Litseen

Litquake on Lockdown: Wayétu Moore and The Dragons, the Giant, the Women
2020-06-08 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Co-presented by Museum of the African Diaspora
When Wayétu Moore turns five years old, her father and grandmother throw her a big birthday party at their home in Monrovia, Liberia, but all she can think about is how much she misses her mother, who is working and studying in faraway New York. Before she gets the reunion her father promised her, war breaks out in Liberia. The family is forced to flee their home on foot, walking and hiding for three weeks until they arrive in the village of Lai. Finally, a rebel soldier smuggles them across the border to Sierra Leone, reuniting the family and setting them off on yet another journey, this time to the United States.
Spanning this harrowing journey in Moore’s early childhood, her years adjusting to life in Texas as a black woman and an immigrant, and her eventual return to Liberia, The Dragons, the Giant, the Women is a deeply moving story of the search for home in the midst of upheaval. Moore has a novelist’s eye for suspense and emotional depth, and this unforgettable memoir is full of imaginative, lyrical flights and lush prose. In capturing both the hazy magic and stark realities of what is becoming an increasingly pervasive experience, Moore shines a light on the great political and personal forces that continue to affect many migrants around the world, and calls us all to acknowledge the tenacious power of love and family. Wayétu will be in converation with author and professor Faith Adiele. FREE, $5 suggested donation
Streamed live at Crowdcast and Facebook Live!
Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

Speakers

Wayétu Moore

Faith Adiele
Faith Adiele’s work includes The Nigerian Nordic Girl’s Guide to Lady Problems; Meeting Faith, a memoir about becoming Thailand’s first Black Buddhist nun; My Journey Home, a PBS documentary about finding family in Nigeria; and Coming of Age Around the World: A Multicultural… Read More →

Kathy Evans - Trespassers Welcome
2020-06-07 16:00 - 18:00 | Book Passage Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Kathy Evans’s full-length debut, Trespassers Welcome, is an extravaganza of imaginative leaps, bounds, and deep dives, a worldwide web of seemingly unlikely but delightfully believable connections—from the everyday to the unexpected. Her work is profoundly playful and playfully profound–no mean feat in these parlous times.
Kathy Evans, a Marin County resident, just recently released her latest poetry collection, Trespassers Welcome, from Bluelight Press. She is the author of three other books of poetry, including Hunger and Sorrow, which won the Small Press Poetry prize, and was Artist-in-Residence at The Headlands Center for the Arts. She has brought poetry into classrooms all over the Bay Area and is currently poet-in-residence at The Benioff Children’s Hospital in San Francsico and Oakland.

Zoom Forward! Catamaran Summer 2020 Issue Launch
2020-06-06 17:00 - 19:00
VIRTUAL EVENT: Join us for a special online event celebrating the Summer 2020 issue of Catamaran Literary Reader, hosted by poet, fiction writer, and essayist Jory Post.
This event is part of the Zoom Forward Reading Series, presented by phren-Z, The Hive Poetry Collective, and Bookshop Santa Cruz to showcase writers, keep our cultural spirits high, and support Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Join the Santa Cruz Writes/phren-Z email list by subscribing here. Weekly Zoom links will be emailed to you. Contact Jory Post with any questions at jory@cruzio.com.

Babylon Salon
2020-06-06 17:00
presents a special
online performance
Saturday, June 6, 2020
5pm PST / 8pm EST

Register for our Zoom gathering

presents a special
online performance
Saturday, June 6, 2020
5pm PST / 8pm EST

Register for our Zoom gathering
featuring

Bonnie Tsui
(Why We Swim; American Chinatown; Writing Action)

“An enthusiastic and thoughtful work mixing history, journalism, and elements of memoir… We’ll never be the fish, Tsui reminds us. ‘But we get glimpses of what it’s like to be the fish. We get flashes of forgetting the water.’ How glorious.” — The New York Times Book Review

A Boston Globe bestseller and Best Book of the Season: Amazon, Buzzfeed, Bustle, The San Francisco Chronicle

Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and California Sunday Magazine. She has been the recipient of the Jane Rainie Opel Young Alumna Award from Harvard University, the Lowell Thomas Gold Award, and a National Press Foundation Fellowship. American Chinatown: A People’s History of Five Neighborhoods, won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature and was a San Francisco Chronicle bestseller and Best of 2009 Notable Bay Area Books selection. Bonnie has also performed numerous times at Pop-Up Magazine and other live storytelling events. She helped to launch F&B: Voices from the Kitchen, a storytelling project from La Cocina that shares stories from cooks and kitchens that are less often heard. She is also her first children’s book, Sarah & the Big Wave, about big-wave women surfers; it will be published by Henry Holt Books for Young Readers in spring 2021.

Meng Jin
(Little Gods)
“Meng Jin’s beautiful debut novel is ambitious in the best ways: meticulously observed, daringly imagined, rich in character and history. Ranging across continents, cultures and generations, Jin poses profound questions: how might we know ourselves, or the people we love? And what truths, if any, travel with us?” — Claire Messud

“If the mark of a good novel is its ability to delicately rewire the reader’s brain, then Meng Jin has given us a very good novel….Little Gods is a page-turner—but all the while it winks, reminding us that possible explanations in our universe are as varied as the beings who populate it.” — The Paris Review, Staff Pick

Meng Jin was born in Shanghai and lives in San Francisco. A Kundiman Fellow, she is a graduate of Harvard and Hunter College. Little Gods is her first novel.
Alia Volz
(Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco)
“I devoured this book! Sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, a savvy business woman, a social and medicinal revolution: What’s not to love? This is a story Alia Volz was born to tell.” —Rebecca Skloot, bestselling author of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Alia Volz is the author of the new memoir Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, spring 2020). She’s a homegrown San Franciscan. Her work has been published in The Best American Essays 2017, The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Threepenny Review, Salon, and many other places. Her unusual family story has been featured on Snap Judgement, Criminal, and NPR’s Fresh Air. Alia has received fellowships by the MacDowell Colony and the Ucross Foundation and has twice been awarded the Oakley Hall Memorial Scholarship from the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She was runner-up of The MOTH’s GrandSLAM Championship in 2014.

Tomas Moniz
(Big Familia; Rad Dad; Collaboration/Colaboración)

“A quiet, thoughtful story about coming-of-age at middle age. . . . With his first novel, poet Moniz tells a story that is simultaneously timeless and quite timely. . . . Characters deal with and talk about racism and homophobia, gentrification and police brutality. These are some of the challenges they endure as they navigate universally human experiences like connection, community, birth, and death. . . . Diverse characters and a deeply likable protagonist make this a standout debut.” — Starred Review, Kirkus Reviews

Tomas Moniz edited Rad Dad, Rad Families, and the kids book Collaboration/Colaboración. He’s recently been published by Barrelhouse and Longleaf Review. In July 2019, he released a chapbook, All Friends Are Necessary, with Mason Jar Press and his debut novel, Big Familia, on Acre Books (which received a STARRED Kirkus review), in November 2019. Big Familia was a Finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Debut Novel 2020 Award, a Finalist for a LAMBDA 2020 award for Bisexual Fiction and a Finalist for the Foreword Review Indies Award.

with music from

Art Elliot
(Hello; Goodbye; Earth Abides)
Art Elliot sings of apocalyptic futures, lost loves, ice ages and Depression-era folk art, among other topics. Born the second son of a carpenter and a singer during the height of The Catastrophe™, Elliot took to his iron horse and rode west at the age of 22. Art has collaborated with a few of the well-known troubadours of Sector 6 including Larry Gallagher, The Dirty Snacks Ensemble, Jack O’ the Clock, and Eli Wise. He currently dwells deep underground in a bunker near what was once known as Oakland, California.
____________________
Free Admission!

Marianne Ingheim - Out of Love
2020-06-06 16:00 - 18:00 | Book Passage Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
We all tell ourselves stories about who we are. Many of these stories are self-critical and disempowering. Through the practice of self-compassion, we can rewrite these stories and become more authentic and powerful versions of ourselves—transforming not only our own lives but also the lives of those around us.
In short and personal pieces, Marianne Ingheim tells the story of how the practice of self-compassion has changed her life in ways big and small, helping her unlearn harsh self-criticism, survive multiple tragedies, and live more authentically. In the wake of a breast cancer diagnosis and her husband’s suicide, she discovers the power of self-compassionate storytelling and finds belonging within herself—and in doing so, she learns how to manage anxiety and stress, how to be authentic in relationships, and how to let go of comparison and be truly creative.
Through stories and journaling prompts, Out of Love: Finding Your Way Back to Self-Compassion aims to inspire readers to unlearn the self-critical patterns holding them hostage—and begin to live a happier, more courageous life.
Marianne Ingheim is a Danish-Norwegian American writer, teacher, and PhD student at California Institute of Integral Studies. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. For more information, please visit www.marianneingheim.com.

Rosalyn Learns How to Misbehave: A Zoom Puppet Story
2020-06-06 14:00 - 14:35
Ramon Abad and the Bindlestiff Studio Puppet Crew present a KID-FRIENDLY live stream puppet performance with about 9 artists/storytellers via Zoom. Celebrate this fun-filled afternoon with the whole family and kids 5-11 years old in our own home!
This event will be recorded and uploaded to YouTube and other social media platforms. By registering at the link above, you agree to the possibility of appearing on this recording by virtue of attending or participating in the event.
Presented by the API Cultural Center- San Francisco as part of the United States of Asian America Festival 2020: FINDING KINSHIP. #USAAF2020 #FINDINGKINSHIP
With funding and support from San Francisco Arts Commission, SF Grants for the Arts, California Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts.

VIRTUAL EVENT: Eric Cervini and Johnny Sibilly
2020-06-05 19:00 - 21:00
Join us on Crowdcast on Friday June 5th at 7PM PDT for a conversation between author Eric Cervini and Pose actor Johnny Sibilly on The Deviant’s War: The Homosexual vs. The United States of America. Co-sponsored by the GLBT Historical Society of San Francisco.
Want your book signed?
1. Order a copy of The Deviant’s War from Green Apple
2. Submit your receipt here
3. Receive a limited edition custom bookplate, signed by Eric, to place in your book!
About The Deviant’s War
From a young Harvard- and Cambridge-trained historian, the secret history of the fight for gay rights that began a generation before Stonewall.
In 1957, Frank Kameny, a rising astronomer working for the U.S. Defense Department in Hawaii, received a summons to report immediately to Washington, D.C. The Pentagon had reason to believe he was a homosexual, and after a series of humiliating interviews, Kameny, like countless gay men and women before him, was promptly dismissed from his government job. Unlike many others, though, Kameny fought back.
Based on firsthand accounts, recently declassified FBI records, and forty thousand personal documents, The Deviant’s Warunfolds over the course of the 1960s, as the Mattachine Society of Washington, the group Kameny founded, became the first organization to protest the systematic persecution of gay federal employees. It traces the forgotten ties that bound gay rights to the Black Freedom Movement, the New Left, lesbian activism, and trans resistance. Above all, it is a story of America (and Washington) at a cultural and sexual crossroads; of shocking, byzantine public battles with Congress; of FBI informants; murder; betrayal; sex; love; and ultimately victory.

Nomadic Press' Virtual Open Mic #12
2020-06-05 18:00
90 minutes
30 readers
3 minutes each
On Zoom!
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
Showing up is one amazing form of support that we really appreciate. Another is financial. Money = energy to us, and donating sends one signal (of many) that you would like our work to continue. If enjoy spaces like this and can swing it in these tight times, please consider supporting us via:
1) the Cash App to $NomadicPress OR https://cash.app/$NomadicPress;
2) donating via the “ticket” option here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/nomadic-press-virtual-open-mic-12-tickets-107293473668;
OR 3) donating through the website at www.nomadicpress.org/donate
We have a short goal of $150.
It feels really important to gather in these times, and we need to prioritize the health of most vulnerable community members (our elders, those who work with elders, and those with suppressed immune systems). So we are hosting another virtual open mic! Feel free to join just to listen, too! We can hold up to 100 people.
Hosted by Nazelah Jamison (with J. K. on tech). It’s a continuing experiment, and we hope you can join us!
Sign Up Here:
https://forms.gle/1ZNKSnnzRZpXxvUE7
Our safe space process still applies to our collective virtual space, so please read this by visiting https://www.nomadicpress.org/safespaceprocess.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Nomadic Press’ Virtual Open Mic #12
Time: Jun 5, 2020 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81930707090
Meeting ID: 819 3070 7090
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Meeting ID: 819 3070 7090
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kxmPPLiHu

Zoom Forward! #12 with Julia Chiapella, Julie Murphy, Cynthia White
2020-06-05 17:00 - 19:00
Phren-Z, The Hive Poetry Collective, and Bookshop Santa Cruz present Zoom Forward! #11 with Julia Chiapella, Julie Murphy, Cynthia White part of the Zoom Forward Reading Series—an ongoing reading series to showcase writers, keep our cultural spritits high, and support Bookshop Santa Cruz.
Join the Santa Cruz Writes/phren-Z email list by subscribing here. Weekly Zoom links will be emailed to you. Contact Jory Post with any questions at jory@cruzio.com.

VIRTUAL: The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi in conversation with Eileen Donahoe / Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of An Unconventional Life
2020-06-05 13:00 - 15:00
Booksmith is pleased to collaborate with The Internet Archive to host a virtual event with The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi for his new book, co-authored with Zara Houshmand, Running Toward Mystery: The Adventure of An Unconventional Life. He’ll be in conversation with Eileen Donahoe. This event will be held on June 5th, Saka Dawa, a day celebrating Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and parinirvana (passing from this life). It is said that Saka Dawa is an especially auspicious day for spiritual practice.
Please note: This is a ticketed event. Tickets are on sale here and below.

Purchase of the book will also grant you access to a brief one-on-one with Tenzin following the event, during which he’ll be happy to virtually sign your book. Due to time constraints, this offer is valid for the first 100 book sales.
You may purchase the book here or below — be sure to include a note in the special field that you’d like to attend the event.
Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions: events@booksmith.com.

“A necessary and captivating narrative of spiritual courage and truth seeking far beyond the veil of our contemporary delusions.” – Sting
Born in India to a prominent Hindu Brahmin family, the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi was only six years old when he began having visions of a mysterious mountain peak, and of men with shaved heads wearing robes the color of sunset. “It was as vivid as if I were watching a scene from life,” he writes. And so at the age of ten, he ran away from boarding school to find this place—taking a train to the end of the line and then riding a bus to wherever it went.
Strangely enough, he ended up at a Buddhist monastery that was the place in his dreams. His frantic parents and relatives set out to find him and, after two weeks, located him and brought him home. But he continued to have visions and feel a strong pull to a spiritual life in a tradition that he had never heard of as a child. Today, he is a revered monk and teacher as well as President and CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he works to build bridges among communities and religions.

Running Toward Mystery is the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi’s profound account of his lifelong journey as a seeker. At its heart is a story of striving for enlightenment, the vital importance of mentors in that search, and of the many remarkable teachers he met along the way, among them the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Mother Teresa. “Teachers come and go on their own schedule,” Priyadarshi writes. “I clearly wasn’t in charge of the timetable and it wasn’t my place to specify how a teacher should teach.” And arrive they did, at the right time, in the right way, to impart the lessons that shaped a life of seeking, devotion, and deep human connection across all barriers.

Running Toward Mystery is the bracing and beautiful story of a singular life compelled to contemplation, and a riveting narrative of just how exciting that journey can be.

EVENT SCHEDULE: All time are Pacific Time
Be sure to join us early for a live musical prelude

12:55 PM: Musical Prelude by members of Del Sol Quartet
1:05 PM: Welcome by Brewster Kahle, Founder, Internet Archive
1:10-2:10 PM: Conversation with the Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi and Eileen Donahoe, an expert in human rights, cyber security and foreign policy
2:10-2:30 PM: Q & A
2:30-2:45 PM: Break
2:45-3:45 PM: 1 on 1 with the author for a Virtual Book Signing (limited to first 100 book buyers thru this Booksmith link.)

The Venerable Tenzin Priyadarshi is an innovative thinker, philosopher, educator and a polymath monk. He is President & CEO of The Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eileen Donahoe is Executive Director of the Global Digital Policy Incubator (GDPI) at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center. She served as the first US Ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva during the Obama Administration. After leaving government, she was Director of Global Affairs at Human Rights Watch where she represented the organization worldwide on human rights foreign policy, with special emphasis on digital rights, cybersecurity and internet governance. Among her many degrees, Donahoe received a Ph.D. in Ethics and Social Theory from the Graduate Theological Union Cooperative Program with UC Berkeley.
Violist Charlton Lee and cellist Kathryn Bates are members of the Del Sol String Quartet. The internationally-acclaimed quartet is a leading force in the Bay Area music scene, championing music by living artists that explores aspects of social change, technology, and artistic innovation. Del Sol has premiered hundreds of works, released 9 albums, and produces vibrant productions and educational experiences.

Bill McKibben, Sy Montgomery, Jennifer Ackerman, Mary Ellen Hannibal For Books On B
2020-06-05 12:00
Fundraising Goal: $2000
It’s a tough time for local bookstores, what with the social distancing and the sheltering in place. So we’re raising funds to help local Bay Area bookstores stay in business, with a series of fundraisers. This event will feature Bill McKibben, Sy Montgomery, Jennifer Ackerman and Mary Ellen Hannibal.
Bill McKibben is an author and environmentalist who in 2014 was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel.’
Sy Montgomery’s 28 books for both adults and children have garnered many honors. The Soul of an Octopus was a 2015 Finalist for the National Book Awards. The Good Good Pig, her memoir of life with her pig, Christopher Hogwood, is an international bestseller.
Jennifer Ackerman has been writing about science and nature for three decades. She is the author of eight books, including The Bird Way: A New Look at How Birds Talk, Work, Play, Parent, and Think, just published by Penguin Press, and the New York Times bestseller, The Genius of Birds.
Mary Ellen Hannibal is a long-time journalist focused on natural history and literature. Her most recent book, Citizen Scientist: Searching for Heroes and Hope in an Age of Extinction, was named one of 2016’s best non-fiction books by the San Francisco Chronicle.
This event is hosted by Charlie Jane Anders, organizer of Writers With Drinks.
All proceeds benefit Books on B in Hayward. Shop online now!

June 5 at 12 PM
Register at Eventbrite

We use the conferencing system Zoom. After you sign up you’ll get an email with the Zoom access code. (Check that Eventbrite is using your current email address.) You don’t have to join with video, but it’s nice to see faces.

Eves At The Virtual Beat
2020-06-04 19:00 - 21:00
During Women’s History month a constellation of events brought together a group of fabulous womxn+ writers. The meeting of these hearts and minds exploded into something powerful and a new monthly reading series concept was born, “Eves at the Beat”.
June’s Eves At The Virtual Beat will feature
Amalia Alvarez
Lyndsey Ellis
Leticia Hernandez
Naomi Quiñonez
Alia Volz
Ophelia Williams
hosted by Janice Blaze Rocke
curated by Nicole Henares
Topic: Eves At The Beat On Zoom
Time: Jun 4, 2020 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83865957296?pwd=[REDACTED]
Meeting ID: 838 6595 7296
Password: [REDACTED]
One tap mobile
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Dial by your location
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+1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown)
Meeting ID: 838 6595 7296
Password: [REDACTED]
Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kebI0idpfg

Author Alex George Discussing THE PARIS HOURS | GGP Online Zoom Chat
2020-06-04 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Thursday, June 4, 2020 at 7 PM PDT for an online discussion with author Alex George, discussing his new historical fiction novel, THE PARIS HOURS.
Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87893211762.

(Order your copy of THE PARIS HOURS in hard cover at bit.ly/GGPParisHC, or in audiobook from Libro.fm at bit.ly/GGPParisLibro.)
May 2020 Indie Next List

“Alex George has woven a beautiful tapestry of a historical novel in The Paris Hours through four colorful, intertwining threads. Each of the characters will touch your heart with their stories of love, loss, the ravages of war, and their search for answers and a path to pick up the broken pieces of their lives. Lush with descriptions of 1927’s Paris and the appearance of many famous cultural figures of the era, The Paris Hours will transport readers to a time and place they will be reluctant to leave until the last unexpected moment.”
— Betsy Von Kerens, The Bookworm of Omaha, Omaha, NE
Description

“Like All the Light We Cannot See, The Paris Hours explores the brutality of war and its lingering effects with cinematic intensity. The ending will leave you breathless.” —Christina Baker Kline, author of Orphan Train and A Piece of the World
One day in the City of Light. One night in search of lost time.
Paris between the wars teems with artists, writers, and musicians, a glittering crucible of genius. But amidst the dazzling creativity of the city’s most famous citizens, four regular people are each searching for something they’ve lost.
Camille was the maid of Marcel Proust, and she has a secret: when she was asked to burn her employer’s notebooks, she saved one for herself. Now she is desperate to find it before her betrayal is revealed. Souren, an Armenian refugee, performs puppet shows for children that are nothing like the fairy tales they expect. Lovesick artist Guillaume is down on his luck and running from a debt he cannot repay—but when Gertrude Stein walks into his studio, he wonders if this is the day everything could change. And Jean-Paul is a journalist who tells other people’s stories, because his own is too painful to tell. When the quartet’s paths finally cross in an unforgettable climax, each discovers if they will find what they are looking for.
Told over the course of a single day in 1927, Alex George’s The Paris Hours takes four ordinary people whose stories, told together, are as extraordinary as the glorious city they inhabit.
About the Author

A native of England, Alex George read law at Oxford University and worked for eight years as a corporate lawyer in London and Paris. He has lived in the Midwest of the United States for the last sixteen years. He is the founder and director of the Unbound Book Festival, and is the owner of Skylark Bookshop, an independent bookstore in downtown Columbia, Missouri.
Alex is the author of The Paris Hours, A Good American, and Setting Free the Kites.

The Racket Weekly : A Necessary Distraction
2020-06-04 19:00 - 20:30
The Racket Weekly : A NECESSARY DISTRACTION, JUNE 4th, 7PM
ZOOM LINK TO COME
You know what’s good right now? Distraction. We know it looks different for all of us, but regardless if it’s a drink or two at the end of the day, a deep dive into an epic, a six film movie marathon, a wet cloth over your eyes, a dog, a cat, a mouse, a bird, a documentary on tigers – whatever it might be it is more necessary than ever. Our quintet of readers will be discussing their distractions, what’s keeping the bad thoughts at bay, or inviting them into stay.
6/4 PST, 7PM, ZOOOOOOOOOOM.
The Readers (So Far):
James Cagney
Emily Pinkerton
Wesley Cohen
Chris Danzig

Quarantine Storytime // Miah Jeffra
2020-06-04 19:00
During the Shelter in Place, CLA is presenting live readings online with poets, writers, and translators, and the local presses who publish them.
Our final event features Miah Jeffra, author of The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic: Essays (Sibling Rivalry Press) and The First Church of What’s Happening (Nomadic Press). Miah’s reading will be streamed on Facebook Live and Instagram Live on Thursday, June 4 at 7PM.
Praise for The Fabulous Ekphrastic Fantastic:
“Miah Jeffra is that rare writer who’s as committed to the individual sentence as much as he is to developing a bold, animated vision. These short pieces are nothing less than an ongoing art of survival, and they’re irresistible in their force, innovation, and vulnerability.” — Paul Lisicky
Praise for The First Church of What’s Happening:
“Miah Jeffra does not use his imagination to protect himself or to protect us. Instead, he gives us stories of reckless tenderness and anger and sorrow and lust—that overflow with images of wonder and desire. How wonderful!” –Robert Glück
Miah Jeffra is a writer, artist, curator and educator, currently living in San Francisco. A military brat, Jeffra moved throughout their childhood, but most identifies the South as home.
They spent their high school years in Baltimore, and then moved to Atlanta, where they studied English, Music and Theatre at Oglethorpe University.
Miah later studied in the MFA Writing Program in Critical Studies at the California Institute of the Arts and the MA program in English at San Francisco State University. Jeffra teaches Writing, Drama, Media and Cultural Studies at Santa Clara University and The San Francisco Art Institute, and is Founding Editor and Production Designer for queer literary collaborative, Foglifter Press.
Jeffra finds interest in community-centered arts and discourse and chooses to maintain a multi-disciplinary studio practice for its collaborative possibilities. The subjects of their work range from psycho-geography, urban studies and class to gender structures and whiteness as oppressive construct. Influences include Augusto Boal, Anna Deavere Smith, Richard Rodriguez, Peter Brook, Angela Davis, Richard Schechner, James Baldwin, Judith Butler, Michael Cunningham, Toni Morrison, Adrian Piper, Colum McCann, Olafur Eliasson, Guy Debord and the Situationists, Whoopi Goldberg, Joe Goode, West African dance forms, and other artists/writers who emphasize process in their work.

YOU'RE GOING TO DIE PRESENTS: YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.
2020-06-04 18:30
Thursday, June 4, 2020
6:30 PM 9:00 PM
GLOBALLY (map)

You’re Going to Die Presents: YOU. ARE. NOT. ALONE.
an online community event
for enlivening connection
featuring words & music from
The Feelings Parade
The Singer and The Songwriter
Chelsea Coleman
Nick Jaina
Jordan Edelheit
Ned Buskirk
& more, more, more….
You’re Going to Die offers a mortally conscious & enliveningly entertaining experience, proudly presenting great artists as they deserve to be presented: in the concert context of acknowledging their mortal magic…
Honestly. We just wanna have a fun night together.
We might cry, but mainly we’re gonna laugh & sing a lot.
Virtual Doors at 6:30pm
Show at 7pm
Ends at 9pm
REGISTRATION: https://bit.ly/3gbDTmr
TICKETING:
Like so many other artists & nonprofits with an event focus, much of our work for the foreseeable future is cancelled. For this special online event we suggest that people pay between $10-50, but don’t hesitate to go above or below based on what feels possible. And PLEASE, if you are suddenly in financial danger, DO NOT pay us. We’re just happy you’re alive & able to join. If you’re still earning income (or are just generally resourced), we very much welcome your generosity.
Venmo: @YG-2D
Paypal: chelsea@yg2d.com
Mortally Yours,
the You’re Going to Die Team
www.yg2d.com

VIRTUAL: Meredith Talusan in conversation with Jennifer Finney Boylan / Fairest: A Memoir
2020-06-04 18:00 - 20:00
Booksmith and The Bindery host a virtual event with Meredith Talusan for her new memoir Fairest. She’ll be in conversation with Jennifer Finney Boylan (Long Black Veil; Good Boy: My Life in 7 Dogs)! Please join us.
“A ball of light hurled into the dark undertow of migration and survival.” – Ocean Vuong
“Talusan sails past the conventions of trans and immigrant memoirs.” – The New York Times Book Review
We’ll be streaming live on our Facebook page.
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Fairest is a memoir about a precocious boy with albinism, a “sun child” from a rural Philippine village, who would grow up to become a woman in America. Coping with the strain of parental neglect and the elusive promise of U.S. citizenship, Talusan found childhood comfort from her devoted grandmother, a grounding force as she was treated by others with special preference or public curiosity. As an immigrant to the United States, Talusan came to be perceived as white. An academic scholarship to Harvard provided access to elite circles of privilege but required Talusan to navigate through the complex spheres of race, class, sexuality, and her place within the gay community. She emerged as an artist and an activist questioning the boundaries of gender. Talusan realized she did not want to be confined to a prescribed role as a man, and transitioned to become a woman, despite the risk of losing a man she deeply loved. Throughout her journey, Talusan shares poignant and powerful episodes of desirability and love that will remind readers of works such as Call Me By Your Name and Giovanni’s Room. Her evocative reflections will shift our own perceptions of love, identity, gender, and the fairness of life.

Meredith Talusan is an award-winning author and journalist who has written for The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, WIRED, SELF, and Condé Nast Traveler, among many other publications, and has contributed to several essay collections. She has received awards from GLAAD, The Society of Professional Journalists, and the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association. She is also the founding executive editor of them., Condé Nast’s LGBTQ+ digital platform, where she is currently contributing editor. Photo by Albrica Tierra. Photo by Albrica Tierra.
Professor Jennifer Finney Boylan, author of fifteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. Her column “Men & Women” appears on the op/ed page of the New York Times on alternate Wednesdays. She serves on the Board of Trustees of PEN America, the nonprofit advocating for authors, readers, and freedom of expression. From 2011 to 2018 she served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD; she was co-chair of GLAAD’s board of directors from 2013-17. She also is a member of the faculty of the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference of Middlebury College, and the Sirenland Writers’ Conference in Positano, Italy.

Litquake on Lockdown: Daniel Mallory Ortberg and Something That May Shock and Discredit You
2020-06-04 18:00
From the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyreand Merry Spinster, writer of Slate’s “Dear Prudence” column, and cofounder of The Toast comes this hilarious and stirring collection of essays and cultural observations spanning pop culture—from the endearingly popular to the staggeringly obscure. In Daniel Mallory Ortberg’s most personal work to date, he offers vigorous and laugh-out-loud funny accounts of both popular and highbrow culture while mixing in meditations on gender transition, family dynamics, and the many meanings of faith. From a thoughtful analysis of the beauty of William Shatner to a sinister reimagining of HGTV’s House Hunters, and featuring figures as varied as Anne of Green Gables, Columbo, Nora Ephron, Apollo, and the cast of Mean Girls, Something That May Shock and Discredit You will make you see yourself and those around you entirely anew. FREE, $5 suggested donation
Streamed live at Crowdcast and Facebook Live!
Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

Speakers

Daniel Mallory Ortberg
Daniel Mallory Ortberg is the “Dear Prudence” advice columnist at Slate, the cofounder of The Toast, and the New York Times bestselling author of Texts From Jane Eyre and The Merry Spinster.

We Are the Voices & City Lights Live Present: Alli Warren + Cedar Sigo
2020-06-04 17:00 - 19:00
celebrating the release of Alli Warren’s new poetry book
Little Hill
published by City Lights
Event co-presented by We Are the Voices
This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet.
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(Click Here) to make reservations
Event is free, but reservations are required
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(Purchase Little Hill here)
The third full-length collection from Bay Area poet Alli Warren, Little Hill comprises seven long poems written with propulsive prosody in a daybook fashion, examining our present, politically charged moment. These poems are at once energetic and contemplative, intimate and direct, as Warren focuses her attention on capitalism, gender, love, inequality, and resistance. Despite the dystopian now, Warren finds promise in the smallest human instances of tenderness, ecological connection, and political solidarity. Little Hill is about learning to live and love in the 21st century while not shying away from all there is to struggle against.
Praise for Little Hill:
“Little Hill is gift more than condemnation, though as the latter it’s unsparing. Still, it’s a gift.”––Alice Notley
“Alli Warren keeps company with those rare poets whose every new book is their best.”––CAConrad
“Little Hill embodies a poetics of radical uncertainty, one that attends to its horrific condition of possibility and is produced through the unmooring catastrophes that define our present moment: the destruction of the earth, mass imprisonment, late-capitalism—the litany does not end there. . . . Yet yearning, even as it is raised tentatively, is not crushed. In and against it all, a question is raised—the question of what it means to love in times of terror.”—Jackie Wang, author of Carceral Capitalism
Alli Warren published her Poetry Center Book Award-winning debut, Here Come the Warm Jets, with City Lights in 2013. She is also the author of I Love It Though (Nightboat Books, 2017), as well as numerous chapbooks. She has edited the literary magazine Dreamboat, co-curated the (New) Reading Series at 21 Grand, co-edited the Poetic Labor Project, and contributed to SFMOMA’s Open Space. Her writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Harpers, Poetry, The Brooklyn Rail, Best American Experimental Poetry, and BOMB. She has lived and worked in the Bay Area since 2005.
Cedar Sigo was raised on the Suquamish Reservation in the Pacific Northwest and studied at The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the Naropa Institute. He is the editor of There You Are: Interviews, Journals, and Ephemera, on Joanne Kyger (Wave Books, 2017), and author of eight books and pamphlets of poetry, including Royals (Wave Books, 2017), Language Arts (Wave Books, 2014), Stranger in Town (City Lights, 2010), Expensive Magic (House Press, 2008), and two editions of Selected Writings (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2003 and 2005). He has taught workshops at St. Mary’s College, Naropa University, and University Press Books.
About We Are the Voices: Through a generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, this project connects Mills College students with local and national poets, performers, writers, and scholars to collaborate around transformative art and critical scholarship.
Led by Mills Professor Sheila Lloyd, We Are the Voices We Have Been Waiting For: Poetry, Performance, and Public Humanities is a five-year, multi-pronged project that brings visiting artists and scholars to campus, broadening the conversation for Mills students and building connections with our local community.city

Eric Goodman: Cuppy and Stew
2020-06-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Eric Goodman discusses his new novel Cuppy and Stew.
Praise for Cuppy and Stew
“CUPPY AND STEW is completely natural, poignant, and riveting from the first page to the last. An easy read in the best sense of that phrase, and a major work of fiction.”—Ron Hansen
“Eric Goodman’s CUPPY AND STEW: THE BOMBING OF FLIGHT 629, A LOVE STORY reads like a fairy tale—until some pretty remarkable darkness sets in, as the title tells us it will. Part novel, part memoir (the author writes in the voice of his wife), part journalistic inquiry, the dark forests of this tale lead down to the far more treacherous and psychological underworld of the hero’s journey—and a gritty, hard-earned climb back to the light. A most compelling read.”—Sands Hall
“The grim tragedy of the first US terrorist bombing in 1955 that killed the narrator’s parents hovers over this powerful story. Readers are given the complicated love story of the two who die on United Flight 629 and the moving struggle of the daughters who are orphaned by the tragedy: ‘It was me and my sissy against the world.’ CUPPY AND STEW brilliantly blends the known and the imagined and will stand as a model for new possibilities in historical fiction.”—Jim Heynen
About Cuppy and Stew
In November, 1955, a young man in Denver, Colorado, hid twenty-five sticks of dynamite and a crude timer in his mother’s suitcase. In what the FBI would term the first example of American air piracy, United Flight 629 blew up twelve minutes after taking off, killing everyone aboard. Part historical novel, part memoir, CUPPY AND STEW tells one family’s story before and after the bomb went off. Narrated by a young girl whose parents died on Flight 629, CUPPY AND STEW evokes the not-so-innocent 1950s, and the struggles of Cuppy and Stew’s daughters to survive their parents’ deaths. Prize-winning novelist Eric Goodman’s sixth novel is not only his most moving but also his most personal. His wife’s parents perished on United 629.

Zeyn Joukhadar - The Thirty Names of Night
2020-06-03 18:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
Five years after a suspicious fire killed his ornithologist mother, a closeted Syrian American trans boy sheds his birth name and searches for a new one. He has been unable to paint since his mother’s ghost has begun to visit him each evening. As his grandmother’s sole caretaker, he spends his days cooped up in their apartment, avoiding his neighborhood masjid, his estranged sister, and even his best friend (who also happens to be his longtime crush). The only time he feels truly free is when he slips out at night to paint murals on buildings in the once-thriving Manhattan neighborhood known as Little Syria.
One night, he enters the abandoned community house and finds the tattered journal of a Syrian American artist named Laila Z, who dedicated her career to painting the birds of North America. She famously and mysteriously disappeared more than sixty years before, but her journal contains proof that both his mother and Laila Z encountered the same rare bird before their deaths. In fact, Laila Z’s past is intimately tied to his mother’s—and his grandmother’s—in ways he never could have expected. Even more surprising, Laila Z’s story reveals the histories of queer and transgender people within his own community that he never knew. Realizing that he isn’t and has never been alone, he has the courage to officially claim a new name: Nadir, an Arabic name meaning rare.
As unprecedented numbers of birds are mysteriously drawn to the New York City skies, Nadir enlists the help of his family and friends to unravel what happened to Laila Z and the rare bird his mother died trying to save. Following his mother’s ghost, he uncovers the silences kept in the name of survival by his own community, his own family, and within himself, and discovers the family that was there all along.
Featuring Zeyn Joukhadar’s signature “magical and heart-wrenching” (The Christian Science Monitor) storytelling, The Thirty Names of Night is a timely exploration of how we all search for and ultimately embrace who we are.
Zeyn Joukhadar is the author of The Map of Salt and Stars. He is a member of the Radius of Arab American Writers (RAWI) and of American Mensa. Joukhadar’s writing has appeared in Salon, The Paris Review, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. The Map of Salt and Stars was a 2018 Middle East Book Award winner in Youth Literature and a 2018 Goodreads Choice Award Finalist in Historical Fiction and was shortlisted for the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. He has been an artist in residence at the Montalvo Arts Center, the Fes Medina Project, Beit al-Atlas, and the Arab American National Museum.

Ali Araghi in conversation with Laleh Khadivi
2020-06-03 18:00 - 20:00
Ali Araghi in conversation with Laleh Khadivi
celebrating Ali Araghi’s new novel
The Immortals of Tehran
published by Melville House
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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Crowdcast platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Crowdcast before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Crowdcast.
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Event is free, but reservations are required
(Re-visit this link) in the near future to make reservations
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Books for this event may be purchased at these links :
(To be posted)
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As a child living in his family’s apple orchard, Ahmad Torkash-Vand treasures his great-great-great-great grandfather’s every mesmerizing word. On the day of his father’s death, Ahmad listens closely as the seemingly immortal elder tells him the tale of a centuries-old family curse . . . and the boy’s own fated role in the story.
Ahmad grows up to suspect that something must be interfering with his family, as he struggles to hold them together through decades of famine, loss, and political turmoil in Iran. As the world transforms around him, each turn of Ahmad’s life is a surprise: from street brawler, to father of two unusually gifted daughters; from radical poet, to politician with a target on his back. These lives, and the many unforgettable stories alongside his, converge and catch fire at the center of the Revolution.
Exploring the brutality of history while conjuring the astonishment of magical realism, The Immortals of Tehran is a novel about the incantatory power of words and the revolutionary sparks of love, family, and poetry—set against the indifferent, relentless march of time.
Ali Araghi is an Iranian writer and translator. He earned his MA in Ancient Cultures and Languages at the University of Tehran and has translated Samuel Beckett into Persian. After completing his MFA from the University of Notre Dame, he is currently working on his PhD in Comparative Literature, International Writers Track, at Washington University. He won the 2017 Prairie Schooner Virginia Faulkner Award for Excellence in Writing and has published stories and translations in Prairie Schooner, The Fifth Wednesday Journal, Asymptote, and Hayden’s Ferry Review, among others. He lives in St. Louis.
Laleh Khadivi was born in Esfahan, Iran, in 1977. In the aftermath of the Islamic Revolution her family fled, finally settling in Canada and then the United States. Khadivi received her MFA from Mills College and was a Creative Writing Fellow in Fiction at Emory University. In 2008 she received The Whiting Writers’ Award. In 2009 she published her first novel The Age of Orphans and in 2017 her second titled A Good Country.

Hanif Abdurraqib with Jeff Chang
2020-06-02 19:30 - 21:00 | Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
TICKETSTo purchase over the phone: 415-392-4400
This event appears in the series
Special Events

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of the poetry collections The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster, the essay collection They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Go Ahead In The Rain, an homage to A Tribe Called Quest, and the forthcoming They Don’t Dance No Mo. His poetry has been published in Muzzle, Vinyl, PEN American, and various other journals and his essays and music criticism have been published in The FADER, Pitchfork, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. Adburraqib is a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet/essayist Eve L. Ewing.

Photograph credit: Marcus Jackson

DEAR EDWARD by Ann Napolitano | GGP Online Book Club
2020-06-02 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Tuesday, June 2, 2020 at 7 PM PDT for a GGP Online Book Club discussion of Ann Napolitano’s amazing new novel, DEAR EDWARD.
This book is one of Kathleen’s recent favorites. Samantha of GGP said this about DEAR EDWARD: “I’m a little reluctant to reveal the details of the events that propels this extraordinary novel forward. A plane crash leaving only one young survivor seems repellently gloomy and yet Napolitano has given us one of the most hopeful stories I’ve ever read!”
Please join us even if you have not read the book yet. We’ll play a sample from the audiobook from our audiobook partner, Libro.fm.
The Zoom meeting will be at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84683199803.
You can order a hardcover of DEAR EDWARD at bit.ly/EdwardHC, or an audiobook from Libro.fm, GGP’s audiobook partner, at bit.ly/EdwardAB.

Andrew Fraknoi: Visit the Top Tourist Sights of the Solar System
2020-06-02 19:00 - 20:00
So many of us are dreaming of the places we would love to visit, hatching plans for our next vacation. Andrew Fraknoi asks us to imagine the top tourist destinations in our solar system that our great-grandchildren will be visiting.
Using spectacular images from space probes and the world’s largest telescopes, we will explore the most intriguing future “tourist destinations” among the planets and moons in our cosmic neighborhood. Our stops will include the 4,000-mile lava channel on Venus, the towering Mount Olympus volcano on Mars (three times the height of Mount Everest), the awesome Verona Cliffs on the moon Miranda (which are the tallest “lover’s leap” in the solar system), the recently discovered salt-water steam geysers on Saturn’s intriguing moon Enceladus (nicknamed “Cold Faithful.”). We’ll finish with the latest images of the eerie vistas on Pluto.
Andrew Fraknoi retired in 2017 as the Chair of the Astronomy Department at Foothill College, and now teaches non-credit astronomy courses for older adults at The Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco and the OLLI program at SF State. Fraknoi has appeared regularly on local and national radio, explaining astronomical developments in everyday language, and was the California Professor of the Year in 2007. He is the lead author on a college astronomy textbook and a children’s book When the Sun Goes Dark. He also writes science fiction and has published three stories in the last few years. The International Astronomical Union has named Asteroid 4859 Asteroid Fraknoi to honor his contributions to the public understanding of science.
This is the perfect get-away from our current problems, rooted in real science with a hopeful view of the future.

America’s Most Unusual Marriage: Adam Hochschild on Rebel Cinderella in conversation with Monika Bauerlein
2020-06-02 19:00
Trust bestselling author and historian Adam Hochschild to unearth one of history’s forgotten heroines and give her story the page-turning treatment it deserves. Russian immigrant Rose Pastor Stokes spent her first twelve years in America in a sweatshop, only to skyrocket to the upper class when she married an heir to a massive mining and real estate fortune. It’s a classic Cinderella story: that is, if Cinderella converted her prince to socialism, became an antiwar and labor activist, caused a scandal by promoting birth control access, and was dubbed “one of the most dangerous influences of the country” by a sitting President.
This tale of a volatile, bright-burning Gilded Age marriage could only exist in the America of Jay Gatsby, bootleggers, and the Lost Generation: an era of glamour and privation, of big dreams and bigger inequities. An era, as Hochschild reveals, with far more parallels to our own than anything in the Brothers Grimm. Only Hochshild could do justice, in words and images, to a crusader who was far ahead of her own time, but strikingly relevant to ours. Hochschild will be joined by Monika Bauerlein, CEO and award-winning editor of Mother Jones.

Sasha Abramsky - Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World's First Female Sports Superstar
2020-06-02 18:00 - 20:00 | Book Passage San Francisco, 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco, CA, 94111, United States
Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dod, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar is a biography of a truly extraordinary sports figure who blazed trails of glory in the last decades of the nineteenth and first decade of the twentieth centuries. Dod was the third woman to win the Ladies’ Championships at the Wimbledon tennis tournament. She did so for the first time in 1887, at the ludicrously young age of fifteen. She remains today the youngest person ever to have won a singles trophy in what would come to be known as the big-four Grand Slam tennis tournaments.
Dod won Wimbledon five times, grew bored with competitive tennis, and moved on to myriad other sports. She became the world’s leading female ice skater and tobogganist, perfecting her talents in St. Moritz, Switzerland; befriended Elizabeth Main, the most skilled female mountaineer of the age, and joined her in summiting many of Switzerland’s and Norway’s most difficult mountains; became an endurance bicyclist; played hockey for England; won the British ladies’ golf championship in 1904; and finally, in 1908, took the Olympic silver medal in archery in the London Olympics.
In her time, she had a huge following, with fans coming out by the thousands to cheer her on. She was feted by the media, and repeatedly profiled by the top sports journals of the day. Had Dod lived in a different age, this fame would have followed her throughout her life. But Dod’s years of glory occurred just before the rise of cinema, radio, and other electronic media. By the outset of World War I, she was largely a forgotten figure; she died alone and without fanfare in 1960.
Little Wonder brings this remarkable woman’s story to life, contextualizing it against a backdrop of rapid social change and tectonic shifts in the status of women in society. Dod was born into a world in which even upper-class women such as herself could not vote, were restricted in owning property, and were assumed to be fragile and delicate. True, the monarch was a queen, Victoria; but Victoria’s reign was hardly a bastion of feminist progress. Women of Lottie Dod’s class were expected not to work and to definitely get married. Dod turned that equation on its head; she never married and never had children, instead putting heart and soul into training to be the best athlete she could possibly be.
Dod was one of the pioneers who paved the way for the likes of Billie Jean King, Serena Williams, and the top female athletes of today. She accepted no limits, no glass ceilings, believed she could compete with the top men in whatever sport she set her sights on, and always refused to compromise.
Sasha Abramsky is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared over the past twenty-five years in major newspapers and magazines in the United States and United Kingdom. These include the Nation, the Atlantic, the New Yorker online, Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Independent, the Observer, and the New Statesman. He has written widely about poverty and inequality; hunger; mass incarceration; the treatment of immigrants, refugees, and asylum seekers; along with book reviews, cultural essays, and travel writing. Little Wonder is Abramsky’s ninth book. He teaches writing part-time at the University of California, Davis, and lives in Sacramento with his wife and two children.

Robert Mailer Anderson & Friends
2020-06-02 18:00 - 20:00
Robert Mailer Anderson will be joined by Jacqueline Obradors, Jon Sack, with musical accompaniment by Jay Walsh (of Douglas Fir)
celebrating his new graphic novel
Windows on the World
Co-authored with Zack Anderson
Illustrations by Jon Sack
published by Fantagraphics Books
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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Crowdcast platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Crowdcast before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Crowdcast.
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(Click Here) for reservations
Event is free, but reservations are required
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The book for this event may be purchased at this link :
>Purchase WINDOWS ON THE WORLD here<
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Set in a New York City in mourning, this poignant graphic novel explores the push-and-pull between love and obligation.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, an undocumented worker named Balthazar busses tables at New York City’s famous Windows on the World restaurant. Back in Mexico, his family watches their TV screen in horror as the Twin Towers collapse. Refusing to give up hope that Balthazar is alive, his son Fernando embarks on a treacherous journey across the border to New York to find him. Along the way, Fernando learns what it means to be undocumented in America — encountering at turns an indifferent bureaucracy and a supportive group of fellow immigrants who help guide him through his quixotic mission to bring his family back together.
Now a major motion picture!
Robert Mailer Anderson is a San Francisco Library Laureate as well as a novelist, screenwriter, producer, and activist. He is the author of the novel Boonville.
Jon Sack is a US and UK based artist and writer whose comic books include La Lucha and Iraqi Oil For Beginners.
Jacqueline Danell Obradors is an actor and has appeared in numerous feature film that include Six Days, Seven Nights (1998), Deuce Bigalow:Male Gigolo (1999), Tortilla Soup (2001), A Man Apart(2003) and Unstoppable (2004). She has also appeared on the television crime drama NYPD Blue (2001–2005.)
Jay Walsh play Vocals, Guitars, and Piano for the musical combo DOUGLAS FIR.

Litquake on Lockdown: Ode to Our 13-Year-Old Selves
2020-06-02 18:00
Prompted by a fireside moment at a writing conference, these poets with varying childhood experiences of race, gender, sexuality, migration, culture and religion, will share work that honors their 13-year-old selves — and the surprise, disbelief, pride, love, and even derision those 13-year-old selves might have for the grown and poetry folx they have become. Participants will each open their readings by addressing themselves as their younger selves might experience them now. An unforgettable evening of vulnerable intimacy, physical distancing, and social connection. With Hari Alluri, Nico Amador, Faisal Mohyuddin, Cynthia Dewi Oka, and Seema Reza. FREE, $5 suggested donation
Streamed live at Crowdcast and Facebook Live!
Books are available from your favorite indie bookstores, or order from bookshop.org!

Speakers

Nico Amador
Nico Amador is a poet, community organizer and facilitator based in Vermont by way of San Diego and Philadelphia. His poems have appeared in Bettering American Poetry, Vol 3, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series, Hypertext Review, Poets Reading the News, Poet Lore, Bedfellows… Read More →

Cynthia Dewi Oka
Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Salvage (Northwestern University Press) and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (Thread Makes Blanket). Her work has appeared widely in print and online, including in ESPNW, Hyperallergic, Guernica, Scoundrel Time, Academy of American Poets, American Poetry… Read More →

Seema Reza
Seema Reza is the author of A Constellation of Half-Lives and When the World Breaks Open. Her writing has appeared in print and online in McSweeney’s, The Feminist Wire, Bellevue Literary Review, The Offing, Full Grown People, and The Nervous Breakdown, among others. She has performed… Read More →

Faisal Mohyuddin
Faisal Mohyuddin is a writer, artist, and educator. He is the author of The Displaced Children of Displaced Children, winner of the 2017 Sexton Prize in Poetry and a 2018 Summer Recommendation of the Poetry Book Society. His other awards include the Prairie Schooner’s Edward Stanley… Read More →

Hari Alluri
Hari Alluri is the author of The Flayed City (Kaya), Carving Ashes (CiCAC/Thompson Rivers), and the chapbook The Promise of Rust (Mouthfeel Press, 2016). Winner of the 2020 Leonard A. Slade, Jr. Poetry Fellowship for Poets of Color, his current projects are supported by grants from… Read More →

VIRTUAL: ZYZZYVA & The Booksmith Present: Lockdown Lit @ Lunch with Melanie Abrams & Andrew Altschul
2020-06-02 11:00 - 13:00
Booksmith and The Bindery, in partnership with Zyzzyva, present Lockdown Lit @ Lunch, a weekly salon, Tuesdays at 11am PST. Lockdown Literature is a group of authors with books published during the coronavirus pandemic who have banded together to support one another. This event features Melanie Abrams (Meadowlark) & Andrew Altschul (The Gringa).
You can find a full list of Lockown Lit authors here. Please save the date and join us!
This event will be streaming live on our Facebook page.

Friends, neighbors: We are pleased to be able to bring you some of our events virtually while our doors are otherwise closed in the interest of public health. If you’d like to support the store, you can still do that in the usual ways:
> Buy Meadowlark and/or The Gringa and we’ll deliver them directly to your door.
> Buy one of our gift certificates, which we keep on file and never expire.
> Make a donation.
Thank you very much for your support – we’re proud to be a legacy business and a mainstay of the Haight-Ashbury since 1976!

Meadowlark by Melanie Abrams
After growing up in an austere spiritual compound, two teenagers, Simrin and Arjun, escape and go their separate ways. Years later, Simrin receives an email from Arjun. As they reconnect, Simrin learns that he has become the charismatic leader of Meadowlark, a commune in the Nevada desert that allows children to discover their “gifts.”
In spite of their fractured relationship, Simrin, a photojournalist, agrees to visit Meadowlark to document its story. She arrives at the commune with her five-year-old daughter in tow and soon realizes there is something disturbing about Arjun’s beliefs concerning children and their unusual abilities. When she discovers that the commune is in the midst of a criminal investigation, her unease grows deeper still.
As tensions with police heighten, Arjun’s wife begins to make plans of her own, fearing the exposure the investigation might bring for her and her children. Both mothers find themselves caught in a desperate situation, and as the conflict escalates, everyone involved must make painful–and potentially tragic–choices that could change their worlds forever.
Gripping and beautifully crafted, Meadowlark explores the power and danger of being extraordinary and what it means to see and be seen.
Melanie Abrams is the author of the novels Playing and Meadowlark. Melanie teaches writing at UC Berkeley and is a photographer and developmental editor. She is married to the writer Vikram Chandra, and they live with their children in Oakland, CA.

The Gringa by Andrew Altschul
Leonora Gelb came to Peru to make a difference. A passionate and idealistic Stanford grad, she left a life of privilege to fight poverty and oppression, but her beliefs are tested when she falls in with violent revolutionaries. While death squads and informants roam the streets and suspicion festers among the comrades, Leonora plans a decisive act of protest—until her capture in a bloody government raid, and a sham trial that sends her to prison for life.
Ten years later, Andres—a failed novelist turned expat—is asked to write a magazine profile of “La Leo.” As his personal life unravels, he struggles to understand Leonora, to reconstruct her involvement with the militants, and to chronicle Peru’s tragic history. At every turn he’s confronted by violence and suffering, and by the consequences of his American privilege. Is the real Leonora an activist or a terrorist? Cold-eyed conspirator or naïve puppet? And who is he to decide?
In this powerful and timely new novel, Andrew Altschul maps the blurred boundaries between fact and fiction, author and text, resistance and extremism. Part coming-of-age story and part political thriller, The Gringa asks what one person can do in the face of the world’s injustice.
Andrew Altschul is the author of three novels—The Gringa, Deux Ex Machina, and Lady Lazarus. His work has appeared in anthologies including Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best New American Voices, and O. Henry Prize Stories. A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford, he has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Center, the Ucross Foundation, and the Fundacíon Valparaíso. The former director of the Center for Literary Arts in San José, Altschul currently directs the Creative Writing program at Colorado State University, in Fort Collins.

This event is free and all ages.
RSVP appreciated by not required.
