Virtual Speaking Axolotl Reading and Open Mic #39
2021-09-16 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | online, CA, United States
A Latinx poetry reading series y open mic entering into our 3rd consecutive year that happens every third Thursday of the month en el Zoom mundo. Curated y hosted by Josiahluis Alderete.
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This month’s features: TBA
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Topic: Nomadic Press’ Monthly Speaking Axolotl
Time: Jan 21, 2021 08:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every month on the Third Thu, 12 occurrence(s)
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Feb 18, 2021 08:00 PM
Mar 18, 2021 08:00 PM
Apr 15, 2021 08:00 PM
May 20, 2021 08:00 PM
Jun 17, 2021 08:00 PM
Jul 15, 2021 08:00 PM
Aug 19, 2021 08:00 PM
Sep 16, 2021 08:00 PM
Oct 21, 2021 08:00 PM
Nov 18, 2021 08:00 PM
Dec 16, 2021 08:00 PM
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Grant Faulkner and Melanie Abrams
2021-09-17 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17 AT 6PM PT WHEN GRANT FAULKNER DISCUSSES HIS BOOK ALL THE COMFORT SIN CAN PROVIDE WITH MELANIE ABRAMS AT 9TH AVE!
Masks Required for In-Person
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Praise for All the Comfort Sin Can Provide
“Somewhere between sinister and gleeful the characters in Grant Faulkner’s story collection All the Comfort Sin Can Provide blow open pleasure—guilty pleasure, unapologetic pleasure, accidental pleasure, repressed pleasure. Really, at the heart of all identity is the reach for pleasure, and then what actually comes, all those moments of slippage where we do the wrong thing, take a ridiculous risk, double down on failure, land in a forsaken place, slip the mainstream of things enough to change and become. These characters exude beauty from their flaws. These stories are lit.”–Lidia Yuknavitch
“Full of bad behavior and a ferocious desire for escape, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide is a catalog of longing. Faulkner’s arresting characters broadcast their worst decisions from grimy motel rooms, greasy kitchens, and sprawling American highways, each of them hellbent on the promise of something better.”–Kimberly King Parsons
“All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delivers on the promise of Grant Faulkner’s daring debut with a follow-up collection of stories that excavates possibility, salvation, and the deceptive comforts one finds in so many pleasures.”–Adam Johnson
About All the Comfort Sin Can Provide
With raw, lyrical ferocity, All the Comfort Sin Can Provide delves into the beguiling salve that sin can promise—tracing those hidden places most of us are afraid to acknowledge. In this collection of brutally unsentimental short stories, Grant Faulkner chronicles dreamers, addicts, and lost souls who have trusted too much in wayward love, the perilous balm of substances, or the unchecked hungers of others, but who are determined to find salvation in their odd definitions of transcendence.
Taking us from hot Arizona highways to cold Iowa hotel rooms, from the freedoms of the backwoods of New Mexico to the damnations of slick New York City law firms, Faulkner creates a shard-sharp mosaic of desire that careens off the page—honest, cutting, and wise.
About Grant Faulkner
Grant Faulkner is the Executive Director of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and the co-founder of 100 Word Story. He recently published the short story collection All the Comfort Sin Can Provide, and he’s also the author of Fissures, a collection of 100-word stories. His essays on creativity have been published in The New York Times, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer, and his book, The Art of Brevity, is forthcoming in 2022. He also co-hosts Write-minded, a weekly podcast on writing and publishing.
About Melanie Abrams
Melanie Abrams is the author of the novels Playing and Meadowlark and the forthcoming The Joy of Cannabis: 75 Ways to Amplify Your Life through the Science and Magic of Cannabis. She is a developmental editor and photographer and teaches writing at the University of California, Berkeley.

Nomadic Press Virtual Open Mic #76
2021-09-17 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States
90 minutes
30 readers
3 minutes each
On Zoom!
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
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If you enjoy spaces like this and can swing it in these tight times, please consider supporting us via:
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We have a short goal for the evening of $150.
Pandemic times continue in 2021 and we continue to gather our community virtually across state and country lines. Join us to read, join us to listen. All are welcome.
Hosted by Nazelah Jamison (with Tula Biederman on tech). It’s a continuing experiment, and we hope you can join us!
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’ Weekly Virtual Open Mic
Time: Jan 1, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Colson Whitehead
2021-09-17 19:30 - 20:30 | Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Friday, September 17, 2021
7:30pm Pacific Time
Venue: Sydney Goldstein Theater
TICKETS

Colson Whitehead is the author of ten works of fiction and nonfiction, and is a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, for Nickel Boys and The Underground Railroad, which also won the National Book Award. His new novel, Harlem Shuffle, is a gloriously entertaining novel of heists, shakedowns, and rip-offs set in Harlem in 1960s.
A limited number of tickets include a copy of Harlem Shuffle.
You and your guests must be fully vaccinated to attend this event; proof of vaccination is required upon arrival. Full vaccination is defined as completion of the two-dose regimen of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered two weeks or more in advance of the event.

Alix Ohlin - We Want What We Want
2021-09-18 13:00 - 14:00 | online, CA, United States
Book Passage Presents
Sat., September 18, 2021 • 1:00pm PT • Live • Online
BUY THE BOOK WATCH HERE
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This event will be broadcast live and does not require registration to attend. To view, please click the “Watch Here” button at the time of the event, or subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive a ten-minute reminder.
A collection of glittering, surprising, darkly funny stories of people testing the boundaries of their lives from Alix Ohlin, award-winning author of Dual Citizens.
In the mordantly funny “Money, Geography, Youth,” Vanessa arrives home from a gap year volunteering in Ghana to find that her father is engaged to her childhood best friend. Unable to reconcile the girl she went to dances with in the eighth grade and the woman in her father’s bed, Vanessa turns to a different old friendship for her own, unique diversion.
In the subversive “The Brooks Brothers Guru,” Amanda drives to upstate New York to rescue her gawky cousin from a cult, only to discover clean-cut, well-dressed men living in a beautiful home, discussing the classics, and drinking sophisticated cocktails, moving her to wonder what freedoms she might willingly trade away for a life of such elegant comfort.
And in “The Universal Particular,” Tamar welcomes her husband’s young stepcousin into their home, imagining they are saving this young woman from Somalia by way of Stockholm, only to find their cool suburban life of potlucks and air-conditioning knocked askew in ways they cannot quite understand.
Populated with imperfect families, burned potential, and inescapable old flames, the thirteen stories in We Want What We Want are, each one, diamond-sharp—sparkling with pain, humor, and beauty.
Alix Ohlin is the author of six books, including the novel Dual Citizens, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Best American Short Stories, and many other places. She lives in Vancouver, where she is the Director of the UBC School of Creative Writing.

Book Release: Second Edition of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory by James Cagney
2021-09-18 18:00 - 20:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us to celebrate the release of the second edition of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory by James Cagney!
Lineup of readers and musician to be announced soon.
Preorders will go live soon.
About the book: The poems in Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory interrogate identity, family, loneliness, and the expectations of masculinity. Using dreams, blues, and a chorus of voices, this collection of poems examines the complexities of intimacy for an adopted person trying to find balance between two families—one rattled by age and illness; the other, holding space for a son that doesn’t exist. Second edition includes a foreword by Aya De Leon, introduction by James Cagney, and a reading guide at the back.
Zoom Joining Info
Topic: Book Release: Second Edition of Black Steel Magnolias in the Hour of Chaos Theory by James Cagney
Time: Sep 18, 2021 06:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
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Joel Selvin - Hollywood Eden
2021-09-19 16:00 - 17:00 | Book Passage Corte Madera, 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera, CA, 94925, United States
Book Passage Presents
Sun., Sept. 19, 2021 • 4:00pm PT • Corte Madera Store
BUY THE BOOK
This event will be hosted in-person at Book Passage’s Corte Madera location
From the Beach Boys and Jan & Dean to the Byrds and the Mamas & the Papas, acclaimed music journalist Joel Selvin tells the story of a group of young artists and musicians who came together at the dawn of the 1960s to create the lasting myth of the California dream.
From surf music to hot-rod records to the sunny pop of the Beach Boys and the Mamas & the Papas, Hollywood Eden captures the fresh blossom of a young generation who came together in the epic spring of the 1960s to invent the myth of the California Paradise. Central to the story is a group of sun-kissed teens from the University High School class of 1959—a class that included Jan & Dean, Nancy Sinatra, and future members of the Beach Boys—who came of age in Los Angeles at the dawn of a new golden era when anything seemed possible. These were the people who created the idea of modern California for the rest of the world. From the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” to the Mamas & the Papas’ “California Dreamin’,” they crafted an image of the West Coast as the promised land—a sun-dappled vision of an idyllic life in the sand and surf.
But their own private struggles belied the paradise portrayed in their music. What began as a light-hearted frolic under sunny skies ended up crashing down to earth just a few short but action-packed years later, as, one by one, each met their destinies head-on. Compelling, evocative, and ultimately tragic, Hollywood Eden travels far beyond the music into the desires of the human heart and the price of living out a dream. A rock ‘n’ roll opera loaded with violence, deceit, intrigue, low comedy, and high drama, it tells the story of a group of young artists and musicians who bumped heads, crashed cars, and ultimately flew too close to the sun.

Nathaniel Rich and Chris Jennings
2021-09-20 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Discuss George Stewart’s pioneering eco-novel, Storm

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Monday, September 20, 2021 – 6:00pm

Crowdcast

Tickets:

Sliding scale ($0-$100)

Nathaniel Rich and Chris Jennings discuss George Stewart’s pioneering and prescient eco-novel, Storm (NYRB Classics).
Originally published in 1941, Stewart’s novel was praised by the likes of Wallace Stegner, who wrote of Storm: “Weather is here for the first time given the importance in fiction that it has in fact. . . . It is impossible to forget, anywhere in the novel, the impending weight of that mighty movement of the air. . . . Stewart with admirable ingenuity and sure craftsmanship has let us look for a moment at the mortar that holds a civilization together. A good many of his readers will never again . . . note a cloud without remembering at least momentarily that the air, not the earth, is our mortal home.”
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Storm
A thrilling, innovative novel about the interplay between nature and humankind by the author of Names on the Land.
With Storm, first published in 1941, George R. Stewart invented a new genre of fiction: the eco-novel. California has been plunged into drought throughout the summer and fall when a ship reports an unusual barometric reading from the far western Pacific. In San Francisco, a junior meteorologist in the Weather Bureau takes note of the anomaly and plots “an incipient little whorl” on the weather map, a developing storm, he suspects, that he privately dubs Maria. Stewart’s novel tracks Maria’s progress to and beyond the shores of the United States through the eyes of meteorologists, linemen, snowplow operators, a general, a couple of decamping lovebirds, and an unlucky owl, and the storm, surging and ebbing, will bring long-needed rain, flooded roads, deep snows, accidents, and death. Storm is an epic account of humanity’s relationship to and dependence on the natural world.
About George Stewart and the event participants
George R. Stewart (1895–1980) was born in Pennsylvania and educated at Princeton. He received his PhD in English literature from Columbia in 1922 and joined the English faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1924. He was a sociologist, toponymist, and founding member of the American Name Society, and the author of more than twenty books, including the highly successful novel Earth Abides and several works of American history. In addition to Storm, NYRB Classics publishes his study of American place names, Names on the Land.
Nathaniel Rich is the author of Second Nature; Losing Earth, a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Award and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physicists; and the novels King Zeno, Odds Against Tomorrow, and The Mayor’s Tongue.
Chris Jennings grew up in New York City. He graduated from Deep Springs College and Wesleyan University. He is the author of Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism. He lives in Northern California with his family.

Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
2021-09-21 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Launch event featuring Robin Wall Kimmerer, John Hausdoerffer, Gavin van Horn, and others

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Tuesday, September 21, 2021 – 6:00pm

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Join us to celebrate the release of the 5-volume set, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations (Chelsea Green) with editors and contributors Gavin Van Horn, John Hausdoerffer, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and more.
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTER HERE
About Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations
From The Center for Humans and Nature, a collection in five volumes: essays, interviews, poetry, and stories of solidarity that highlight the interdependence that exists between humans and nonhuman beings
We live in an astounding world of relations. We share these ties that bind with our fellow humans–and we share these relations with nonhuman beings as well. From the bacterium swimming in your belly to the trees exhaling the breath you breathe, this community of life is our kin–and, for many cultures around the world, being human is based upon this extended sense of kinship.
Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a lively series that explores our deep interconnections with the living world. More than 70 contributors–including Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, David Abram, J. Drew Lanham, and Sharon Blackie–invite readers into cosmologies, narratives, and everyday interactions that embrace a more-than-human world as worthy of our response and responsibility. These diverse voices render a wide range of possibilities for becoming better kin.
Contents:
Planet What are the sources of our deepest evolutionary and planetary connections, and of our profound longing for kinship?
Place To what extent does crafting a deeper connection with the Earth’s bioregions reinvigorate a sense of kinship with the place-based beings, systems, and communities that mutually shape one another?
Partners How do relations between and among different species foster a sense of responsibility and belonging in us?
Persons Which experiences expand our understanding of being human in relation to other-than-human beings?
Practice What are the practical, everyday, and lifelong ways we become kin?
From the recognition of nonhumans as persons to the care of our kinfolk through language and action, Kinship: Belonging in a World of Relations is a guide and companion into the ways we can deepen our care and respect for the family of plants, rivers, mountains, animals, and others who live with us in this exuberant, life-generating, planetary tangle of relations.
Proceeds from sales of Kinship benefit the nonprofit, non-partisan Center for Humans and Nature, which partners with some of the brightest minds to explore human responsibilities to each other and the more-than-human world. The Center brings together philosophers, ecologists, artists, political scientists, anthropologists, poets and economists, among others, to think creatively about a resilient future for the whole community of life.
About the participants
Gavin Van Horn is the Creative Director and Executive Editor for the Center for Humans and Nature. His writing is tangled up in the ongoing conversation between humans, our nonhuman kin, and the animate landscape. He is the co-editor (with John Hausdoerffer) of Wildness: Relations of People and Place, and (with Dave Aftandilian) City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness, and the author of The Way of Coyote: Shared Journeys in the Urban Wilds. If he’s not up a tree or in a kayak, you can find Gavin slow-walking the footpaths, beaches, and forests of the Chicagoland area.
Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, botanist, writer and Distinguished Teaching Professor at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York and the founding Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment. She is an enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation and a student of the plant nations. Her writings include Gathering Moss and Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants. As a writer and a scientist, her interests include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens domestic and wild.
John Hausdoerffer is author of Catlin’s Lament: Indians, Manifest Destiny, and the Ethics of Nature as well as co-author and co-editor of Wildness: Relations of People and Place and What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be? John is the Dean of the School of Environment & Sustainability at Western Colorado University and co-founder of Coldharbour Institute, the Center for Mountain Transitions, and the Resilience Studies Consortium. John serves as a Fellow and Senior Scholar for the Center for Humans and Nature.

Virtual Get Lit #76
2021-09-21 19:00 - 21:00 | online, CA, United States
We’re in our 6th consecutive year as we continue to celebrate 12–15 writers taking risks and reading never-before-read work (rough drafts/debuts) within a 3-minute time limit + live music. All ages are welcome. Emceed by Abe Becker.
Nomadic Press’ Safe Space Statement and Process: https://www.nomadicpress.org/safespaceprocess
Poster by Jevohn Tyler Newsome
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
If you 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/…/nomadic-press-monthly-get…; OR
3) donating through the website at www.nomadicpress.org/donate
We have a short goal for the evening of $200.
Topic: Nomadic Press’ Monthly Get Lit
Time: Feb 16, 2021 07:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Every month on the Third Tue, until Dec 21, 2021, 11 occurrence(s)
Feb 16, 2021 07:00 PM
Mar 16, 2021 07:00 PM
Apr 20, 2021 07:00 PM
May 18, 2021 07:00 PM
Jun 15, 2021 07:00 PM
Jul 20, 2021 07:00 PM
Aug 17, 2021 07:00 PM
Sep 21, 2021 07:00 PM
Oct 19, 2021 07:00 PM
Nov 16, 2021 07:00 PM
Dec 21, 2021 07:00 PM
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
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Remember Who You Are with Friends of Pedro Gomez
2021-09-22 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 2 AT 6PM PT WHEN WE CELEBRATE THE BOOK REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE: WHAT PEDRO GOMEZ SHOWED US ABOUT BASEBALL AND LIFE IN-PERSON AT 9TH AVE
FEATURING ROBIN CARR, BRAD MANGIN, BRIAN MURPHY, MICHAEL ZAGARIS, AND EDITOR STEVE KETTMANN
Masks Requried for In-Person Attendance
Join us virtually by registering at the link below
Zoom Registration
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About Remember Who You Are
Pedro Gomez of ESPN was a beloved figure in baseball. His death from sudden cardiac arrest on Feb. 7, 2021, unleashed an outpouring of heartfelt tributes. He was 58, both a hard-nosed reporter and a smiling ambassador of the sport. These 62 personal essays soar beyond sports to delve into life lessons.
Pedro, a proud Cuban American, was known for his dramatic reporting from Havana. Fully and fluidly bilingual, he did as much as anyone to bridge the wide gap that had existed between U.S.-born players and the Latin Americans now so important to the game’s vitality and future growth. He was also a family man who loved to talk about his three children, Sierra, Dante and Rio, a Boston Red Sox prospect. Pedro was universally known as a smiling presence who brought out the best in people. His humanity and generosity of spirit shaped countless lives, including one of his ESPN bosses, Rob King, who was so moved by Pedro’s advice to him—“Remember who you are”—that he printed up the words and posted them on the wall of his office in Bristol. King is one of a diverse collection of contributors whose personal essays turn Pedro’s shocking death into an occasion to reflect on the deeper truths of life we too often overlook. Part The Pride of Havana and part Tuesdays With Morrie, part The Tender Bar and part Ball Four, this is the rare essay collection that reads like a novel, full of achingly honest emotion and painful insights, a book about friendship, a book about standing for something, a book about joy and love.
Former New York Times writer Jack Curry writes about Pedro’s passion for live music, and former Sports Illustrated writer Tim Kurkjian brings alive spring-training basketball games with executives like Sandy Anderson and Billy Beane and Pedro right in the mix. Detroit manager AJ Hinch and formers Texas manager Ron Washington both reveal that in their darkest hours Pedro gave them some of the best advice of their lives.
Hall of Famers Dennis Eckersley, Tony La Russa, Peter Gammons, Ross Newhan, Tracy Ringolsby and Dan Shaughnessy are among the contributors. So are likely future Hall of Famers Max Scherzer and Dusty Baker. Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post war correspondent Steve Fainaru, award-winning writers from Howard Bryant and Mike Barnicle to Tim Keown, Ken Rosenthal and Dave Sheinin also contribute. Rounding out the mix are current and former ESPN stars including Rachel Nichols, Shelley M. Smith, Peter Gammons, Bob Ley and Keith Olbermann.
This is a book to rekindle in any lapsed fan a love of going to the ballpark, but it’s also a wakeup call that transcends sports. To any journalist, worn down by the demands of a punishing job, to anyone anywhere, pummeled by pandemic times and the dark mood of the country in recent years, these essays will light a spark to seize every opportunity to make a difference, in your work and in the lives of people who matter to you.
Praise for Remember Who You Are
“Pedro Gomez was as kind as he was talented. I can think of no one else in the industry who would have inspired this many heartfelt essays by this diverse a group of writers, ballplayers, coaches, and front office executives. Everyone loved and respected him. And while he left this earth way too soon, his legacy will live on through his children and in the pages of this book.” —Molly Knight, Author, The Best Team Money Can Buy
“The words in this collection share a common source—while they were crafted with the head, they originated from the heart. The Gomez Rules are the Commandments for those who cover the game. All who have lived the baseball life should have followed all at some point. They should be etched in tablet.”—Broadcaster Ted Robinson
“Reading Remember Who You Are took me on a journey from the day I met Pedro, a smiling young scribe who was my new coworker, who grew into a legend. These tributes not only reveal a man who was beloved by virtually all who knew him, but also paint a vivid picture of our sports media tribe—the laughs, the camaraderie, the adventure, the challenges. At the center of so much of it, smiling and including all of us, was Pedro. We will miss him so.” —Ann Killion, Award-winning San Francisco Chronicle columnist

Jewell Parker Rhodes, Paradise on Fire
2021-09-22 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
FREE VIRTUAL EVENT: Bookshop welcomes award-winning and bestselling author Jewell Parker Rhodes for an online event celebrating her new book, Paradise on Fire, a powerful coming-of-age survival tale exploring issues of race, class, and climate change. Rhodes will be in-conversation with Samira Ahmed, author of the new middle grade novel Amira & Hamza: The War to Save the Worlds.
Register for this free Crowdcast event by clicking here.
Paradise on Fire will be published on September 14th and Amira & Hamza: The War to Save the Worlds will be published on September 21st. Both books are available for preorder below.
Addy is haunted by the tragic fire that killed her parents, leaving her to be raised by her grandmother. Now, years later, Addy’s grandmother has enrolled her in a summer wilderness program. There, Addy joins five other Black city kids—each with their own troubles—to spend a summer out west.
Deep in the forest the kids learn new (and to them) strange skills: camping, hiking, rock climbing, and how to start and safely put out campfires. Most important, they learn to depend upon each other for companionship and survival.
But then comes a devastating forest fire…
Addy is face-to-face with her destiny and haunting past. Developing her courage and resiliency against the raging fire, it’s up to Addy to lead her friends to safety. Not all are saved. But remembering her origins and grandmother’s teachings, she’s able to use street smarts, wilderness skills, and her spiritual intuition to survive.
Jewell Parker Rhodes is the author of Ninth Ward, winner of a Coretta Scott King Honor; Sugar, winner of the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award; and the New York Times-bestselling Ghost Boys; as well as Bayou Magic; Towers Falling; Black Brother, Black Brother; and Paradise on Fire. She has written many award-novels for adults, including, Magic City, a novel about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. Jewell is the Virginia G. Piper Endowed Chair of Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
Samira Ahmed is the New York Times bestselling author of Love, Hate, & Other Filters and Internment. She was born in Bombay, India, and has lived in New York, Chicago, and Kauai, where she spent a year searching for the perfect mango. She currently resides in the Midwest. Find her online at samiraahmed.com and on Twitter and Instagram @sam_aye_ahm.

Katie Crouch and Rachel Levin
2021-09-23 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
JOIN US ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23 AT 6PM PT WHEN KATIE CROUCH DISCUSSES HER LATEST NOVEL, THE EMBASSY WIFE, WITH RACHEL LEVIN AT 9TH AVE!
Masks Required for In-Person Event
Join us online by registering at the link below
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o3CKo2AqQ1GQEyWEmWdivA
Praise for Embassy Wife
“One of the novel’s greatest strengths is the omniscient third-person narration that oscillates focus between main and minor characters. The structure helps heighten the tension between characters, the past and the present, and Namibians and Americans. In addition to sketching complex characters with rich backstories, Crouch excels at moving the plot forward while not missing any opportunity to observe the human condition. With wit and tenderness, the novel explores the complicated nature of race, power, marriage, colonization, diplomacy, and community. A sharp, funny, page-turning romp.” – Kirkus Reviews
“Crouch’s…knowledge of expat life adds realism to this observant, funny satire. Unpredictable twists lead to an ending where everyone may not get what they want, but they get what they need. Suggest this one to fans of Meg Wolitzer and Maria Semple.” – Booklist
“Katie Crouch is an incredible writer – deft, fearless, super-smart and compassionate – and EMBASSYWIFE is one of the funniest, sharpest, most insightful novels I’ve read in a long time. It’s also a flat-out page-turner: I read it in a single, feverish sitting; then again, a second time, trying to figure out how she pulled off such an intricately constructed narrative that manages to read so effortlessly. A tremendous novel by a writer who surprises and moves us with each new book. I can’t recommend this novel highly enough.”—Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
“Keenly observed and expertly crafted, Katie Crouch’s EMBASSY WIFE is a wickedly irresistible novel.”—Natalie Baszile, author of Queen Sugar
About Embassy Wife
Amanda Evans is a trailing spouse: she has just arrived in Namibia, mere weeks after giving up her lucrative Silicon Valley job, as her husband, Mark, has accepted a Fulbright. Their marriage, which seemed solid in the safety of home, feels tenuous in the glaring heat of the Kalahari, and when their daughter becomes involved an international conflict, lines are drawn in the sand.
Meanwhile, Persephone Wilder is the wife of an American diplomat already stationed in Namibia. She takes her job as an Embassy Wife seriously, and employs an intricate set of rules to navigate such problems as: how to dress in hundred-degree weather without showing too much skin, how not to look drunk at embassy functions, and how to eat roasted oryx with grace. However, she suspects her husband may not actually the ambassador’s general counsel, but in fact, a secret agent in the CIA. Despite Persephone’s personal issues, she is ever the embassy wife, and graciously takes the new trailing spouse, Amanda under her wing.
But once Amanda, Mark and their daughter settle into the sub-Saharan desert, it becomes clear that Mark, who lived in Namibia two decades earlier, had other reasons for returning to African soil. Mark, it seems, has unfinished business from twenty years prior, and this journey is actually a quest to find a woman he left behind.
Propulsive and provocative, subversive, smart and funny, EMBASSY WIFE compellingly explores the limits of human resiliency and loyalty, asking: How far will Amanda go to keep her family intact? How much corruptness can Persephone purposefully ignore?
And what, exactly, does it mean to be an American abroad when you don’t like your country anymore?
About Katie Crouch
Katie Crouch is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Girls in Trucks. She is also the author of Men and Dogs, Abroad and the YA series The Magnolia League. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Slate, and Salon. A MacDowell Fellow, she teaches at Dartmouth College and lives in Vermont.

Richard Powers
2021-09-23 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Discusses his new novel, Bewilderment

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Thursday, September 23, 2021 – 6:00pm

Crowdcast

Tickets:

Sliding scale ($0-$100)

In conjunction with Diesel, a Bookstore and Vroman’s Bookstore, we present Richard Powers, who will discuss Bewilderment (W.W. Norton), his highly anticipated follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize winning The Overstory.
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
REGISTRATION INFO COMING SOON
About Bewilderment
Longlisted for the 2021 Booker Prize
A heartrending new novel from the Pulitzer Prize–winning and #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Overstory.
Named one of the Most Anticipated Books of 2021 by New York Magazine, Chicago Tribune, BookPage, Literary Hub, The Millions, New Statesman, and Times of London
The astrobiologist Theo Byrne searches for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old, Robin, following the death of his wife. Robin is a warm, kind boy who spends hours painting elaborate pictures of endangered animals. He’s also about to be expelled from third grade for smashing his friend in the face. As his son grows more troubled, Theo hopes to keep him off psychoactive drugs. He learns of an experimental neurofeedback treatment to bolster Robin’s emotional control, one that involves training the boy on the recorded patterns of his mother’s brain…
With its soaring descriptions of the natural world, its tantalizing vision of life beyond, and its account of a father and son’s ferocious love, Bewilderment marks Richard Powers’s most intimate and moving novel. At its heart lies the question: How can we tell our children the truth about this beautiful, imperiled planet?
About Richard Powers
Richard Powers has published thirteen novels. He is a MacArthur Fellow and received the National Book Award. His most recent book, The Overstory, won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. He lives in the Great Smoky Mountains.

Max Chafkin on Thiel's Pursuit of Power
2021-09-23 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
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“Whether you admire him or fear him, Peter Thiel’s influence has been undeniable. In this deeply reported and gripping biography, Max Chafkin reveals the lessons behind Thiel’s rise. It offers essential insights for anyone who wants to understand what Silicon Valley’s global ascendance has wrought—and it’s a really great read.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better
Few have done more to shape Silicon Valley than Peter Thiel. The billionaire venture capitalist and entrepreneur has been a behind-the-scenes operator influencing countless aspects of the contemporary way of life, from technologies we use daily to the delicate power dynamic between Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and Washington. Despite his power and the ubiquity of his projects, no public figure is quite so mysterious.
In the first major biography of Peter Thiel, Bloomberg reporter Max Chafkin traces the trajectory of the tech giant’s life and worldview, including his upbringing as the child of immigrant parents, his years at Stanford as a conservative thought leader, the founding of PayPal and Palantir, early investment in Facebook and SpaceX, and his relationships with fellow tech titans Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt. The Contrarian shows the extent to which Thiel has spread his values to corridors of power far beyond Silicon Valley, including funding the lawsuit that destroyed the blog Gawker and strenuously backing far-right political candidates—notably Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.
In conversation with Emily Chang, the Emmy-award winning business journalist and a Bloomberg anchor you may recognize from her cameo appearances on HBO’s Silicon Valley, Chafkin shares the insights from this deeply reported biography. Tune in for the eye-opening view of a business leader whose rise, like the rise of Silicon Valley, has proven both thrilling and fraught with controversy. How well do you know the leaders of the digital age?
*We encourage you to join with a book or donation to support the production of this event and make it possible for us to continue bringing you great conversations.

Joanna Ho
2021-09-28 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
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This is an online event
Join us to celebrate the launch of Joanna Ho’s beautiful new picture book, Playing at the Border: A Story of Yo-Yo Ma, a poignant picture book biography about the musician Yo-Yo Ma, immigration, and using music to build bridges

Joanna Ho’s lyrical writing and Teresa Martinez’s vibrant art weave together to tell an inspiring story of Yo-Yo Ma, who challenges conventions, expectations, and beliefs in order to build bridges to unite communities, people, and cultures.
Before Yo-Yo Ma became one of the most renowned and celebrated cellists, he wanted to play the double bass. But it was too big for his four-year-old hands. Over time, Ma honed his amazing talent, and his music became a reflection of his own life between borders, cultures, disciplines, and generations.
Since then, he has recorded over a hundred albums, won nineteen Grammy Awards, performed for eight American presidents, and received the National Medal of the Arts and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, just to name a few accomplishments.
Staying true to himself, Yo-Yo Ma performed at the US-Mexico border at the Rio Grande on April 13, 2019, as part of his multi-continent “Bach Project” tour to prove a point—through music, we can build bridges rather than walls between different cultures.
Joanna Ho is the author f the New York Times bestselling Eyes that Kiss in the Corners and is passionate about anti-bias/anti-racism, equity and inclusion in books and education. She has a Master’s in Educational Leadership from UC Berkeley and has worn many hats in education including: English teacher, dean, and a teacher professional development mastermind. She is currently the vice principal of a high school in the San Francisco Bay Area. Homemade chocolate chip cookies, outdoor adventures, and dance parties with her kids make Joanna’s eyes crinkle into crescent moons.
Join us and discover the pleasure of a timely and timeless story that honors immigrants and inspires action. “Everyone can benefit from Ho’s message of music bringing calm and peace to the world” Booklist

Carolina de Robertis in Conversation, The President and the Frog
2021-09-28 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual
Carolina de Robertis discusses her latest book and the craft of writing and translating. Featuring a former Latin American president reminiscing on his remarkable life, The President and the Frog is a timeless and timely exploration of power, revolution and survival. Carolina de Robertis is of Uruguayan origins; her work has been translated into seventeen languages and she has received multiple honors. Join online for the discussion.
This event is a partnership with Berkeley Public Library and San Mateo County Libraries.
Free
https://sfpl.org/events/2021/09/28/author-carolina-de-robertis-conversation-president-and-frog sfplcpp@sfpl.org 415-557-4400

An Afternoon Craft Conversation with Jamil Jan Kochai
2021-09-29 14:30 - 15:30 | De La Salle Hall: Hagerty Lounge, 928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA, 94575, United States
DATE & TIME:
Wednesday, September 29, 2021 – 2:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.

LOCATION:
De La Salle Hall: Hagerty Lounge, De La Salle Hall: Hagerty Lounge, 1928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA 94575, 1928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA 94575
View a map and get directions.

DESCRIPTION:
The novelist Thomas Berger once suggested that the sentence was “the cell beyond which the life of the book cannot be traced, a novel being a structure of such cells.” Continuing this line of thought, one might argue that a great novel is built upon great sentences. In this craft talk, we will be thinking through the techniques and theories discussed in Brooks Landon’s Building Great Sentences in order to determine what elements make a great sentence, and how particular sentences are fashioned by writers like Patrick Chamoiseau, Sandra Cisneros, and Annie Proulx.

Jamil Jan Kochai is the author of 99 Nights in Logar (Viking, 2019), a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award for Debut Novel and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature.

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Readers from ZYZZYVA No. 121, The Family Issue
2021-09-29 18:00 - 19:00 | San Francisco Public Library – Virtual Library
Come celebrate the release of ZYZZYVA No. 121—The Family Issue—with a night of readings featuring contributors from the issue. ZYZZYVA is the award-winning literary magazine founded in San Francisco in 1985. Since that time, it has made a name for itself as one of the country’s premier journals and as a beloved fixture in the Bay Area’s literary community. The event will be hosted by Oscar Villalon, ZYZZYVA’s managing editor.
Bethany Ball is the author of the novels What to Do About the Solomons (Grove Atlantic), which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and, most recently, The Pessimists, to be published by Grove Atlantic in October.
Andrew Navarro lives in Southern California where he works as a history teacher. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kelp Journal, Cutthroat, A Journal of The Arts, The ICE Colony, Carve and ZYZZYVA.
Robin Romm is the author of three books, and, most recently, edited Double Bind: Women on Ambition (Liveright). Her story collection, The Mother Garden, was a finalist for the PEN USA prize. Her memoir, The Mercy Papers, was named a best book of the year by The New York Times,The San Francisco Chronicle and Entertainment Weekly.
Mark Labowskie is a Jones Lecturer and former Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. He is also the host and curator of the Stanford Storytelling Project podcast Off the Page, which spotlights the work of Stanford writers.

Creative Writing Reading Series with Chris Feliciano Arnold
2021-09-29 19:30 - 20:30 | De La Salle Hall: Hagerty Lounge, 928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA, 94575, United States
DATE & TIME:

Wednesday, September 29, 2021 – 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

LOCATION:
De La Salle Hall: Hagerty Lounge, 1928 St. Marys Road, Moraga, CA 94575
View a map and get directions.

DESCRIPTION:
Chris Feliciano Arnold has written essays and journalism for The Atlantic, Harper’s, Outside, Vice News, The New York Times and more. His fiction has been published in Playboy, The Kenyon Review, Ecotone and other magazines. His work has been noted in The Best American Sports Writing and The Best American Short Stories. He has received fellowships and scholarships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Disquiet International Literary Program in Lisbon. His first book, The Third Bank of the River: Power and Survival in the Twenty-First Century Amazon, is a work of narrative nonfiction published by Picador in June 2018.

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Mary Roach
2021-09-29 19:30 - 20:30 | Sydney Goldstein Theater, 275 Hayes St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
7:30pm Pacific Time
Venue: Sydney Goldstein Theater
TICKETS

Mary Roach is the author of the books STIFF, SPOOK, BONK, GULP, GRUNT, and PACKING FOR MARS, all of which bring her distinctly funny voice to popular science subjects. Her new book FUZZ: When Nature Breaks the Law, combines little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, trespassing squirrels, and more of “nature’s lawbreakers,” offering hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat. Roach has written for National Geographic, Wired, and The New York Times Magazine, among others, and her TED talk made the TED 20 Most Watched list. She has been a guest editor for Best American Science and Nature Writing, a finalist for the Royal Society’s Winton Prize, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies’ journalism award.
You and your guests must be fully vaccinated to attend this event; proof of vaccination is required upon arrival. Full vaccination is defined as completion of the two-dose regimen of Pfizer or Moderna vaccines or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered two weeks or more in advance of the event.

The Merwin Conservancy presents Garden of Verses
2021-09-30 12:00 - 13:00 | https://www.crowdcast.io/e/garden-of-verses-2021/register, 74 Anuenue Pl, Kula, HI, 96790, United States
On Thursday, September 30th at 12:00 pm Hawai‘i (3:00 pm Pacific, 6:00 pm Eastern), The Merwin Conservancy will gather virtually with friends around the world to celebrate the poetry of W.S. Merwin on the occasion of his birthday, and share our vision for stewarding his legacy.
Poets Puanani Burgess, Jorie Graham, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Ada Limón, and Matthew Zapruder will read selections of William’s poetry along with several other special guests yet to be announced. We’ll share glimpses of the newly restored house and garden dojo and the palms that envelop them, all set to music recorded by award-winning composer, singer-songwriter and slack-key guitarist Makana.
The Merwins’ house, the garden dojo, the garden itself were made of concerns enacted as ways of being and living. We hope you will join us for an hour celebrating The Merwin Conservancy’s work to restore and share these special places.

Bikes to Books 8-Year Anniversary Ride
2021-10-02 13:00 - 16:00 | Jack London Street, Jack London Street, San Francisco, CA, 94107, United States
It’s a party and you’re all invited! Our signature 7.1 mile bicycle tour of literary San Francisco combines San Francisco history, art, literature, cycling, and urban exploration—a diverting and unique way to celebrate the literary and adventurous spirit of San Francisco. In 2013 we created Bikes to Books as an homage to the 1988 street-naming project spearheaded by City Lights Books founder and former San Francisco Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in which 12 San Francisco streets were renamed for famous artists and authors who’d once made San Francisco their home. Celebrate eight years of Bike to Books, 33 years of street names, and 150+ years of San Francisco literary history from South Park to North Beach, Jack London to Jack Kerouac.
Meet us on the north side of Jack London Alley in South Park, SF at 12:45.
Tour ends in North Beach outside City Lights Books.
Bring bikes with gears, snacks, and enthusiasm. This is an urban ride of moderate difficulty, recommended for riders 16 years of age and older. Masks and appropriate distancing required. Proof of vaccination is not required, but vaccination is highly encouraged.
Event is Free, with maps and posters available for purchase.

9th Ave: Sandra Lim, Natalie Shapero and Noah Warren
2021-10-05 18:00 - 19:00 | Green Apple Books 9th Avenue, 1231 9th Avenue, San Francisco, CA, 94122, United States
Join us on Tuesday, October 5th at 6pm PT when Sandra Lim, Natalie Shapero, and Noah Warren join us for an evening celebrating their latest poetry collections at 9th Ave!
Masks Required for In-Person Attendance
Join us virtually by registering at the link below
Zoom Registration
https://us02web.zoom.us/…/reg…/WN_vHSYhcpURdaNKQ_wr42E1g
About The Curious Thing
In this gorgeous third collection, Sandra Lim investigates desire, sexuality, and dream with sinewy intelligence and a startling freshness.
Truthful, sensuous, and intellectually relentless, the poems in The Curious Thing are compelling meditations on love, art making, solitude, female fate, and both the mundane and serious principles of life. Sandra Lim’s poetry displays stinging wit and a tough-minded approach to her own experiences: She speaks with Jean Rhys about beauty, encounters the dark loneliness that can exist inside a relationship, and discovers a coiled anger on a hot summer day. An extended poem sequence slyly revolves the meanings of finding oneself astray in midlife. A steely strength courses through the volume’s myriad discoveries—Lim’s lucidity and tenderness form a striking complement to her remarkable metaphors and the emotional clamor of her material.
Animated by a sense of reckoning and a piercing inwardness, these anti-sentimental poems nevertheless celebrate the passionate and empathetic subjective life.
About Popular Longing
With her sharp, punchy, sardonic wit, Natalie Shapero’s Popular Longing explores sadnesses and subordinations in their myriad forms.
The poems of Natalie Shapero’s third collection, Popular Longing, highlight the ever-increasing absurdity of our contemporary life. With her sharp, sardonic wit, Shapero deftly captures human meekness in all its forms: our senseless wars, our inflated egos, our constant deference to presumed higher powers—be they romantic partners, employers, institutions, or gods. “Why even / look up, when all we’ll see is people / looking down?” In a world where everyone has to answer to someone, it seems no one is equipped to disrupt the status quo, and how the most urgent topics of conversation can only be approached through refraction. By scrutinizing the mundane and all that is taken for granted, these poems arrive at much wider vistas, commenting on human sadness, memory, and mortality. Punchy, fearlessly ironic, and wickedly funny, Popular Longing articulates what it means to share a planet, for better or more often for worse, with other people.
About The Complete Stories
The Complete Stories announces its desire and its lie in the title; this is a book of shatter and loss. In his second collection, Noah Warren—previously selected by Carl Phillips for the Yale Series of Younger Poets—unravels histories both personal and public, picking apart their ugliness, beauty, and irreducible singularity. Clothed in broken forms, these poems of grieving and tentative joy ask finally how we can go forward with our own mottled pasts, into the futures we can’t predict but for which we must bear responsibility.

Seeds Bursting Open in Fire: Poetry & Justice Event
2021-10-06 16:00 - 17:30 | online, CA, United States
Seeds Bursting Open in Fire is a free virtual event featuring poets Aimee Nezhukumatathil (World of Wonders), Tamiko Beyer (Last Days), and Gabrielle Civil (( ghost gestures )) who will be reading from their most recent collections of poetry.
These poets will be joined by community organizers and artists from Power Shift Network, Tsuru for Solidarity, and Urban Bush Women for a conversation at the intersection of literature, climate justice, racial justice, and abolition.
Please join us for an evening of poems, collective writing, dreaming, and activation.
Learn more about all the presenters at tinyurl.com/seeds-catalyst.
ASL interpretation and close captioning will be available.

Matthew Clark Davison in conversation with Michael Nava
2021-10-06 19:00 - 20:00 | online, CA, United States
Matthew Clark Davison will be joined by Michael Nava to discuss his debut novel, Doubting Thomas. Thomas McGurrin is a fourth-grade teacher and openly gay man at a private primary school serving Portland, Oregon’s wealthy progressive elite when he’s falsely accused of inappropriately touching a male student. The accusation comes just as Thomas is thrust back into the center of his unusual family by his younger brother’s battle with cancer. Although cleared of the accusation, Thomas is forced to resign from a job he loves during a potentially life-changing family drama.
Davison’s novel explores the discrepancy between the progressive ideals and persistent negative stereotypes among the privileged regarding social status, race, and sexual orientation and the impact of that discrepancy on friendships and family relations.
Armistead Maupin writes, “An electrifying debut. Doubting Thomas is one of those novels where you return to passages, again and again, to see exactly how the author pulled off such an ingenious sleight-of-hand. Matthew Clark Davison is a force to be reckoned with.”
Doubting Thomas can be purchased from our event co-sponsor, Fabulosa Books.

Bios
Matthew Clark Davison is the author of Doubting Thomas (Amble Press ’21). He is creator and teacher of The Lab :: Writing Classes with MCD, a non-academic school started in 2007 in a friend’s living room. The textbook version of The Lab, co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2022. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on LitHub, Lambda Literary, The Advocate, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, The Rumpus, Foglifter, Exquisite Pandemic, and others. Matthew earned a BA and MFA in Creative Writing from SFSU, where he now teaches full-time in the BA/MA/MFA departments.
Michael Nava is the author of an acclaimed series of eight novels featuring gay, Latino criminal defense lawyer Henry Rios who The New Yorker, called “a detective unlike any previous protagonist in American noir.” The New York Times Book Review has called Nava “one of our best” writers. He is the recipient of seven Lambda Literary Awards in the gay mystery category and the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement in LGBT Literature. His most recent Rios novel is Lies With Man, was published in April by Amble Press, an LGBTQ press and imprint of Bywater Books, of which he is also managing editor.

Rhys Bowen - God Rest Ye, Royal Gentlemen
2021-10-07 13:00 - 14:00 | online, CA, United States
Book Passage Presents
Thurs., Oct 7, 2021 • 1:00pm PT • Live • Online
Signed Copies Available!
BUY THE BOOK WATCH HERE
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER
This event will be broadcast live and does not require registration to attend. To view, please click the “Watch Here” button at the time of the event, or subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive a ten-minute reminder.
Georgie is back and hanging the stockings with care when a murder interrupts her Christmas cheer in this all-new installment in the New York Times bestselling Royal Spyness series from Rhys Bowen.
Georgie is excited for her first Christmas as a married woman in her lovely new home. She suggests to her dashing husband, Darcy, that they have a little house party, but when Darcy receives a letter from his aunt Ermintrude, there is an abrupt change in plans. She has moved to a house on the edge of the Sandringham estate, near the royal family, and wants to invite Darcy and his new bride for Christmas. Aunt Ermintrude hints that the queen would like Georgie nearby. Georgie had not known that Aunt Ermintrude was a former lady-in-waiting and close confidante of her royal highness. The letter is therefore almost a royal request, so Georgie, Darcy, and their Christmas guests: Mummy, Grandad, Fig, and Binky all head to Sandringham.
Georgie soon learns that the notorious Mrs. Simpson, mistress to the Prince of Wales, will also be in attendance. It is now crystal clear to Georgie that the Queen expects her to do a bit of spying. There is tension in the air from the get-go, and when Georgie pays a visit to the queen, she learns that there is more to her request than just some simple eavesdropping. There have been a couple of strange accidents at the estate recently. Two gentlemen of the royal household have died in mysterious circumstances and another has been shot by mistake during a hunt. Georgie begins to suspect that a member of the royal family is the real target but her investigation will put her new husband and love of her life, Darcy, in the crosshairs of a killer.
Rhys Bowen, a New York Times bestselling author, has been nominated for every major award in mystery writing, including the Edgar®, and has won many, including both the Agatha and Anthony awards. She is also the author of the Molly Murphy Mysteries, set in turn-of-the-century New York, and the Constable Evans Mysteries, set in Wales as well as two internationally bestselling stand alone novels. She was born in England and now divides her time between Northern California and Arizona.

Everyone’s a Critic
2021-10-07 15:00 - 16:30
Whether it’s the role of take-downs, accusations of smarm, writers rebutting their reviews, or the daily Twitter discourse, the role of criticism in our culture is complex, ever-changing, and seemingly always up for debate. The tools of criticism are evolving, too. Goodreads, Substack, and social media remove critics from an ivory tower and allow anyone to assume the mantle. New Yorker staff writer and former New York Times book critic Parul Seghal, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, and novelist-cum-critic Brandon Taylor will discuss these topics as well as their own pursuits of critical honesty and excellence. Moderated by Electric Literature’s Executive Director Halimah Marcus. Their discussion will be followed by an audience Q&A. This event is part of Electric Lit’s Fall 2021 series, presented by Mount Saint Mary’s University.

Joshua Ferris - A Calling for Charlie Barnes
2021-10-07 17:30 - 18:30 | online, CA, United States
Book Passage Presents
Thurs., October 7, 2021 • 5:30pm PT • Live • Online
BUY THE BOOK WATCH HERE
SUBSCRIBE TO OUR E-NEWSLETTER

This event will be broadcast live and does not require registration to attend. To view, please click the “Watch Here” button at the time of the event, or subscribe to our e-newsletter to receive a ten-minute reminder.
From a National Book Award Finalist comes a novel about a modern American family and a man on a secret mission to uncover the world’s hidden truths—until his two lives come crashing together.
Someone is telling the story of the life of Charlie Barnes, and it doesn’t appear to be going well. Too often divorced, discontent with life’s compromises, and in a house he hates, this lifelong schemer and eternal romantic would like out of his present circumstances and into the American dream. But when the twin calamities of the Great Recession and a cancer scare come along to compound his troubles, his dreams dwindle further, and an infinite past full of forking paths quickly tapers to a black dot.
Then, against all odds, something goes right for a change: Charlie is granted a second act. With help from his storyteller son, he surveys the facts of his life and finds his true calling where he least expects it—in a sacrifice that redounds with selflessness and love—at last becoming the man his son always knew he could be.
A Calling for Charlie Barnes is a profound and tender portrait of a man whose desperate need to be loved is his downfall, and a brutally funny account of how that love is ultimately earned.
Joshua Ferris is the author of three previous novels, Then We Came to the End, The Unnamed, and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, and a collection of stories, The Dinner Party. He was a finalist for the National Book Award, winner of the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the PEN/Hemingway Award, and was named one of The New Yorker‘s “20 Under 40” writers in 2010. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour won the Dylan Thomas Prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Best American Short Stories. He lives in New York.

Gary Paulsen, How to Train Your Dad
2021-10-07 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Bookshop Santa Cruz is delighted to welcome acclaimed and bestselling author Gary Paulsen for a virtual event celebrating his new middle grade novel, How to Train Your Dad.
Register for this free Crowdcast event by clicking here!
The featured book will be published on October 5th and is available for preorder below.
From the legendary author of Hatchet, a laugh-out-loud eco-friendly adventure about a boy, his free-thinking dad, and the puppy-training pamphlet that turns their summer upside down.
Twelve-year-old Carl is fed up with his father’s single-minded pursuit of an off-the-grid existence. His dad may be brilliant, but dumpster-diving for food, scouring through trash for salvageable junk, and wearing clothes fully sourced from garage sales is getting old. Increasingly worried about what schoolmates and a certain girl at his new school might think of his circumstances–and encouraged by his off-kilter best friend–Carl adopts the principles set forth in a randomly discovered puppy-training pamphlet to “retrain” his dad’s mindset . . . a crackpot experiment that produces some very unintentional results.
This is a fierce and funny novel about family, green-living, and untangling some of the ties that bind from middle-grade master Gary Paulsen.
Gary Paulsen is the winner of the ALA Margaret Edwards Award for his contribution to young adult literature, and is a three-time Newbery Honor winner, for Hatchet, Dogsong, and The Winter Room. His books have sold more than 35 million copies. He lives in New Mexico.
