Archive
Friends,
below are some great events coming up at the Book Smith at 1644 Haight St. between Clayton & Cole (863-8688)
Celebrate Earth Day with Doug Fine and us!
Tuesday, April 22
7:30 PM
DOUG FINE
HEMP BOUND: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Next Agricultural RevolutionBestselling comedic investigative journalist Doug Fine delivers a wildly entertaining and journalistically rigorous, from-the-fields, slide-accompanied storytelling show that will leave you who are new to the topic at once laughing and informed -- in this case about the billion-dollar worldwide hemp industry that’s about to emerge.
Hemp, Doug discovered in two years of research from Hawaii to Belgium, can replace at once plastics and fossil fuels, while putting small farmers worldwide back in business on a profitable and soil-enhancing bridge crop. Also its seed oil is a nutritive superfood. Doug even saw an entire tractor body made from hemp -- intended to harvest the very same crop. Already hemp's stronger-than-steel fibers are in BMW and Mercedes door panels.
The stat sheet on hemp sounds almost too good to be true: its fibers are among the planet’s strongest, its seed oil the most nutritious, and its potential as an energy source vast and untapped. Its one downside? For nearly a century, it’s been illegal to grow industrial cannabis in the United States -- even though Betsy Ross wove the nation’s first flag out of hemp fabric, Thomas Jefferson composed the Declaration of Independence on it, and colonists could pay their taxes with it. But as the prohibition on hemp’s psychoactive cousin winds down, one of humanity’s longest-utilized plants is about to be reincorporated into the American economy. Get ready for the newest billion-dollar industry.
In HEMP BOUND Doug Fine embarks on a humorous yet rigorous journey to meet the men and women who are testing, researching, and pioneering hemp’s applications for the twenty-first century. From Denver, where Fine hitches a ride in a hemp-powered limo; to Asheville, North Carolina, where carbon-negative hempcrete-insulated houses are sparking a mini housing boom; to Manitoba where he raps his knuckles on the hood of a hemp tractor; and finally to the fields of east Colorado, where practical farmers are looking toward hemp to restore their agricultural economy -- Fine learns how eminently possible it is for this misunderstood plant to help us end dependence on fossil fuels, heal farm soils damaged after a century of growing monocultures, and bring even more taxable revenue into the economy than its smokable relative.
Fine’s journey will not only leave you wondering why we ever stopped cultivating this miracle crop, it will fire you up to sow a field of it for yourself, for the nation’s economy, and for the planet.
Doug Fine is a comedic investigative journalist, bestselling author, and solar-powered goat herder. He has reported from five continents for The Washington Post, Wired, Salon, The New York Times, Outside, National Public Radio, and U.S. News & World Report. His work from Burma was read into the Congressional Record (by none other than pro-hemp Senator Mitch McConnell), and he won more than a dozen Alaska Press Club awards for his radio reporting from the Last Frontier. Fine is the author of three previous books: Too High to Fail: Cannabis and the New Green Economic Revolution; Farewell, My Subaru: An Epic Adventure in Local Living; andNot Really an Alaskan Mountain Man.
Thursday, April 24
7:30 PM
ANDREW SEAN GREER
THE IMPOSSIBLE LIVES OF GRETA WELLS
"The premise of this novel isn’t that a woman travels through time: it’s that ‘the impossible happens once to each of us’…What this wonderful novel teaches us is how magic works.” -- John IrvingFrom the critically acclaimed author of the New York Times bestseller The Confessions of Max Tivoli comes The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, a rapturously romantic story of a woman who finds herself transported to the “other lives” she might have lived.
After the death of her beloved twin brother and the abandonment of her long-time lover, Greta Wells undergoes electroshock therapy. Over the course of the treatment, Greta finds herself repeatedly sent to 1918, 1941, and back to the present. Whisked from the gas-lit streets and horse-drawn carriages of the West Village to a martini-fueled lunch at the Oak Room, in these other worlds, Greta finds her brother alive and well—though fearfully masking his true personality. And her former lover is now her devoted husband…but will he be unfaithful to her in this life as well? Greta Wells is fascinated by her alter egos: in 1941, she is a devoted mother; in 1918, she is a bohemian adulteress.
In this spellbinding novel by Andrew Sean Greer, each reality has its own losses, its own rewards; each extracts a different price. Which life will she choose as she wrestles with the unpredictability of love and the consequences of even her most carefully considered choices?
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of The Story of a Marriage andThe Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was a Today book club selection and received a California Book Award.
Sunday, April 27
2:00 - 4:30 PM
MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS WRITING WORKSHOPCelebrate Spring by leaping into your imagination and swimming around in your creativity together!
Come join us for a creative writing workshop for moms and their daughters (or aunts and nieces, grandmothers and granddaughters...)
Presented by "Take My Word For It!", an innovative creative writing program that's been enchanting kids and adults with the written word since 2005. More information and registration at www.takemywordforit.net
Please note: this is the second Mother-Daughter workshop this month; the first is sold out. If you registered for the April 6 session, you're all set and don't need to register for this second session!
Thursday, May 1
7:00 - 9:30 PMWriteClub SF and The Booksmith Present
SHIPWRECK: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Good theatre for bad literature? Marital aid for book nerds? A literary erotic fanfiction competition for the ages? Shipwreck is all of these things.Six Great Writers will destroy one Great Book, one Great Character at a time, in service of the transcendent and the profane (and also laughs). Marvel as beloved characters are plucked from their worlds and made to do stuff they were never meant to do in places they were never meant to see.
You choose the best Ship. The winning writer chooses their character for the next Shipwreck, and returns to defend their title.
All stories will be recited by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, from his private chamber at Booksmith Castle, both to preserve the majesty of the written work and to ensure the honesty of the audience when voting for a winner.
The competing writers this month: Alan Leggitt (yes, again), Gabriel Cubbage, Natalie Warner, Gabrielle Gomez, Aaron Dillard, and Anne Trickey
.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please.
Tuesday, May 6
7:30 PMCommunity Forum: A Discussion of the Social and Public Health Ramifications of Unreported Rape
with WILLIAM GOODSON, M.D., STEVE HEILIG and THERESE WILSON, moderated by Christin Evans, the owner of The Booksmith
A surgeon at Stanford and the California Pacific Medical Center, William Goodson specializes in the treatment of breast cancer. His novel, THE BLUE-EYED GIRL, is in part inspired by his decades of caring for the health and well-being of female patients and his concern about the effects of long-term trauma on a woman's health. Goodson's novel explores the psyches of both a young man and woman impacted by one violent evening and the interactions that follow.
This evening, we will discuss the challenges of writing about rape, particularly in novel form. Does the novel educate? Does it help us define or understand circumstances which lead to rape in a way that doesn’t lay blame on victims? Does it help us heal, or is it a form of violence repeated? Why separate date rape from other kinds? By writing from a rapist’s point of view, does it apologize for those who deserve no apology? How do men talk about sexual assault? How do we create safe forums for exploring difficult topics? Is a book group the place to invite this conversation?
Steve Heilig is a healthcare editor, epidemiologist, ethicist, environmentalist and ethnomusicologist working with a wide range of issues and organizations including Planned Parenthood, the San Francisco Medical Society, University of California, California Pacific Medical Center, Commonweal, Haight-Ashbury Free Clinics, and more. With over 500 published papers and articles, he is a longtime book critic for many outlets and a blogger for the Huffington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. As of this year, he is a 30-year denizen of the Haight-Ashbury.
Therese Wilson currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for No Bully, a San Francisco based non-profit organization that partners with schools nationwide to implement a non-punitive and highly effective solution to end bullying and harassment. Previously, she was CEO of Planned Parenthood and worked to ensure access to comprehensive reproductive and primary health care and sexuality education services for over 70,000 individuals annually in the Bay Area including managing the Prevention First program aimed at reducing incidences of intimate partner violence and its harmful consequences. She has also worked extensively in Africa designing and implementing culturally competent health, education and gender empowerment projects.
This evening, we will invite audience members to write their questions on note cards for our speakers. Attendees should understand that we will be discussing topics related to sexual violence in a public forum and some conversation may become uncomfortable at times.
Launch Party!
Tuesday, May 13
7:30 PMKATHRYN MA
THE YEAR SHE LEFT US"Kathryn Ma's first novel is electrified by the enraged tenderness of its alienated young protagonist. Part mystery, part odyssey, The Year She Left Us heralds the arrival of a fierce, subtle new American voice."
–Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon SquadKathryn Ma received tremendous critical praise for her story collection, which was also the recipient of the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. Her debut novel, THE YEAR SHE LEFT US, more than delivers on the promise of those stories, and announces the emergence of an exciting new talent in contemporary fiction.
THE YEAR SHE LEFT US introduces the Kongs, four unforgettable women in a Chinese-American family whose multi-generational saga is as emotionally raw as it is expertly crafted. Back in San Francisco after a visit to her “home” orphanage in China ended traumatically, Ariadne Bettina Yun-li Rose Kong, an eighteen-year-old adoptee known as Ari, is spiraling out of control, bent on sacrificing her future to go digging into the mysteries of her elusive past. Her big-hearted single mother, Charlie, who works as a lawyer for the poor, tries and fails to keep her troubled daughter from heading down a self-destructive path. Charlie’s elderly mother, Gran—a formidable woman with a sharp tongue and a sly sense of humor who was sent as a teen by her renowned doctor father to America in the tumultuous days before the Chinese Revolution—believes only in moving forward, and never looking back. Les, Charlie’s unmarried and childless sister, is a well-respected judge with even higher aspirations, and her take-charge nature extends beyond the courtroom, into the lives of her mother, sister, and niece.
Born to unnamed parents and left on the steps of a busy department store, Ari is desperate to recover her unknown past. Instead of departing as planned for her freshman year at Bryn Mawr (her grandmother’s alma mater), Ari embarks on a journey, like those of the mythological heroes she read incessantly as a child. Before long, Ari’s solo quest unleashes a chain reaction in this tight-knit clan, forcing each of the Kong women to confront her own difficult truths, and face their repercussions.A thoughtful exploration of identity, sacrifice, resiliency, loss, and love, this literary page-turner ponders the power of secrets, the joys and sorrows of adoption, the push-pull between assimilation and tradition, and the personal toll of professional success. Written with eloquence and assurance,THE YEAR SHE LEFT US is an exquisite debut novel from an extremely gifted storyteller.
Kathryn Ma is the author of the story collection All That Work and Still No Boys, winner of the 2009 Iowa Short Fiction Award, and the recipient of the David Nathan Meyerson Prize for Fiction. Her stories have appeared in theKenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and other publications. An accomplished public speaker and a former practicing lawyer, she lives with her husband and three daughters in San Francisco.
Friday, May 16
7:00 PMWORD / PLAY
Word/Play is a book & lit-themed game show for nerds like you.Six writers, two teams, three rounds. Points awarded on the basis of wit, whimsy, & audience favoritism.
Ten US dollars for an open bar, plenty of second-hand embarrassment, & two hours of putting your B.A. in English to good use.
Team Chronicle!
April Whitney is a publicist at Chronicle Books specializing in Entertainment. A proud vintage motorscooter rider, she is the past editor ofScoot! Magazine. She lives in, and scoots around, San Jose.
Anna-Lisa Sandstrum is the Northern California indie bookstore rep. at Chronicle Books. She lives on Arguello Blvd with her dog, too many roommates, and a bookshelf organized by book color.Lara Starr is the children’s book publicist at Chronicle Books, and the author of several cookbooks including the Party Girl Cookbook, The Frugal Foodie Cookbook, Wookiee Pies: The Star Wars Cookbook and Ice Sabers: The Star Wars Cookbook. She’s also a producer at KGO-AM 810, producing Consumer Talk with Michael Finney and The Brian Copeland Show. She lives in San Anselmo with her husband and son.
Team Pegasus!
Julie Phan is originally from Denver, Colorado, where she was a bookseller at Barnes & Noble for 8 years. She fell in love with a boy from the Bay Area and moved to California in 2013. When she’s not working at Pegasus, Julie practices roller derby with the B.ay A.rea D.erby Girls. In her free time, she enjoys cuddling with her three cats, reading (obviously), and hoarding pencils.Ill Nipashi is a bookninja with one decade in the book biz.
Pegasus gofer Lilah Hinde has great hair, enjoys cheese with a Wallace and Gromit-like ferocity.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please. Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
Monday, May 19
7:30 PMALYSIA ABBOTT
FAIRYLAND: A Memoir of My Father“ ‘Observe without judging,’ Alysia Abbott’s father told her in college when she was having problems with a friend. This is good advice for writing, too, and Abbott has taken it to heart. She has given us a clear-eyed and luminous account of growing up with her gay Buddhist poet dad in San Francisco in the 1970s and ’80s, from the intricacies of café culture to the Language poetry scene. . . . Fairyland is a love story that not only brings a new generational perspective to a history we’re in danger of forgetting but irrevocably shifts the way we think about family itself.” —Alison Bechdel, author of Are You My Mother?
After Alysia Abbott’s father died of AIDS in 1992, she returned home from the hospice to the apartment they shared in San Francisco. She dug his journals out of dusty boxes. Her father, Steve Abbott—poet, cartoonist, editor—had kept these journals from 1971, when he was in graduate school, until 1991, when his illness made writing and reading nearly impossible. Drawing on her father’s writings and her own memories, Alysia tells the story of their life together in her vibrant and poignant memoirFAIRYLAND.
“These journals recorded the brief time when my mother, father, and I formed a family. . . . It was the first time I experienced my mother in that most exciting of verb tenses: the present.” Alysia thought she knew the story of her father and mother’s life together. But as she read further into the journals, a different story emerged.
Steve Abbott and Barbara Louise Binder met in 1969 in Atlanta, where they were both graduate students at Emory University and vocal protestors of the Vietnam War. Early in their relationship, Steve told Barbara he was bisexual. Barbara, a nice Jewish girl from a typical nuclear family in Illinois, was not deterred—in fact, she found Steve’s sexuality intriguing. They married a year later. In 1970, nine months after the wedding, Alysia was born. “My parents believed, as did many members of their generation, in revolution—that the rules of family needed to be shattered and rewritten, that there should be room in marriage for sexual curiosity, even transgression.” As Alysia read through those early journals, she saw that the marriage was loving but also turbulent. Both parents took other lovers, and Barbara developed a drug habit. When Barbara’s then-lover was arrested in Michigan, she drove up to bail him out, leaving Alysia with Steve. A few nights later, a terrible phone call changed everything: Barbara had died in a car accident. Alysia was motherless. Even though Barbara’s sister offered to adopt her and Steve Abbott knew it would be difficult to raise a daughter on his own, he decided it was what he wanted to do. And, he decided, they would begin their new life together in San Francisco.If FAIRYLAND is a story of an unconventional family, it is also very much the story of San Francisco during the 1970s and the 1980s—a time of gay liberation and activism and, ultimately, devastation in the face of a plague that would change the face of the city forever. In 1974, Steve and Alysia embarked on their new life and landed in the Haight district, eventually settling into a cramped Victorian apartment. Steve took on odd jobs to make ends meet, but his true passion was his poetry, and he became a leading figure in the New Narrative poetry movement. Steve enrolled Alysia in the French American Bilingual School, where she found herself surrounded by kids who had families quite different from her own—families with both fathers and mothers. “I knew what families were supposed to look like, and I knew ours was different. Though I deeply loved Dad, I really wanted a mother. . . . Right side up with Dad, I couldn’t help but be upside down in school. I learned to move between both worlds, to turn myself over as the situation required.”
“This place where Dad and I lived together, our fairyland, wasn’t make-believe but a real place with real people, and I was there,” Alysia writes.FAIRYLAND is both a moving story of a family making its way in the world and a loving tribute to a father who never got to tell his own story. Steve Abbott may be gone, but Alysia Abbott won’t forget him, and nor will readers after finishing FAIRYLAND. “This queer history is my queer history,” Abbott writes. “This queer history is our queer history.”
Alysia Abbott’s work has appeared in Real Simple, Salon, andTheAtlantic.com. She is a graduate of the New School’s MFA program and was a contributing producer at WNYC radio. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children.
Wednesday, May 28
7:30 PMMADISON YOUNG
DADDY“Madison Young is an incredible and singular force in the world of art, and her talent, spirit and energy never fail to impress me. She’s dedicated to changing the game for women, queers, kinksters and now moms - with her individualism, innovation, insight and innate intelligence. She is downright inspirational. Madison is the real deal, the whole package. We need her voice now more than ever, and I know that supporting her work means to support the needs of women, indie women, queer women, women who want more - women everywhere. I am a longtime fan of Madison Young’s both artistically and personally, and I cannot wait for her new project. She is devoted to the truth, and that - after motherhood, truly is the noblest profession.” —Margaret Cho
In a world filled with constant change, we are all looking for a heroic figure to believe in. For Madison Young, that hero that we are in search of is Daddy. Daddy explores Young’s interwoven relationships with the men in her life from the fraught relationship with her biological father to the BDSM “leather daddies” that lead her on a journey of sexual revelation, both on and off camera. When Young finally finds the Daddy that she has been searching for, her fairytale quest is shattered with the flawed realities of human nature that exists outside of this little girl’s fantasy.“Madison Young is living a double life—running a DIY queer, feminist art space in San Francisco by day, and jetting off to Europe to get tied up, smacked up and glamour-shot by night. Or, is she hosting trans-inclusive dirty spoken word events by night, and being a world-famous bondage model by day? And, when does she find the time to shoot her own blue movies? ‘Cause she does. This lady has done more in the first quarter of her life than most people do in a generation.” —Michelle Tea
Madison Young is an artist and activist dedicated to creating space for love. This sexpert grew up in the suburban landscape of Southern Ohio before moving to San Francisco, California in 2000. Since then this mid-westerner has dedicated her days to facilitating safe space to dialogue on the topic of fringe identities and cultures as well as documenting healthy expression of sexuality. Young’s breadth of work in the realm of sexuality spans from documenting our sexual culture in her feminist erotic films to serving as the Artistic Director of the forward thinking non-profit arts organization, Femina Potens Art Gallery. Young values sexual education in her work and has taught workshops, lectures, and acted as a panelist on the topics of sexuality, feminist porn studies, and the politics of BDSM around the world including at Yale University, Hampshire College, Northwestern University, University of Toronto, University of Minnesota, and UC Berkeley. Her writings have been published in books such as The Ultimate Guide to Kink,Baby Remember My Name, Rope, Bondage, and Power, Best Sex Writing of 2013, and John’s Marks, Tricks, and Chickenhawks. Madison Young lives in Berkeley, with her partner James and child, Em. She is currently pursuing her doctorate in clinical sexology at the Institute of Advanced Studies for Human Sexuality.
Monday, June 2
7:30 PM
13 CRIME STORIES FROM LATIN AMERICA:
McSweeney's Quarterly Concern #46
A conversation with editor DANIEL GUMBINER
and translators KATHERINE SILVER and JOEL STREIKERIn thirteen electrifying stories, McSweeney's very first all-Latin-American issue takes on the crime story as a starting point, and expands to explore contemporary life from every angle—swinging from secret Venezuelan prisons to Uruguayan resorts to blood-drenched bedrooms in Mexico and Peru, and even, briefly, to Epcot Center and the Havana home of a Cuban transsexual named Amy Winehouse.
Featuring contemporary writers from ten different countries—including Alejandro Zambra, Juan Pablo Villalobos, Rodrigo Rey Rosa, Andres Ressia Colino, Mariana Enriquez, and many more—McSweeney’s 46 offers an essential cross-section of the troubles and temptations confronting the region today. It’s crucial reading for anyone interested in the shifting topography of Latin American literature and Latin American life, and a collection of writing to rival anything McSweeney's has assembled in years.
You'll get the inside scoop on the amazing writers represented in this big new book from a McSweeney's editor and two excellent translators.KATHERINE SILVER is an award-winning translator of literature from Spanish and also the codirector of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre (BILTC) in Alberta, Canada. Her most recent translations include works by Martín Adán, Daniel Sada, Horacio Castellanos Moya, César Aira, Rafael Bernal, Jorge Luis Borges, and Marcos Giralt Torrente.
JOEL STREICKER’s translations of Latin American authors have appeared in A Public Space, Subtropics, Words Without Borders, Zyzzyva, and Epiphany. He received a 2011 PEN American Center Translation Fund Grant to translate Samanta Schweblin’s collection of short stories, Pájaros en la boca . Streicker holds a B.A. in Latin American studies from the University of Michigan and a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University.
DANIEL GUMBINER is an editor at McSweeney's. He lives in Berkeley.
Tuesday, June 3
7:30 PM
JAMES FEARNLEY
HERE COMES EVERYBODY
The Story of The Pogues
"The portrait of Shane is so vivid and disturbing, the capturing of the various scenes the band moved through so affectionate and sad, and the writing so good. Fearnley has made a work of art to set beside the band's records. Beautiful."
-- John Jeremiah SullivanThe Pogues came barreling out of Kings Cross, London in the early 80s -- a riotous sound of punk rock and poetic Celtic folk that would turn traditional Irish music on its head. With emotive songwriter Shane MacGowan at the helm, the Pogues were destined for world tours with the likes of Elvis Costello, U2 and Bob Dylan.
In Here Comes Everybody, James Fearnley paints a clear, often dark picture of the fantastic highs and dramatic lows of life in one of the most original bands of their era. Drawing from his personal experiences as well as the series of journals and the letters he wrote throughout the band’s career, Fearnley reveals how the drifters who made up the Pogues, led by MacGowan, succeeded, according to Billy Bragg, in “taking Irish music and throwing it down the cellar steps.”
The exuberance of their live performances coupled with relentless touring spiraled into years of hard drinking and excess which eventually took their toll -- most infamously on MacGowan, but also on the rest of the band --causing them to break up after nine years (though reuniting in 2001 and touring ever since). Fearnley tells their story is told with beauty, humor and honesty with a novelist’s eye bringing to life the youthful friendships, the concerts, the conflicts and the eventual collapse, in a hugely compelling and moving account.
James Fearnley was born in 1954 in Worsley, Manchester. He played guitar in various bands, including the Nips with Shane MacGowan, before becoming the accordion player in the Pogues. Fearnley continues to tour with the band and lives in Los Angeles.
Wednesday, June 4
7:30 PM
ANNE GERMANACOS
TRIBUTEIn her masterful second book, Anne Germanacos gets right down to the elemental: the single line. TRIBUTE is a work of prose -- novel, essay, experiment in narrative? -- created from distinct lines, a work of continual shape-shift and exhilarating motion. Chronicling the daily life of a woman whose mother is dying and who begins to see a psychoanalyst, a woman who lives among lovers, sisters, and children, across continents and their conflicts (New York, San Francisco, Crete, Cyprus, Israel/Palestine), the book that results offers us both her story -- forcefully sensual, vibrantly lived -- and, through its bold form, her complex relationship to story.
Germanacos’s restless relationship to form is born of that most essential restlessness: desire. In TRIBUTE she documents desire’s manifold incarnations, the body’s and the mind’s; she pays beautiful tribute to the force of desire and to those who have been bold enough to try to comprehend it. In the tradition of Clarice Lispector, David Markson, and Marguerite Duras, TRIBUTE takes us deep into the borderlands where fiction and nonfiction meet.Anne Germanacos is the author of the short-story collection In the Time of the Girls Together with her husband, Nick Germanacos, she ran the Ithaka Cultural Studies Program on the islands of Kalymnos and Crete. She runs the Germanacos Foundation in San Francisco.
Thursday, June 5
7:00 PM
SHIPWRECK: TOURNAMENT OF CHAMPIONS / Gone with the WindShipwreck turns 1. To mark the occasion, we're bringing back past winners to compete in a masterfully disgusting Tournament of Champions based onGone with the Wind.
Featuring Alan Leggitt (winner of A Christmas Carol, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, Pride & Prejudice, The Wind in the Willows, and The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), Mac Barnett (The Wizard of Ozwinner), Carolyn Ho (The Great Gatsby winner), Spencer Bainbridge(The Shining winner), Ivan Hernandez (The Hunger Games winner), andMaggie Tokuda-Hall (The Catcher in the Rye winner).
Good theatre for bad literature? Marital aid for book nerds? A literary erotic fanfiction competition for the ages? Shipwreck is all of these things.
Six Great Writers will destroy one Great Book, one Great Character at a time, in service of the transcendent and the profane (and also laughs). Marvel as beloved characters are plucked from their worlds and made to do stuff they were never meant to do in places they were never meant to see.
You choose the best Ship. The winning writer chooses their character for the next Shipwreck, and returns to defend their title.
All stories will be recited by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, from his private chamber at Booksmith Castle, both to preserve the majesty of the written work and to ensure the honesty of the audience when voting for a winner.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please. Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
"a vile, disgusting event"
"an affront to literature"
"it used to be, we had to sit in dark, sticky booths to get these kinds of thrills"
Monday, June 9
7:30 PM
SINGAPORE NOIR
with editor CHERYL LU-LIEN TAN"Say Singapore to anyone and you’ll likely hear one of a few words: Caning. Fines. Chewing gum. For much of the West, the narrative of Singapore -- a modern Southeast Asian city-state perched on an island on the tip of the Malay Peninsula -- has been marked largely by its government’s strict laws and unwavering enforcement of them.
In 1994, American teenager Michael Fay was famously sentenced to six strokes of the cane after a series of car vandalisms in Singapore. Just the year before in a cover story for Wired magazine, William Gibson criticized the country, calling it constrained and humorless, saying “conformity here is the prime directive.”
“Imagine an Asian version of Zurich operating as an offshore capsule at the foot of Malaysia,” Gibson wrote, “an affluent microcosm whose citizens inhabit something that feels like, well, Disneyland. Disneyland with the death penalty.”
As much as I understand these outside viewpoints, I have always lamented that the quirky and dark complexities of my native country’s culture rarely seem to make it past its borders. The Singapore in which I was born and spent most of my first eighteen years was safe, yes -- so safe that I could wander its city streets without fear at two in the morning as a teenage girl. And its general cleanliness is unrivaled -- even now, I feel sometimes that one could, in fact, eat off the streets.
Beneath that sparkling veneer, however, is a country teeming with shadows. For starters, it has not just one but several red-light districts. There’s the large designated area, Geylang, which is filled with dozens of narrow lanes and alleys where one can find prewar houses festooned with red lights and prostitutes ... Gambling and its many fallouts have always been an issue in this country, one that was pockmarked with illegal gambling dens long before Las Vegas Sands poured about $6.5 billion into building a casino in the heart of Singapore in 2011...And then there are the ghosts. Singaporeans love nothing better than to tell a good gory tale... This is a Singapore rarely explored in Western literature -- until now. No Disneyland here; but there is a death penalty. "
Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan is the New York–based author of A Tiger in the Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family. A native of Singapore, she is a former staff writer at the Wall Street Journal, and her work has also appeared in the New York Times and the Washington Post, among other publications.
Co-sponsored by the Oakland Asian Cultural Center
Tuesday, June 10
7:30 PM
SHEILA BAPAT
PART OF THE FAMILY?
Nannies, Housekeepers, Caregivers and The Battle for Domestic Workers' RightsSheila Bapat chronicles the rising political and social movement to secure labor protections for domestic workers who toil in our homes cleaning, cooking, and caring for our children and elders. Through interviews with the leaders and activists who are forging new and unlikely political alliances among workers, employers, policymakers and other social justice movements, as well as analysis of the historical underpinnings of the current fight for improved conditions and protections for domestic workers, this important and timely book will shine an overdue light on the invisible laborers who are so critical to our economy (and our families).
Sheila Bapat is an attorney and writer covering economic and gender justice. Her work has appeared in Jacobin, Salon, Reuters, Slate, Alternet, Truthout, the University of Pennsylvania Journal of Labor and Employment Law, PolicyMatters, and the Center for Women Policy Studies' series, "Reproductive Laws for the 21st Century." Sheila holds a JD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and lives in San Francisco.
This evening, Jamie Allison-Hope leads a discussion with Sheila and a domestic worker-advocate from the National Domestic Workers' Alliance.
Wednesday, June 11
7:30 PM
EMMA STRAUB
THE VACATIONERSLorrie Moore declares her “a magician, full of brilliance and surprise.” Elizabeth Gilbert calls her “a natural talent and a gorgeous, witty storyteller.”The New York Times Magazine featured her in their “Inspiration” issue;Nylon described her as “at once no-nonsense and whimsical,” and L Magazine anointed her "the best bookseller in Brooklyn." Having won early praise from the ranks of Jennifer Egan and Tom Perrotta, Emma Straub first captured readers with her breakout story collection Other People We Married, in which she introduced a cast of lovably flawed characters. She later dazzled with her sprawling, historical novel Laura Lamont’s Life in Pictures.
Now Straub brings a vivid, contemporary setting to life, and revives some familiar characters from her stories in THE VACATIONERS -- an irresistible, deftly observed novel about the secrets, joys and jealousies that rise to the surface over the course of a family’s two-week stay in Mallorca, Spain.
For the Post family, a luxurious vacation to the island of Mallorca with their extended family and friends is meant as a celebration of Franny and Jim’s thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and their daughter’s graduation from high school. The sunlit beaches, mountains, tennis and tapas also promise an escape from the tensions simmering at home in Manhattan. But all does not go according to plan: over the course of the trip: secrets come to light, childhood rivalries resurface, and ancient wounds reopen. Written with Straub’s signature wry humor and tremendous heart,
THE VACATIONERS is the richly satisfying story of a family in the midst of change and the sides of ourselves that we choose to show and those we try to conceal, of the ways we tear each other down and build each other up again. For anyone who loved Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins, Elizabeth Von Arnmin’s Enchanted April, or J. Courtney Sullivan’s Maine, this is the summer book to curl up with on the beach, by the pool, at the airport, in the backyard or on the couch."Beach reads" at The Booksmith? Why, yes, we happily indulge, and we're very happy to welcome Emma Straub back!
Emma Straub is from New York City. Her fiction and nonfiction have been published in Vogue, Tin House, the New York Times, and the Paris Review Daily. She is a staff writer for Rookie. Straub lives with her husband and son in Brooklyn.
Thursday, June 12
7:30 PM
TOM RACHMAN
THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERSWhen it was published in 2010, Tom Rachman’s debut novel The Imperfectionists was an instant New York Times bestseller -- and remains a Booksmith bestseller -- that became one of the most celebrated books of the year. Whereas his first novel was a group portrait of expatriate journalists living in Rome, Rachman’s highly anticipated second novel, THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERS centers on one woman’s whirlwind journey to unlock the mysteries of her past.
We first meet Tooly Zylberberg as the thirty-something American owner of World’s End, a sleepy bookstore in the Welsh countryside. A bit of a loner, she spends her days filing used books into eccentric categories like, “Artists Who Were Unpleasant to their Spouses,” “History, The Dull Bits,” and “Books You Pretend to Have Read but Haven’t.” What she doesn’t do is let herself think too much about a childhood that took her all over the world and implicated her in the capers of a seductive group of outsiders. But when an old boyfriend finds her on Facebook and shares some startling news from New York, old memories surface, launching Tooly and the reader on a quest for answers. So begins a thrillingly ambitious novel that ranges brilliantly across space and time, from the back alleys of 1980s Bangkok to the Manhattan of the ’90s dot-com boom to the present day. In THE RISE & FALL OF GREAT POWERS, Tom Rachman further solidifies himself as one of the sharpest, funniest, most acute writers we have. In addition to presenting a bevy of remarkable characters, this stunning novel offers poignant, urgent observations about the past quarter-century, about the enduring consolations of reading and books, and about how our pasts – for better or for worse – ultimately shape who we are.
“When a Tom Rachman novel lands in the bookstores, I stop living and breathing to devour it. It’s hard to think of anyone who has a better grasp on the world we live in (and I mean, like, the entire planet) and can write about it with such entertainment and panache.” -- Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure
Tom Rachman was born in London in 1974 and raised in Vancouver. He attended the University of Toronto and Columbia Journalism School, and then worked as a journalist for the Associated Press in New York and Rome, and the International Herald Tribune in Paris. His first novel, The Imperfectionists, was an international bestseller, translated into twenty-five languages. He lives in London.
Friday, June 13
7:00 PM
WORD/PLAYWord/Play is a book & lit-themed game show for nerds like you.
Six writers, two teams, three rounds. Points awarded on the basis of wit, whimsy, & audience favoritism.Ten US dollars for an open bar, plenty of second-hand embarrassment,& two hours of putting your B.A. in English to good use.
Teams TBA.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please. Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
Monday, June 16
7:30 PM
THOMAS BELLER
J.D. SALINGER: THE ESCAPE ARTISTA spirited, deeply personal inquiry into the near-mythic life and canonical work of J.D. Salinger, Beller’s biography follows its subject’s trail from his Park Avenue childhood to his long, final refuge in New Hampshire. The result is a fascinating book as much about the biographer as about the subject. This is also the first biography of Salinger to focus on his Jewishness and the first to grapple with the meta-literary problem of writing a biography of an author who, more than any other literary figure in the culture, has gone to great lengths to thwart his biographers.
“There is something about Salinger himself that created, in his readers, a sense of their being on a quest of some kind. To read him was to be in search of a hidden riddle.” Beller addresses, for the first time, why we are still so moved to care about J.D. Salinger. Is our desire to know Salinger’s secrets a projection of our desire to understand what it is about his prose that so affects us?
Beller’s exhilarating investigation surfaces new details and connections for both the Salinger scholar and the casual admirer. As a former staff writer atThe New Yorker and current contributor to the magazine’s Culture Desk Blog, Beller is uniquely positioned to understand the cultural forces at play in the magazine’s formation. With access to key figures at The New Yorker, Beller also constructs a mini-cultural history of the magazine with which Salinger was so closely connected.
“The objective, exhaustive biographies of Salinger have been published. Beller supplies us with what’s needed now – a book that shines with a deep personal passion for the writer.” -- Edmund White, author Rimbaud: The Double Life of a Rebel and Marcel Proust: A Life
Thomas Beller is the author of Seduction Theory, The Sleep-Over Artist, andHow to be a Man. He cofounded and for twenty years edited the literary journal Open City. He has worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker and the Cambodia Daily, and contributes regularly to Travel + Leisure and The New Yorker’s Culture Desk. He is an associate professor at Tulane University and lives in New Orleans with his wife and two children.
Tuesday, June 17
7:30 PM
KATIE CROUCH
ABROADFrom the author of the bestselling Girls in Trucks, a sad, wry testament to the beauty and recklessness of youth, set in Grifonia, Italy, a city swarming with secrets -- thousands of years of dark, murderous secrets.
Taz, a British student who has just arrived for her year abroad, thinks that she will spend her time in Italy sipping wine and taking in the rolling Umbrian hills. But she soon falls in with a cabal of posh, reckless girls -- the B4 -- who turn her quaint fantasies into an erotic and dangerous rush through the darkest realms of friendship and love. ABROAD is a chilling parable of modern girlhood from an author who “from her opening line . . . grabs you and never lets go” (People).
Not since Donna Tartt’s The Secret History have we been treated to such an addictive tale of tumultuous adolescence. We see Taz scared and alone, but hungry for new experience and piqued by the thrill of living abroad. We see her roommate, the plainspoken American Claire, who worries about Taz’s motives and expresses sincere concern for her safety -- but everything changes when they fall for the same man.
And then there’s what we don’t see -- the perils that lurk around the corner. We don’t see the secrets that friends -- and lovers -- keep from one another. And we don’t see the force that is bigger than Taz, bigger than her friends and loves, a force that seems to be propelling them all toward a dark, awful end. Inspired by real events but tackled with grace and sharpness by a master storyteller, this is Katie Crouch at her finest.
“Abroad is a riveting page-turner populated by vain, destructive, and yet altogether intriguing characters. A tribute to the complexities of youth, a vivid picture of both ancient and modern Italy, and most of all, a complex psychological thriller, Abroad will incite debate, admiration, and awe.” -- Vendela Vida, author of Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name and The Lovers
Katie Crouch is the New York Times bestselling author of Girls in Trucks, among other novels. She contributes to The Guardian, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Slate, the Rumpus, and Salon. A MacDowell fellow, Crouch teaches at San Francisco State University and lives in Bolinas.
Thursday, June 19
7:30 PM
The Booksmith & The Merola Opera Program present
A Streetcar Named The 6 ParnassusAn evening celebrating Tennessee Williams, with live performances of scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire.
Come dressed as your favorite Tennessee Williams heroine for a chance to win tickets to see Merola's performance of Streetcar (the opera). Plus, a Stella-Screaming Contest, Stella Lager, and other surprises.
$10, includes drinks; tickets available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online.
Tuesday, June 24
7:30 PM
JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN
SONG OF THE SHANK
in conversation with Ethan NosowskyThomas Wiggins, AKA Blind Tom, was a legendary 19th-century African American pianist who has been largely erased from the history books. Born a slave, and probably an autistic savant, Tom was a stage sensation who performed for the likes of Mark Twain and President James Buchanan. As Jeffery Renard Allen’s SONG OF THE SHANK ranges from Tom’s boyhood to the heights of his performing career, the inscrutable savant is buffeted by opportunistic teachers and crooked managers, crackpot healers and militant prophets. Through it all, Tom stands at the quiet center, a mystery that others project onto, a man who speaks for himself but cannot be understood.
There are no recordings of Tom’s performances, nor did he leave any written accounts of his own. In the marvelously talented hands of Jeffery Renard Allen, this very absence freed him to write a contemporary American masterpiece that blends history and fantastical invention into an incantatory, hallucinatory, disturbing, and inspiring literary tour de force.
“Writing a novel like this is the equivalent of building a three-story building. Single handedly.” -- Ishmael Reed
“Besides Joyce and Faulkner, other 20th-century novelists whose work Allen’s calls to mind are Dos Passos, Ellison, and Henry Roth.” -- The New York Times Book Review
Jeffery Renard Allen is the author of the novel Rails Under My Back, the story collection Holding Pattern, and two collections of poetry. Raised in Chicago and now living in New York, he teaches at Queens College and in the writing program at the New School.
Ethan Nosowsky is the editorial director of Graywolf Press.
Friday, June 27
6:30 - 9:30 PM
BOOKSWAP: COOKBOOK EDITION with JOSEY BAKERCome and share all the stories behind your cookbook stains at Bookswap: Cookbook Edition, featuring Josey Baker, the man behind The Mill, gourmet toast, and the newly released Josey Baker Bread.
There’ll be delicious food, free-flowing wine, and of course the white elephant swap that gives the night its name. So clear out your cupboards and bring a cookbook -- delicious, useful, or just plain pretty. By the end of the night, you’ll leave with a swapped book, free schwag, and possibly a rekindled love of carbs.Josey Baker Bread is being hailed as one of the most accessible bread-baking cookbooks ever written. Starting out with the basics -- flour, water, time and a pan -- it offers step-by-step instructions, then expands to include more complex loaves such as Josey's famous Dark Mountain Rye. Josey Baker is a former science teacher turned San Francisco baking guru, and yes, that’s his real name.
Tickets $25 (includes dinner and drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. Advance tickets are required for Bookswaps!
Thursday, July 10
7:00 PM
SHIPWRECK: George Orwell's ANIMAL FARMGood theatre for bad literature? Marital aid for book nerds? A literary erotic fanfiction competition for the ages? Shipwreck is all of these things.
Six Great Writers will destroy one Great Book, one Great Character at a time, in service of the transcendent and the profane (and also laughs). Marvel as beloved characters are plucked from their worlds and made to do stuff they were never meant to do in places they were never meant to see.
You choose the best Ship. The winning writer chooses their character for the next Shipwreck, and returns to defend their title.
All stories will be recited by Shakespearean Thespian in Residence, Sir Steven Westdahl, from his private chamber at Booksmith Castle, both to preserve the majesty of the written work and to ensure the honesty of the audience when voting for a winner.
This month's competitors, er, talent: Maggie Tokuda-Hall (Two-Time Winner), Gabriel Cubbage (May Winner), Kari June (kink.com), Aleks Kang (kink.com), Maggie Glover, and Ambur Lowenthal.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please. Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
Tuesday, July 15
7:30 PM
ANOOP JUDGE
THE RUMMY CLUBFour women from India, friends from their teen years at an all-girls' boarding school, find their lives have brought each of them to the San Francisco Bay Area. Now in their 40s, Mini, Divya, Alka, & Priya reunite. Once a week they meet to play the Indianized version of rummy.
As these four lives intersect and collide, as their relationships shift and change (widowed Mini and her romantic liaison with an Anglo; Priya's painful divorce and the new path that opens for her; the tragedy of Alka's high expectations for her beloved only son; and Divya's frustrated longing for the Indian-American dream), their friendships both challenge and sustain them -- and the whole provides a snapshot of the Indian Diaspora in 21st century America.
Anoop Judge, a blogger and author, a litigator in another lifetime, a former aerobics instructor and a fitness enthusiast, has lived in the Bay Area for the past 23 years. Her first book, Law; What It's All About and How to Get In, was published in New Delhi, in a series of 'Dummies' style books in the 90s about different careers open to college grads.Judge serves as Legal Advisor of Home of Hope, Inc., a nonprofit organization that supports destitute, orphaned and otherwise disadvantaged children in India.
Friday, July 18
7:00 PM
WORD/PLAY
SHENANIGANERY OF THE HIGHEST BROWWord/Play is a book & lit-themed game show for nerds like you.
Six writers, two teams, three rounds. Points awarded on the basis of wit, whimsy, & audience favoritism.
Ten US dollars for an open bar, plenty of second-hand embarrassment, & two hours of putting your B.A. in English to good use.
Teams TBA.
Tickets $10 (includes drinks) available in the store or at Brown Paper Tickets online. 21+, please.
Buy your ticket ahead of time, and we'll reserve you a seat.
NEW VOICES, NEW STORIES AT THE BOOKSMITH
Tuesday, July 22
7:30 PM
ANGELA PNEUMAN
LAY IT ON MY HEARTFamily past and present looms large in tiny East Winder, a rigidly evangelical, rural Kentucky community. As her prophet father grapples with sanity, sending the family into financial despair, thirteen-year-old Charmaine Peake must navigate an increasingly complicated Peake legacy. Her grandfather was a famous preacher, her grandmother a powerful one-time debutante in physical decline. Her mother, thrown into a marital crisis she deeply resents, turns to Charmaine for impossible answers.
In this piercing debut, identity is at stake for everyone. While her father loses all sense of himself and her mother bitterly discovers the self she has buried, Charmaine must set about forging the person she will become. LAY IT ON MY HEART takes a hard look at family and faith, the pathos and claustrophobia of the mother-daughter bond, the strangeness and comfort of female friendship, the menace and wonder of encroaching sexuality, and the profound loss of home—that highest price of perspective.
“At stake in this must-read novel is the sanity of a modern-day prophet, the state of his God-ordained marriage, and, most of all, the painful coming-of-age of his daughter—our wise, perceptive narrator—in the evangelical territory of the rural South. Angela Pneuman brings searing psychological insight to the conflicts that draw people to extreme faith, keep them there, or force them to emerge—dazed, blinking and giving thanks. A profoundly moving, deeply compassionate, wickedly funny book.” -- Adam Johnson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Orphan Master’s Son
Angela Pneuman teaches fiction writing at Stanford and works as a copywriter in the California wine industry. Her stories have appeared inBest American Short Stories (2012 & 2004), Ploughshares, Los Angeles Review, Iowa Review, Glimmertrain and many other literary magazines -- and were collected in her first book, Home Remedies. Angela was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, a Presidential Fellow at SUNY Albany, and the recipient of the first inaugural Alice Hoffman Prize for short fiction from Ploughshares. Pneuman grew up in the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, and now divides her time between Chicago and San Francisco.
Thursday, July 24
7:30 PM
ELLEN SUSSMAN
A WEDDING IN PROVENCEEllen Sussman delivers a feast for the senses in A Wedding in Provence -- a moving novel of love, forgiveness, and trust, set among the beaches and vineyards of southern France.
When Olivia and Brody drive up to their friend’s idyllic inn, nestled in a valley in the Mediterranean town of Cassis, they know they’ve chosen the perfect spot for their wedding. The ceremony will be held in the lush garden, and the reception will be a small party of only their closest family and friends. But when Olivia’s and Brody’s guests check in, their peaceful wedding weekend is quickly thrown off balance.
The first to arrive is Nell, Olivia’s oldest daughter from her first marriage. Impulsive and reckless, she invites a complete stranger to be her guest at the wedding -- an enigmatic man who is both alluring and a bit dangerous. The next is Carly, Olivia’s youngest daughter, the responsible and pragmatic one. Away from her demanding job and a strained relationship, she feels an urgent need to cut loose -- and for once do something brash and unpredictable. Then there is Jake, Brody’s playboy best man, and Fanny, Brody’s mother, who is coping with the fallout of her own marriage. And in the middle of it all is Olivia, navigating the dramas, joys, and pitfalls of planning a wedding and starting a new life.
A delicious, escapist, and utterly enchanting novel, A Wedding in Provence captures the complex and enduring bonds of family, and our boundless faith in love.Ellen Sussman is the author of The Paradise Guest House, French Lessons, On a Night Like This, and the editor of Bad Girls and Dirty Words. She has been awarded fellowships from The Sewanee Writers Conference, The Napoule Art Foundation, Hedgebrook, Brush Creek, Ledig House, Ucross, Ragdale Foundation, Writers at Work, Wesleyan Writers Conference and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has taught at Pepperdine, UCLA and Rutgers University. Ellen now teaches through Stanford Continuing Studies and in private classes out of her home.
NEW VOICES, NEW STORIES AT THE BOOKSMITH
Monday, July 28
7:30 PM
SEAN MICHAELS
US CONDUCTORS"Us Conductors stretches its arms to encompass nearly everything—it is an immigrant tale, an epic, a spy intrigue, a prison confession, an inventor's manual, a creation myth, and an obituary—but the electric current humming through its heart is an achingly resonant love story.Sean Michaels orchestrates his first novel like a virtuoso." -- Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Locked in a cabin aboard a ship bearing him back to Russia and away from the love of his life, Lev Sergeyvich Termen begins to type his story: a tale of electricity, romance and the invention of the world’s strangest instrument, the theremin. He recollects his early years as a scientist forging breakthroughs during the Bolshevik Revolution and his decade as a Manhattan celebrity and reluctant Soviet spy. Against the backdrop of Prohibition and the 1929 Crash, Termen spends his days in his workshop, devising inventions, and his nights in Harlem clubs, jostling with famous bandleaders and falling in love with the young violinist Clara Reisenberg. When the boat reaches his homeland, Termen finds it is not the Russia he remembers. He is imprisoned in the Gulag system, sent first to a Siberian work camp and then to a secret laboratory. In the face of all this, his love for Clara remains constant, passing through the ether like the theremin’s song.
Steeped in beauty, wonder, and looping heartbreak, Sean Michaels’s debut novel explores the lies we tell, the truths we imagine, and the lengths we go to survive.
Sean Michaels is a writer and music critic. A two-time National Magazine Award winner, his work has been published by the Guardian, McSweeney's, The Walrus, Brick, Pitchfork, The Believer, and many others. In 2003, he founded the music-blog Said the Gramophone. He lives in Montreal.
Tuesday, July 29
7:30 PM
JAMES JOSEPH DEAN
STRAIGHTS: Heterosexuality in Post-Closeted CultureSince the Stonewall Riots in 1969, the politics of sexual identity in America have drastically transformed. It’s almost old news that recent generations of Americans have grown up in a culture more accepting of out lesbians and gay men, seen the proliferation of LGBTQ media representation, and witnessed the attainment of a range of legal rights for same-sex couples. But the changes wrought by a so-called “post-closeted culture” have not just impacted the queer community -- heterosexuals are also in the midst of a sea change in how their sexuality plays out in everyday life.
In Straights, James Joseph Dean argues that heterosexuals can neither assume the invisibility of gays and lesbians, nor count on the assumption that their own heterosexuality will go unchallenged. The presumption that we are all heterosexual, or that there is such a thing as ‘compulsory heterosexuality,’ he claims, has vanished.
Based on 60 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of straight men and women, Straights explores how straight Americans make sense of their sexual and gendered selves in this new landscape. Dean provides a historical understanding of heterosexuality and how it was first established, then moves on to examine the changing nature of masculinity and femininity and, most importantly, the emergence of a new kind of heterosexuality -- notably, for men, the metrosexual, and for women, the emergence of a more fluid sexuality. A fascinating study, Straights provides an in-depth look at the changing nature of sexual expression in America.
James Joseph Dean is Associate Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University.
NEW VOICES, NEW STORIES AT THE BOOKSMITH
Wednesday, July 30
7:30 PM
WILL CHANCELLOR
A BRAVE MAN SEVEN STOREYS TALLA triumphant literary debut with notes of both The Art of Fielding andThe Flamethrowers, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall introduces the striking figure of Owen Burr, a gifted Olympics-bound athlete whose dreams of greatness are deferred and then transformed by an unlikely journey from California to Berlin, Athens, Iceland, and back again.
Owen Burr, a towering athlete at Stanford University, son of renowned classicist Professor Joseph Burr, was destined to compete in the Athens Olympic Games of 2004. But in his final match at Stanford, he is blinded in one eye. The wound shatters his identity and any prospects he had as an athlete.
Determined to make a new name for himself, Owen flees the country and lands in Berlin, where he meets a group of wildly successful artists living in the Teutonic equivalent of Warhol’s Factory. An irresistible sight -- nearly seven-feet-tall, wearing an eye patch and a corduroy suit -- Owen is quickly welcomed by the group’s leader, who schemes to appropriate Owen’s image and sell the results at Art Basel. With his warped and tortured image on the auction block, Owen seeks revenge.
Professor Burr has never been the father he wants to be. Owen’s disappearance triggers a call to action. He dusts off his more speculative theory, Liminalism, to embark on a speaking tour, pushing theory to its radical extreme, at his own peril and with Jean Baudrillard’s help, in order to send up flares for his son in Athens, Berlin, and Iceland.
A compulsively readable novel of ideas, action, and intrigue, A Brave Man Seven Storeys Tall offers a persuasive vision of personal agency, art, family, and the narratives we build for ourselves.
“A globetrotting, witty, powerful and wildly ambitious novel that is at once a psychological journey and a terrific page-turner. Will Chancellor has an electrifying, deeply original voice, and his book is so full of depth and heart that it’s impossible to put down.” -- Molly Antopol, author of The UnAmericans
"Owen Burr is a character unlike any you're likely to meet in contemporary literature. Watching him move through the world, and negotiate with his own dreams, is both powerful and revelatory." -- Daniel Alarcon
Will Chancellor grew up in Hawaii and in Texas. He made it to the finals of the high school national debate championship at age 15 and was a nationally ranked golfer. At Stanford, Chancellor studied political theory and environmental policy, and after graduation lived in Paris and Prague before ending up at UT Austin for post-grad work in physics and ancient Greek. All along he knew he wanted to write books and eventually ended up in his mother’s childhood home, in the bustling metropolis of Pittsburg, TX, with just a manual typewriter to keep him company. During the eight months that he spent there writing, Chancellor interacted with other people just three times and ate pasta at every meal. But if you’re picturing a reclusive, wild eyed, long haired madman, think again. Chancellor was fastidious about his appearance, often wearing a dress shirt and tie while he feverishly typed away on one 300ft roll of vellum tracing paper. And this is all before he moved to New York and lived in the Chelsea Hotel. During his three years in the storied hotel, he paid his $800/month rent with a credit card and fell into the cliché of starving artist.To research the book beyond the first draft, Chancellor collaborated on a large-scale sculpture for the New Museum, impersonated a world-renowned painter at Art Basel, and completed a solo traverse of Iceland from the westernmost to easternmost tip.