Same Page SF | An unforgettable debut, a vision-board book party, and the annual Night of Ideas
April 6 - 12, 2026
Welcome back to Same Page SF, your home for all things local and literary!
I’m Christina, your friendly, well-informed, and unabashedly nerdy bookseller. Every Monday, I share author events, book clubs, and new releases happening across our city.
I’m especially excited about this week’s issue - I’m still riding high from last Wednesday’s CALIBA gathering, and I’ve had the good fortune to read all five of the exceptional books featured below. Here’s what you’ll want to do if:
1) You’re craving “a testimony to the unwieldy shape of mourning”
Leigh Lucas on Splashed Things at Green Apple Books on the Park and live online. Tuesday 4/7, 7pm, free (RSVP requested).
Splashed Things is a collection about death that’s full of life. Fifty-six poems on grief in the wake of a former boyfriend’s suicide, it’s “not a neat arc toward healing, but a testimony to the unwieldy shape of mourning and the persistence of love in its wake.” I found it sharp, moving, and, at times, laugh-at-a-funeral funny; it’s nestled alongside Amy Lin’s Here After and Sloane Crosley’s Grief is for People on my bookshelf.
2) You’re interested in a debut that honors a near-forgotten story
Jiyoung Han on Honey in the Wound at Book Passage. Tuesday 4/7, 5:30pm, free.
Jiyoung Han didn’t consider herself a writer. But a few years ago, when she learned there were only nine surviving “comfort women” - a euphemism for those forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese pre and during WWII - she found herself compelled to memorialize their lives. Historical fiction with touches of magical realism, Honey in the Wound centers on the women and girls in one Korean family split by Japanese imperialism. It’s devastatingly memorable in the vein of Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead - I might have stopped reading if I wasn’t so riveted.
3) You love a peek into the process
Brontez Purnell with Tess Pollok at Booksmith. Wednesday 4/8, 7pm, RSVP requested.
Brontez Purnell has the best titles - his debut 100 Boyfriends, his memoir-in-verse Ten Bridges I’ve Burnt. Not coincidentally, he also has the best stories. With a remarkable mix of brashness and vulnerability, his musings on sex, trauma, family, Blackness, and queerness are basically unclassifiable; as the SF Chronicle admiringly put it in a 2024 review, “Purnell is a genre unto himself.” In what’s sure to be a fascinating chat, he’ll speak with Tess Pollok, editor of Animal Blood Magazine, about his writing practice and inspirations.
4) You want to celebrate the wildest ride of 2025
Kate Folk on Sky Daddy at Green Apple Books on the Park. Wednesday 4/8, 7pm, free (RSVP requested).
If you’ve read Same Page for a while, you’ve heard me rave about Sky Daddy. Yes, it’s about a woman who’s sexually obsessed with planes, and it’s as unhinged as you’d expect - but what took it from a fun read to a favorite is Folk’s tenderness toward her protagonist. Join her to celebrate the paperback - with bonus material!! - at Green Apple Books on the Park, where Sky Daddy was their 2025 Bookseller Pick of the Year. Inspired by events of the book, expect vision-boarding and mini-donuts, plus a reading and signing.
5) You’re looking for a big-hearted beach read
Emma Straub on American Fantasy at Sydney Goldstein Theater. Saturday 4/11, 7:30pm, $49+.
My taste in fiction has always skewed literary - speculative, dystopian, post-apocalyptic, sign me up. But lately I've been gravitating toward positive escapism, and I'm increasingly convinced that a really good “light” book just might be the hardest to write. Enter American Fantasy. Emma Straub’s latest follows a 49-year-old woman who finds herself on a cruise ship devoted to the boy band of her youth and makes an unexpected connection with the lead singer. It’s nostalgic, earnest, and unapologetically fun.
✨ BONUS: Your ideal Saturday takes place at an art museum and a library
Afternoon + Night of Ideas at the Asian Art Museum and the SFPL with Villa Albertine, Circuit Network, and KQED. Saturday 4/11, 3-6pm and 6:30pm-12am.
The theme of this year’s Afternoon + Night of Ideas - an eight-years-running celebration of art, innovation, and culture - is “Lighting the Way,” exploring how creativity and collective action can illuminate paths forward. Highlights from the family-friendly afternoon programming include Drag Story Hour and an “instrument petting zoo” with the SF Symphony. At night, don’t miss Litquake’s panel on feminist reclamations, Because the Night (Belongs to Women Writers), or the closing dance party in the Main Library.
Book-adjacent events
💬 Bookshop West Portal is kicking off their Q&A series with congressional candidates with Connie Chan. These aren’t debates, but rather a chance for each candidate to share their platform and connect with the community. Thursday April 9, 7pm, free.
🎨 Black Bird is hosting an art opening party for Sharon Sakura’s Hawaiian Comfort, an oil-painting exhibit that encourages finding solace in animals and heritage crafts. Come hungry - there’ll be Hawaiian pies from Beck’s Bakeshop. Friday April 10, 7pm, free.
🌉 I don’t often feature East Bay events, but I’m bending the rules for the West Berkeley Community Print Festival, an afternoon of all-ages art-making, studio tours, artist demos, and more. (Plenty of San Francisco organizations are participating, so that’s my tie-in!) Saturday April 11, 12-4pm, free.
News & needs
Staff at Silver Sprocket are raising funds to support themselves after the shop abruptly closed last month | Bookshop West Portal is offering 20% off all poetry in celebration of National Poetry Month | Broccoli Club, a four-week writing group centering mutual accountability and inspiration, is seeking new members for their May circle | The Bay Area Book Festival wants volunteers for next month’s festivities | The Center for the Art of Translation is seeking Bay Area event proposals that engage with translation while creating opportunities for community conversations | I’m continuing to collect local bookstore testimonials for our crowdsourced bookstore database
Excited about one of this week’s features? Invite a friend to join you (or a full crew, but let’s be real, we’re all introverts here).
MONDAY Karen Russell on the paperback release of her historical novel The Antidote, a national bestseller and finalist for the National Book Award, at Booksmith | Translator Max Lawton on Antonio Moresco’s The Beginnings at City Lights, co-presented by the Center for the Art of Translation and Deep Vellum Books | Journalist Victoria Law on Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration at Medicine for Nightmares | Mix, Mingle & Be Moved, an evening with San Francisco Poet Laureate Genny Lim, at the Commonwealth Club | Analog Mondays at Manny’s
TUESDAY Pushcart Award-winning writer Kim Samek on her story collection I Am the Ghost Here at Booksmith | Science historian Jessica Riskin on The Power of Life: The Invention of Biology and the Revolutionary Science of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck at the Commonwealth Club | Meeting of Christopher’s Book Club for Tayari Jones’ Kin at Goat Hill Pizza | Law professor Khiara M. Bridges on Expecting Inequity: How the Maternal Health Crisis Affects Even the Wealthiest Black Americans via City Lights Zoom
WEDNESDAY “A necessary and restorative evening of poetry” with Tyehimba Jess and Tongo Eisen-Martin at the Minnesota Street Project | Tamika Thompson on The Curse of Hester Gardens at Telegraph Hill Books | Maya Shankar on The Other Side of Change: Who We Become When Life Makes Other Plans at the Commonwealth Club | Mariana Velásquez on Revel: A Maximalist’s Guide to Having People Over at Omnivore | Meet-and-Greet with uru-chan for her graphic novel unOrdinary Volume 4 at Book Passage | Open Mic Night at Black Bird | Silent Reading Time at Sour Cherry Comics
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