Same Page SF | A guidebook, a memoir, and a story with a soundtrack 🎶

Plus: See you at book club!

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. Each week, I summarize and signal-boost author events, book clubs, and new releases happening across our city.

It’s another great week to be a reader in San Francisco. Here’s what you’ll want to do if:

1) You love the idea of “a love song to love songs”

David Levithan and Jens Lekman on Songs for Other People’s Weddings at the Swedish American Hall. Monday 9/15, 7:30pm, $26.

The story behind Songs for Other People’s Weddings is one for the books (ha): in 2004, Swedish songwriter Jans Lekman released “If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing at Your Wedding),” resulting in a flood of invitations to - you guessed it - sing at weddings. Nearly two decades later, he floated an idea to novelist David Levithan: what if they co-created a book and an album, with original songs for the fictional couples? Join Lekman and Levithan for an evening of story and song - “part concert, part conversation, part celebration of shared creativity and the bittersweet nature of romantic love.”

2) You’re a writer craving advice and how-tos

Laura Goode on Pitch Craft at Green Apple Books on the Park and via YouTube. Tuesday 9/16, 7pm, free.

Join award-winning author Laura Goode for the launch of Pitch Craft: The Writer’s Guide to Getting Agented, Published, and Paid. Drawing on years of experience as a novelist, poet, essayist, filmmaker, and writing instructor, it’s full of practical advice for impressing agents and editors, negotiating compensation, and building a social media presence (every writer’s favorite activity).

3) You’re looking for “a mystery that resists solving”

Alvin Lu on Daydreamers at City Lights and via Zoom. Wednesday 9/17, 7pm, free with RSVP.

Local author Alvin Lu, who in 2020 won the John Williams Prize for Prose, is back with Daydreamers. Told through letters, interviews, travelogues, and fragments, it’s the tale of a son’s discovery of his late father’s unfinished manuscript - and what happens when he attempts to translate the mysterious text (“betrayal, artistic rivalry, and a murder in California’s Chinese literary underground - one that was never solved but perhaps was fictionalized”).

4) You’re fascinated by complex relationships

Arundhati Roy on Mother Mary Comes to Me at Sydney Goldstein Theater. Friday 9/19, 7:30pm, $59+ (includes book). 

It’s hard to overstate Arundhati Roy’s impact on literature; her multi-prize-winning novels The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness sold millions of copies across dozens of countries and languages. Now she’s turned her formidable powers of observation and storytelling to her own life with Mother Mary Comes to Me, a raw exploration of her relationship with her late mother. She’ll be interviewed by NPR’s Deepa Fernandes in City Arts & Lecture’s classic fireside-style format.

5)  You’re showing up for book club!

Same Page x Black Bird Book Club. Sunday 9/21, 7pm, free with RSVP.

Each month, the Same Page x Black Bird Book Club selects a discussion-worthy novel with a connection to San Francisco, whether through the topic or the author. On Sunday evening, we’ll gather over These Memories Do Not Belong to Us, an eerie and beautiful novel-in-stories that asks: what if not even our memories are safe? Author and former Bay resident Yiming Ma will join for the second half of the conversation, and I can’t wait to hear more about the process behind the debut. (You can also catch him at Books Inc. in the Marina earlier in the week!)

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Excited about one of this week’s features? Invite a bookish friend to join you (or a full crew, but let’s be real, we’re all introverts here).

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Also

MONDAY Award-winning author Michael Thomas on The Broken King, a memoir of race, trauma, alcoholism, parenting, mental illness and ultimately hope in three generations of Black American men, at City Lights | L Scully on Self Romancing at Fabulosa | Acclaimed environmentalist Bill McKibben on Here Comes the Sun at Sydney Goldstein Theater via City Arts & Lectures

TUESDAY Lucía Arrocha on Magna, her second poetry collection, with guest readers and an interactive writing exercise at Medicine for Nightmares | Alison Owings and Del Seymour on Mayor of the Tenderloin: Del Seymour's Journey from Living on the Streets to Fighting Homelessness in San Francisco at Book Passage | Blaise Agüera y Arcas on What is Intelligence? at Fort Mason Center via the Long Now Foundation is sold out, but you can join the waitlist

WEDNESDAY Bonnie Tsui on On Muscle: The Stuff that Moves Us and Why it Matters at Black Bird | Launch party for Not in the Mood, a genre-defying collection of essays by Henry 磊磊 Roark, at 518 Valencia | Zoe B. Wallbrook on her big-hearted mystery History Lessons at Bookshop West Portal | Coauthors James Workman and Amanda Leland on Sea Change: Unlikely Allies and a Success Story of Oceanic Proportions, the tale of the Gulf Coast fishermen who “helped carry out the biggest conservation success story you’ve never heard of,” at Book Passage