Archive

Friends,

below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)

TODD MCCAFFREY
reading & booksigning for Dragon Harper Tuesday, January 8 at 7 pm

Bestselling author Anne McCaffrey has dazzled audiences with her tales of the Dragonriders of Pern, one of the most popular science fiction series of all time. Recently, her son Todd McCaffrey has delved into the Pern universe with his own Pern novel and through two collaborations with his mother. Now, in Dragon Harper, Anne and Todd spin a tale of a mysterious illness that may succeed in doing what centuries of Threadfall could not: kill every last human on Pern.

Todd McCaffrey is the bestselling author of the Dragonsblood, as well as Dragon's Kin and Dragon's Fire, which he co-wrote with his mother, the legendary fantasy author Anne McCaffrey. A computer engineer, Todd currently lives in Los Angeles. Having grown up in Ireland with the epic of the Dragonriders of Pern, he is bursting with ideas for new stories of that world and its people.

ROBERT ALTMAN,
HEATHER MARX GALLERY

FORMER PHOTOGRAPHER ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE, BOOK SIGNING, 77 GEARY 2nd FLOOR, SAN FRANCISCO, 415-627-9111 JAN 10th 5:30 p,m. to 7:30 p.m.

LLOYD DANGLE
talk & booksigning for Troubletown Told You So Friday, January 11 at 7 pm

Troubletown Told You So: Comics that Could've Saved Us from this Mess is the new collection of comics from Lloyd Dangle, the nationally syndicated cartoonist whose work appears in the San Francisco Bay Guardian and other alternative newsweeklies and lefty political magazines. What’s it all about? In his introduction, columnist Dan Savage says, “Thank God there’s at least one person out there who can clearly see the lies and the malice - and he’s still got a sense of humor! This is no small comfort in Bush’s America."

Oakland, California cartoonist Lloyd Dangle grew up in Michigan, where he drew cartoons for Michael Moore’s muckraking newspaper, the Michigan Voice. He has also worked for the Village Voice, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Mother Jones, The Nation, Utne Reader, and Wired. Lloyd was also the first cartoonist assigned to cover the Republican National Convention in New York City.

FRAY
reading & booksigning for Busted: True Stories of Getting Caught in the Act Friday, January 18 at 7 pm

Fray began as a storytelling website. Since 1996, it has presented true first-person stories. Eventually, the website evolved into a series of live storytelling events. And now, Fray is evolving again this time into a quarterly series of independently produced books. Just out is Busted: True Stories of Getting Caught in the Act. Guest readers to be announced.

Fray (located at http://www.fray.com) is about true, personal stories and original art. They plan to publish a themed book four times a year.

Dear friends and neighbors,

We hope that you will be able to attend:

4th Monthly Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Peace Vigil

Place: San Francisco: Masonic between Oak and Fell

Time: Friday Jan. 18th, 6-8 PM

One issue focus - end the war in Iraq. Support our troops and the Iraqi people by ending the war now.

Everybody welcome. Bring candles and signs if you have them, they will also be provided, along with cookies.

Peace, love, and cookies

ROBERT HASS
reading & booksigning for Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 Tuesday, January 22 at 7 pm

RESCHEDULED FROM NOVEMBER: Robert Hass is a poet of great eloquence, clarity, and force whose work is rooted in the landscapes of his native Northern California. Widely read and much honored, he has brought the kind of energy in his poetry to his work as an essayist, translator, and activist. Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005 - his first new collection in a decade - is grounded in the beauty and dynamics of the physical world, and in the bafflement of the present moment in American culture.

Robert Hass was born in San Francisco and lives in Berkeley, where he teaches at the University of California. Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. A MacArthur Fellow , a two-time winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the recent winner of the National Book Award, he has published poems, literary essays, and translations.

HEIDI JULAVITS
reading & booksigning for The Uses of Enchantment Friday, January 25 at 7 pm

In late afternoon on November 7, 1985, sixteen-year-old Mary Veal was abducted after field hockey practice at her all-girl New England prep school. Or was she? Heidi Julavits' new novel, The Uses of Enchantment which is just out in paperback, weaves a provocative spell in which the reader sees how the extraordinary power of a young woman's sexuality, and the desire to wield it, have a devastating effect on all involved.

Heidi Julavits is the author of two previous novels, The Mineral Palace and The Effect of Living Backwards, as well as a collaborative book, Hotel Andromeda. She is a founding editor of The Believer, and her writings have appeared in The New York Times, Esquire, Time, and McSweeney's. She lives in Manhattan and Maine.

WILLIAM T. VOLLMANN
reading & booksigning for Riding Toward Everywhere Thursday, February 7 at 7 pm

William T. Vollmann has investigated humanity's obsession with violence (Rising Up and Rising Down), taken a personal look into the hearts and minds of the poor (Poor People), and now turns his attentions to America, to our romanticizing of "freedom" and the ways in which we restrict the very liberties we profess to admire. Riding Toward Everywhere is the new book from the National Book Award winning author of Europe Central.

William T. Vollmann is the author of seven novels; three collections of stories; a seven-volume critique of violence, Rising Up and Rising Down (finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award); and Poor People, an examination of poverty. His most recent novel, Europe Central, won the National Book Award in 2005. He has also won the PEN Center USA West Award for Fiction, a Shiva Naipaul Memorial Prize, and a Whiting Writers' Award. No other writer has appeared more often at The Booksmith as has this acclaimed California author

DINAW MENGESTU
talk & booksigning for The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears Wednesday, February 13 at 7 pm

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears, by Dinaw Mengestu, is a deeply affecting novel about what it means to lose a family and a country - and what it takes to create a new home. "This first novel, by an Ethiopian-American, sings of the immigrant experience, an old American story that people renew every generation, but it sings in an existential key...His straightforward language and his low-key voice combine to make a compelling narrative." - Alan Cheuse

Dinaw Mengestu was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1978. In 1980, he immigrated to the United States with his mother and sister, joining his father, who had fled Ethiopia during the Red Terror. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and Columbia University's MFA program in fiction and the recipient of a 2006 fellowship in fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts

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