Litseen

Louise Aronson
2019-06-13 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Louise Aronson

presents Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life, an essential, empathetic look at a vital but little respected stage of life.
“In the latter years there are possibilities for joy, transcendence, and meaning, but also for just the opposite. Aronson writes like a memoirist while giving us scientific insight, philosophical wisdom, and wise counsel for a journey and destination we all share. Elderhood is a lovely and thoughtful exploration of this voyage.”–Abraham Verghese
To reserve your seat please purchase a copy of Elderhood by speaking to a bookseller or ordering through our website.

Thursday, June 13, 2019 – 7:30pm

For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, denigrated, neglected, and denied.
Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy–a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself.
Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author’s own words, “an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being.”
Louise Aronson, MD, is the author of the story collection A History of the Present Illness and a geriatrician, educator, and professor of medicine at UCSF, where she directs UCSF Medical Humanities. A graduate of Harvard Medical School and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Dr. Aronson has received numerous awards for her medical work, teaching, educational research, and writing. The recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and four Pushcart nominations, her articles and stories have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and Bellevue Literary Review.

Event address:

2904 College Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94705

Ted Chiang and Robin Sloan
2019-06-13 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Ted Chiang discusses his new story collection, Exhalation, with Robin Sloan.
Praise for Ted Chiang
“Ted Chiang’s stories are lean, relentless, and incandescent.”—Colson Whitehead, author of The Underground Railroad
“Ted Chiang writes with such a matter-of-fact grace and visionary power that one simply takes on faith that his worlds and his characters exist, whether they are human or robot or parrot; he is the rare author who makes me feel, also, that he believes in his readers, in our integrity and our imagination.”—Karen Russell, author of Orange World
“Ted Chiang has no contemporary peers when it comes to the short story form. His name deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Carver, Poe, Borges, and Kafka. Every story is a universe. Every story is a diamond. You will inhale Exhalation in a single, stunned sitting, because true genius doesn’t come along nearly as often as advertised. This is the real thing.”—Blake Crouch, author of Dark Matter
“From Ted Chiang’s singular mind comes another innovative and mind-bending collection of short stories. With boundless empathy, curiosity, and wisdom, Chiang asks all the important questions that come with being human. Reading Exhalationis like standing outside on a clear, starry night. Chiang’s writing does what good writing should: make the universe feel both vast and small at the same time.”—Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin
About Exhalation
From an award-winning science fiction writer (whose short story “The Story of Your Life” was the basis for the Academy Award-nominated movie Arrival), the long-awaited new collection of stunningly original, humane, and already celebrated short stories
This much-anticipated second collection of stories is signature Ted Chiang, full of revelatory ideas and deeply sympathetic characters. In “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate,” a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and the temptation of second chances. In the epistolary “Exhalation,” an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications not just for his own people, but for all of reality. And in “The Lifecycle of Software Objects,” a woman cares for an artificial intelligence over twenty years, elevating a faddish digital pet into what might be a true living being. Also included are two brand-new stories: “Omphalos” and “Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom.”
In this fantastical and elegant collection, Ted Chiang wrestles with the oldest questions on earth–What is the nature of the universe? What does it mean to be human?–and ones that no one else has even imagined. And, each in its own way, the stories prove that complex and thoughtful science fiction can rise to new heights of beauty, meaning, and compassion.

Clearly Meant presents Adam David Miller
2019-06-15 14:00 - 15:00 UTC | Claremont Branch, Berkeley Public Library, 2940 Benvenue Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Adam David Miller reads his poems,
followed by an interview and discussion
Adam David Miller has worked in northern California for four decades as a teacher, writer, poet, editor, publisher, and radio and television producer. He has won many awards, including the Bay Area Writing Project’s Teachers as Writers Lifetime Achievement Award. Elise Peeples will be joining her husband for this presentation.
A free chapbook is available at Berkeley Public Library branches. Please pick one up!

Bloomsday with Thomas Lynch
2019-06-16 09:45 - 23:00 UTC | Mrs. Dalloway’s Bookstore, 2904 College Ave, Berkeley, CA, 94705, United States
Bloomsday with Thomas Lynch
reading from Chapter Ten of James Joyce’s Ulysses recalling Dublin on June 16, 1904 .
Join us for Guinness, Irish soda bread and cheer!
Sunday, June 16, 2019 – 9:45am
Event address:
2904 College Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94705

Michael McClure and Juvenal Acosta
2019-06-17 19:00 - 20:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Moe’s Books, 2476 telegraph avenue, Berkeley, 94704, United States
Please join us for this very special reading: Michael McClure in translation, with Juvenal Acosta. Michael will read from new and selected work. Spanish translations will be read by Juvenal.
Two books in Spanish, Agnosia and Neuronas del Espíritu available, along with copies of Michael’s latest, Persian Pony and books by Juvenal.

POETS! - featured readers followed by an open mic
2019-06-17 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

POETS! - featured readers followed by an open mic
2019-06-17 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Bird & Beckett Books and Records, 653 Chenery St, San Francisco , CA, 94131, United States
POETS! – featured readers followed by an open mic

Robert Macfarlane and Steve Silberman / Underland
2019-06-17 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Robert Macfarlane, who has been called the “greatest nature writer of his generation,” makes a rare West coast visit to celebrate the publication of his masterpiece, Underland. He’ll be joined in conversation by science writer and author Steve Silberman.
Please note: This is a ticketed event — tickets can be purchased in advance here. The price of admission is equal to the cost of Underland, which is included with each ticket.
Hailed as “the great nature writer of this generation” (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of prize-winning books about the intersection between the human and the natural world. In Underland, he delivers his masterwork: an epic exploration of Earth’s vast subterranean landscape in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.
Delving into what is known as “deep time,” the dizzying expanses of geologic time that stretch away from the present, Macfarlane takes us on an exhilarating journey to Arctic sea caves, Bronze Age burial chambers, the catacombs of Paris, the underground fungal networks through which trees communicate, a dark matter research lab searching for the origins of the universe, and a deep-sunk “hiding place” designed to store nuclear waste for 100,000 years to come.
Global in its geography, contemporary in its concerns, and written with great lyricism and power, Underland uncovers our complex, crucial relationship with the worlds beneath our feet.

Robert Macfarlane is the author of the prize-winning booksMountains of the Mind, Wild Places, and The Old Ways. He has contributed to Harper’s, Granta, The Observer, The Times Literary Supplement, and the London Review of Books. He is a Fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Author photo by Bryan Appleyard.
Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer and the author ofNeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity, which Oliver Sacks called “a sweeping and penetrating history presented with a rare sympathy and sensitivity.” The book became a widely-praised bestseller in the United States and the United Kingdom. His TED talk, The Forgotten History of Autism, has been viewed more than a million times and translated into 35 languages. He lives with his husband Keith in San Francisco. Author photo by Tanya Rosen-Jones.

** Please note **
– This is an all-ages event.
– The duration of this event is up to the authors.
– Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.
– 1 ticket = 1 book, no exceptions. The book must be purchased from Booksmith. If you already have a copy of Underland, please remember that books make great gifts! If you’ve already gifted Underland to all of your friends, it’s ok to buy a different book from Booksmith instead — in that case, please write events AT booksmith DOT com.
– If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of any of Rob’s books, order here and be sure to put your request in the comments field; for signed copies of Steve’s book, order here and be sure to include your request.

Get Lit #44
2019-06-18 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Ale Industries, 3096 E 10th Street, Oakland, CA, 94601, United States
Heading into its fourth consecutive year, Get Lit is a community gathering of 12–15 writers reading NEVER-BEFORE-READ material (rough drafts / debuts) within a three-minute time limit. There is live music at every show, beer made by Ale Industries on site, and wonderful food by Guadalajara Restaurant & Tequila Bar just down the block. All ages are welcome.
Doors open at 7:00 PM; show starts at 7:30 PM SHARP!
Performers:
June 18:
July 16:
August: 20:
September 17:
October: 15:
November 19:
December 17:
Suggested donations of $10-25 will be kindly requested at the door, though no one will be turned away for lack of funds (NOTAFLOF).
Safe Space Statement
Nomadic Press events are safe spaces for those who have been silenced and marginalized. There is no room for racism, misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia whether in the content of one’s reading or in one’s interactions with members of the community. We will protect the safety of this space by revoking a reader’s access to the microphone if we feel they have violated these guidelines, and we encourage community members to come to us if someone has violated these guidelines away from the microphone. We are a community, and we will work together to ensure that the safety of our most vulnerable members is prioritized above all else.
Get beer. Get lit. Then get tacos.
Past performers:
April 16 lineup: Jan Steckel, Gary Turchin, Barbara Saunders, Anna Allen, Yume Kim, LadiRev, Gamal Abdel Chasten, Beverly Parayno, Michael Gallagher, Caesar Kent, Josiahluis Alderete, Gaia Thomas, Charlie Getter, Leticia Garcia Bradford, and music by Kiva Uhuru.
February 19: Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Ricardo Tavarez, Jordan Wilson-dalzell, Hilary Brown, Jenee Darden, Chad Koch, Jeanne Lupton, Lorenz Damuk, Emily Podhorcer, Becca Gomez Farrell, Phyllis Oscar, Esmerelda Mezcal, Katie Aliferis, Dee Allen., Kimi Sugioka, Kai Sugioka-Stone, Giavanna Ortiz de Candia “The Open Minds” (music)

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Launch for Dr. Naomi Wolf / Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love
2019-06-18 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Booksmith hosts a special event to launch Dr. Naomi Wolf‘s new book Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love. More information to be announced soon, but please save the date and join us!
Please note: This is a ticketed event — tickets can be purchased in advance here. The price of admission is equal to the cost of Outrages, which is included with each ticket.
Until 1857, the State did not link the idea of homosexuality to deviancy. In the same year, the concept of the obscene was coined. New York Times best-selling author Naomi Wolf’s Outrages is the story, brilliantly told, of why this two-pronged State repression took hold — first in England and spreading quickly to America — and why it was attached so dramatically, for the first time, to homosexual men. Before 1857, it wasn’t homosexuality that was a crime, but the act of sodomy. But in a single stroke, not only did love between men become illegal, but anything referring to this love alsowas ruled obscene, unprintable, unspeakable. Wolf paints the dramatic ways this played out among a bohemian group of sexual dissidents, including American poet Walt Whitman and closeted English critic John Addington Symonds, as, decades before the infamous 1895 trial of Oscar Wilde, dire prison terms became the government’s penalty for homosexuality. Most powerfully, Wolf recounts how a dying Symonds helped write the book on sexual inversion that created our modern understanding of homosexuality. And she argues that his secret memoir, mined here fully for the first time, stands as the first gay rights manifesto in the West.

Naomi Wolf‘s most recent books include Vagina, Give Me Liberty, and The End of America, all New York Times best-sellers, and of the landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth. She lives in New York City.

** Please note **
– This is an all-ages event.
– The duration of this event is up to the author.
– Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable.
– 1 ticket = 1 book, no exceptions. The book must be purchased from Booksmith. If you already have a copy of Outrages, remember that books make great gifts! If you’ve already gifted Outrages to all of your friends, it’s ok to buy a different book from Booksmith instead — in that case, please write events AT booksmith DOT com.
– If you’d like a signed copy of any of Naomi’s books but are unable to attend the event,order here and be sure to include your request in the special field.
– RSVP appreciated but not required.

Ocean Vuong and Rebecca Solnit
2019-06-18 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Ocean Vuong discusses his new novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous with Rebecca Solnit.
Praise for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
“A bruised, breathtaking love letter never meant to be sent. A powerful testimony to magic and loss. A marvel.” —Marlon James, author of Black Leopard, Red Wolf
“On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous will be described — rightly—as luminous, shattering, urgent, necessary. But the word I keep circling back to is raw: that’s how powerful the emotions here are, and how you’ll feel after reading it – scoured down to bone. With a poet’s precision, Ocean Vuong examines whether putting words to one’s experience can bridge wounds that span generations, and whether it’s ever possible to be truly heard by those we love most.” —Celeste Ng, author of Everything I Never Told You and Little Fires Everywhere
“This book—gorgeous is right there in the title—finds incredible, aching beauty in the deep observation of love in many forms. Ocean Vuong’s debut novel contains all the power of his poetry, and I finished the book knowing that we are seeing only the very beginning of his truly magnificent talent.” —Emma Straub, author of Modern Lovers and The Vacationers
“Ocean Vuong runs up against the limits of language—this book is addressed to a mother who cannot read it—and expands our sense of what literature can make visible, thinkable, felt across borders and generations and genres. This is a courageous, embodied inquiry into the tangle of colonial and personal histories. It is also a gorgeous argument for astonishment over irony—for the transformative possibilities of love.” —Ben Lerner, author of Leaving the Atocha Stationand 10:04
“One is not often given the chance to apply words like “brilliant” and “remarkable” to any novels, certainly not first novels. Thank you, Ocean Vuong, for this brilliant and remarkable first novel.” —Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
About On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born — a history whose epicenter is rooted in Vietnam — and serves as a doorway into parts of his life his mother has never known, all of it leading to an unforgettable revelation. At once a witness to the fraught yet undeniable love between a single mother and her son, it is also a brutally honest exploration of race, class, and masculinity. Asking questions central to our American moment, immersed as we are in addiction, violence, and trauma, but undergirded by compassion and tenderness, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is as much about the power of telling one’s own story as it is about the obliterating silence of not being heard.
With stunning urgency and grace, Ocean Vuong writes of people caught between disparate worlds, and asks how we heal and rescue one another without forsaking who we are. The question of how to survive, and how to make of it a kind of joy, powers the most important debut novel of many years.

Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith
2019-06-19 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
with David Trinidad, Amy Gerstler, D.A. Powell, Kevin Killian, Dodie Bellamy, Randall Mann, and Roberto Bedoya
celebrating the release of
Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World: Poems and Notebooks of Ed Smith
by Ed Smith, Edited by David Trinidad
published by Turtle Point Press
In Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World, David Trinidad brings together a comprehensive selection of Ed Smith’s work: his published books; unpublished poems; excerpts from his extensive notebooks; photos and ephemera; and his timely “cry for civilization,” “Return to Lesbos”: put down that gun / stop electing Presidents.
Ed Smith blazed onto the Los Angeles poetry scene in the early 1980s from out of the hardcore punk scene. The charismatic, nerdy young man hit home with his funny/scary off- the- cuff- sounding poems, like “Fishing”: This is a good line. / This is a bad line. This is a fishing line.
Ed’s vibrant “gang” of writer and artist friends― among them Amy Gerstler, Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan, Mike Kelley, and David Trinidad― congregated at Beyond Baroque in Venice, on LA’s west side. They read and partied and per-formed together, and shared and published each others’ work.
Ed was more than bright and versatile: he worked as a math tutor, an animator, and a typesetter. In the mid- 1990s, he fell in love with Japanese artist Mio Shirai; they married and moved to New York City. Despite productive years and joyful times, Ed was plagued by mood disorders and drug problems, and at the age of forty- eight, he took his own life.
Ed Smith’s poems speak to living in an increasingly dehumanizing consumer society and corrupt political system. This “punk Dorothy Parker” is more relevant than ever for our ADD, technology- distracted times
Ed Smith (1957–2005) was a poet involved in the punk and alternative arts scenes in Los Angeles in the early 1980s. His books were Fantasyworld (1983) and Tim’s Bunnies (1988). His poems appeared in Rolling Stone, St. Mark’s Poetry Project Newsletter, and other publications. Smith also worked as an animator on Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues.
David Trinidad is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, collabora-tions, and edited volumes. These include Swinging on a Star (2017), Notes on a Past Life (2016), Dear Prudence: New and Selected Poems (2011), and Plasticville (2000), finalist for the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize. Trinidad is editor of A Fast Life: The Collected Poems of Tim Dlugos (2011), which won a Lambda Literary Award. He is a professor of poetry in the English and Creative Writing Department at Columbia College, Chicago.
Critical Praise For Punk Rock Is Cool for the End of the World:
“In the very early ’80s Ed was intimidatingly skinny and gorgeous and as reckless and charismatic as that guy in The Libertines who got caught doing coke with Kate Moss, but very, very talented and massively intelligent, and even when he was a little too wild, he was always so kind and heartbreakingly sweet and smart. Saying he was our Rimbaud is way too lazy, but there was that. I thought of him as LA’s John Wieners. Ed’s poetry has Wieners’s deep melancholy and low-key, note-perfect lyricism, mixed with Ed’s strange, bright ideas and his dead-pan, startling sense of humor. I’m one of the many people who misses his poetry a lot.” ―Dennis Cooper
“Years ago my wife slept with Ed Smith and wrote him into her novel; we goggled, bemused by his ubiquity. It was a time when Ed was everywhere, or so it seemed, and his energy and taste for the zany and the outrageous fit right in with what we in San Francisco appreciated most about the heroic LA artists―Bob Flanagan, Mike Kelley, Amy Gerstler, Dennis Cooper, so many more. The present anthology is not only the best of Ed’s writing but contains in his notebooks the single greatest account of the genius brewing in the Southland at that moment. Hats off to David Trinidad for bringing it all back home―his exquisite care in selecting and contextualizing is the greatest gift he could have given his late friend.” ―Kevin Killian
“Sappho invented civilization, and Ed Smith made it punk.”―Tony Trigilio

Alex Espinoza / Cruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime
2019-06-19 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Alex Espinoza for his new bookCruising: An Intimate History of a Radical Pastime. With him in conversation is the one and only Carla Trujillo! Please join us!
Acclaimed author Alex Espinoza takes readers on an uncensored journey through the underground, to reveal the timeless art of cruising. Combining historical research and oral history with his own personal experience, Espinoza examines the political and cultural forces behind this radical pastime. From Greek antiquity to the notorious Molly houses of 18th century England, the raucous 1970s to the algorithms of Grindr, Oscar Wilde to George Michael, cruising remains at once a reclamation of public space and the creation of its own unique locale — one in which men of all races and classes interact, even in the shadow of repressive governments.
In Uganda and Russia, we meet activists for whom cruising can be a matter of life and death; while in the West he shows how cruising circumvents the inequalities and abuses of power that plague heterosexual encounters. Ultimately, Espinoza illustrates how cruising functions as a powerful rebuke to patriarchy and capitalism — unless you are cruising the department store restroom, of course.

“Alex Espinoza’s much-anticipated book takes readers on a unique ‘cruise’ through places of public gay-sex connections, from early times to today’s apps and sites; and the result is as lively and entertaining as a boldly intimate, and wonderfully written, memoir.” – John Rechy
“Espinoza’s painstakingly documented love letter to cruising is a rare achievement. Not only does he excavate an oft-hidden and -policed queer history, but he also topples the myth that LGBTQ progress conforms to a single, ‘straight’ narrative. In a culture that often flattens queer stories to fit assimilationist standards, Espinoza’s book stands out as a beacon for future queer writers, thinkers, and activists. Reading these accounts, I felt myself drawn into a past both wonderful and strange, a world I hope we will continue to celebrate and preserve.” – Garrard Conley
“Against all they have tried to do to bury our revolutionary past, Alex Espinoza brings it to life in a work that is equal parts secrets shared in confidence, sweeping historical account, and learned analysis. Against all the neutering of our social movements and the treacly lure of assimilation, Espinoza’s fast-paced, compelling narrative shows readers the radical community of struggle, contact and solace from which we came, and to which we belong still.” – Jordy Rosenberg

Alex Espinoza is the author of the novels The Five Acts of Diego Leónand Still Water Saints, a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Selection. His writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Magazine, NPR, Salon, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Virginia Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. His awards include a 2014 Fellowship in Prose from the National Endowment for the Arts and a 2014 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation for The Five Acts of Diego León. He lives in Los Angeles.

Carla Trujillo was born in New Mexico and received a PhD in educational psychology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her first novel, What Night Brings (Curbstone Press, 2003), received the Miguel Mármol Prize for best first work of fiction by a Latino/a writer, the Latino Book Award for fiction, and the Paterson Fiction Prize. It was a finalist for the LAMBDA Literary Award, ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year, and was an honorable mention for the Gustavas Myers Book Award. What Night Brings was one of three finalists for the University of Washington’s “common book” for 2009 . Carla is the editor of Living Chicana Theory (1998) and Chicana Lesbians: The Girls Our Mothers Warned Us About (1991), which won the Lambda Literary Award and the Out/Write Vanguard Award. The anthologies and the novel are widely used in college and high school classrooms. Carla has also written various articles on identity and higher education. She is a founding member Macondo Writers Workshop. In addition to Macondo, she has taught at Lambda Literary Foundation’s Emerging Writers Retreat, U.C. Berkeley, Mills College, and San Francisco State University. Carla lives in Berkeley, California.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
This is an all ages event with mature themes. The bar opens at 7pm; event starts at 7:30pm.
As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of any of Alex’s books, order here and include your request in the comments field; to request a signed copy of any of Carla’s books, order here and be sure to include your request in the comments field.
RSVP appreciated but not required.

Stephen Markley / Ohio
2019-06-19 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
The Booksmith hosts Stephen Markley for Ohio. Join us!
Since the turn of the century, a generation has come of age knowing only war, recession, political gridlock, racial hostility, and a simmering fear of environmental calamity. In the country’s forgotten pockets, where industry long ago fled, where foreclosures, Walmarts, and opiates riddle the land, death rates for rural whites have skyrocketed, fueled by suicide, addiction and a rampant sense of marginalization and disillusionment. This is the world the characters in Stephen Markley’s Ohio inherit. This is New Canaan.
On one fateful summer night in 2013, four former classmates converge on the rust belt town where they grew up, each of them with a mission, all of them haunted by regrets, secrets, lost loves. There’s Bill Ashcraft, an alcoholic, drug-abusing activist, whose fruitless ambitions have taken him from Cambodia to Zuccotti Park to New Orleans, and now back to “The Cane” with a mysterious package strapped to the underside of his truck; Stacey Moore, a doctoral candidate reluctantly confronting the mother of her former lover; Dan Eaton, a shy veteran of three tours in Iraq, home for a dinner date with the high school sweetheart he’s tried to forget; and the beautiful, fragile Tina Ross, whose rendezvous with the captain of the football team triggers the novel’s shocking climax.
At once a murder mystery and a social critique, Ohio ingeniously captures the fractured zeitgeist of a nation through the viewfinder of an embattled Midwestern town and offers a prescient vision for America at the dawn of a turbulent new age.

“Markley [does] some extraordinary things with the structure of the book… Casual details suddenly take on new surprising significance. There’s real pleasure in this hopscotching narrative: with each new point of view, a clearer sense of the hidden story emerges as the reader slowly pieces together some shocking revelations… The most moving parts of the book are those that step back and let the events and the actions speak for themselves, as when one character (the shy bookish one from high school) recalls his first tours in Afghanistan. The beautifully precise details are all the more vivid for their lack of accompanying commentary. The real core of this earnestly ambitious debut lies not in its sweeping statements but in its smaller moments, in its respectful and bighearted renderings of damaged and thwarted lives. It’s the human scale that most descriptively reveals the truth about the world we’re living in.” – Dan Chaon, New York Times Book Review
“Ohio isn’t just a remarkable debut novel, it’s a wild, angry and devastating masterpiece of a book. Markley’s debut is a sprawling, beautiful novel that explores the aftermath of the Great Recession and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a powerful look at the tenuous bonds that hold people together at their best and at their worst. [Ohio] is intricately constructed, with gorgeous, fiery writing that pulls the reader in and never lets go.”– NPR

Stephen Markley is an author, screenwriter, and journalist. A graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, Markley’s previous books include the novel Ohio, the memoir Publish This Book: The Unbelievable True Story of How I Wrote, Sold, and Published This Very Book, and the travelogue Tales of Iceland. He lives in Los Angeles.

This is a free, all-ages event.
RSVP is appreciated, but not required.
As with all of our events, seating may be limited and not guaranteed; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of Ohio, order below and put your request in the comments field.

Bawdy Storytelling ‘BEST FIENDS’
2019-06-20 08:00 - 17:00 UTC | Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa St, San Francisco , CA, 94110, United States
Thursday, June 20th, 2019
at the Verdi Club, 2424 Mariposa Street, San Francisco CA
Remember: Bang-O & Games at 7 PM, Stories at 8 PM
Want a sample? Listen to our podcast at
http://bit.ly/bawdypodcast
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This evening of ‘That came outta nowhere!’ stories & songs includes:
❤ Hosted by Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour
❤ Play Bang-O, Bawdy’s beloved icebreaker
❤ WIN Prizes from Good Vibrations – yeah, baby!
❤ Lube Giveaways from UberLube & Good Clean Love
❤ Condom Giveaways from Lucky Bloke
❤ Sexy cocktails to help you Libate #Sin&Tonic #Rimjob
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“The Moth for Pervs” – LA Weekly
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About Bawdy Storytelling:
Bawdy Storytelling – the Original Sex + Storytelling series – features Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits Live Onstage; think of us as a One Night Stand with the Moth & Savage Love. Storytellers are an eclectic mix of Authors, Porn Stars, Sex Educators, Comics & More, along with Regular Joes just like you who submitted their stories online and were chosen for their panache and sense of (Mis)Adventure.
Bawdy Storytelling features tales of Carnal Wins & Epic Fails with No Scripts, No Nets, and No Holds Barred. These folks aren’t reading from cue cards: this is honest-to-badness story time with true sexcapades and poignant, transformational tales at each and every show. Join Sexual Folklorist Dixie De La Tour & hand-picked Rockstars as they share their own stories of Love, Lust, and making you feel funny in your bathing suit area. Hey, you may even go home with a few new tricks for your boudoir arsenal!
A REVIEW of Bawdy Storytelling : “Stories are powerful. No other medium has the ability to move, inspire, or change us quite like a well-crafted narrative. Never has this been more true than the world of sex, where fear, shame, and misinformation abound. This is all a high-minded and roundabout way of telling you to check out Thursday’s edition of Bawdy Storytelling, a rousing and arousing night of true sex stories that promises to make you laugh, make you think, and make you hard … pressed to find a more interesting thing to do on a Thursday night.” – SF Weekly
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Named #1 on Marie Claire’s 14 Best Sex Podcasts:
https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/news/a21284/best-sex-podcasts/
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Performer Bios:
❤ Dixie De La Tour is a sexual folklorist, storyteller, entrepreneur, teacher, catalyst, coach, community builder, facilitator, & instigator (& that’s just for starters). She is the founder, curator & host of the award-winning sex and storytelling series, Bawdy Storytelling (“The nation’s original sex and storytelling series” – Playgirl, “The Moth for Pervs” – LA Weekly)
Called “a stiff shot of courage in a push-up bra”, Dixie is passionate about storytelling’s power to connect strangers. A former sex party producer & adult dating site community manager, she founded Bawdy Storytelling, a multi-city brand of sex-positive self advocacy that’s changing the world and making our relationships more authentic and accessible. Dixie has presented and hosted at Yale Sex Week, Kink.com’s Bondage Awards, the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco’s series ‘Uninhibited: About Sex’, CatalystCon Sexuality Conference, Dark Odyssey kink conferences, FetFest kink events, and more, as well as her home turf of the Bawdy Mainstage and BawdySlam shows. As a storyteller, Dixie’s stories can been heard on the Risk! podcast and her own Bawdy Storytelling podcast (which was selected by Esquire.com as a top 5 ‘Best Sex Podcast’) Ping her (she likes that) at @Bawdy, facebook.com/DixieDeLaTour & at www.BawdyStorytelling.com
• No refunds or exchanges.
• Theme and Lineup subject to change.
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The Original Sex + Storytelling series, featuring Real People & Rockstars sharing their Bona Fide Sexual Exploits, Live Onstage
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Winner of SFist’s Best Storytelling Show, the SF Weekly’s Best of San Francisco & LA Weekly’s Best Of Los Angeles (for Best Storytelling) & 2 Time Winner of the SF Bay Guardian’s Best of the Bay Award (Best Literary Event)
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Named 1 of Uproxx’s 10 Best Sex Podcasts to listen to right now:
https://uproxx.com/life/best-sex-podcasts-right-now/
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Voted 1 of Esquire’s 10 Best Sex Podcasts, no matter your taste:
https://www.esquire.com/lifestyle/sex/a46389/best-sex-podcasts
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Want more Bawdy?
www.BawdyStorytelling.com
Twitter: @Bawdy
& at Facebook.com/BawdyStorytelling
( photo by the talented Andrew McDonald )

Marcus Thompson on Kevin Durant
2019-06-20 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Moe’s Books, 2476 Telegraph Avenue, BERKELEY, 94704-2322
Thursday, Jun 20, 2019 7:00 PM
Location:
In the basement
2476 Telegraph Ave., Berkeley
Website
We are proud to present bestselling author of Golden, Marcus Thompson. He joins us to read from and to sign copies of his new book, KD: Kevin Durant’s Relentless Pursuit to Be the Greatest.
Join us on Thursday June 20th at 7pm.Golden State Warriors insider and bestselling author Marcus Thompson delivers the definitive biography of one of the most extraordinary basketball players in NBA history—Kevin Durant. As a sports columnist for The Athletic Bay Area, and longtime beat reporter covering the Golden State Warriors, Marcus Thompson is perfectly positioned to trace Durant’s inspirational journey. KD follows Durant’s underdog story from his childhood spent in poverty outside DC; to his rise playing on AAU teams with future NBA players; to becoming a star and hometown hero for the Oklahoma Thunder; to his controversial decision to play for the NBA rival Golden State Warriors; to his growth from prodigy into a man, in the first true inside account of this superstar player. KD is a powerful, moving biography of a modern-day legend and an essential read for all sports fans—or anyone who wants to know: what’s it like to shoot for greatness?
Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic, covering the Golden State Warriors, San Francisco 49ers and Giants, and the Oakland Raiders and A’s. He was previously a sportswriter at the San Jose Mercury News and covered the Warriors exclusively as a beat writer for ten seasons. He lives with his wife, Dawn, and daughter, Sharon, in Oakland, California. He is the author of the national bestseller Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry and KD: Kevin Durant’s Relentless Pursuit to Be the Greatest.

Megan Griswold
2019-06-20 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Megan Griswold joins us to discuss her new book, The Book of Help: A Memoir in Remedies.

Praise for The Book of Help
“Griswold’s vulnerability and deeply honest writing will captivate and bolster readers in their own search for improvement.”
–Publishers Weekly
“In a world full of spiritual seekers, Megan Griswold is an undisputed All-Star. She has spent her life examining her existence in patient, courageous, and microscopic detail, and now she has written about her search with tender and comic honesty. What a delightful journey!”
–Elizabeth Gilbert, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love

“The Book of Help is a bright, self-effacing, celebratory, gut-wrenching and hilarious chronicle of one woman’s attempt to heal both herself and the parts of the world she intersects. It reminds us, in these dizzyingly corrupted times, of the redemption to be found in good friends, good dogs, and good therapy, and urges us to make the world we want to live in. This book is an all-night sleepover ouija board/tarot card/magic eight ball session of delight.
–Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek

About The Book of Help
The Book of Help traces one woman’s life-long quest for love, connection, and peace of mind. A heartbreakingly vulnerable and tragically funny memoir-in-remedies, Megan Griswold’s narrative spans four decades and six continents –– from the glaciers of Patagonia and the psycho-tropics of Brazil, to academia, the Ivy League, and the study of Eastern medicine.
Megan was born into a family who enthusiastically embraced the offerings of New Age California culture –– at seven she asked Santa for her first mantra and by twelve she was taking weekend workshops on personal growth. But later, when her newly-wedded husband calls in the middle of the night to say he’s landed in jail, Megan must accept that her many certificates, degrees and licenses had not been the finish line she’d once imagined them to be, but instead the preliminary training for what would prove to be the wildest, most growth-insisting journey of her life.

Shipwreck Returns to Booksmith! Mary Poppins Edition
2019-06-20 19:00 - 22:00 UTC | The Booksmith, 1644 Haight St, San Francisco , CA, 94117, United States
Shipwreck Returns!
Join us for a Very Special One-Off event as San Francisco’s premier Literary Erotic Fanfiction Competition gets the band back together: Amy hosts, Baruch reads, and Casey records.
Hop on that East Wind: we’re doing a Mary Poppins adaptation that’s sure to be even worse than the 2018 Emily Blunt vehicle (probably). Join us to get all those chimney sweep jokes out of your system. Costumes encouraged. Get scared.

Featured writers: Returning champs Joe Wadlington & Maggie Tokuda-Hall, plus Kirstie Haruta, Alan Leggitt, Amanda Rosenberg, Molly Sanchez, and more TBA.

$12 advance, $15 door, ticket includes *open bar* for 21+, and admission to the afterparty at The Alembic (1725 Haight). Seats tend to sell out fast; we encourage you to buy early.
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Welcome, Shipsters, to San Francisco’s premier literary erotic fanfiction event.
Six Great Writers destroy six notable characters from one Great Book on one notable Thursday this June at our home base, the Booksmith in San Francisco.
Fics are blind-read by our Thespian-in-Residence, Baruch Porras-Hernandez, and you choose the best ship before the writers are unmasked. The winner is cast off from polite society, and invited back at some point to defend their title.

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Critics are saying:
wait, they’re still doing that?

… the most despicable literary event possible.

I’m so lost and so scared

… an affront to literature.

wonderfully, masterfully, hilariously disgusting.

come if you are high on marijuana cigarettes and have done sex before.

Shipwreck will bring you to madness and you may never return.

I do not care for this.

…lovingly rendered artisanal small batch nightmares…

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PLEASE NOTE: No children are ever harmed at Shipwreck, and consent and inclusion are paramount. We’re not dicks, we just like dick jokes. Shipwreck tickets are non-transferable and non-refundable.

Tickets on sale now

InsideStorytime PRIDE
2019-06-20 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Manny’s, 3092 16th St, San Francisco, CA 94103, San Francisco, 94108, United States
Coming up: InsideStorytime PRIDE, featuring Nona Caspers (The Fifth Woman), Vernon Keeve III (Southern Migrant Mixtape), Eddie Jen, and others, will occur at Manny’s, 3092 16th Street, San Francisco, Thursday June 20th, 7.30-9.30 pm.

Nicole Dennis-Benn
2019-06-20 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun, discusses her new novel, Patsy.
Praise for Patsy
“Nicole Dennis-Benn is an exquisite writer who paints scenes with words so vivid you might as well be walking through it as a character, not a reader. In Patsy, she addresses motherhood, sexuality, racism, and colorism; turning her prodigious talents to the timely story of an undocumented immigrant straddling two worlds while learning that love isn’t a choice, but the beat in one’s blood.” – JODI PICOULT, New York Times bestselling author of A Spark of Light and Small Great Things
“A stunningly powerful inter-generational novel about the price―the ransom really― women must pay to choose themselves, their lives, their value, their humanity. Frank, funny, salty, heartbreaking, full of love, Dennis-Benn is a map-maker to those places in the heart held so closely, the holder may not know even they’re there.” – ALEXANDER CHEE,author of How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
“Beautiful, shattering, and deeply affecting. Patsy’s story ultimately makes for a novel that is destined to endure.” – CHIGOZIE OBIOMA, author of The Fishermen
“An aching meditation on motherhood, sacrifice, and what it means to look truth in the face in order to fully become oneself. A beautiful book, as heartbreaking as it is restorative.” – CRISTINA HENRIQUEZ, author of The Book of Unknown Americans
“A novel that splits at the seams with yearning, elegantly written and deeply felt. Dennis-Benn leads the reader through Patsy’s life with empathy and grace.” – ESME WEIJUN WANG, author of The Collected Schizophrenias
About Patsy
Beating with the pulse of a long-witheld confession, Patsy gives voice to a woman who looks to America for the opportunity to choose herself first–not to give a better life to her family back home. Patsy leaves Tru behind in a defiant act of self-preservation, hoping for a new start where she can be, and love, whomever she wants. But when Patsy arrives in Brooklyn, America is not as Cicely’s treasured letters described; to survive as an undocumented immigrant, she is forced to work as a bathroom attendant and nanny. Meanwhile, Tru builds a faltering relationship with her father back in Jamaica, grappling with her own questions of identity and sexuality, and trying desperately to empathize with her mother’s decision.
Expertly evoking the jittery streets of New York and the languid rhythms of Jamaica, Patsy weaves between the lives of Patsy and Tru in vignettes spanning more than a decade as mother and daughter ultimately find a way back to one another.
As with her masterful debut, Here Comes the Sun, Nicole Dennis-Benn once again charts the geography of a hidden world–that of a paradise lost, swirling with the echoes of lilting patois, in which one woman fights to discover her sense of self in a world that tries to define her. Passionate, moving, and fiercely urgent, Patsy is a prismatic depiction of immigration and womanhood, and the lasting threads of love stretching across years and oceans.

Undocumented Consequences: Life on Both Sides of the Border
2019-06-22 13:00 - 16:00 UTC | Woman’s Building, 3543 18th St #8, San Francisco, CA, 94110
Undocumented Consequences: Life on Both Sides of the Border
Saturday, June 22, 2019, Doors 1:00 p.m. Eveny begins 1:30 p.m., Woman’s Building, 3543 18th St #8, San Francisco, CA 94110

City Lights in conjunction with Duke University Press, Harvard University Press, and The Woman’s Building present
Beth C. Caldwell and Ana Raquel Minian

This event will be held at:
Woman’s Building, 3543 18th St #8, San Francisco, CA 94110
Admission is Free, seating limited, reservations required.
E-mail: staff@citylights.com to inquire about seating availability.
This event will explore the history of undocumented migration from Mexico to the United States, and the consequences of the current save of mass deportation from the U.S. to Mexico. Beth C. Caldwell and Ana Raquel Minian are two exceptional scholars working in the field. If you are an activist, policy maker, or simply interested in the current situation regarding migration, this event promises to cover important ground. There will be an open discussion after the lectures and panel talk.
Beth C. Caldwell is Professor of Legal Analysis, Writing, and Skills at Southwestern Law School and was formerly an attorney in the Los Angeles County Office of the Public Defender. She is the author of Deported Americans: Life after Deportation to Mexicopublished by Duke University Press.
Ana Raquel Minian is Assistant Professor of History and of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. She is the author of Undocumented Lives:The Untold Story of Mexican Migration published by Harvard University Press.

about Deported Americans: Life after Deportation to Mexico
When Gina was deported to Tijuana, Mexico, in 2011, she left behind her parents, siblings, and children, all of whom are U.S. citizens. Despite having once had a green card, Gina was removed from the only country she had ever known. In Deported Americans legal scholar and former public defender Beth C. Caldwell tells Gina’s story alongside those of dozens of other Dreamers, who are among the hundreds of thousands who have been deported to Mexico in recent years. Many of them had lawful status, held green cards, or served in the U.S. military. Now, they have been banished, many with no hope of lawfully returning. Having interviewed over one hundred deportees and their families, Caldwell traces deportation’s long-term consequences—such as depression, drug use, and homelessness—on both sides of the border. Showing how U.S. deportation law systematically fails to protect the rights of immigrants and their families, Caldwell challenges traditional notions of what it means to be an American and recommends legislative and judicial reforms to mitigate the injustices suffered by the millions of U.S. citizens affected by deportation.
about Undocumented Lives:The Untold Story of Mexican Migration
In the 1970s the Mexican government acted to alleviate rural unemployment by supporting the migration of able-bodied men. Millions crossed into the United States to find work that would help them survive as well as sustain their families in Mexico. They took low-level positions that few Americans wanted and sent money back to communities that depended on their support. But as U.S. authorities pursued more aggressive anti-immigrant measures, migrants found themselves caught between the economic interests of competing governments. The fruits of their labor were needed in both places, and yet neither country made them feel welcome. Ana Raquel Minian explores this unique chapter in the history of Mexican migration. Undocumented Lives draws on private letters, songs, and oral testimony to recreate the experience of circular migration, which reshaped communities in the United States and Mexico. While migrants could earn for themselves and their families in the U.S., they needed to return to Mexico to reconnect with their homes periodically. Despite crossing the border many times, they managed to belong to communities on both sides of it. Ironically, the U.S. immigration crackdown of the mid-1980s disrupted these flows, forcing many migrants to remain north of the border permanently for fear of not being able to return to work. For them, the United States became known as the jaula de oro—the cage of gold. Undocumented Lives tells the story of Mexicans who have been used and abused by the broader economic and political policies of Mexico and the United States.

J Dianne Dotson
2019-06-22 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Green Apple Books, 506 Clement St, San Francisco , CA, 94118, United States
J. Dianne Dotson joins us to discuss the second book in her Questrison Saga, Ephemeris.

About Ephemeris

Visions of doom. A growing evil. A new hero emerges as old alliances unravel.
An epic science fiction and fantasy tale with a rich array of characters and settings, Ephemeris: The Questrison Saga: Book Two is the sequel to Heliopause: The Questrison Saga: Book One.
Plucked from space and raised in a star-city of androids, impetuous Galla-Deia looks human but is not. Chosen to stop the dual threats of a galactic natural disaster and a malevolent alien entity, she must grow as a commander and gain the trust of both humans and non-humans alike. Unknown to her, the entity draws zealots to its cause, destabilizing interstellar order, and threatening all life in the galaxy.

Silent Book Club SF
2019-06-23 16:00 - 18:00 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
Bring a book, bring a friend, and join Silent Book Club for an afternoon of reading! At Silent Book Club, there’s no assigned reading. All books and all ages are welcome.
We’ll kick off introvert happy hour at 4pm with some light chatter and informal book recommendations before settling in to read quietly, but if you’d rather just pull up a chair and read, by all means do so. No one will be shushed or shamed. The bar will be open for late afternoon libations.
Happy reading and hope to see you there!

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

Mariana Mazzucato Rethinking Value
2019-06-24 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | SFJAZZ Center, 201 Franklin St, San Francisco, CA, 94102, United States
Mariana Mazzucato (PhD) is Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at University College London, and is Founder and Director of the UCL Institute for Innovation & Public Purpose.
Mazzucato’s work is focused on the economics of innovation; the role of the State in modern capitalism; finance and economic growth; and how to steer innovation in ‘mission oriented’ ways directed at the sustainable development goals.
Mazzucato gave a Long Now Seminar in 02014 around her previous book, The Entrepreneurial State: Debunking Public vs. Private Sector Myths. Her new book is The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy.
Tickets will go on sale one month before the Seminar; you can follow Long Now on Twitter, Facebook and through our blog for updates on our live events, podcasts and videos on long-term thinking.

SPANISH LANGUAGE BOOK CLUB MEETING
2019-06-25 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | Adobe Books, 3130 24th St., San Francisco, CA, 94110, United States
Please join us for a lively discussion about:
“Tristana” de Benito Perez Galdos
(author will not be present)
To join the book group please contact iranyi@me.com

Thom Hartmann / The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment
2019-06-25 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704, United States
Berkeley Arts & Letters presents Thom Hartmann for his new book The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment.

With mass shootings continually on the rise, the call for gun control at a fever pitch, and the House recently passing what could be the biggest change to federal gun laws in decades, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment is the kind of brief and brilliant analysis for which syndicated talk show host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann is justly renowned.
Offering an in-depth, historically informed view, Hartmann examines how guns have played important roles throughout American history, from early European settlement to the Revolutionary War and Manifest Destiny, through the use of Slave Patrols in the Deep South (which became the “well-regulated militias” so debated in 1787), to the recent school massacres. He explores the brutal role of guns, including in the enforcement of slavery and the racist post-Civil War social order, and documents how inequality in America and the number of people killed in mass shootings have grown together over the last fifty years.

He shows how the NRA and conservative Supreme Court justices used specious logic to invent a virtually unlimited individual right to own guns, which has enabled the ever-growing number of mass shootings in the United States.

Hartmann identifies common-sense and powerful solutions that would break the power of the gun lobby and restore the understanding of the Second Amendment that the Framers of the Constitution intended, such as:

* getting money out of politics to get the National Rifle Association out of lobbying
* passing laws that would treat gun ownership like car ownership (title, license, insurance)
* addressing the social despair and economic inequality that drive violent crime and mass shootings
A timely examination of the real history of guns in America, The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment shows what we can do to limit both their lethal impact and the power of the gun lobby.

Thom Hartmann is a progressive national and internationally syndicated talk show host. Talkers magazine named him America’s most important progressive host and has named his show one of the top ten talk radio shows in the country every year for over a decade. A four-time recipient of the Project Censored Award, Hartmann is also a New York Times bestselling author of twenty-four books, translated into multiple languages.

Please note:
– Duration of event is subject to author’s preference.
– Signing and additional details coming soon.
– This event is all ages. Accessibility is important to us! If you have special needs of any kind, please write events AT booksmith DOT com and we will do our best to accommodate you.
– If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment, and/or any of Thom’s books, order below and put your request in the comments field.
– RSVP appreciated but not required.

Rachel DeWoskin / Banshee
2019-06-25 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | The Bindery, 1727 Haight St, San Francisco , 94117, United States
The Bindery hosts Rachel DeWoskin for her new novel, Banshee. More to be announced soon, but please save the date and join us!
A former pleaser, newly enraged poet/professor Samantha Baxter burns her polite life to the ground.
By turns heart-wrenching, uncomfortable, and hilarious,Banshee explores the internal monologue and actions of a woman who, upon being diagnosed with cancer, tumbles head-first into a midlife crisis and decides to be unapologetic about it. Banshee is a critical addition to the feminist canon, giving the reader a dramatized glimpse into what happens when women step outside of society’s rules and expectations as wives, mothers, and working professionals — and instead choose to behave the way men do on a day-to-day basis.

Rachel DeWoskin is the author of six books: Blind, Big Girl Small, Foreign Babes in Beijing, Repeat After Me, Someday We Will Fly, and Banshee, which is forthcoming from Dottir Press in June 2019. Her essays and articles have appeared in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Sunday Times Magazine of London, Teachers and Writers, and numerous anthologies. She spent her twenties in China as the unlikely star of a nighttime soap opera, which became the basis for her memoir. DeWoskin is on the core fiction faculty at the University of Chicago, and is an affiliated faculty member of the Centers for East Asian Studies and Jewish Studies.

Please note: this event will be held at The Bindery, 1727 Haight.
This is an all ages event with mature themes. The bar opens at 7pm; event starts at 7:30pm.
As with all of our events, seating may be limited; you can guarantee a seat by pre-purchasing the book below — when checking out, just be sure to include a note that you’d like to attend the event. If you cannot attend the event but would like to request a signed copy of any of Rachel’s books, order here and include your request in the comments field.
RSVP appreciated but not required.

Louise Aronson
2019-06-26 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
discussing the subject of her new book
Elderhood: Redefining Aging, Transforming Medicine, Reimagining Life
from Bloomsbury Books
As revelatory as Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, physician and award-winning author Louise Aronson’s Elderhood is an essential, empathetic look at a vital but little respected stage of life.
For more than 5,000 years, “old” has been defined as beginning between the ages of 60 and 70. That means most people alive today will spend more years in elderhood than in childhood, and many will be elders for 40 years or more. Yet at the very moment that humans are living longer than ever before, we’ve made old age into a disease, a condition to be dreaded, disparaged, neglected, and denied.
Reminiscent of Oliver Sacks, noted Harvard-trained geriatrician Louise Aronson uses stories from her quarter century of caring for patients, and draws from history, science, literature, popular culture, and her own life to weave a vision of old age that’s neither nightmare nor utopian fantasy–a vision full of joy, wonder, frustration, outrage, and hope about aging, medicine, and humanity itself.
Elderhood is for anyone who is, in the author’s own words, “an aging, i.e., still-breathing human being.”
Louise Aronson has an MFA in fiction from the Warren Wilson Program for Writers and an MD from Harvard Medical School. She has won the Sonora Review prize, the New Millennium short fiction award and has received three Pushcart nominations. She is an Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of California where she cares for diverse, frail older patients and directs the Pathways to Discovery Program, the Northern California Geriatrics Education Center and UCSF Medical Humanities. She lives in San Francisco. Visit: http://louisearonson.com/
Praise for the work of Louise Aronson:
“[A] penetrating meditation on geriatrics . . . Aronson’s deep empathy, hard-won knowledge, and vivid reportage makes for one of the best accounts around of the medical mistreatment of the old.” – Publishers Weekly, starred review
“In the latter years there are possibilities for joy, transcendence, and meaning, but also for just the opposite. Aronson writes like a memoirist while giving us scientific insight, philosophical wisdom, and wise counsel for a journey and destination we all share. Elderhood is a lovely and thoughtful exploration of this voyage.” – Abraham Verghese, author of CUTTING FOR STONE
“Aronson’s Elderhood is dazzling, rich with knowledge gleaned from her professional work as a geriatrician, her personal experience as a daughter, her common sense, and her thorough analysis of our social supports and cultural messaging. Her arguments are powerful, and her conclusions are revolutionary. I hope everyone who has a stake in older people, which is ultimately all of us, will read this book.” – Mary Pipher, author of REVIVING OPHELIA and WOMEN ROWING NORTH
“An intimate look into how the aging process affects real lives and a non-didactic take on the importance of health care.” – San Francisco Chronicle on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“Dr. Aronson writes lovely, nuanced description.” – The New York Times on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“The ethical dilemmas that abound in medicine are prominent but never swamp the stories: these are tales about people, as insightfulas Lorrie Moore or Alice Munro.” – The Independent on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“A fascinating study of our fragile human condition, both physical and emotional. Here is a writer-and a doctor-whose empathy . . . springs forth on every page.” – Peter Orner on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“If you’ve ever wondered what goes on behind the closed doors of the sick and the wounded–not on television or in movies but really–then this is the book for you. Compassionate and even anguished . . . It it has the palette and the ring of truth.” – Victoria Sweet, author of GOD’S HOTEL, on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“Invites us to bear witness as people–with very little fanfare, but with a profound sense of truth–to come to terms with what it really means to be a flawed, sick human being in a flawed, sick world.” – Chris Adrian, M.D., author of THE CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“A History of the Present Illness is a collection of stories about doctors and their patients, and about the chronic and presenting situations that bring them to crisis. Eudora Welty described the work of another physician/story writer by saying that ‘Chekhov’s candor was exploratory and painstaking — he might have used it as the doctor in him would know how, treating the need for truth between human beings as an emergency,’ words that seem to me to also apply here. Aronson’s quest, too, is for that truth.” – Antonya Nelson, author of BOUND, on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“Aronson’s examination of medical culture in stories, of the brutality and tenderness at home and hospital, is a gem. [Her] voice is tender and one from which I hope we’ll hear more histories in the future.” – Washington Independent Review of Books on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS
“Aronson effectively illustrates just how jumbled life can be. Hope is limping barely one step ahead of sadness. Human devotion and division, responsibility to self and others are only a smidgen of the subject matter examined by talented and knowledgeable Aronson.” – Booklist on A HISTORY OF THE PRESENT ILLNESS

James Polchin
2019-06-26 19:30 - 21:30 UTC | Green Apple Books on the Park, 1231 9th Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94122, United States
James Polchin discusses his new book Indecent Advances: A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall.
About Indecent Advances
A skillful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the relationship between the media and popular culture in the portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall.
Stories of murder have never been just about killers and victims. Instead, crime stories take the shape of their times and reflect cultural notions and prejudices. In Indecent Advances, James Polchin recovers and recounts queer stories from the crime pages–often lurid and euphemistic–that reveal the hidden history of violence against gay men.
What was left unsaid in the crime pages provides insight into the figure of the queer man as both criminal and victim, offering readers tales of vice and violence that aligned gender and sexual deviance with tragic, gruesome endings. Victims were often reported as having made “indecent advances,” forcing the accused’s hands in self-defense and reducing murder charges to manslaughter.
Published in time for the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising on June 28, 1969, Indecent Advances investigates how queer men navigated a society that criminalized them and displayed little compassion for the violence they endured. Polchin shows, with masterful insight, how this discrimination was ultimately transformed by activists to help shape the burgeoning gay rights movement in the years leading up to Stonewall.

David Rothenberg in conversation with Elliot Sharp
2019-06-27 19:00 - 21:00 UTC | City Lights Bookstore, 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco , CA, 94133, United States
celebrating the release of two new books
Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound
by David Rothenberg
published by University of Chicago Press
and
IrRational Music
by Elliot Sharp
published by Terra Nova Books (distributed by The MIT Press)
about Nightingales in Berlin:
A celebrated figure in myth, song, and story, the nightingale has captivated the imagination for millennia, its complex song evoking a prism of human emotions,—from melancholy to joy, from the fear of death to the immortality of art.
But have you ever listened closely to a nightingale’s song? It’s a strange and unsettling sort of composition—an eclectic assortment of chirps, whirs, trills, clicks, whistles, twitters, and gurgles. At times it is mellifluous, at others downright guttural. It is a rhythmic assault, always eluding capture. What happens if you decide to join in?
As philosopher and musician David Rothenberg shows in this searching and personal new book, the nightingale’s song is so peculiar in part because it reflects our own cacophony back at us. As vocal learners, nightingales acquire their music through the world around them, singing amidst the sounds of humanity in all its contradictions of noise and beauty, hard machinery and soft melody. Rather than try to capture a sound not made for us to understand, Rothenberg seeks these musical creatures out, clarinet in tow, and makes a new sound with them. He takes us to the urban landscape of Berlin—longtime home to nightingale colonies where the birds sing ever louder in order to be heard—and invites us to listen in on their remarkable collaboration as birds and instruments riff off of each other’s sounds. Through dialogue, travel records, sonograms, tours of Berlin’s city parks, and musings on the place animal music occupies in our collective imagination, Rothenberg takes us on a quest for a new sonic alchemy, a music impossible for any one species to make alone. In the tradition of The Hidden Life of Trees and The Invention of Nature, Rothenberg has written a provocative and accessible book to attune us ever closer to the natural environment around us.
about IrRational Music:
A memoir and manifesto by a pivotal figure at the junction of rock, the avant-garde, and an ever-widening spiral of art, theater, film, and dance.
For over five decades, Elliott Sharp has been engaged in a quest at once quixotic and down to earth: to take the music he hears in his inner ear and bring it to life in the real world. In this vivid memoir and manifesto, Sharp takes us along on that quest, through some of the most rugged, anarchically fertile cultural terrain of our time. Sharp, a mainstay of the New York Downtown scene beginning in the 1980s, has been a pivotal figure at the junction of rock, experimental music, and an ever-widening spiral of art, theater, film, and dance. Rooted in blues, rock, jazz, and the twentieth-century avant-garde, Sharp’s innovative music has encompassed fractal geometry, chaos theory, algorithms, genetic metaphors, and new strategies for graphic notation.
In IrRational Music, Sharp dodges fake cowboys’ real bullets by the side of a highway near Colby, Kansas; is called on the carpet by a prickly, pompadoured Morton Feldman (“Improvisation… I don’t buy it”); segues from Zen tea to single malt with an elfin John Cage; conjures an extraterrestrial opera from a group of high-school students in Munich; and—back in his own high-school days—looks up from strumming Van Morrison’s “Gloria” in Manny’s Music on 48th Street to see Jimi Hendrix smiling benignly upon him. A mix of tales from the road with thoughts on music, art, politics, technology, and the process of thinking itself, IrRational Music is a glimpse inside the mind of one of our most exacting, exciting creative artists.
David Rothenberg is the Series Editor of Terra Nova Books and is distinguished professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books investigating music in nature, including Why Birds Sing, Survival of the Beautiful, and Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise. His writings have been translated into more than eleven languages and among his twenty one music CDs is One Dark Night I Left My Silent House, on ECM.
Elliott Sharp is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He was awarded the Berlin Prize in Music in 2015 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. His composition “Storm of the Eye” for violinist Hilary Hahn appeared on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces.
Terra Nova Books aim to show how environmental issues have cultural and artistic components, in addition to the scientific and political. Combining essays, reportage, fiction, art, and poetry, Terra Nova Books reveal the complex and paradoxical ways the natural and the human are continually redefining each other.
