Litseen

VIRTUAL: Launch for Lin Manuel-Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes & Jeremy McCarter / In the Heights: Finding Home
2021-06-15 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Booksmith is thrilled to co-present Lin Manuel-Miranda, Quiara Alegría Hudes and Jeremy McCarter for the virtual launch of In the Heights: Finding Home.
Join Miranda, Hudes, and McCarter for what is sure to be an unforgettable conversation on creativity, community, and finding home. This is your chance to hear directly from the creative team behind the timeless story of how one neighborhood—Washington Heights—can speak to the world.
Please note:
> Tickets are available here.
> Each ticket includes admission to this exclusive event, a hardcover copy of In the Heights: Finding Home (normally $40) and complimentary postage anywhere in the US.
> Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.
> Please contact events@booksmith.com with any questions.
About the book
In 2008, In the Heights, a new musical from up-and-coming young artists, electrified Broadway. The show’s vibrant mix of Latin music and hip-hop captured life in Washington Heights, the Latino neighborhood in upper Manhattan. It won four Tony Awards and became an international hit, delighting audiences around the world. For the film version, director Jon M. Chu (Crazy Rich Asians) brought the story home, filming its spectacular dance numbers on location in Washington Heights. That’s where Usnavi, Nina, and their neighbors chase their dreams and ask a universal question: Where do I belong?
In the Heights: Finding Home reunites Miranda with Jeremy McCarter, co-author of Hamilton: The Revolution, and Quiara Alegría Hudes, the Pulitzer Prize–winning librettist of the Broadway musical and screenwriter of the film. They do more than trace the making of an unlikely Broadway smash and a major motion picture: They give readers an intimate look at the decades-long creative life of In the Heights.
Like Hamilton: The Revolution, the book offers untold stories, perceptive essays, and the lyrics to Miranda’s songs—complete with his funny, heartfelt annotations. It also features newly commissioned portraits and never-before-seen photos from backstage, the movie set, and productions around the world.
This is the story of characters who search for a home—and the artists who created one.
Please note:
> Tickets are available here.
> Each ticket includes admission to this exclusive event, a hardcover copy of In the Heights: Finding Home (normally $40) and complimentary postage anywhere in the US.
> Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.
> Please contact events@booksmith.com with any questions.

Virtual Event: Martha Cooley and Anne Germanacos
2021-06-14 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON MONDAY, JUNE 14 AT 6PM PT WHEN MARTHA COOLEY DISCUSSES HER LATEST NOVEL, BUY ME LOVE, WITH ANNE GERMANACOS ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84120825850
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,84120825850# or +12532158782,,84120825850#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcGy7MX0NI
Praise for Buy Me Love
Buy Me Love is a terrific novel about the eternal confusions of money and our beloved notions of free will—as they play out for one woman with a lottery ticket. It has a superbly believable romance, crooked family histories, and a sneaky double plot. Readers drawn in by its sharpness and originality will find themselves richly rewarded by its striking turns.
—Joan Silber, author of Improvement
Money—its seductive force, the love of it, its weird immaterial nature, the good it can do, and the risk that having it could obliterate who you are—is everyone’s suave adversary in Martha Cooley’s penetrating novel. She has drawn each of these characters with striking uniqueness. They could all use a bit more money. But it’s the possibility of suddenly having a lot more that fills the story with such danger and hope. If you got everything you wanted, would you still want it? And would you still be you?
—Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer
About Buy Me Love
A novel about chance, trust, and a lottery ticket.
Described by Publishers Weekly as Cooley’s “sharp latest”, “Cooley has a sure hand in probing the intersection of artistic ambition and money. This hopeful take is sure to move readers.”
In Brooklyn, New York, in 2005, Ellen Portinari buys a lottery ticket on a whim; not long after, she realizes she’s won a hundred-million-dollar jackpot. With a month to redeem the ticket, she tells no one but her alcoholic brother—a talented composer whose girlfriend has died in a terrorist attack abroad—about her preposterous good luck.
As the clock ticks, Ellen caroms from incredulity to giddiness to dread as she tries to reckon with the potential consequences of her win. She becomes unexpectedly involved with a man and boy she’s met at her local gym. While she grapples with the burden of secret-keeping and the tug of a new intimacy, a Brooklyn street artist named Blair Talpa is contending with her own challenges: a missing brother, an urge to make art that will “derange orbits,” and a lack of money.
En route to redeem the lottery ticket, Ellen finds her prospects entwining by chance with Blair’s—which allows Ellen to reimagine luck’s relation to loss, and the reader to revel in surprise.

Virtual Event: Martha Cooley and Anne Germanacos
2021-06-14 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Monday, June 14 at 6pm PT when Martha Cooley discusses her latest novel, Buy Me Love, with Anne Germanacos on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84120825850

Praise for Buy Me Love
“Buy Me Love is a terrific novel about the eternal confusions of money and our beloved notions of free will—as they play out for one woman with a lottery ticket. It has a superbly believable romance, crooked family histories, and a sneaky double plot. Readers drawn in by its sharpness and originality will find themselves richly rewarded by its striking turns.”
—Joan Silber, author of Improvement

“Money—its seductive force, the love of it, its weird immaterial nature, the good it can do, and the risk that having it could obliterate who you are—is everyone’s suave adversary in Martha Cooley’s penetrating novel. She has drawn each of these characters with striking uniqueness. They could all use a bit more money. But it’s the possibility of suddenly having a lot more that fills the story with such danger and hope. If you got everything you wanted, would you still want it? And would you still be you?”
—Salvatore Scibona, author of The Volunteer

About Buy Me Love
A novel about chance, trust, and a lottery ticket.
Described by Publishers Weekly as Cooley’s “sharp latest”, “Cooley has a sure hand in probing the intersection of artistic ambition and money. This hopeful take is sure to move readers.”

In Brooklyn, New York, in 2005, Ellen Portinari buys a lottery ticket on a whim; not long after, she realizes she’s won a hundred-million-dollar jackpot. With a month to redeem the ticket, she tells no one but her alcoholic brother—a talented composer whose girlfriend has died in a terrorist attack abroad—about her preposterous good luck.

As the clock ticks, Ellen caroms from incredulity to giddiness to dread as she tries to reckon with the potential consequences of her win. She becomes unexpectedly involved with a man and boy she’s met at her local gym. While she grapples with the burden of secret-keeping and the tug of a new intimacy, a Brooklyn street artist named Blair Talpa is contending with her own challenges: a missing brother, an urge to make art that will “derange orbits,” and a lack of money.

En route to redeem the lottery ticket, Ellen finds her prospects entwining by chance with Blair’s—which allows Ellen to reimagine luck’s relation to loss, and the reader to revel in surprise.

Misa Sugiura, Claire Kann, and Jared Reck
2021-06-14 18:00 - 19:00
Three fabulous authors.
Three amazing new summer reads.
Join us for The Marvelous Proclamations of Love and Other Doughnut Disasters Extravaganza and celebrate the launch of your new summer favorites.

Misa Sugiura is the author of It’s Not Like It’s a Secret, which won the Asian/Pacific American Award for YA Literature and This Time Will Be Different, which was the HarperCollins Children’s Books Lead Read. Her new book, Love and Other Natural Disasters is a delightfully disastrous queer YA rom-com
When Nozomi Nagai pictured the ideal summer romance, a fake one wasn’t what she had in mind. That was before she met the perfect girl. Willow is gorgeous, glamorous, and…heartbroken? And when she enlists Nozomi to pose as her new girlfriend to make her ex jealous, Nozomi is a willing volunteer. Because Nozomi has a master plan of her own: one to show Willow she’s better than a stand-in, and turn their fauxmance into something real. But as the lies pile up, it’s not long before Nozomi’s schemes take a turn toward disaster…and maybe a chance at love she didn’t plan for.

Claire Kann is the author of Let’s Talk About Love and If It Makes You Happy. Her exuberant new book, The Marvelous, follows six teens locked together in a mansion, contending for a life-changing cash prize in a competition run by a reclusive heiress.
Everyone thinks they know Jewel Van Hanen. Heiress turned actress turned social media darling who created the massively popular video-sharing app, Golden Rule. After mysteriously disappearing for a year, Jewel makes her dramatic return with an announcement: she has chosen a few lucky Golden Rule users to spend an unforgettable weekend at her private estate. But once they arrive, Jewel ingeniously flips the script: the guests are now players in an elaborate estate-wide game. And she’s tailored every challenge and obstacle to test whether they have what it takes to win. Told from the perspective of three players–Nicole: the new queen of Golden Rule; Luna: Jewel’s biggest fan; and Stella: a brilliant outsider–this novel will charm its way into your heart and keep you guessing how it all ends because money isn’t the only thing at stake.

Jared Reck is the author of A Short History of the Girl Next Door His new book Donuts and Other Proclamations of Love an alternately funny and heartbreaking story about food trucks, festivals, and first loves.
It’s easy to look at high school senior Oscar Olsson and think: lost. He hates school, struggles to read, and wants nothing to do with college. But Oscar knows exactly what he wants and how to get it. Oscar and Farfar, the Swedish grandfather who’s raised him, run a food truck together, and Oscar wants to finish school so he can focus on the food truck full-time. It’s easy to look at Mary Louise (Lou for short) Messinger and think: driven. AP everything, valedictorian in her sights, and Ivy league college aspirations. When Lou hijacks Oscar’s carefully crafted schedule of independent studies and time in the Culinary Lab, Oscar is roped into helping Lou complete her over-ambitious, resume-building service project-reducing food waste in their school. While Lou stands to gain her Girl Scout Gold Award, Oscar will be faced with uneaten school apples and countless hours with a girl he can’t stand. With the finish line in sight, a relationship he never expected, and festival season about to begin, the unthinkable happens, and Oscar’s future is anything but certain.

VIRTUAL: Omnidawn Spring Book Launch
2021-06-13 13:00 - 15:00
Booksmith and The Bindery are pleased to host Omnidawn Publishing for their seasonal launch of new titles, for which each author will be reading from their work. Be the first to own these new treasures:
100 Words by Damon Potter & Truong Tran
Boyish by Brody Parrish Craig (winner of the Omnidawn Chapbook contest)
Life in a Field by Katie Peterson (winner of the Omnidawn Open Book contest)
Luminaires by Kristin Keane (winner of the Omnidawn Fabulist Fiction contest)
Tropical Lung exi(s)t(s) by Roberto Harrison
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
About 100 Words by Damon Potter & Truong Tran
Written as a conversation engaged over the course of 100 words. It is an exchange of ideas, dialogues, burdens and ideals between someone Brown and someone White. It is an attempt by one to put the weight down and another’s willingness to pick it up. It is a private conversation made public. It is an exchange, a negotiation, discoveries. I did not know this about myself. You crossed the street or was it I? We walk and this weight, we are still carrying it together.
Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He is the author of five previous collections of poetry, The Book of Perceptions, Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, Within The Margins, and Four Letter Words. He also authored the children’s book, Going Home Coming Home, an artist monograph, I Meant To Say Please Past the Sugar. His poems have been translated into Spanish, French and Dutch. He is the recipient of The Poetry Center Prize, The Fund For Poetry Grant, The California Arts Council Grant and numerous San Francisco Arts Commission Grants. He lives in San Francisco and currently teaches at Mills College, Oakland.
Damon Potter lives and works in San Francisco. Poems have previously published in Elderly, and Mirage #4/Period[ical].
To have 100 Words sent to your door, order here.
About Boyish by Brody Parrish Craig
Boyish engages what once thought impossible: a reconciliation of southern and queer identities, of upbringing, rebellion, and revival. The coming to Jesus moments of looking back, of liberation & reckoning. Each page exterior & interior revolutions. To carve space between. To cut-up the absence. To find oneself carried over graveled creekside into the first mouth’s babble. As much subconscious as embodied desire, change holds within the white space and the formal play—language twisting the unspeakable alongside dense sonnets, a thicket of warmth & dissonance that holds a mirror up to puddled overpass & river. The landscapes of city’s dystopia meeting the queer pastoral, where conservation often means what must burn down.
Originally from Louisiana, Brody Parrish Craig is a poet & tranarchist who currently lives in the Ozarks. They are an educator and creator of TWANG, a regional creative project for TGNC folks in the South & Midwest US. BPC’s poetry has appeared in TYPO, EOAGH, Gigantic Sequins & Crab Fat Magazine, amongst others. They can often be found by the creek.
To have Boyish sent to your door, order here.
About Life in a Field by Katie Peterson
Life in a Field is a comedy about climate change. In the story, a girl and a donkey become friends. Then, they decide to marry time. A lyric fable, Life in a Field intersperses slow-moving, cinematic paragraphs in image-driven, sensual prose with three folios of images by the photographer Young Suh. Introspection, wish, dream, and memory take on the character of events. A narrative voice combines candor with distance, attempting to find a path through our daily and familiar strife, towards what remains of beauty and pleasure. In clear, exacting sentences, Life in a Field attempts, against all evidence, to reverse our accelerating destruction of the natural world, reminding us of “the cold clarity we need to continue on this earth.”
Katie Peterson is the author of four previous collections of poetry, including A Piece of Good News. Her third collection, The Accounts, won the Rilke Prize from the University of North Texas. She is Professor and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California at Davis, where she directs the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing. She lives in Berkeley with her husband, Young Suh, and their daughter Emily.
To have Life in a Field sent to your door, order here.
About Luminaires by Kristin Keane
Agnes has been drifting away from herself. People look through her, her husband doesn’t understand her and lately, she’s begun losing the sensations in her body. When a tube of shoplifted lipstick awakens her back to life, an impulse for stealing emerges that leads her to a court-ordered service at a camp for grieving children. Hopeful the time there will help make the stealing stop, when the spirits of the campers’ parents realize Agnes can act as a conduit to their children through their things, she has to navigate using her compulsion to either feed herself or to help the bereaved. Luminaries is about the things we take and about the things that are taken from us. It asks what it means to exist in lives filled with loss, to reach for the things we hope balm us, and the risks we’re willing to take to stymie yearning—both in our material lives and in the ones we pass through.
Kristin Keane‘s work has appeared with the New England Review, The Normal School, Electric Literature and elsewhere. She is a doctoral fellow at Stanford University and lives in San Francisco. More of her work can be found at thisisnotreallyhere.space.
To have Luminaires sent to your door, order here.
About Tropical Lung exi(s)t(s) by Roberto Harrison
These are writings and drawings from and to a new homeland, a new homeland of Panamá that can be transmitted through the quantum martyrs beyond life and death, and/or a new homeland of the Tecumseh Republic, where technology grows to be necessary in understanding the ancient as well as then becoming erased and transcended by a now ever present electronic circle. It is a book brought close to the earth in its symbolic springs, to the light filled mystery that began with countering disassociation and by repairing a devastating explosion of interior structures necessary to being a person in the most foundational ways. It is where the screen removes itself by song as we move toward kinship beyond color mark.
Roberto Harrison‘s poetry books include Yaviza (Atelos, 2017), Bridge of the World (Litmus Press, 2017), culebra (Green Lantern Press, 2016), bicycle (Noemi Press, 2015), Counter Daemons (Litmus Press, 2006), Os (subpress, 2006), as well as many chapbooks. With Andrew Levy, Roberto edited the poetry journal Crayon from 1997 to 2008. He is also the editor of Bronze Skull Press which has published over 20 chapbooks, including the work of many Midwestern poets. Most recently Roberto served as a co-editor for the Resist Much/Obey Little : Inaugural Poems to the Resistance anthology. He was the Milwaukee Poet Laureate for 2017-2019 and is also a visual artist. He lives in Milwaukee with his wife the poet Brenda Cárdenas.
To have Tropical Lung exi(s)t(s) to your door, order here.

Virtual Event: Paul Mendez
2021-06-12 12:00 - 14:00
JOIN US ON SATURDAY, JUNE 12 AT 12PM PT WHEN PAUL MENDEZ JOINS US TO DISCUSS HIS DEBUT NOVEL, RAINBOW MILK, ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84107018600
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,84107018600# or +12532158782,,84107018600#
Webinar ID: 841 0701 8600
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kOLJG2ljP
Praise for Rainbow Milk
“The kind of novel you never knew you were waiting for. An explosive work that reels from sex, to sin, to salvation all the while grappling with what it means to black, gay, British, a son, a father, a lover, even a man. A remarkable debut.” —Marlon James, New York Times bestselling author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
“When did you last read a novel about a young, black, gay, Jehovah’s Witness man from Wolverhampton who flees his community to make his way in London as a prostitute? This might be a debut, but Mendez is an exciting, accomplished and daring storyteller with a great ear for dialogue. Graphic erotica alert! Don’t read this book if you like your fiction cosy and middle-of-the-road.” —Bernardine Evaristo, Booker Prize–winning author of Girl, Woman, Other
“A state of the nation novel…Extraordinary…Tthe voice of the character is so strong…Paul Mendez is now a significant new figure in the literary world…James Baldwin would be very proud of this book.” —BBC
About Rainbow Milk
An essential and revelatory coming-of-age narrative from a thrilling new voice, Rainbow Milk follows nineteen-year-old Jesse McCarthy as he grapples with his racial and sexual identities against the backdrop of his Jehovah’s Witness upbringing.
In the 1950s, ex-boxer Norman Alonso is a determined and humble Jamaican who has immigrated to Britain with his wife and children to secure a brighter future. Blighted with unexpected illness and racism, Norman and his family are resilient, but are all too aware that their family will need more than just hope to survive in their new country.
At the turn of the millennium, Jesse seeks a fresh start in London, escaping a broken immediate family, a repressive religious community and his depressed hometown in the industrial Black Country. But once he arrives he finds himself at a loss for a new center of gravity, and turns to sex work, music and art to create his own notions of love, masculinity and spirituality.
A wholly original novel as tender as it is visceral, Rainbow Milk is a bold reckoning with race, class, sexuality, freedom and religion across generations, time and cultures.
About Paul Mendez
Paul Mendez was born and raised in the Black Country. He now lives in London and is studying for an M.A. in Black British Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. He has been a performing member of two theatre companies, and worked as a voice actor, appearing on audiobooks by Andrea Levy, Paul Theroux and Ben Okri, most recently recording Ian Wright’s A Life in Football for Hachette Audio. As a writer, he has contributed to the Times Literary Supplement and the Brixton Review of Books. Rainbow Milk is his debut novel.

Nomadic Press' Virtual Open Mic #62
2021-06-11 18:00 - 19:30 | online, CA, United States
90 minutes
30 readers
3 minutes each
On Zoom!
FREE AND ALL WELCOME!
Sign up to read here:
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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;
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3) donating through the website at www.nomadicpress.org/donate
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)
Every week on Fri, until Dec 10, 2021, 50 occurrence(s)
Please download and import the following iCalendar (.ics) files to your calendar system.
Weekly: https://us02web.zoom.us/…/tZcudeqoqjIiE9fnl7dxuB…/ics…
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Author Gayle Forman Discussing WE ARE INEVITABLE with YA Authors Jandy Nelson and Nina LaCour
2021-06-10 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Thursday, June 10, 2021 at 7 PM PDT for a discussion of WE ARE INEVITABLE with author Gayle Forman in conversation with Nina LaCour (author of WE ARE OKAY and WATCH OVER ME) and Jandy Nelson (author of I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN and THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE).
Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87202166749.
Order your copy of WE ARE INEVITABLE at http://bit.ly/ggpInevitable, or in audiobook from Libro.fm at http://bit.ly/inevitableAB.
Description

Even in the face of extinction, life–and love–finds a way.
Aaron Stein used to think books were miracles. But not anymore. Even though he spends his days working in his family’s secondhand bookstore, the only book Aaron can bear to read is one about the demise of the dinosaurs. It’s a predicament he understands all too well, now that his brother and mom are gone and his friends have deserted him, leaving Aaron and his shambolic father alone in a moldering bookstore in a crusty mountain town where no one seems to read anymore.
So when Aaron sees the opportunity to sell the store, he jumps at it, thinking this is the only way out. But he doesn’t account for Chad, a “best life” bro with a wheelchair and way too much optimism, or the town’s out-of-work lumberjacks taking on the failing shop as their pet project. And he certainly doesn’t anticipate meeting Hannah, a beautiful, brave musician who might possibly be the kind of inevitable he’s been waiting for.
All of them will help Aaron to come to terms with what he’s lost, what he’s found, who he is, and who he wants to be, and show him that destruction doesn’t inevitably lead to extinction; sometimes it leads to the creation of something entirely new.
About the Author

Gayle Forman is an award-winning, internationally bestselling author and journalist. Her #1 New York Times bestselling novel If I Stay was adapted into a film starring Chloë Grace Moretz. Gayle is also the author of several other bestselling novels, including Where She Went, I Was Here, the Just One series, I Have Lost My Way, and Leave Me. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughters.
CONNECT WITH GAYLE:
Website: GayleForman.com
Twitter: @GayleForman
Instagram: @GayleForman
Facebook: Facebook.com/GayleFormanAuthor
Praise For…

“No one writes about love like Gayle Forman. Lose yourself in her passionate mash note to rock music, indie bookstores and best of all, the miracles that can happen when you take chances on other people.” — E. LOCKHART, #1 New York Times bestselling author of We Were Liars and Again Again

About Jandy Nelson

Jandy Nelson, like her characters in I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN, comes from a superstitious lot. She was tutored from a young age in the art of the four-leaf clover hunt; she knocks wood, throws salt, and carries charms in her pockets. Her debut novel, THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE, was on multiple Best Books of the Year lists, was a YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults pick, earned numerous starred reviews, has been translated widely, and continues to enjoy great international success. Currently a full-time writer, Jandy lives and writes in San Francisco, California—not far from the settings of THE SKY IS EVERYWHERE and I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN.
About Nina LaCour

Nina LaCour is the author of the widely acclaimed HOLD STILL, THE DISENCHANTMENTS, EVERYTHING LEADS TO YOU, and the Michael L. Printz Award-winner WE ARE OKAY. She is also the coauthor, with David Levithan, of YOU KNOW ME WELL. Formerly a bookseller and high school English teacher, she now writes and parents full time. A San Francisco Bay Area native, Nina lives with her family in San Francisco, California. www.ninalacour.com

Elizabeth Hinton
2021-06-10 18:00 - 20:00
Point Reyes Books and East Bay Booksellers present Elizabeth Hinton in conversation with Michael Tubbs and Advance Peace Director DeVone Boggan about the new book, America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s (Liveright).
“If you want to understand the massive antiracist protests of 2020, put down the navel-gazing books about racial healing and read America on Fire.” —Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination
This event will stream on our Crowdcast channel. We encourage you to purchase the book from us or East Bay Booksellers.
REGISTER HERE
About America on Fire
From one of our top historians, a groundbreaking story of policing and “riots” that shatters our understanding of the post–civil rights era.
What began in spring 2020 as local protests in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police quickly exploded into a massive nationwide movement. Millions of mostly young people defiantly flooded into the nation’s streets, demanding an end to police brutality and to the broader, systemic repression of Black people and other people of color. To many observers, the protests appeared to be without precedent in their scale and persistence. Yet, as the acclaimed historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in America on Fire, the events of 2020 had clear precursors—and any attempt to understand our current crisis requires a reckoning with the recent past.
Even in the aftermath of Donald Trump, many Americans consider the decades since the civil rights movement in the mid-1960s as a story of progress toward greater inclusiveness and equality. Hinton’s sweeping narrative uncovers an altogether different history, taking us on a troubling journey from Detroit in 1967 and Miami in 1980 to Los Angeles in 1992 and beyond to chart the persistence of structural racism and one of its primary consequences, the so-called urban riot. Hinton offers a critical corrective: the word riot was nothing less than a racist trope applied to events that can only be properly understood as rebellions—explosions of collective resistance to an unequal and violent order. As she suggests, if rebellion and the conditions that precipitated it never disappeared, the optimistic story of a post–Jim Crow United States no longer holds.
Black rebellion, America on Fire powerfully illustrates, was born in response to poverty and exclusion, but most immediately in reaction to police violence. In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson launched the “War on Crime,” sending militarized police forces into impoverished Black neighborhoods. Facing increasing surveillance and brutality, residents threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers, plundered local businesses, and vandalized exploitative institutions. Hinton draws on exclusive sources to uncover a previously hidden geography of violence in smaller American cities, from York, Pennsylvania, to Cairo, Illinois, to Stockton, California.
The central lesson from these eruptions—that police violence invariably leads to community violence—continues to escape policymakers, who respond by further criminalizing entire groups instead of addressing underlying socioeconomic causes. The results are the hugely expanded policing and prison regimes that shape the lives of so many Americans today. Presenting a new framework for understanding our nation’s enduring strife, America on Fire is also a warning: rebellions will surely continue unless police are no longer called on to manage the consequences of dismal conditions beyond their control, and until an oppressive system is finally remade on the principles of justice and equality.
About the participants
Elizabeth Hinton is associate professor of history and African American studies at Yale University and a professor of law at Yale Law School. The author of From the War on Poverty to the War on Crime, she lives in New Haven, Connecticut.
On November 8, 2016, Michael Tubbs was elected to serve as the mayor of the City of Stockton, California. Upon taking office in January 2017, elected at the age of 26, Michael Tubbs became both the nation’s youngest mayor, for a city of over 100,000 people and Stockton’s first African-American mayor.
Devone Boggan is the founder and chief executive officer of Advance Peace, an organization dedicated to ending cyclical and retaliatory gun violence in American urban neighborhoods.

Virtual Event: Chenxing Han and Breeshia Wade
2021-06-10 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON THURSDAY, JUNE 10 AT 6PM PT WHEN BREESHIA WADE AND CHENXING HAN JOIN US TO DISCUSS THEIR BOOKS, GRIEVING WHILE BLACK AND BE THE REFUGE ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84076096679
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,84076096679# or +13462487799,,84076096679#
Webinar ID: 840 7609 6679
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcYBicTJNB
Praise for Grieving While Black
“Grieving While Black expands the notion of grief beyond its quick association with death to examine all of the spiritual and psychological tolls of racism and sexism. By drawing on her experiences as a birth doula and chaplain, Breeshia Wade complicates grief itself by exploring different forms of loss while also imagining a path toward healing. A bracing, illuminating read.”
—BRIT BENNETT, author of the New York Times best sellers The Vanishing Half and The Mothers
“Breeshia Wade has written a moving testament to the power of grief and healing at the intersection of generational loss, race, and sexuality. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to enact compassionate antiracism in their activism and in their lives.”
—SARAH VALENTINE, PhD, author of When I Was White
About Grieving While Black
An exploration of grief and racial trauma through the eyes of a Black end-of-life caregiver.
Most of us understand grief as sorrow experienced after a loss—the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a change in life circumstance. Breeshia Wade approaches grief as something that is bigger than what’s already happened to us—as something that is connected to what we fear, what we love, and what we aspire toward. Drawing on stories from her own life as a Black woman and from the people she has midwifed through the end of life, she connects sorrow not only to specific incidents but also to the ongoing trauma that is part and parcel of systemic oppression.
Wade reimagines our relationship to power, accountability, and boundaries and points to the long-term work we must all do in order to address systemic trauma perpetuated within our interpersonal relationships. Each of us has a moral obligation to attend to our own grief so that we can responsibly engage with others. Wade elucidates grief in every aspect of our lives, providing a map back to ourselves and allowing the reader to heal their innate wholeness.
Praise for Be the Refuge
“In Be The Refuge, Buddhists from all backgrounds will find truth in the words of like-minded people from various Asian streams, dealing squarely with the complexity of ‘betwixt-and-between’ racial identities and life experiences.” –San Francisco Book Review (5/5 stars)
“Chenxing Han writes with a singular grace, missing nothing in a work that draws from a well of academic origins, while merging cultural critique and luminous voices into a moving memoir. No doubt many an Asian American Buddhist will find themselves heard and championed here, even as the book’s careful sifting of histories and possibilities makes it valuable reading for future scholarship. Above all, Be the Refuge lives up to its name.”
—erin Khuê Ninh, author of Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature
About Be the Refuge
A must-read for modern sanghas–Asian American Buddhists in their own words, on their own terms.
Despite the fact that two thirds of U.S. Buddhists identify as Asian American, mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism.
Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian American Buddhists’ own voices. With insights from multi-generational, second-generation, convert, and socially engaged Asian American Buddhists, Be the Refuge includes the stories of trailblazers, bridge-builders, integrators, and refuge-makers who hail from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds.
Championing nuanced representation over stale stereotypes, Han and the 89 interviewees in Be the Refuge push back against false narratives like the Oriental monk, the superstitious immigrant, and the banana Buddhist–typecasting that collapses the multivocality of Asian American Buddhists into tired, essentialized tropes. Encouraging frank conversations about race, representation, and inclusivity among Buddhists of all backgrounds, Be the Refuge embodies the spirit of interconnection that glows at the heart of American Buddhism.

Virtual Event: Chenxing Han and Breeshia Wade
2021-06-10 18:00 - 19:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Thursday, June 10 at 6pm PT when Breeshia Wade and Chenxing Han join us to discuss their books, Grieving While Black and Be the Refuge on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84076096679

Praise for Grieving While Black
“Grieving While Black expands the notion of grief beyond its quick association with death to examine all of the spiritual and psychological tolls of racism and sexism. By drawing on her experiences as a birth doula and chaplain, Breeshia Wade complicates grief itself by exploring different forms of loss while also imagining a path toward healing. A bracing, illuminating read.”
—BRIT BENNETT, author of the New York Times best sellers The Vanishing Half and The Mothers

“Breeshia Wade has written a moving testament to the power of grief and healing at the intersection of generational loss, race, and sexuality. This book is a must-read for anyone looking to enact compassionate antiracism in their activism and in their lives.”
—SARAH VALENTINE, PhD, author of When I Was White

About Grieving While Black
An exploration of grief and racial trauma through the eyes of a Black end-of-life caregiver.

Most of us understand grief as sorrow experienced after a loss—the death of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a change in life circumstance. Breeshia Wade approaches grief as something that is bigger than what’s already happened to us—as something that is connected to what we fear, what we love, and what we aspire toward. Drawing on stories from her own life as a Black woman and from the people she has midwifed through the end of life, she connects sorrow not only to specific incidents but also to the ongoing trauma that is part and parcel of systemic oppression.

Wade reimagines our relationship to power, accountability, and boundaries and points to the long-term work we must all do in order to address systemic trauma perpetuated within our interpersonal relationships. Each of us has a moral obligation to attend to our own grief so that we can responsibly engage with others. Wade elucidates grief in every aspect of our lives, providing a map back to ourselves and allowing the reader to heal their innate wholeness.

Praise for Be the Refuge
“In Be The Refuge, Buddhists from all backgrounds will find truth in the words of like-minded people from various Asian streams, dealing squarely with the complexity of ‘betwixt-and-between’ racial identities and life experiences.” –San Francisco Book Review (5/5 stars)

“Chenxing Han writes with a singular grace, missing nothing in a work that draws from a well of academic origins, while merging cultural critique and luminous voices into a moving memoir. No doubt many an Asian American Buddhist will find themselves heard and championed here, even as the book’s careful sifting of histories and possibilities makes it valuable reading for future scholarship. Above all, Be the Refuge lives up to its name.”
—erin Khuê Ninh, author of Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature

About Be the Refuge
A must-read for modern sanghas–Asian American Buddhists in their own words, on their own terms.

Despite the fact that two thirds of U.S. Buddhists identify as Asian American, mainstream perceptions about what it means to be Buddhist in America often whitewash and invisibilize the diverse, inclusive, and intersectional communities that lie at the heart of American Buddhism.

Be the Refuge is both critique and celebration, calling out the erasure of Asian American Buddhists while uplifting the complexity and nuance of their authentic stories and vital, thriving communities. Drawn from in-depth interviews with a pan-ethnic, pan-Buddhist group, Be the Refuge is the first book to center young Asian American Buddhists’ own voices. With insights from multi-generational, second-generation, convert, and socially engaged Asian American Buddhists, Be the Refuge includes the stories of trailblazers, bridge-builders, integrators, and refuge-makers who hail from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds.

Championing nuanced representation over stale stereotypes, Han and the 89 interviewees in Be the Refuge push back against false narratives like the Oriental monk, the superstitious immigrant, and the banana Buddhist–typecasting that collapses the multivocality of Asian American Buddhists into tired, essentialized tropes. Encouraging frank conversations about race, representation, and inclusivity among Buddhists of all backgrounds, Be the Refuge embodies the spirit of interconnection that glows at the heart of American Buddhism.

reVisions: Decoding Technological Bias
2021-06-10 12:00 - 2021-06-18 13:00
Join City Lights, the Goethe-Institut San Francisco, and Gray Area for reVisions, a week-long festival exploring how technological bias shapes our cultural realities.
Our trust in mediated experiences has never been lower. Governed by algorithms that perpetuate the biases and weaknesses of their developers, our cultural consumption is increasingly shaped by undetectable forces that determine our reality. Images play an important role here: fake photos and videos created with deep neural networks threaten privacy, democracy, and national security. Vision recognition systems skew gender, race, and class differences and become vehicles of discrimination. Underdeveloped AI models misrepresent the health disparities faced by minority populations.
How can we illuminate the algorithmic bias embedded within technology and counter the perpetuation of bias? What innovative approaches can we develop to strengthen inclusion, diversity, and sustainability in technology?
This festival brings a network of luminaries together to share new perspectives and rewrite new visions advocating for justice and reclaiming power.
The festival is part of the project IMAGE + BIAS that critically engages with the cultural realities being increasingly determined by imperceptible technologies.
Speakers:
• Jillian York
• Maureen Webb
• Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski
• Ryan Milner and Whitney Phillips
• Jer Thorp and Romi Ron Morrison

Workshops:
• Understanding AI Data Bias Workshop
• BYOW Workshop: Build Your Own Words to Resist Algorithmic Censorship
• Meme Tactics Workshop
All events are free but require registration. Links are posted below each event description.

SPEAKER SCHEDULE

Thursday June 10, 2021
Session 1
12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern
Against Technosolutionism! Why We Can’t Regulate Our Way Out Of This Mess
with Jillian York

The same radical technologies that helped give rise the social and political movements of 2010-12 later enabled a rise in disinformation, propaganda, and the promotion of other harms. Today, our societies are grappling to find solutions, but looking in all the wrong places.
Jillian C. York is International Activism Director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, EFF. She is also a founding member of the feminist collective, Deep Lab. She has been covering questions of surveillance and freedom since the 2000s. She was named by Foreign Policy as one of the top 100 intellectuals on social media. She has written for the Guardian, Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy. Verso Books recently released her new book Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech under Surveillance Capitalism. She is based in Berlin.
Click the (RSVP LINK) on the Gray Area website to reserve your place in the virtual hall.

Friday, June 11, 2021
Session 2
12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern
Coding Democracy – How Hackers Are Disrupting Power, Surveillance, and Authoritarianism
with Maureen Webb

Hackers have a bad reputation, as shady deployers of bots and destroyers of infrastructure. Maureen Webb would like to offer another view. Hackers, she argues, can be vital disruptors. Hacking is becoming a practice, an ethos, and a metaphor for a new wave of activism in which ordinary citizens are inventing new forms of distributed, decentralized democracy for a digital era. Confronted with concentrations of power, mass surveillance, and authoritarianism enabled by new technology, the hacking movement is trying to “build out” democracy into cyberspace.
Maureen Webb is a human rights lawyer and activist. She has spoken extensively on post-September 11 security and human rights issues, most recently testifying before the House and Senate Committees reviewing the Canadian Anti-terrorism Act. In 2001, Webb was a Fellow at the Human Rights Institute at Columbia University in New York. A litigator for some of the first constitutional cases heard under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, including the landmark freedom of association case, “Lavigne, “and a case challenging the powers of Canada’s newly instituted spy agency, CSIS, she sits as co-chair of the International Civil Liberties Monitoring Group. She is also the Coordinator for Security and Human Rights issues for Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada. She is the author of Illusions of Security: Global Surveillance and Democracy in the Post-9/11 World published by City Lights Books and has taught national security law as an Adjunct Professor at the University of British Columbia.
Click the (RSVP LINK) on the Gray Area website to reserve your place in the virtual hall.

Session 3
3:00 pm Pacific / 6:00 pm Eastern
Surrogate Futures: Technology, Race, and the Human
with Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski

In this talk, Kalindi Vora and Neda Atanasoski consider how the surrogate effect of technology within technoliberalism, as they describe it in their book, Surrogate Humanity: Race, Robots and the Politics of Technological Futures (2019), comes to bear on recent discussions around technological bias. Assessing how technological design is central to envisioning and shaping different potential futures, they emphasize the importance of thinking beyond bias if we are to understand how racial capitalism undergirds technological design. They also explore radical design politics that disrupt more mainstream uses and visions of technological value.
Neda Atanasoski is Professor of Feminist Studies and Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and author of Humanitarian Violence: The U.S. Deployment of Diversity.
Kalindi Vora is Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of California, Davis, and author of Life Support: Biocapital and the New History of Outsourced Labor.
Click the (RSVP LINK) on the Gray Area website to reserve your place in the virtual hall.

Saturday, June 12, 2021
Session 4
12:00 pm Pacific / 3:00 pm Eastern
You Are Here: A Field Guide
with Ryan Milner and Whitney Phillips

Our media environment is in crisis. Polarization is rampant. Polluted information floods social media. Even our best efforts to help clean up can backfire, sending toxins roaring across the landscape. In You Are Here, Whitney Phillips and Ryan Milner offer strategies for navigating increasingly treacherous information flows. Using ecological metaphors, they emphasize how our individual me is entwined within a much larger we, and how everyone fits within an ever-shifting network map.
Whitney Phillips is Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University and the author of This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture (MIT Press).
Ryan M. Milner is Associate Professor of Communication at the College of Charleston and author of The World Made Meme: Public Conversations and Participatory Media (MIT Press).
Click the (RSVP LINK) on the Gray Area website to reserve your place in the virtual hall.

Session 5
3:00 pm Pacific / 6:00 p.m.
Living in Data
with Jer Thorp and Romi Ron Morrison

To live in data in the twenty-first century is to be incessantly extracted from, classified and categorized, statisti-fied, sold, and surveilled. Data—our data—is mined and processed for profit, power, and political gain. In Living in Data, Thorp asks a crucial question of our time: How do we stop passively inhabiting data, and instead become active citizens of it?
Jer Thorp is an artist, a writer, and a teacher. He was the first data artist in residence at The New York Times, he is a National Geographic Explorer, and he served as the innovator in residence at the Library of Congress in 2017 and 2018. He lives under the Manhattan Bridge with his family and his awesome dog, Trapper John, MD. Living in Data is his first book.
Romi Ron Morrison is a Black queer non-binary artist, researcher, and educator. Their work investigates the personal, political, ideological, and spatial boundaries of race, ethics, and social infrastructure within digital technologies. Using maps, data, sound, performance, and video, their installations center Black Feminist technologies that challenge the demands of an increasingly quantified world—reducing land into property, people into digits, and knowledge into data.
Click the (RSVP LINK) on the Gray Area website to reserve your place in the virtual hall.

Workshop Schedule

Wednesday, June 16, 2021, 10am – 1pm Pacific / 1pm – 4pm Eastern
Understanding AI Data Bias
Instructors: Paul Bethge, Ralph Eger, Yannick Hofmann, & Jana Müller
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the basics of Deep Learning and explore the topic of data bias. Together, the implications of this technology will be explored using generative neural networks in the visual media domain.
Coordinated by The Intelligent Museum

The Intelligent Museum is a practice-based research and development project at the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and the German Museum, with the aim of connecting the museum with current AI technologies, making it a place of experience and experimentation, a social space where art, science, technology and public discourse come together.

Thursday, June 17, 2021, 10:00 am – 12:00 pm Pacific / 1:00 pm – 3:00 pm Eastern
BYOW Workshop: Build Your Own Words to Resist Algorithmic Censorship
Instructors: Xiaowei Wang, Qianqian Ye

To enroll click the (ENROLLMENT LINK) on the Gray Area website.
Our capacity for change is shaped by our capacity for language: new phrases, words, revolution are created by our ability to imagine new worlds and vocabularies. From hashtags and political slogans, words serve as reminders and provocations of where we’ve been and where we are headed.
Yet online, words are not just expressions — words are now a form of data. “The systemic manipulation and monetization of digitized language is a threat to the security and stability of modern society. The very words we use to communicate, learn, debate, and critique have become compromised by opaque algorithmic organisation and optimisation, and the market-driven profits of private companies such as Google. We might therefore ask ourselves, just how resilient and secure is language in the digital age?” writes researcher Pip Thornton. Whether in the US, in China, globally, language online has become the medium in which activism arises. Language has also become a form of data, ready to be co-opted, used to create machine learning systems for profit, such as words for training data that form AI models that can “write”. Words have also become an arena for automated censorship and moderation. In China, automated censorship has led to a surge of creativity as online netizens scramble to “fool the machine”, through creative use of homophones to images and new characters that bypass OCR (optical character recognition).
Writing has long been a form of dissent and provocation. Words can destroy worlds or create new worlds. Our new languages will be prismatic in nature, subject to the multiple, relational and transnational ways of expression.
In this workshop, we’ll use the Hanzimaker and other parts of the Algorithmic Censorship Toolkit by Future of Memory to experiment with creating new words, phrases and vocabularies to document the past and think through the future. These new hybrid characters, a mash of multiple languages, just as diasporic as their creators will escape classification and recognition by automated systems. We see these characters as a form of visual poetry.
As Audre Lorde wrote, “Poetry is not only dream and vision; it is the skeleton architecture of our lives. It lays the foundation for a future of change, a bridge across our fears of what has never been before.”
What words will we be left with to describe the past? What words will build our future? What is the new vocabulary we need for different kinds of revolution?
Xiaowei Wang is an artist, coder and a writer. The creative director at Logic magazine, their work encompasses community-based projects on technology, ecology, and education. Their projects have been finalists for the Index Design Awards and featured by the New York Times, the BBC, CNN, VICE, and elsewhere.
Qianqian Ye is an artist, educator and organizer based in Los Angeles. She currently teaches at USC Media Arts + Practice and works as a p5.js co-lead at Processing Foundation. She was born and raised in China and moved to the US in 2012. Trained as an architect, she explores the complex interaction between digital, architectural, and social spaces.

Friday, June 18, 2021, 10:00 am – 1:00 pm Pacific / 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm Eastern
Meme Tactics Workshop
Instructors: Josue Chavez, Kira Simon-Kennedy

To enroll click the (ENROLLMENT LINK) on the Gray Area website.
Memes make us laugh, and make a message catch on. Best of all, people can remix them and pass them on. We need all the tools we can get to negotiate power and assert presence. Meme Tactics is a session to share strategies to harness the humorous power of memes for movements. We’ll share examples of dances, symbols, zines and patches from Nicaragua, India, mainland China, and beyond. You’ll leave with a set of tactics specific to amplify your own messages.
Josue Chavez researches media, translation and labor in China and Central America. He is the co-curator of Meme Tactics, and his critical writing has been featured in Ada: A Journal of Gender, New Media and Technology. He is a Ph.D. student in the Hispanic Studies department at Penn.
Kira Simon-Kennedy helps creative people do impactful and interesting things as the co-founder & director of China Residencies, a co-founder of Rivet, and an independent film producer. She likes writing guides, redistributing resources, and curating meme tactics.

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

Carol Queen on the State of Sex in 2021
2021-06-09 19:00 - 20:30 | Virtual
Carol Queen has been on the frontlines of the sex-positivity movement since the 1970s. A cultural sexologist, author, and co-founder of San Francisco’s Center for Sex & Culture, Carol is a long-time advocate for sexual health and pleasure. As Staff Sexologist at Good Vibrations, Carol developed their education program and is a leading educator in the field of sexual education in San Francisco and beyond. A long running sex advice columnist for BUST magazine, Carol has brought her insight and knowledge to readers all over the world.
Join Sex Therapist and CIIS Sex Therapy Certificate Program Lead Zoe Sipe for a lively conversation with Carol as they explore the state of sex in 2021. Together, they discuss societal views on sex, social movements related to sex, sex education, sexual shame, and sex positivity in civic life.
Free, suggested donation of $15.
https://www.ciis.edu/public-programs/event-calendar/queen-carol-june-9-2021 publicprograms@ciis.edu 415-575-6175

VIRTUAL: Yang Huang with Kaitlin Solimine / Launch for My Good Son
2021-06-09 18:00 - 20:00
Booksmith is thrilled to host the virtual launch for Yang Huang and her new novel, My Good Son. She’ll be in conversation with Kaitlin Solimine. This will be a special evening – some of you might remember the warm launch we had for Yang’s last book, My Old Faithful – join us!
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order **signed copies** of My Good Son here and we’ll ship it directly to you (or hold for pickup at our San Francisco shop).
Order Empire of Glass by Kaitlin Solimine here.
We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact events@booksmith.com.
About the book
From award-winning author Yang Huang, My Good Son explores the power—and the cost—of parental love. A tailor in post-Tiananmen China, Mr. Cai has one ambition: for his son, Feng, to make something of himself. With harsh discipline and relentless pressure, Mr. Cai succeeds in getting Feng ready to attend a U.S. college, but Feng needs a sponsor. When Mr. Cai meets a closeted American art student named Jude, they hatch a plan to benefit them both—get Feng to the US and help Jude come out to his conservative father. Their scheme will expose the fault lines in both Chinese and American cultures: father-son relationships, familial expectations, gender and sexuality, social status and privilege. Huang’s writing abounds with sharp insights and a quiet humor, revealing the complexity of family relationships amidst two rapidly changing cultures.
About the authors
Yang Huang grew up in China and has lived in the United States since 1990. Her novel My Good Son won the UNO Press Publishing Lab Prize. Her linked story collection, My Old Faithful, won the Juniper Prize, and her debut novel, LIVING TREASURES, won the Nautilus Book Award silver medal. She works for the University of California, Berkeley and lives in the Bay Area with her family.
Raised in New England, Kaitlin Solimine has considered China a second home for almost two decades. Her debut novel, Empire of Glass (Ig Publishing, 2017) was a finalist for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. Her writing has been featured in Guernica Magazine, LitHub, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, China Daily, and more. She is the mother to two young children and lives in San Francisco where she is at work on a new novel and book of essays.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.

Carol Anderson in conversation with Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
2021-06-09 17:00 - 19:00
Carol Anderson in conversation with Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz
discussing
The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America
published by Bloomsbury Books
From the New York Times bestselling author of White Rage, an unflinching, critical new look at the Second Amendment–and how it has been engineered to deny the rights of African Americans since its inception.
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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
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Event is free, but registration is required
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(CLICK HERE) to register. Link to be posted.
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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. Link to be posted.
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In The Second, historian and award-winning, bestselling author of White Rage Carol Anderson powerfully illuminates the history and impact of the Second Amendment, how it was designed, and how it has consistently been constructed to keep African Americans powerless and vulnerable. The Second is neither a “pro-gun” nor an “anti-gun” book; the lens is the citizenship rights and human rights of African Americans.
From the seventeenth century, when it was encoded into law that the enslaved could not own, carry, or use a firearm whatsoever, until today, with measures to expand and curtail gun ownership aimed disproportionately at the African American population, the right to bear arms has been consistently used as a weapon to keep African Americans powerless–revealing that armed or unarmed, Blackness, it would seem, is the threat that must be neutralized and punished.
Throughout American history to the twenty-first century, regardless of the laws, court decisions, and changing political environment, the Second has consistently meant this: That the second a Black person exercises this right, the second they pick up a gun to protect themselves (or the second that they don’t), their life–as surely as Philando Castile’s, Tamir Rice’s, Alton Sterling’s–may be snatched away in that single, fatal second. Through compelling historical narrative merging into the unfolding events of today, Anderson’s penetrating investigation shows that the Second Amendment is not about guns but about anti-Blackness, shedding shocking new light on another dimension of racism in America.
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation’s Divide, a New York Times Bestseller, Washington Post Notable Book of 2016, and a National Book Critics Circle Award winner. She is also the author of Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955; Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy, which was long-listed for the National Book Award and a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Award in non-fiction.
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz grew up in rural Oklahoma, the daughter of a tenant farmer and part-Indian mother. She is the author of many books, including Loaded: A Disarming History of the Second Amendment, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico, and Blood on the Border: A Memoir of the Contra War. Her forthcoming book is called Not “A Nation of Immigrants” : Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion. She is the recipient of the Cultural Freedom Prize for Lifetime Achievement by the Lannan Foundation, and she lives in San Francisco, CA.
What has been said about the work of Carol Anderson:
“The second amendment, as Carol Anderson deftly establishes here, was written in the blood of enslaved black people. Our stalemated gun rights debates have focused on the idea that the second amendment preserves liberty rather than its historic role in denying it. This book does a great deal to change the parameters of that conversation.” – Jelani Cobb, New Yorker staff writer, author of THE SUBSTANCE OF HOPE
“In this extraordinarily important book, Dr. Anderson shows that the Second Amendment was designed, and has always been implemented, to enable white Americans to dominate their Black neighbors. In her trademark engaging and unflinching prose, Dr. Anderson traces America’s racist history of gun laws from the 1639 Virginia colony’s prohibition on Africans carrying guns to the recent police murders of Breonna Taylor and Emantic Bradford, Jr., showing how calls for ‘law and order’ have concentrated guns in the hands of white people while defining Black gun ownership as a threat to society. Anderson’s deft scholarship convincingly places the right to use force at the center of American citizenship, and warns that the Second Amendment, as it is currently exercised, guarantees that Black Americans will never be equal.” – Heather Cox Richardson, author of HOW THE SOUTH WON THE CIVIL WAR
“Carol Anderson brings her brilliant analytical framing to one of our most pressing issues: the proliferation of guns and the epidemic of American gun violence. She reveals the racial hypocrisy inherent in Second Amendment defenses of gun rights. The Second is a must-read for students of American History.” – Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, former U.S. Poet Laureate, author of MEMORIAL DRIVE
“Carol Anderson brings her storied sense of the intertwining of past and present, her keen insights into the wiles of racism, and her passionate prose to this extraordinary take on the meaning of the Second Amendment. This is a necessary history of the roots of gun obsession in slavery, racial assumptions, legal and political fictions that may have put America on a ‘fatal’ spiral we can only hope to prevent. Let’s dream that this book echoes across the partisan canyon.” – David W. Blight, Yale University, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning FREDERICK DOUGLASS: PROPHET OF FREEDOM
“A powerful consideration of the Second Amendment as a deliberately constructed instrument of White supremacy. . . . An urgent, novel interpretation of a foundational freedom that, the author makes clear, is a freedom only for some.” – Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“Carol Anderson’s prose is unflinching, and she wastes no time as she marches the reader from the openly racist, clear-cutting suppression tactics of the early 20th century toward the carefully veneered, ruthlessly efficient disenfranchisement campaign of the present.” – NPR Best Books of the Year on ONE PERSON, NO VOTE
“This trenchant little book will push you to think not just about the vote count but about who counts, too.” – New York Times on ONE PERSON, NO VOTE
“An extraordinarily timely and urgent call to confront the legacy of structural racism . . . and to show its continuing threat to the promise of American democracy.” – Editor’s Choice, New York Times Book Review on WHITE RAGE
“A sobering primer on the myriad ways African American resilience and triumph over enslavement, Jim Crow and intolerance have been relentlessly defied by the very institutions entrusted to uphold our democracy.” – Washington Post on WHITE RAGE

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

VIRTUAL EVENT: Laurie R. King, Castle Shade
2021-06-08 19:00 - 21:00
Join us online as we celebrate the publication of beloved and award-winning local writer Laurie R. King’s new book, Castle Shade! A queen, a castle, a dark and ageless threat all await Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes in Castle Shade, the chilling new adventure in bestselling author Laurie R. King’s series. Publishers Weekly says, “King smoothly slips in fascinating historical details about the life of Marie of Roumania, all the while keeping the plot galloping along at high speed. This is a treat for old fans and newcomers alike.”
Register for this free Crowdcast by clicking here!
This is a free event. The featured book may be preordered below. You can make a donation to help support Bookshop Santa Cruz here. Thank you!
The queen is Marie of Roumania: the doubly royal granddaughter of Victoria, Empress of the British Empire, and Alexander II, Tsar of Russia. A famous beauty who was married at seventeen into Roumania’s young dynasty, Marie had beguiled the Paris Peace Conference into returning her adopted country’s long-lost provinces, singlehandedly transforming Roumania from a backwater into a force.
The castle is Bran: a tall, quirky, ancient structure perched on high rocks overlooking the border between Roumania and its newly regained territory of Transylvania. The castle was a gift to Queen Marie, a thank-you from her people, and she loves it as she loves her own children.
The threat is . . . well, that is less clear. Shadowy figures, vague whispers, the fears of girls, dangers that may be only accidents. But this is a land of long memory and hidden corners, a land that had known Vlad the Impaler, a land from whose churchyards the shades creep.
When Queen Marie calls, Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes are as dubious as they are reluctant. But a young girl is involved, and a beautiful queen. Surely it won’t take long to shine light on this unlikely case of what would seem to be strigoi?
Or, as they are known in the West . . . vampires.
Laurie R. King is the award-winning, bestselling author of sixteen Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and many acclaimed stand-alone novels such as Folly, Touchstone, The Bones of Paris, and Lockdown. She lives in Northern California, where she is at work on her next Mary Russell mystery.

Discussion of THE MARVELOUS MIRZA GIRLS | Author Sheba Karim in conversation with Mathangi Subramanian
2021-06-08 19:00 - 21:00
Please join us on Tuesday, June 8, 2021 at 7 PM PDT for a discussion of THE MARVELOUS MIRZA GIRLS with author Sheba Karim in discussion with Mathangi Subramanian (author of A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF HEAVEN).
Our discussion will be webcast on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88967599970.
Pre-order your copy of THE MARVELOUS MIRZA GIRLS at http://bit.ly/ggpMirza, or in audiobook from Libro.fm at http://bit.ly/MirzaAB.
Description

Gilmore Girls meets vibrant New Delhi in this thoughtful and hilarious new novel about a teen facing family expectations, relationship complications, and hidden secrets in a new country—sprinkled with Sheba Karim’s signature wit and steamy romance, and perfect for readers who loved Mary H. K. Choi’s Emergency Contact and Adib Khorram’s Darius the Great Is Not Okay.
To cure her post-senior year slump, made worse by the loss of her aunt Sonia, Noreen decides to follow her mom on a gap year trip to New Delhi, hoping India can lessen her grief and bring her voice back.
In the world’s most polluted city, Noreen soon meets kind, handsome Kabir, who introduces her to the wonders of this magical, complicated place. With the help of Kabir—plus Bollywood celebrities, fourteenth-century ruins, karaoke parties, and Sufi saints—Noreen discovers new meanings for home.
But when a family scandal erupts, Noreen and Kabir must face complex questions in their own relationship: What does it mean to truly stand by someone—and what are the boundaries of love?
About the Author

Sheba Karim is the author of Mariam Sharma Hits the Road, That Thing We Call a Heart, and Skunk Girl. She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and NYU School of Law and currently lives in Nashville. You can visit her online at www.shebakarim.com.
About Mathangi Subramanian

Mathangi Subramanian is an award-winning Indian American writer, author, and educator. She is a graduate of Brown University and the Teachers College of Columbia University, and the recipient of a Fulbright as well as other fellowships. Her writing has previously appeared in the Washington Post, Quartz, Al Jazeera America, and elsewhere. A PEOPLE’S HISTORY OF HEAVEN is her first work of literary fiction.
Praise For THE MARVELOUS MIRZA GIRLS

“Karim’s latest is a searing story of love in its many forms: young and old, romantic and familial, and maybe most complex, our capacity to love a place. A deep dive into the values of travel and firsthand experience, the book takes an unflinching look at poverty and complicity, sex and religion, without ever losing sight of what it is: family drama, rom-com, travelogue. Call it what you want, The Marvelous Mirza Girls is an utter delight.”
— David Arnold, author of Mosquitoland and The Electric Kingdom
“Part self-discovery, part travelogue, all charming.”
— Kendare Blake #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Three Dark Crowns series
Filled with beautiful imagery, sensory language, clever structuring, and humor, this is a romantic coming-of-age story…. An engaging and perceptive story of love, grief, and personal awakening.
— Kirkus Reviews

Mick LaSalle & Richard Wolinsky: Dream State: California at the Movies
2021-06-08 19:00 - 20:00 | Virtual
KPFA Radio 94.1 FM presents
Mick LaSalle & Richard Wolinsky: A Zoom Event
DREAM STATE: CALIFORNIA IN THE MOVIES
Dream State is a freewheeling journey through several dozen big-screen visions of the Golden State, with LaSalle’s unmistakable contrarian humor as the guide. His writing, unerringly perceptive and resistant to cliche, brings clarity to the haze of Hollywood reverie and self-regard.
It hardly needs to be argued: nothing has contributed more to the mythology of California than the movies. Fed by the film industry, the California dream is instantly recognizable to people everywhere, yet remains elusive for nearly everyone, including Californians themselves. That paradox is the subject of longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist film critic Mick LaSalle’s first book in nearly a decade. The opposite of a dry historical primer, Dream State leaps effortlessly between genres and generations, moving with ease from Double Indemnity to the first two versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to Boyz n the Hood to Booksmart. There are natural disasters, vicious crimes, dubious utopias, wild romances, and unforgettable nights. Both entertaining and unsettling, this book is a bold dissection of the California dream and how it shaped the modern world.
Mick LaSalle, longtime film critic for The San Francisco Chronicle, is the author of three previous books: Complicated Women: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of Modern Man; Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man, and The Beauty of The Real: What Hollywood Can Learn from Contemporary French Actresses.
Richard Wolinsky, a veteran radio broadcaster, is the host of Bookwaves and Arts-Waves interviews and discussions on KPFA, as well as his Probabilities series of extended archive interviews on literature, theater, film, and other visual arts from a progressive viewpoint.
Suggested Donation $5-$20.
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mick-lasalle-richard-wolinsky-dream-state-california-in-the-movies-tickets-147654956951

Virtual Event: Chaney Kwak and Daniel Handler
2021-06-08 18:00 - 20:00
JOIN US ON TUESDAY, JUNE 8 AT 6PM PT WHEN CHANEY KWAK IS JOINED BY DANIEL HANDLER FOR THE LAUNCH OF HIS BOOK, THE PASSENGER: HOW A TRAVLE WRITER LEARNED TO LOVE CRUISES & OTHER LIES FROM A SINKING SHIP ON ZOOM!
Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87694059629
Or One tap mobile :
US: +16699009128,,87694059629# or +13462487799,,87694059629#
International numbers available: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdR1Y3dnz
Praise for The Passenger
“In The Passenger, Chaney Kwak debuts with the ultimate freelancer revenge story: What do you do when the cruise ship you are covering on assignment starts to sink? The result is a gripping story of survival, capitalism, maritime history—nothing less than a very modern adventure, and an instant classic of travel writing.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“Chaney Kwak’s The Passenger is an unflinching debut about the calamity of survival. Kwak speaks through the silent archives of history—from thousands of Koreans who died at sea to the maritime disasters across the globe. With incendiary humor and transcendent clarity, Kwak exhumes the crisis of our haunted relationships and goes beyond the headlines in every scrolling smartphone to demand a greater understanding of being alive.“—E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others
“Chaney Kwak’s The Passenger somehow, in one slim volume, manages to do it all: in this hybrid of investigative journalism and travel writing, personal and familial memoir, Kwak chronicles—with searing wit—his long hours aboard a sinking Viking cruise ship, veering from his family’s history in post-WWII Korea to the history of successful lifeboat deployments, all against the backdrop of his own failing relationship. Kwak observes human beings with a precise, compassionate eye, moving from poignancy as he contemplates his place in the universe to biting social commentary aimed at the Twitter-storm of armchair storm chasers hoping to capitalize on his doom. I loved this book. It left me longing, guiltily, for Kwak’s next misadventure.”—Lori Ostlund, author After the Parade and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction
About The Passenger
In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by 50-foot swells and 40-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.
Chaney Kwak is a travel writer used to all sorts of mishaps on the road, but this is a first even for him: trapped on the battered cruise ship, he stuffs his passport into his underwear just in case his body has to be identified. As the massive cruise ship sways in surging waves, Kwak holds on and watches news of the impending disaster unfold on Twitter, where the cruise ship’s nearly 1,400 passengers are showered with “thoughts and prayers.” Kwak uses his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship to examine his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore with a man he’s loved for nearly two decades: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape.
The Passenger takes readers for an unforgettable journey from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco. Kwak weaves his personal experience into events spanning decades and continents to explore the serendipity and the relationships that move us–perfect for readers who love to discover the world through the eyes of a perceptive and humorous observer.

VIRTUAL: Matthew Clark Davison with Paul Lisicky / Launch for Doubting Thomas: A Novel
2021-06-08 18:00 - 20:00
Booksmith is thrilled to host the virtual launch for Matthew Clark Davison and his fiction debut, Doubting Thomas: A Novel. This will be a special evening celebrating queer publishing, featuring a reading by the author, a conversation with Paul Lisicky, and an audience Q&A, with shout-outs to & words from Amble Press and Foglifter Magazine. Join us!
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required. Event link will be sent to everyone who registers.
You can order ** signed copies** of the book here and we’ll ship it directly to you (or hold for pickup at our San Francisco shop).
We are happy to fulfill orders anywhere in the world – international postage will be invoiced separately. If you have any questions at all, don’t hesitate to contact events@booksmith.com.
About the book
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 is 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.
By turns rueful, humorous, angry, and wise, Doubting Thomas marks the debut of an important writer.

About the authors
Matthew Clark Davison‘s debut novel, Doubting Thomas, will be published in Summer 2021 by Amble Press. 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 on Douglass Street.The textbook version of The Lab (see below), co-authored by bestselling writer Alice LaPlante, will be published by Norton in 2022. His prose has been recently anthologized in Empty The Pews (Epiphany Publishing) and 580-Split; and published in or on The Advocate, Exquisite Pandemic, Guernica, The Atlantic Monthly, Foglifter, Lumina Magazine, Fourteen Hills, Per Contra, Educe, and others; and has been recognized with a Creative Work Grant, Cultural Equities Grant. Clark Gross Award for a Novel-in-Progress, and a Stonewall Alumni Award.
Paul Lisicky is the author of six books including Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, one of NPR’S Best Books of 2020, as well as The Narrow Door, Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House, Famous Builder, and Lawnboy. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, The Cut, Fence, The New York Times, Ploughshares, Tin House, and in many other magazines and anthologies. He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he has served on the Writing Committee since 2000. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere. He is currently an Associate Professor in the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden and lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is at work on a memoir Animal Care and Control.
This event is free and all ages, but RSVP is required.

Virtual Event: Chaney Kwak and Daniel Handler
2021-06-08 18:00 - 19:00 | online
Join us on Tuesday, June 8 at 6pm PT when Chaney Kwak is joined by Daniel Handler for the launch of his book, The Passenger: How a Travel Writer Learned to Love Cruises & Other Lies from a Sinking Ship on Zoom!

Zoom Login Info
Please click the link below to join the webinar:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87694059629

Praise for The Passenger
“In The Passenger, Chaney Kwak debuts with the ultimate freelancer revenge story: What do you do when the cruise ship you are covering on assignment starts to sink? The result is a gripping story of survival, capitalism, maritime history—nothing less than a very modern adventure, and an instant classic of travel writing.”—Alexander Chee, author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel

“Chaney Kwak’s The Passenger is an unflinching debut about the calamity of survival. Kwak speaks through the silent archives of history—from thousands of Koreans who died at sea to the maritime disasters across the globe. With incendiary humor and transcendent clarity, Kwak exhumes the crisis of our haunted relationships and goes beyond the headlines in every scrolling smartphone to demand a greater understanding of being alive.“—E. J. Koh, author of The Magical Language of Others

“Chaney Kwak’s The Passenger somehow, in one slim volume, manages to do it all: in this hybrid of investigative journalism and travel writing, personal and familial memoir, Kwak chronicles—with searing wit—his long hours aboard a sinking Viking cruise ship, veering from his family’s history in post-WWII Korea to the history of successful lifeboat deployments, all against the backdrop of his own failing relationship. Kwak observes human beings with a precise, compassionate eye, moving from poignancy as he contemplates his place in the universe to biting social commentary aimed at the Twitter-storm of armchair storm chasers hoping to capitalize on his doom. I loved this book. It left me longing, guiltily, for Kwak’s next misadventure.”—Lori Ostlund, author After the Parade and winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction

About The Passenger
In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by 50-foot swells and 40-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.

Chaney Kwak is a travel writer used to all sorts of mishaps on the road, but this is a first even for him: trapped on the battered cruise ship, he stuffs his passport into his underwear just in case his body has to be identified. As the massive cruise ship sways in surging waves, Kwak holds on and watches news of the impending disaster unfold on Twitter, where the cruise ship’s nearly 1,400 passengers are showered with “thoughts and prayers.” Kwak uses his twenty-seven hours aboard the teetering ship to examine his family history, maritime tragedies, and the failing relationship back on shore with a man he’s loved for nearly two decades: the Viking Sky, he realizes, may not be the only sinking ship he needs to escape.

The Passenger takes readers for an unforgettable journey from the Norwegian coast to the South China Sea, from post-WWII Korea to pandemic-struck San Francisco. Kwak weaves his personal experience into events spanning decades and continents to explore the serendipity and the relationships that move us–perfect for readers who love to discover the world through the eyes of a perceptive and humorous observer.

Slipping: Mohamed Kheir and Robin Moger in conversation with Yasmine El Rashidi
2021-06-08 14:00 - 15:00 | online, CA, United States
Virtual Event

2:00 pm PT | 3:00 pm MT | 4:00 pm CT | 5:00 pm ET

Two Lines Press joins the Transnational Literary Series to celebrate Mohamed Kheir’s Slipping, the Egyptian author’s first book to be brought into English by Robin Moger. Mohamed and Robin will be in conversation with Egyptian writer Yasmine El Rashidi.
More details and registration information coming soon!

AUTHOR
Mohamed Kheir

Mohamed Kheir is a novelist, poet, short story writer, journalist, and lyricist. Slipping (Eflat Al Asabea, Kotob Khan Publishing House, 2018; Two Lines Press, 2021) is his fourth novel and his first to be translated into English. He lives in Egypt.

TRANSLATOR
Robin Moger

Robin Moger is a translator of Arabic to English currently based in Cape Town, South Africa. He has translated several novels and prose works into English including Iman Mersal’s How To Mend (Kayfa ta), Nael Eltoukhy’s The Women of Karantina (AUC Press) and Youssef Rakha’s The Crocodiles (7 Stories Press).

CONTACT:

Leslie-Ann Woofter
lwoofter@catranslation.org
415.512.8812

Claire Nelson and Signe Johansen
2021-06-08 12:00 - 14:00
Claire Nelson joins us to discuss her debut memoir, Things I Learned From Falling (HarperOne).
The gripping first-person account of one woman’s survival in Joshua Tree National Park against the odds.
“A vibrantly physical book”—The Guardian • “Uplifting and brave”—Stylist • “A riveting account of loneliness, anxiety and survival”—Cosmopolitan
REGISTER HERE

About Things I Learned From Falling
In 2018, writer Claire Nelson made international headlines when she fell over 25 feet after wandering off the trail in a deserted corner of Joshua Tree. The fall shattered her pelvis, rendering her completely immobile. There Claire lay for the next four days, surrounded by boulders that muffled her cries for help, but exposed her to the relentless California sun above. Her rescuers had not expected to find her alive.
In Things I Learned from Falling Claire tells not only her story of surviving, but also her story of falling. What led this successful thirty-something to a desert trail on the other side of the globe from her home where no one knew she would be that day? At once the unbelievable story of an impossible event, and the human journey of a young woman wrestling with the agitation of past and anxiety of future.
About the Author
Claire Nelson is a New Zealand-born writer who has spent more than a decade in London working in food and travel journalism, including more than five years at Jamie Oliver’s magazine. She has also written for Elle, Food and Travel, Trek & Mountain, Lodestars Anthology, and Westjet Canada. Things I Learned from Falling is her first book. She lives in Toronto.

Kids Storytime: “Wishes” by Mượn Thị Văn & “When Lola Visits” by Michelle Sterling
2021-06-06 13:00 - 14:00
Come enjoy two read-a-loud new children’s picture books: “Wishes” by Mượn Thị Văn, and “When Lola Visits” by Michelle Sterling.
Join us in our kids activity to draw and bring a drawing of your grandparent to share!
This event is co-sponsored by the Oakland Asian Cultural Community Center and Eastwind Books of Berkeley.
The event will also be live-streamed on Facebook.
About the children’s books and authors:
Wishes, a new children’s book by New York Times acclaimed author Mượn Thị Văn , illustrated by Victo Ngai, published by Scholastic Books May 2021. This is an arresting, poetic journey about one Vietnamese family’s search for a new home on the other side of the world, and the long-lasting and powerful impact that it makes on the littlest member of the family. Inspired by actual events in the author’s life, this is a moving reflection on immigration, family, and home. A beautifully illustrated poem becomes a harrowing refugee flight from home into dangerous ocean waters and an unknown destiny.
Purchase “Wishes” here: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p3165/Wishes.html
Mượn Thị Văn loves to read books of all shapes and sizes. She first began reading yellow-spined hardbacks about a certain girl detective before graduating to longer novels and then picture books (it’s true, she doesn’t remember reading picture books as a young child). So few books reflected her formative experiences, though, that she desired to bring new and different stories into the world. From her New York Times acclaimed debut, In a Village by the Sea, illustrated by April Chu, Mượn’s books have received many distinctions, including a Northern California Book Award, a New York Public Library Best Book. When she’s not writing, Mượn likes to roam the forests of California with her family.
When Lola Visits, written by Michelle Sterling, illustrated by Aaron Asis and published by HarperCollins May 2021. For one young girl, summer is the season of no school, of days spent at the pool, of picking golden limes off the trees. But summer doesn’t start until her lola—her grandmother from the Philippines—comes for her annual visit. Summer is special. For her lola fills the house with the aroma of mango jam, funny stories of baking mishaps, and her quiet sweet singing in Tagalog. And in turn, her granddaughter brings Lola to the beach, to view fireworks at the park, and to catch fish at their lake. When Lola comes, the whole family gathers to cook and eat and share in their happiness of another season spent together. Yet as summer transitions to fall, her lola must return home—but not without a surprise for her granddaughter to preserve their special summer a bit longer.
In an evocative tale brimming with the scents, tastes, and traditions that define summer for one young girl, debut author Michelle Sterling and illustrator Aaron Asis come together to celebrate the gentle bonds of familial love that span oceans and generations.
Purchase “When Lola Visits” here: https://www.asiabookcenter.com/store/p3164/When_Lola_Visits_.html
Michelle Sterling is an author, photographer and speech-language pathologist whose first picture book is When Lola Visits. Many of her stories are inspired by her heritage, family traditions, and her love of gastronomy and food history. She lives in Southern California with her family.

VIRTUAL: Babylon Salon presents Deesha Philyaw, Meredith Talusan, Joshua Mohr, Emma Copley Eisenberg & Sunshine Becker
2021-06-05 17:00 - 19:00
Booksmith and The Bindery are thrilled to partner with Babylon Salon for their Spring event, featuring readings by Deesha Philyaw, Meredith Talusan, Joshua Mohr, Emma Copley Eisenberg & Sunshine Becker!
Please note: this is a free, virtual event. Zoom information will soon be announced here.
About the authors
Deesha Philyaw’s debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, won the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the 2020/2021 Story Prize, and the 2020 LA Times Book Prize: The Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction and was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction. The Secret Lives of Church Ladies focuses on Black women, sex, and the Black church, and is being adapted for television by HBO Max with Tessa Thompson executive producing. Deesha is also a Kimbilio Fiction Fellow.
Meredith Talusan (she/they) is the author of the critically-acclaimed memoir Fairest and has contributed to many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, WIRED, and Condé Nast Traveler. She is also founding executive editor and current contributing editor for them., Condé Nast’s LGBTQ+ digital platform. They are currently working on a novel.
Joshua Mohr is the author of the memoir Sirens and of several novels, including Damascus, which The New York Times called “beat-poet cool.” His novel All This Life won the Northern California Book Award. He is the founder of Decant Editorial.
Emma Copley Eisenberg’s fiction and nonfiction has appeared in McSweeney’s, Granta, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Tin House, Guernica, The Washington Post Magazine, and others. Her first book of nonfiction is The Third Rainbow Girl: The Long Life of a Double Murder in Appalachia which was a NYTimes notable book of 2020 and nominated for an Edgar Award. She lives in Philadelphia, where she co-directs Blue Stoop, a hub for the literary arts. Her next two books, a novel and a collection of short stories, are forthcoming from Hogarth (Penguin Random House).
Born Sunshine Garcia on a hot July 1st, Sunshine was born to sing and has been blessed beyond imagination to do it as her full time career. Her primary job since 2009 has been as the sole female member of Furthur, www.furthur.net, where she serves as a backing vocalist to support the Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. She recently established a new band with drummer Jay Lane called Jay’s Happy Sunshine Burger Joint www.jhsbj.net 2014 also marks 20 years for Sunshine being a member of the acappella vocal band out of Oakland, CA – SoVoSo.Sunshine is a vocal performance coach and leading workshops and residencies focusing on using your voice as a musical instrument and as an instrument for positivity in the world. She is excited for the next chapter as Furthur takes a Hiatus for the rest of 2014, allowing time for her other musical dreams to materialize in the real, including her own band, Sunshine Garcia Band featuring Sunshine Becker.

Please note: this is a free, virtual event. Zoom information will soon be announced here.

Babylon Salon Summer 2021 Performance
2021-06-05 17:00 - 18:00 | online, CA, United States
Join us on Saturday, June 5, 2021 when Babylon Salon’s reading & performance series hosts a special Zoom-based show, featuring Deesha Philyaw (The Secret Lives of Church Ladies); Joshua Mohr (Model Citizen: A Memoir; Sirens; All This Life); Emma Copley Eisenberg (The Third Rainbow Girl) and more!
Reading at 5pm PT/8pm ET. As always, free admission. Zoom registration info coming soon!
Co-hosted by our friends at The Booksmith and The Bindery, now offering curbside pickup. https://www.babylonsalon.com/

Chet'la Sebree
2021-06-05 15:00 - 17:00
reading from and discussing
FIELD STUDY
published by FSG Originals
Winner of the 2020 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets
Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a genre-bending exploration of black womanhood and desire, written as a lyrical, surprisingly humorous, and startlingly vulnerable prose poem
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This is a virtual event that will be hosted by City Lights on the Zoom platform. You will need access to a computer or other device that is capable of accessing the internet. If you have not used Zoom before, you may consider referencing Getting Started with Zoom.
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Event is free, but registration is required
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(CLICK HERE) to register. (Link to be posted soon!)
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(CLICK HERE) to purchase book. (Link to be posted soon!)
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Seeking to understand the fallout of her relationship with a white man, the poet Chet’la Sebree attempts a field study of herself. Scientifically, field studies are objective collections of raw data, devoid of emotion. But during the course of a stunning lyric poem, Sebree’s control over her own field study unravels as she attempts to understand the depth of her feelings in response to the data of her life. The result is a singular and provocative piece of writing, one that is formally inventive, playfully candid, and soul-piercingly sharp.
Interspersing her reflections with Tweets, quips from TV characters, and excerpts from the Black thinkers—Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, Tressie McMillan Cottom—that inspire her, Sebree analyzes herself through the lens of a society that seems uneasy, at best, with her very presence. She grapples with her attraction to, and rejection of, whiteness and white men; probes the malicious manifestation of colorism and misogynoir throughout American history and media; and struggles with, judges, and forgives herself when she has more questions than answers. “Even as I accrue these notes,” Sebree writes, “I’m still not sure I’ve found the pulse.”
A poem of love, heartbreak, womanhood, art, sex, Blackness, and America—sometimes all at once—Field Study throbs with feeling, searing and tender. With uncommon sensitivity and precise storytelling, Sebree makes meaning out of messiness and malaise, breathing life into a scientific study like no other.
Chet’la Sebree is the director of the Stadler Center for Poetry and Literary Arts at Bucknell University and the author of Mistress, winner of the 2018 New Issues Poetry Prize and nominated for a 2020 NAACP Image Award. She earned an MFA in creative writing, with a focus in poetry, from American University, and has received fellowships from the Delaware Division of the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, Vermont Studio Center, and Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies. Her poetry has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Guernica, Pleiades, and elsewhere.
Praise for FIELD STUDY

“Layered, complex, and infinitely compelling, Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a daring exploration of the self and our interactions with others—a meditation on desire, race, loss and survival. In this moment of American reckoning, Sebree shows us—intimately and with vulnerability—the truth of our shared history: that ‘even when we aren’t talking about race we are.'” –Natasha Trethewey, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Memorial Drive
“Woven from the rough threads of race, legacy, and love, Field Study is a groundbreaking book that vibrates with truth and lyrical beauty. A profound poetic talent, Chet’la Sebree has created a brilliant book that both haunts and heals.”–Ada Limón, author of The Carrying, winner of the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry
“With its steady capture of memory recalled, quotes, moments from real and represented (fictive) life, Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study assembles an exquisite, if not propulsive leap into the aftermath of a relationship with a white man–only to land with the grace of a skilled dancer. Elliptically reminiscent of Lily Hoang’s Bestiary and Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, this is not an auto-ethnography by a Black woman, but an immaculate bricolage that both confronts and reckons various channels of knowing and being with the messy, complicated desires of inter- and intra-racial relationships. Here is a woman who does not “avoid speaking a violence.” Of a wound in healing, Sebree “pick[s] until no remnants of a scab exist;” in peering deeply into the crevasses of pop culture, critical race studies, and literature, she clears the surface not for restoration, but unhindered transcendence.” –Diana Khoi Nguyen, author of Ghost Of, finalist for the 2018 National Book Award for Poetry
“Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a long look at those aspects of a self that are often most difficult to look at—chiefly, the woundedness from which we make our loves, and the wounding loves we both flee and mourn. In prose poetry that at crucial moments brilliantly enacts via its syntax the poet’s struggle to look away from that which she must record, Sebree has composed an elegy that is, especially in its music, as alive as a celebration.” –Shane McCrae, author of The Gilded Auction Block
“Chet’la Sebree’s Field Study is a luminous, multi-layered treatise on the complexities of race and desire in America. In contemplating the aftermath of an interracial relationship, the work virtuosically entwines memory with history, literature, pop culture, and critical theory. This is a wise, generous work that holds out hope for all kinds of grace, even as it acknowledges the aches and perils of our current polarized moment. Field Study is a stunning new contribution by an important American voice.” –Kiki Petrosino, author of White Blood: A Lyric of Virgina

Sponsored by the City Lights Foundation

Dara McAnulty: Award-winning 16-year old author launches Diary of a Young Naturalist in the US
2021-06-05 12:00 - 14:00
Dara McAnulty, winner of several major awards, joins us to launch his extraordinary Diary of a Young Naturalist (Milkweed Editions) in the U.S.
“Dara’s is an extraordinary voice and vision: brave, poetic, ethical, lyrical, strong enough to have made him heard and admired from a young age.” — Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland: A Deep Time Journey
This event will be streamed on our Crowdcast channel.
Registration info coming soon
About Diary of a Young Naturalist
From sixteen-year-old Dara McAnulty, a globally renowned figure in the youth climate activist movement, comes a memoir about loving the natural world and fighting to save it.
Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of a year in Dara’s Northern Ireland home patch. Beginning in spring–when “the sparrows dig the moss from the guttering and the air is as puffed out as the robin’s chest”–these diary entries about his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world are vivid, evocative, and moving.
As well as Dara’s intense connection to the natural world, Diary of a Young Naturalist captures his perspective as a teenager juggling exams, friendships, and a life of campaigning. We see his close-knit family, the disruptions of moving and changing schools, and the complexities of living with autism. “In writing this book,” writes Dara, “I have experienced challenges but also felt incredible joy, wonder, curiosity and excitement. In sharing this journey my hope is that people of all generations will not only understand autism a little more but also appreciate a child’s eye view on our delicate and changing biosphere.”
Winner of the Wainwright Prize for UK nature writing and already sold into more than a dozen territories, Diary of a Young Naturalist is a triumphant debut from an important new voice.
About Dara McAnulty
Dara McAnulty lives with his mum, dad, brother Lorcan, sister Bláthnaid, and rescue greyhound Rosie in County Down, Northern Ireland. Dara’s love for nature, his activism, and his honesty about autism have earned him a huge social media following from across the world, and many accolades. In 2017, he was awarded BBC Springwatch “Unsprung Hero” and Birdwatch magazine “Local Hero”; in 2018, he was awarded “Animal Hero” of the year by the Daily Mirror and became ambassador for the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the iWill campaign; and in 2019, he became a Young Ambassador for the Jane Goodall Institute and became the youngest-ever recipient of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Medal for conservation.

Words out Loud Spoken Word Series - Opposites Attract Open Mic
2021-06-04 19:30 - 21:30
Words out Loud: Open Mic – Opposites Attract (Love and Hate)
Join us for a Topical Open Mic
Three minutes per reader, subject to adjustment based on number of registrants. Read one
poem on love, one on hate, and one of your choice if time remains.

When: Friday, June 4, 2021 07:30 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Register in advance for this meeting:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMsdOqvrTsuEtAzzYFhNMOVmLVpotUIsN4e
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining
the meeting.
