Litseen

J. Ryan Stradal
2019-08-01 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Novel Brewing Company, 6510 San Pablo Ave, Oakland, CA, 94608
J. Ryan Stradal

reads from his much-anticipated The Lager Queen of Minnesota, a novel of family, Midwestern values, hard work, fate, and the secrets of making a world-class beer, from the author of Kitchens of the Great Midwest. Please join us for a festive evening of books and brews at Novel Brewing Company (www.novelbrewing.com).
“Warm, whimsical, incredibly well-written and infused with Stradal’s signature sympathy for his characters–those everyday heroes we all know and love. . . a thorough delight, from beginning to end.”–Nickolas Butler
You may order a copy of The Lager Queen of Minnesota in the store, by clicking below, or at the event.

Thursday, August 1, 2019 – 7:30pm

Edith Magnusson’s rhubarb pies are famous in the Twin Cities–they were named the third-best in the state of Minnesota and St. Anthony-Waterside Nursing Home has quickly become the hottest dinner ticket in town. Still, she lies awake wondering how her life might have been different if her father hadn’t left their family farm to her sister Helen, a decision that split their family in two.
With the proceeds from the farm, her sister, Helen Blotz, built her husband Orval’s family soda business into the top selling brewery in Minnesota. She single-handedly created the light beer revolution and made their corporate motto ubiquitous: “Drink lots, it’s Blotz.” But Helen dismisses IPAs as a fad, and the Blotz fortune begins its inevitable decline. Soon, though, she finds a potential savior that’s surprisingly close to home. . .
Diana Winter earns a shot at learning the beer business from the ground up just as the IPA revolution begins. The stakes couldn’t be higher: just as she’s launching her own brewpub, she’s due to deliver a baby girl. When the unthinkable happens, it’s up to Grandma Edith–and a delightfully surprising cadre of grandmother friends–to secure the next generation’s chances for a better future. Can Grandma Edith’s Rhubarb Pie In A Bottle Ale save Diana’s fledgling brewery, and change their hearts and fortunes forever?
J. Ryan Stradal is a contributing editor at Taste Magazine. His bestselling debut, Kitchens of the Great Midwest, won the 2016 American Booksellers Association Indie’s Choice Award for Adult Debut Book of the Year and also the 2016 Midwest Booksellers Choice Award for debut fiction. Born and raised in Minnesota, he now lives in Los Angeles.

Event address:

Novel Brewing Co.
6510 San Pablo Ave

Oakland, CA 94608

Women Bike Book Club
2019-08-01 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Oakland Public Library – Golden Gate Branch, 5606 San Pablo Ave., Oakland, CA, 94608
For our meeting in August, we’ll be reading Cat, by Freya North. This title is a bit of a departure from our past books, and will be a blast to dissect and discuss! Author’s description:
She’s in for the ride of her life.
Her career is stuck in a rut.
Her love life has been a tangle.
But fortune favours the brave…
When journalist Cat McCabe lands a job reporting on the Tour de France she’s confident it might give her stuttering career the boost it needs and provide a welcome distraction from a messy break-up. Or so she hopes.
She quickly realizes Le Tour is not just all about the bikes. Large bulges, huge egos, lashings of Lycra and plenty of sexy shenanigans play their part and, soon enough, her own life starts to mirror the high peaks and perilous lows of the race as she battles for more than just a scoop.
Whatever happens, it’s going to be the ride of her life.
With sex, drugs, and egos, the soap opera that is the Tour de France unfolds, with Cat’s life frequently mirroring the peaks and perils of the race.
Pick up a copy of Cat at Golden Gate! Please call 510-597-5023 or email esanders@oaklandlibrary.org to make sure copies are available.

Sarah Rose Etter: The Book of X
2019-07-31 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Sarah Rose Etter discusses her new novel, The Book of X, with Rita Bullwinkel.
Praise for The Book of X
“Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything.” –Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
“I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.” –Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties
About The Book of X
A surreal exploration of one woman’s life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men.
The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday — school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents — with the surreal — rivers of thighs, men for sale, and fields of throats — Cassie’s realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

#we - a talk and reading series of queer perspectives
2019-07-31 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Please join us for the fourth installment of #we, a talk and reading series of queer perspectives hosted by Richard Loranger. Each event features two writers from various segments of the queer spectrum, who each give a talk on their perspective on or experience of queerness, followed by a reading of their creative work. For our fourth event, experimental non-binary wordsmith Julian Mithra will deliver a talk titled “Hybrid Gender & Genre”, and read selections of whatever they see fit, and poet and performer Marvin R. Hiemstra will present his upcoming memoir, Raven Knows: Your Smile Is Unique, detailing his amorous evolution through much of the 20th Century both extemporaneously and through passages. Q&A and chat time will follow.

Absolutely all are welcome to this sharing of perspectives. The venue is wheelchair accessible, and ASL translation for the deaf is available on request, with a two-week notice preferred.

Hosted by Richard Loranger

free of charge, and a hat will be passed

PERFORMER BIOS

Julian née Sara Mithra writes about things that haven’t happened and never could happen. If the Color Is Fugitive (Nomadic Press) was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Poetry. Read more experiments in The Lifted Brow, Meow Meow Pow Pow, Birds Fall Silent in the Mechanical Sea, Storm Cellar, Name and None, and inside bags of Nomadic Coffee.

Founding Editor-in-Chief of Bay Area Poets Seasonal Review for eight years Marvin R. Hiemstra has published satires and poetic humor in North American Review, The Satirist, Amsterdam Quarterly, Caveat Lector, and elsewhere. Dana Gioia called Marvin’s performance DVD, French Kiss Destiny, “superb work.” The Tower Journal defined Poet Wrangler: Droll Poems: “Marvin R. Hiemstra, profound humor and double-entendre, offers sheer joy.” “What I hold closest to my heart is Marvin’s constant reminder of the importance of human affection in this totally terrifying 21st Century!” Shawn Pittard in The Great American Pinup. Library Journal reported, “Whimsical poet/humorist Hiemstra is a very agreeable addition to contemporary American literature.” Leslie Hills at The Scotsman noted, “Marvin R. Hiemstra’s A Turquoise Coyote Under Your Pillow is intense, refreshing theatre.” RAVEN KNOWS: YOUR SMILE IS UNIQUE is Marvin’s book of anecdotes that will appear in 2020. Marvin’s talk will share the delightful and sometimes shocking details of his amorous evolution.

Sarah Parcak: Archaeology from Space
2019-07-30 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Sarah Parcak discusses her new book, Archaeology From Space: How the Future Shapes Our Past.
Praise for Archaeology From Space
“This book is so much more than the memoir of a dedicated archaeologist—it’s an open invitation for all of us to become explorers. She has pioneered crowd source archaeology, and shows how we can join her on the adventures of discovery that we’ve always dreamed about.” —Peter Jackson, Academy Award-winning director
“Divining clues about what’s hidden beneath the earth from satellites high above, Parcak takes the reader on a worldwide adventure through our shared and ancient past. With delightful wit, infectious wonder, and a big dose of wisdom about where we’re headed, she offers anyone with a computer the chance to become a virtual Indiana Jones.” —Juli Berwald, author of Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone
“Part memoir, part pop-history, Sarah Parcak’s writing bursts with enthusiasm and illuminates her pioneering research that seems more like science fiction than the hard science it is. Reading this book makes me want to become a space archaeologist!”—Steve Brusatte, University of Edinburgh paleontologist and author of the New York Times bestseller The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
About Archaeology From Space
National Geographic Explorer and TED Prize-winner Dr. Sarah Parcak welcomes you to the exciting new world of space archaeology, a growing field that is sparking extraordinary discoveries from ancient civilizations across the globe.
In Archaeology from Space, Sarah Parcak shows the evolution, major discoveries, and future potential of the young field of satellite archaeology. From surprise advancements after the declassification of spy photography, to a new map of the mythical Egyptian city of Tanis, she shares her field’s biggest discoveries, revealing why space archaeology is not only exciting, but urgently essential to the preservation of the world’s ancient treasures.
Parcak has worked in twelve countries and four continents, using multispectral and high-resolution satellite imagery to identify thousands of previously unknown settlements, roads, fortresses, palaces, tombs, and even potential pyramids. From there, her stories take us back in time and across borders, into the day-to-day lives of ancient humans whose traits and genes we share. And she shows us that if we heed the lessons of the past, we can shape a vibrant future.

The Youngest Black Woman in Congress: Congresswoman Lauren Underwood
2019-07-29 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Manny’s, 3092 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, San Francisco, 94108, United States
What is it like to be the youngest black woman in Congress? Congresswoman Lauren Underwood is coming to Manny’s and she’ll tell ya!
There will be a smaller fundraiser for Congresswoman Underwood right before this event from 6-7 PM if you are interested in supporting her!
About Congresswoman Lauren Underwood:Congresswoman Lauren Underwood serves Illinois’ 14th Congressional District and was sworn into the 116th U.S. Congress on January 3, 2019. Congresswoman Underwood is the first woman, the first person of color, and the first millennial to represent her community in Congress. She is also the youngest African American woman to serve in the United States House of Representatives.
Congresswoman Underwood serves on the House Committee on Education and Labor, the House Committee on Veteran’s Affairs, and the House Committee on Homeland Security. She also serves on the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee. Rep. Underwood is a member of the Future Forum, a group of young Democratic Members of Congress committed to listening to and standing up for the next generation of Americans, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), and the LGBT Equality Caucus.
As a strong supporter of addressing the gun violence epidemic, Congresswoman Underwood is a member of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Taskforce.Prior to her election to Congress, Congresswoman Underwood worked with a Medicaid plan in Chicago to ensure that it provided high-quality, cost-efficient care. She served as a Senior Advisor at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), helping communities across the country prevent, prepare for, and respond to disasters, bioterror threats and public health emergencies.
As a career public servant at HHS, she helped implement the Affordable Care Act — broadening access for those on Medicare, improving healthcare quality, and reforming private insurance. Congresswoman Underwood also taught future nurse practitioners through Georgetown University’s online master’s program. Congresswoman Underwood is a graduate of the University of Michigan and Johns Hopkins University.
She graduated from Neuqua Valley High School and is a lifelong Girl Scout. She resides in Naperville, Illinois.

The End of the End of the World Literary Café Presents: Benjamin Heim Shephard and Lynn Breedlove
2019-07-29 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
The End of the End of the World Literary Café Presents:
Benjamin Heim Shephard and Lynn Breedlove
Hosted by James Tracy, author of Dispatches Against Displacement (AK Press), Hillbilly Nationalists (Beacon Press) and the forthcoming (with Hilary Moore) No Fascist USA! The John Brown Anti-Klan Committee and Lessons for Today’s Movements (City Lights)

Illuminations on Market Street is a heartbreaking, bitterly funny, and revelatory look back at a time of crisis in San Francisco, at the height of the AIDS epidemic. This roman à clef proves the personal is political. It was written with great insight and punishing honesty by veteran social justice and queer activist Benjamin Heim Shepard. The writer of several nonfiction books about politics and the counterculture, Shepard mined the contents of a personal journal from 30 years ago to create a slightly fictionalized saga of a city under siege and the souls in freefall who populated it.
45 Thought Crimes (Manic D Press) is Lynn Breedlove’s new book about spirituality for skeptics, in the body of the beloved. It’s church at a punk show, a letter to bees, a map in a crisis, a guidebook to histories, to love in a riot. Compassionate table flipping, commitment to the tactile, a swipe at the inevitable. Breedlove is also the author of the novel Godspeed, singer for the bands Tribe 8 / Homobiles / Commando, and writer/performer of Lynnee Breedlove’s One Freak Show. His work won him the 2012 Harvey Milk LGBT Club Award for Activism.

Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry
2019-07-29 08:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Photographer B.A. Van Sise discusses his new book, Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry. Also featuring readings by poets Jane Hirshfield and Dorianne Laux.
Praise for Children of Grass
“In Children of Grass, books fly around Alicia Ostriker like birds, Vijay Seshadri stands on a ladder propped against the air itself, and Mark Doty is growing from the forest floor. B.A. Van Sise’s photographs of contemporary poets, paired with their poems, are inspired, playful, and absolutely gorgeous. The word for what this book is, what this book gives me, is pleasure.” —Maggie Smith, author of Good Bones
“Van Sise’s imaginative, creative, and humorous eye reveals the ‘person’ of the poet and deeper meanings of their poems in ways that sometimes startle, but always feel truthful. That is the purpose of photography and poetry.” —David Hume Kennerly, Pulitzer Prize winner and former chief White House photographer
“Why do we desperately need books like this? At least for me, it’s because we occasionally need to be reminded that there are still mysteries out there, questions that have no answers. It is nice to be re-introduced to wonder.” —Arun Venugopal, WNYC
About Children of Grass
With this fascinating synthesis of word and image, internationally renowned photographer B.A. Van Sise offers a visually stimulating anthology that will enchant lovers of both poetry and photography. At times whimsical, surreal, challenging, enigmatic, joyful and sobering, these portraits— running adjacent to poems by each of their subjects—highlight some of the most influential poets of our time and celebrate creativity as only these poets in collaboration with Van Sise could convey. Children of Grass is also a timely homage to Walt Whitman—of whom Van Sise is a relative—and his masterpiece, “Leaves of Grass,” during this, the 200th anniversary of his birth. Children of Grass, will, like the work of its literary grandfather, stand as a lasting tribute to the vitality and creativity that flourishes in our country.

The Fight Against Monsanto's Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides
2019-07-28 17:00 - 18:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Green Arcade, 1680 Market St, San Francisco , CA, 94102, United States
Last year, former Benicia Unified School District groundskeeper Dewayne Johnson won a settlement for the cancer he got as a result of using Round Up produced by Monsanto, which was bought by Bayer. In his new book The Fight Against Monsanto’s Roundup: The Politics of Pesticides author Mitchell Cohen describes how the herbicide glyphosate has caused cancer in workers and members of our community at large. In the trial it was discovered that Monsanto had conspired to keep medical information secret which showed this was a dangerous substance, and Johnson’s likely death will be the result of their negligence in pursuit of profits. Cohen looks at the politics behind the pesticide chemical industry, and why it is not being held accountable.

The San Francisco Labor Council this year also passed a resolution calling on the California Attorney General to remove “Round Up” from the shelves in California.

Special appearance by Juror #4 from the landmark verdict against Monsanto in Dewayne Johnson’s trial in which the corporation was originally ordered to pay $289 million but after they appealed, was reduced to $78 million.

In conjunction with LaborFest 2019.

Tucker Malarkey returns to present Stronghold: One Man's Quest to Save the World's Wild Salmon
2019-07-28 15:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Tucker Malarkey

returns to present Stronghold: One Man’s Quest to Save the World’s Wild Salmon, the story of Guido Rahr, a passionate and eccentric environmentalist who has single-mindedly dedicated his life to saving the environment, working to preserve the world’s last pristine stronghold for salmon in Russia’s Far East–a landscape of ecological richness and diversity that is rapidly being developed for oil, gas, minerals, and timber in the Putin era.
“A powerful and inspiring story. Guido Rahr’s mission to save the wild Pacific salmon leads him into adventures that make for a breathtakingly exciting read.”–Ian Frazier, author of Travels in Siberia
To reserve your seat, please purchase a copy of Stronghold by speaking to a bookseller or ordering from our website.

Sunday, July 28, 2019 – 3:00pm

A high school drop-out and rebel more at home in the natural world among animals than among people, Rahr is a passionate fly fisher. His preternatural ability to understand the fish he was catching led him to fear for their future. What he came to understand is that the fate of the salmon is linked with the fate of humanity, as they contribute in essential ways to our own habitat. Deeply reported and beautifully written, Stronghold reveals the astonishing natural history of the salmon, while also providing a fascinating narrative that takes the reader to remote, inhospitable terrain and into the world of Russian oligarchs, corrupt officials, and impenetrable bureaucracies–as well as bringing us as close as possible to an extraordinary species of endangered fish. It is also a personal book in that Malarkey is Rahr’s first cousin and spent her summers with him on their family’s cabins in the wilds of Oregon. She has accompanied Rahr on many of his expeditions and knows this elusive, private, brilliant man as few do.
Tucker Malarkey is the author of the novels An Obvious Enchantment and Resurrection. Stronghold is her first major work of nonfiction. She lives in Berkeley.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Life Without Parole - Author Kenneth E. Hartman
2019-07-28 14:30 - 15:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
Kenneth E. Hartman’s sentence to live without parole was recently commuted by Governor Jerry Brown after he had spent 35 years in prison. He is now an activist for prison and sentencing reform, as well as a writer. This afternoon, Mr. Hartman will read from his book, Mother California: A Story of Redemption Behind Bars, the fierce and affecting memoir of a convicted murderer, whose growing self-awareness enables him to understand his crime and achieve redemption.
In 1980, Kenneth E. Hartman murdered a homeless man in a Los Angeles area park after a drug-fueled binge. Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole by the state of California, Hartman was soon considered a potent force by the system’s most brutal convicts. To the hellish chaos of a maximum-security prison he brought his own limitless propensity for violence—he often spent months at a time in solitary confinement, “the Hole.”
After years in the cold embrace of the state prison system, Hartman discovered a vocation for writing; he also met, through a chance phone call, the woman he would marry and have a child by. With poignancy and self awareness, Hartman chronicles the anarchy and brutish moral code that rules in some of the world’s most infamous prisons, where physical punishment is the only form of control. Over time, Hartman evolves into a sentient being; follows his newly discovered spiritual and literary inclinations; and learns to deal with his demanding responsibilities as a family man. The final chapter describes his development of the Honor Program, which helps motivated prisoners escape the ravages of incarceration.
Mother California is the story of a man who did not succumb to the darkness of the only world left to him. It offers definite proof that there is no such thing as a life beyond redemption.

SF Creative Writing School Student Showcase
2019-07-27 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Student Showcase readings “Write From The Gut” featuring our faculty, alumni and current students reading works in progress.
With your host Paul Corman-Roberts

LAUNCH for Sarah Rose Etter, w/Trisha Low & Tommy Pico / The Book of X
2019-07-26 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Sarah Rose Etter for the launch of her anticipated debut novel, The Book of X. She’ll be joined byTrisha Low and Tommy Pico.
A surreal exploration of one woman’s life and death against a landscape of meat, office desks, and bad men.
The Book of X tells the tale of Cassie, a girl born with her stomach twisted in the shape of a knot. From childhood with her parents on the family meat farm, to a desk job in the city, to finally experiencing love, she grapples with her body, men, and society, all the while imagining a softer world than the one she is in. Twining the drama of the everyday—school-age crushes, paying bills, the sickness of parents—with the surreal—rivers of thighs, men for sale and fields of throats—Cassie’s realities alternate to create a blurred, fantastic world of haunting beauty.

“Etter brilliantly, viciously lays bare what it means to be a woman in the world, what it means to hurt, to need, to want, so much it consumes everything.” –Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist
“I loved every page of this gorgeous, grotesque, heartbreaking novel.” – Carmen Maria Machado, author of Her Body and Other Parties

Sarah Rose Etter is the author of Tongue Party, selected by Deb Olin Unferth as the winner of the Caketrain Press award, and The Book of X, her first novel, which is available from Two Dollar Radio. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Cut, Electric Literature, Guernica,VICE, New York Tyrant, Juked, Night Block, The Black Warrior Review,Salt Hill Journal, The Collagist, and more. She has been awarded residences at Disquiet International program in Portugal and the Gullkistan Writing Residency in Iceland. Author photo by Natalie Graf.
Trisha Low is a poet and performer living in the East Bay. She is the author of The Compleat Purge (Kenning Editions, 2013) and Socialist Realism(Emily Books/Coffee House Press, 2019). Author photo by Kari Orvik.
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is author of the books IRL, Nature Poem, Junk, Feed, and myriad keen tweets including “sittin on the cock of gay.” Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now splits his time between Los Angeles and Brooklyn. He co-curates the reading series Poets with Attitude, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub. Author photo by Niqui Carter.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
The Bindery bar opens at 7pm. Event starts at 7:30pm.
RSVP appreciated but not required.
If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of The Book of X, order below and put your request in the comments field. To request signed copies of Trisha’s book, do the same thing here; for Tommy’s, here.

Kristen Arnett and Esmé Weijun Wang
2019-07-24 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Kristen Arnett discusses her new novel, Mostly Dead Things with Esmé Weijun Wang.
Praise for Mostly Dead Things
“Mostly Dead Things is one of the strangest and funniest and most surprising first novels I’ve ever read. A love letter to Florida and to family, to half-lit swamps and the 7/11, and to the beasts that only pretend to hold their poses inside us. In Kristen Arnett’s expert hands, taxidermy becomes a language to capture our species’ impossible and contradictory desire to be held and to be free.”- Karen Russell, author of SWAMPLANDIA!
“If Heather Lewis and Joy Williams had a child it might be this―I don’t think I’ve ever read a novel like it. There’s a gunslinger cool to every sentence, like someone is telling you the last story they’ll ever tell you. Kristen Arnett is the queen of the Florida no one has ever told you about, and on every page she brings it to a steely and vivid life.”- Alexander Chee, author of HOW TO WRITE AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOVEL
“Mostly Dead Things packs messed-up families, scandalous love affairs, art, life, death and the great state of Florida into one delicious, darkly funny package. Kristen Arnett is wickedly talented and a wholly original voice”- Jami Attenberg, author of ALL GROWN UP
About Mostly Dead Things
One morning, Jessa-Lynn Morton walks into the family taxidermy shop to find that her father has committed suicide, right there on one of the metal tables. Shocked and grieving, Jessa steps up to manage the failing business, while the rest of the Morton family crumbles. Her mother starts sneaking into the shop to make aggressively lewd art with the taxidermied animals. Her brother Milo withdraws, struggling to function. And Brynn, Milo’s wife―and the only person Jessa’s ever been in love with―walks out without a word. As Jessa seeks out less-than-legal ways of generating income, her mother’s art escalates―picture a figure of her dead husband and a stuffed buffalo in an uncomfortably sexual pose―and the Mortons reach a tipping point. For the first time, Jessa has no choice but to learn who these people truly are, and ultimately how she fits alongside them.
Kristen Arnett’s debut novel is a darkly funny, heart-wrenching, and eccentric look at loss and love.

Kristen Arnett: Mostly Dead Things
2019-07-24 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States

This is Now: Richard A. Clarke on Cyber Threat
2019-07-24 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Kepler’s Books, 1010 El Camino Real, Menlo Park , CA, 94025, United States
Cyberwar”— or cyber-anything, for that matter— has always carried a whiff of science fiction about it. But it’s not fiction, it’s certainly not entertainment, and – as terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke warns us— multiple cyberwars are underway already. The battlefronts range from simple identity theft to the disruption of nuclear programs and medical care. The Pentagon even has a word for this new front line: the fifth domain. That’s where ongoing skirmishes for our security as individuals and as citizens are being fought.

Richard Clark has long experience in American security matters. He’s served as a key advisor on intelligence and counterterrorism to three US presidents. In 1998 President Bill Clinton appointed him as the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counterterrorism for the U.S. National Security Council. His latest book, The Fifth Domain: Defending our Country, Companies, and Ourselves in the Age of Cyber Threats, calls on that long experience to tackle one of the most pivotal battlegrounds in modern security.
Join us at Kepler’s as he shares deep research from boardrooms, government conference rooms, and quantum computing labs— all in pursuit of “cyber resilience”, a position of strength against web hacking, election interference, and other boogeymen of the digital realm that are all too real.

John Corbett
2019-07-23 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
John Corbett discusses his new book, Pick up the Pieces: Excursions in Seventies Music.
Praise for Pick up the Pieces
“[A] thoroughly enjoyable—and gorgeously written—joy ride down his version of 1970s memory lane. . . . music lovers are sure to enjoy Corbett’s delightful book about a fascinating, often misunderstood time of musical innovation.”— Booklist
“Just as a rich gumbo benefits from the perfect combination of diverse ingredients, so does Corbett’s analysis and so do the 1970s songs and performances he examines. . . . Corbett is in the upper echelon of music criticism.”— Library Journal
“Corbett is the Carl Sagan of vinyl. Funny and irreverent, he’s voyaged across the stars and the human imagination to bring us music both ‘pathetic and sublime’ from that most misunderstood of decades, the 1970s.”— Rainn Wilson
About Pick up the Pieces
Unless you lived through the 1970s, it seems impossible to understand it at all. Drug delirium, groovy fashion, religious cults, mega corporations, glitzy glam, hard rock, global unrest—from our 2018 perspective, the seventies are often remembered as a bizarre blur of bohemianism and disco. With Pick Up the Pieces, John Corbett transports us back in time to this thrillingly tumultuous era through a playful exploration of its music. Song by song, album by album, he draws our imaginations back into one of the wildest decades in history.
Rock. Disco. Pop. Soul. Jazz. Folk. Funk. The music scene of the 1970s was as varied as it was exhilarating, but the decade’s diversity of sound has never been captured in one book before now. Pick Up the Pieces gives a panoramic view of the era’s music and culture through seventy-eight essays that allow readers to dip in and out of the decade at random or immerse themselves completely in Corbett’s chronological journey.
An inviting mix of skilled music criticism and cultural observation, Pick Up the Pieces is also a coming-of-age story, tracking the author’s absorption in music as he grows from age seven to seventeen. Along with entertaining personal observations and stories, Corbett includes little-known insights into musicians from Pink Floyd, Joni Mitchell, James Brown, and Fleetwood Mac to the Residents, Devo, Gal Costa, and Julius Hemphill.
A master DJ on the page, Corbett takes us through the curated playlist that is Pick Up the Pieces with captivating melody of language and powerful enthusiasm for the era. This funny, energetic book will have readers longing nostalgically for a decade long past.

Dirty Old Women Read Erotica
2019-07-23 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster St #170, Oakland , CA, 94612, United States
Older women: Wise enough to tell the truth about sex – what they want, what they’ve done, what makes them hot. Dirty Old Women celebrates erotic writing by self-identified older women of all flavors. On Tuesday, July 23, hear Beth Elliott and Christine Kammler.
Beth Elliott is the author of four books, two fiction and two non-fiction, including her recently completed experimental erotic fiction collection The Smart Drug Masochists. She is also a singer-songwriter who has released one album to date, the “checkered career retrospective” Buried Treasure. Beth has written articles and reviews for Sisters, Sapphire, The Lesbian Tide, and other women’s and lesbian publications. She was the editor of Wavelength, the newsletter for SapphSIG, a Mensa lesbian special interest group, and was a columnist for Telewoman and the weekly Bay Area Reporter newspaper.
Chris Kammler is a writer, director, performance artist and world traveler. Her work spans poetry, fiction and drama.
As always, we start with an open mic that’s open to all. Featured readings begin at 8 pm at Octopus Literary Salon, 2101 Webster at 21st St., Oakland. This event is free, inclusive and accessible!

John Corbett: Pick Up the Pieces
2019-07-23 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States

Erik Davis: High Weirdness
2019-07-23 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley, 94611
A study of the spiritual provocations to be found in the work of Philip K. Dick, Terence McKenna, and Robert Anton Wilson, High Weirdness charts the emergence of a new psychedelic spirituality that arose from the American counterculture of the 1970s. These three authors changed the way millions of readers thought, dreamed, and experienced reality—but how did their writings reflect, as well as shape, the seismic cultural shifts taking place in America?
In High Weirdness, Erik Davis—America’s leading scholar of high strangeness—examines the published and unpublished writings of these vital, iconoclastic thinkers, as well as their own life-changing mystical experiences. Davis explores the complex lattice of the strange that flowed through America’s West Coast at a time of radical technological, political, and social upheaval to present a new theory of the weird as a viable mode for a renewed engagement with reality.
Erik Davis is an author, podcaster, award-winning journalist, and independent scholar based in San Francisco. His wide-ranging work focuses on the intersection of alternative religion, media, and the popular imagination. In addition to High Weirdness, he is also the author of Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica (2010), The Visionary State: A Journey through California’s Spiritual Landscape (2006), a short critical volume on Led Zeppelin (2005), and the celebrated TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information (1998). Erik’s scholarly and popular essays on music, technoculture, drugs, and spirituality have appeared in scores of books, magazines, and journals, and his writing has been translated into a dozen languages. Davis has spoken widely at conferences, retreat centers, and festivals, and has been interviewed by CNN, the BBC, public radio, and the New York Times. He explores the “cultures of consciousness” on his long-running weekly podcast Expanding Mind.

Marcia Bjornerud Timefulness
2019-07-22 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | SFJAZZ Center, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Marcia Bjornerud is a Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies and her research focuses on the physics of earthquakes and mountain-building. She combines field-based studies of bedrock geology with quantitative models of rock mechanics.
She is the author of Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, Reading the Rocks: The Autobiography of the Earth and is a contributing writer to the New Yorker’s Annals of Technology blog.
Tickets will go on sale one month before the Seminar; you can follow Long Now on Twitter, Facebook and through our blog for updates on our live events, podcasts and videos on long-term thinking.

Chuck Klosterman / Raised in Captivity
2019-07-22 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith welcomes Chuck Klosterman back to the store for his new story collection, Raised in Captivity. More information to be announced soon, but please save the date and join us!
Microdoses of the straight dope, stories so true they had to be wrapped in fiction for our own protection, from the best-selling author of But What if We’re Wrong?
A man flying first class discovers a puma in the lavatory. A new coach of a small-town Oklahoma high school football team installs an offense comprised of only one, very special, play. A man explains to the police why he told the employee of his local bodega that his colleague looked like the lead singer of Depeche Mode, a statement that may or may not have led in some way to a violent crime. A college professor discusses with his friend his difficulties with the new generation of students. An obscure power pop band wrestles with its new-found fame when its song “Blizzard of Summer” becomes an anthem for white supremacists. A couple considers getting a medical procedure that will transfer the pain of childbirth from the woman to her husband. A woman interviews a hit man about killing her husband but is shocked by the method he proposes. A man is recruited to join a secret government research team investigating why coin flips are no longer exactly 50/50. A man sees a whale struck by lightning, and knows that everything about his life has to change. A lawyer grapples with the unintended side effects of a veterinarian’s rabies vaccination.
Fair warning: Raised in Captivity does not slot into a smooth preexisting groove. If Saul Steinberg and Italo Calvino had adopted a child from a Romanian orphanage and raised him on Gary Larsen and Thomas Bernhard, he would still be nothing like Chuck Klosterman. They might be good company, though. Funny, wise and weird in equal measure, Raised in Captivity bids fair to be one of the most original and exciting story collections in recent memory, a fever graph of our deepest unvoiced hopes, fears and preoccupations. Ceaselessly inventive, hostile to corniness in all its forms, and mean only to the things that really deserve it, it marks a cosmic leap forward for one of our most consistently interesting writers.

Chuck Klosterman is the bestselling author of eight nonfiction books (including Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs; I Wear the Black Hat; But What If We’re Wrong?; and Killing Yourself to Live) and two novels (Downtown Owl and The Visible Man). He has written for The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, Esquire, Spin, The Guardian, The Believer, Billboard, The A.V. Club, and ESPN. Klosterman served as the Ethicist for The New York Times Magazine for three years, appeared as himself in the LCD Soundsystem documentary Shut Up and Play the Hits, and was an original founder of the website Grantland with Bill Simmons.

This is a free, all-ages event, but seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Raised in Captivity, order below and put your request in the comments field.
If you’d like to request a signed copy of any of Chuck’s other books, order here and be sure to include your request in the comments field.

Silent Book Club SF
2019-07-21 16:00 - 18:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Bring a book, bring a friend, and join Silent Book Club for an afternoon of reading! At Silent Book Club, there’s no assigned reading. All books and all ages are welcome.
We’ll kick off introvert happy hour at 4pm with some light chatter and informal book recommendations before settling in to read quietly, but if you’d rather just pull up a chair and read, by all means do so. No one will be shushed or shamed. The bar will be open for late afternoon libations.
Happy reading and hope to see you there!

Please note: this event will be at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
RSVP appreciated but not required.
Photo by Cody Pickens for O Magazine

Bay Area Poetry Marathon
2019-07-20 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
* Saturday, July 20
____ Curator: Tongo Eisen-Martin ____
Readers: TBA

* Saturday, September 28
100 Thousand Poets For Change / Bay Area Poetry Marathon joint event
____ Curator: Donna de la Perrière ____
Readers: TBA

_____________________________________________________
All events will be held at ALLEY CAT BOOKS,
3036 24th Street (in the Mission, between Harrison & Treat)

Doors open at 7:00pm. Readings begin at 7:30pm sharp.
+ + + + + + +
For more information, email Donna de la Perrière at baypoma@zoho.com

Charlie Getter & Tom Stolmar
2019-07-20 18:00 - 19:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Charlie Getter & Tom Stolmar
Not to be missed!

Lary Bloom on Sol LeWitt
2019-07-19 19:30 - 21:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Lary Bloom discusses his new biography, Sol LeWitt: A Life of Ideas.
About Sol LeWitt
Sol LeWitt (1928-2007), one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century, upended traditional practices of how art is made and marketed. A key figure in minimalism and conceptualism, he proclaimed that the work of the mind is much more important than that of the hand. For his site-specific work–wall drawings and sculpture in dozens of countries–he created the idea and basic plan and then hired young artists to install the pieces. Though typically enormous and intricate, the physical works held no value. The worth was in the pieces of paper that certified and described them. LeWitt championed and financially supported colleagues, including women artists brushed aside by the bullies of a male-dominated profession. Yet the man himself has remained an enigma, as he refused to participate in the culture of celebrity. Lary Bloom’s book draws on personal recollections of LeWitt, whom he knew in the last years of the artist’s life, as well as LeWitt’s letters and papers and over one hundred original interviews with his friends and colleagues, including Chuck Close, Ingrid Sischy, Philip Glass, Adrian Piper, Jan Dibbets, and Carl Andre. This absorbing chronicle brings new information to our understanding of this important artist, linking the extraordinary arc of his life to his iconic work. Includes 28 illustrations.

Larry Bloom on Sol LeWitt
2019-07-19 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States

Susannah Rodríguez Drissi discusses & signs "The Latin Poet's Guide to the Cosmos"
2019-07-19 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Alley Cat Books, 3036 24th St, San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Award-winning Cuban poet, playwright, translator, and scholar, Susannah Rodríguez Drissi discusses and signs “The Latin Poet’s Guide to the Cosmos.” A delightfully choreographed and ultimately scintillating hoodwink, this extraordinary collection of poetry constitutes a cross-linguistic poetic event in which the correspondence between Romance languages is as close as to approach the condition of a new vernacular; and where the very issue of movement between languages is somehow central, and sound and rhythm are the fundamental characteristics of poetry. Written at the intersection of several romance languages, and most closely related to Spanish and Italian, the collection wears its Latinity on its sleeve; in other words, this is a collection fueled by the many convergences and divergences possible between Latin and its vernaculars, ultimately proposing that true Latinity is always first and foremost expressed through language. And, sometimes, also humor.

After Hours - Eric Kleinenberg: Palaces for the People
2019-07-19 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Main Reading Room, Mill Valley Public Library, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley , CA, 94941, United States
After Hours – Eric Kleinenberg: Palaces for the People
Friday, July 19th | 7:00pm
Wine reception at 6:30pm for registered guests.
Eric Klinenberg (Heat Wave, Fighting for Air, Going Solo) makes the case for how social infrastructure can help fight inequality, polarization and the decline of civic life, the subject of his latest book. He is a Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Public Knowledge at NYU.
Adults and high school students only.
Registration recommended. Registration opens July 1st.
Add to my:iCal/Outlook
When:Friday, July 19, 2019
Time:7:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Where:Mill Valley Public Library – Main Reading Room, 375 Throckmorton Ave, Mill Valley, California, 94941
Event Type:Library, Adult
Contact:(415) 389-4292

Edna in a Bottle (tastes funny)
2019-07-18 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Edna in a Bottle (tastes funny) is a new San Francisco comedy hour at The Bindery in the Haight district. Edna and her friends are trapped in a bottle and dying to perform! A colorful splash of sketch scenes, story-telling, circus talent and wacked-out adult comedy. And there’s nothing wrong with an eating contest here and there. Mark your calendars and come let us out of the bottle!
Tickets are $12-25, sliding. Seating is limited, and this show often sells out — there’s no guarantee tickets will be available at the door, so arrive early. Online sales close at 4pm the day of the show.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
This event is 18+.
Doors open at 7:30pm. Show starts at 8pm.
RSVP appreciated but not required.
More details coming soon — save the date and join us!
