Public Radio. Hernandez holds a BA from Naropa University and an MFA from Bennington College. Hernandez makes his home in El Paso, where he is an assistant professor at the University of Texas at El Paso’s MFA Program in Creative Writing. You can find more information at his website, www.timzhernandez.com
Margi Dunlap is a resident of Pilot Hill, California, where she retired after 34 years working in immigrant rights and immigration law. She is the niece of Martin Hoffman, the musician who is credited with turning Woody Guthrie’s poem, “Plane Wreck at Los Gatos (Deportee)” into the popular protest song that later went on to be recorded by music icons such as Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, Joan Baez, and many others.
Connie Ann Mart is a resident of West Marin County, California, where she makes her living as controller for West Marin Senior Services. She is the niece of pilot Frank Atkinson, who perished in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon.
Lance Canales, a musician who collaborated with Hernandez on creating a new arrangement of the song that now includes the names of the Mexican victims.
What has been said of Tim Z. Hernandez work:
“Tim Z. Hernandez is the real thing. This epic, tragic story is finally being told, and it is in the best possible hands.”—Luis Alberto Urrea
“An important and moving book, exploring the theme of identity and loss and disenfranchisement—topics that have never been more urgent than they are now. Hernandez has illuminated the present with this original and riveting examination of the past.”—Susan Orlean
“There’s something miraculous about the storytelling feat Tim Z. Hernandez has pulled off in All They Will Call You. With great compassion and patience, he has immersed himself in a long-forgotten episode of California history, and uncovered a multilayered epic of love, injustice, and family fortitude, stretching across generations and borders. This is an intelligent, empathic, and deeply moving work.”—Héctor Tobar
“In his lyrics to ‘Plane Wreck at Los Gatos,’ my father, Woody Guthrie, asked a simple question, ‘Who are these friends?’ and finally someone has answered that question. It was unknown if their stories would ever come to light, or if they would simply remain ghosts without names, as if they had no lives at all—as if they didn’t count. Through Hernandez’s amazing work, I now know who these people were, their lives, their loves, and their journeys. All They Will Call You is a heart-wrenching read for anyone who cares, and the names—now etched in stone in a far-off graveyard—have become friends who will travel with me as long as I am walking.”—Arlo Guthrie

Rafael Jesús Gonzalez
2017-02-07 18:30 - 21:00 | Spice Monkey, 1628 Webster St, Oakland, CA, 94612, United States
Featured readers: Rafael Jesús González. An open mic follows the featured readers. Everyone welcome. There is always room. It’s time to showcase your work. Free drawing for books, broadside, and Spice Monkey Gift Card. The series is on the first Tuesday of each month in The Loft at Spice Monkey, 1628 Webster Street, Oakland, 6:30-9:00 pm. Free, we pass the hat.
information: pandemoniumpress@gmail.com.

Quiet Lightning at The Stud Bar
2017-02-06 19:30 - 21:00 | The Stud Bar, 399 9th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94103, United States
A literary mixtape performed live once by the authors and published as sPARKLE & bLINK 82, free for the first 100 people
SIDE A
Joe Wadlington » Heather Bourbeau » Peter Bullen » Stephen Guai-Wu » MK Chavez » Rae Liberto » AshleyRose Sanchez » Miah Jeffra » Siamak Vossoughi » Adam Moskowitz » Peter Max Lawrence » Paul Corman-Roberts
RAFFLE FOR THE STUD + TRANSGENDER LAW CENTER
SIDE B
Paul Corman-Roberts » Kyrsten Bean » Ingrid Keir » Kate Folk » Sage Curtis » Laura Zink » Kate Seifert » Kathryn Reeve » Cassandra Dallett » Paul Corman-Roberts » Isabella Borgeson

featuring art by Irene Nelson
curated by Josey Rose + Christine No

Left Coast Writers: Andy Ross
2017-02-06 19:00 - 21:00 | Book Passage Marin, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd. , Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Left Coast Writers® Salon featuring Andy Ross, literary agent and founder of the Andy Ross Literary Agency.

Chris Formant
2017-02-06 18:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Peter Ham—all of them iconic rock stars, all of them dead at age twenty-seven. How could a group of great musicians all die at the same age? All evidence points to the deaths being unrelated, but were they really?
Gantry Elliot is a relic of rock and roll era still writing for Rolling Stone magazine—covering “classic” rock and roll and struggling for relevance in the age of hip-hop and electronic dance music. Even though he’s an encyclopedia of music trivia, Gantry can’t compete with the new kids on the block and is now reduced to watching the clock tick down on his once dynamic career. But Gantry’s vast knowledge may be the only thing that can unravel the Myth of 27.
When anonymous packages start showing up at his office and then his home, Gantry initially shrugs them off as another Myth of 27 conspiracy nerd trying to get attention. As the clues became more intimate, more personal, more sinister, he realizes this is not a game: someone knows the truth, and the truth may put Gantry’s life in serious danger.
Aptly called, “The Da Vinci Code for rock and roll fans,” author Chris Formant has written a terrific debut novel that creatively and deftly takes readers on a dangerous cold case hunt to uncover the mystery behind these deaths. Truth or fiction, lies or conspiracy, Bright Midnight will keep you guessing until its final chorus.
From his early garage band days, to a seat on the Board of Trustees of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Chris Formant has been a student of rock and roll his whole life. As an executive in a leading global company, running a multi-billion dollar business, Formant is the unlikeliest of authors of a murder mystery. But the continued unanswered questions surrounding the deaths of our most iconic rock legends led Formant to first speculate and then re-imagine what would happen if cutting edge technology were applied to these famous cold cases.

Benjamin Hollander: a Memorial Tribute
2017-02-05 18:30 - 20:30 | The Unitarian Center, 1187 Franklin Street, San Francisco, CA, 94109, United States
Poets, writers, and friends gather in homage to poet, editor, and essayist Benjamin Hollander (1952–2016), reading from his work and remembering him. This event is free and open to the public.
Participants include George Albon, Charles Alexander, Todd Baron, Arthur Bierman, William Cirocco, Norma Cole, Chris Daniels, Steve Dickison, Elise Ficarra, Susan Gevirtz, Jack Hirschman, David Lau, Duncan McNaughton, Sarah Menefee, Laura Moriarty, Murat Nemet-Nejat, Michael Palmer, Julien Poirier, John Sakkis, Len Shneyder, Richard B. Simon, Susan Thackrey, Siamak Vossoughi.

Michael McClure
2017-02-05 15:00 - 16:00 | DIESEL, A Bookstore, 5433 College Ave, Oakland, CA, 94618, United States
A landmark work of bio-romanticism, Mephistos and Other Poems is the first completely new collection in five years from legendary Beat and SF Renaissance poet Michael McClure, reflecting his interests in mammal consciousness and ecological survival. The title sequence stems from McClure’s ongoing “grafting” experiment, growing new poems from fragments of previously ones. Some Fringes is a series of haiku-like nature poems, while the seventeen-part Rose Breaths derives from the poet’s practice of meditation. The freestanding poems grouped under the title Being pay homage to many of McClure’s collaborators and fellow travelers like Bruce Conner, Terry Riley, and Dave Haselwood. The book climaxes with Song Heavy, recounting McClure’s recent encounter with a beached whale in Rockport, Massachusetts, and recalling his classic For the Death of 100 Whales, which he read at the Six Gallery in 1955, the inaugural moment of American eco-poetics.
Michael McClure is an award-winning American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving from Kansas to San Francisco as a young man, he was one of the five poets who participated in the Six Gallery reading that featured the public debut of Allen Ginsberg’s landmark poem Howl. A key figure of the Beat Generation, McClure is immortalized as Pat McLear in Jack Kerouac’s novels The Dharma Bums and Big Sur. He also participated in the sixties counterculture alongside musicians like Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison. McClure remains active as a poet, essayist, and playwright and lives with his second wife, Amy, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Nepotism Night
2017-02-04 19:30 - 2017-02-05 00:00 | The Candy Kitchen, 2807 24th Street, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
The return of Nepotism Night! We have another stellar lineup for you:
Pam Benjamin
Rohan DaCosta
Secret Emchy Society
Joe Loya
Louise Nalbandian
Tarin Towers

Arisa White, Maw Shein Win + Daniel Riddle Rodriguez
2017-02-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Nomadic Press, 2926 Foothill Blvd, Oakland , CA, 94601, United States
Open House! Swing by the for a chance to meet the current 2016-2017 Workroom Artist Program cohort, learn more about the artist program and their work, and enjoy readings by Arisa White, Maw Shein Win, and Daniel Riddle Rodriguez, as well as music by The Open Minds.
Red Bay Coffee and red wine available. Donations will be called for throughout the night, as will sign ups for the next program cohort (limited to 10 people).
