Same Page SF | Comic novels, body horror, and the Bay Area Book Festival
If you like free books, you're in luck
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.
Our first-ever BOOK CLUB is fast approaching! We’ll discuss Tilt by Emma Pattee, a propulsive debut exploring natural disaster, motherhood, and what it really means to be prepared; Kirkus called it “captivating” in a starred review.
We’ll meet at Black Bird on Sunday June 8th at 7pm, with Emma joining for the second half of the conversation. Everyone who’s read the book is welcome (and it’s a quick read, so the procrastinators among us can still make it!), but you’ll score a free cafe drink if you buy your copy from Black Bird. RVSP here.
This is the first gathering of Same Page readers, and I’m newly humbled by how much work goes into every single event covered by this newsletter. I’m a little nervous - despite a dozen RSVPs, I can’t help worrying what if no one shows!? - but mostly excited and hopeful that this is the start of many gatherings to come.
In the meantime, it’s another great week to be a reader in San Francisco. Here’s what you’ll want to attend if:
1) You love a good laugh/cry
Alison Bechdel on Spent: A Comic Novel at Sydney Goldstein Theater via City Arts & Lectures. Tuesday 5/27, 7:30pm, $71 (includes book).
A short list of Alison Bechdel’s achievements: she created the beloved comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, inspired a Tony Award-winning musical, and, of course, coined the Bechdel Test. (Yes, the bar is in hell.) Now she’s celebrating her rave-reviewed comic novel Spent, in which a cartoonist slash pygmy goat rescuer named Alison Bechdel attempts to “pull humanity out of its death spiral by writing a scathingly self-critical memoir about her own greed and privilege.”
2) You’re intrigued by family dramas and what-ifs
Yrsa Daley-Ward on The Catch at Booksmith. Thursday 5/29, 7pm, free (RSVP requested).
Poet and actress Yrsa Daley-Ward has ventured into fiction with The Catch, the inaugural novel in the Well-Read Black Girl x Liveright series. Topping Most Anticipated lists from TIME, Publishers Weekly, LitHub, and more, it’s a “kaleidoscopic multiverse of daughterhood and mother-want” about twin sisters adopted by different families. Kirkus called it “elegant and unpredictable in the best possible way” in a starred review.
3) Your sweet spot is body horror meets political allegory
Hon Lai Chu on Mending Bodies at On Waverly. Thursday 5/29, 5:30pm, free.
In partnership with Two Lines Press and The Ruby, On Waverly is welcoming - from Hong Kong! - author Hon Lai Chu and translator Jacqueline Leung for a talk on Mending Bodies. Set in a future where the government incentivizes an extreme form of couplehood known as conjoining, it’s an eerie exploration of autonomy, relationships, and capitalism. (Sounds a bit like Sakaya Murata’s Vanishing World, the ending of which has haunted my still-sporadic sleep all week … but I can’t resist speculative fiction, so yep, this is on my list!)
4) You’re deeply skeptical of the term “girlboss”
As someone who graduated into the Lean In era, same. On Wednesday, writer and social researcher Sophie Lewis will be at City Lights speaking on Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (5/28, 7pm, free). Also on Wednesday, find culture writer Bridget Read at Book Passage for Little Bosses Everywhere, in which she investigates the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing - and argues it’s not just a massive money-making scam but a radical remaking of society (5/28, 5:30pm, free).
5) Your dream weekend is a book festival
Bay Area Book Festival in downtown Berkeley. Saturday 5/31 and Sunday 6/1, 11am-9pm, mostly free.
It’s that time again: the Bay Area Book Festival is back for its 11th year, and I can’t wait to bask in the magic! It’s chock-full of can’t-miss programming, but my perennial favorite is Sunday’s Bookworm Block Party, with more than 100 eminently browsable exhibits - from indie booksellers, small presses, writing groups, emerging authors, and more - lining Allston Way.
The full schedule’s available here; nearly everything is free, with the exception of ticketed headliners including Roxane Gay, Prentis Hemphill, Judith Butler, and a particularly intriguing panel on Writing as an Other with Viet Thanh Nguyen, Greg Sarris, and Tara Dorabji.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: if there’s one event worth crossing the bridge for, it’s the BABF. Hope to see you there!
Also
MONDAY —
TUESDAY CD Eskilson on their poetry collection Scream/Queen at Green Apple Books on the Park | Nancy Frenesy Azcona on Hija De Tu Madre, a collection about the difficulty and beauty of navigating the world as a Queer/Trans/2S person, at Fabulosa | Co-editor Wendy Call on the second Best Literary Translations anthology at Medicine for Nightmares | Chefs Andrea Aliseda and Srishti Jain on their respective Make It Plant-Based! cookbooks at Omnivore | Grotto Night at SFPL Main featuring authors and RPG enthusiasts on the overlap of games and writing
WEDNESDAY Critically acclaimed cartoonist Guy Delisle on his illustrated biography of Eadweard Muybridge at Booksmith | Daniel Tam-Claiborne on his novel Transplants at Green Apple Books on the Park | Rabbi Irwin Keller, former lawyer and drag queen, on his collection Shechinah at the Art Institute: Words, Worry, Wonder, at SFPL Main | Investigative journalist Jake Adelstein on Tokyo Vice at SFPL Main | Launch party for Dora Grents’ Done With Demons, featuring an interactive demon hunt and “grandma” dress code, at Silver Sprocket
THURSDAY First meeting of the After-Hours Reading Club at Black Bird | Samantha Rose on Giving Up the Ghost: A Daughter’s Memoir at Bird & Beckett | Susan Lieu on The Manicurist’s Daughter: A Memoir at Medicine for Nightmares | Eddie Ahn on his graphic memoir Advocate at SFPL Richmond | Crime novelist Domenic Stansberry on his trilogy of award-winning psychological noirs (with musical accompaniment!) at City Lights
FRIDAY Bookshop West Portal’s annual anniversary sale now through Monday; buy 5+ items for 20% off | Jill Damatac on Dirty Kitchen: A Memoir of Food and Family at On Waverly | Ocean Vuong on The Emperor of Gladness via Green Apple Books and Litquake is sold out (and has been for weeks!)
SATURDAY Pop-up book fair at Sports Basement | Christopher Moore on Anima Rising at Bookshop West Portal | “Unique drag reading” of Sezin Devi Koehler’s Much Ado About Keanu: A Critical Reeves Theory by Lysol Tony-Romeo and Kafka X at Medicine for Nightmares
SUNDAY Brian Copeland on Shadows of Justice: A Topher Davis Thriller at Book Passage
NEXT WEDNESDAY JUNE 4 Oakland-based author Ilana DeBare on Shaken Loose, a contemporary fantasy set in an unjust and unraveling Christian Hell, Heaven, and Mill Valley (!) at Green Apple Books on the Park; to celebrate, she’s gifting two sets of Shaken Free and precursor Shaken Loose to Same Page readers. If you’re into stories that are “magical, satirical, and full of insight about what makes us human” (Michael David Lukas), enter the giveaway here.
Book-adjacent gatherings
Not *about* books, but around them
🎞️ As part of the 25th annual San Francisco Documentary Festival, The Roxie is screening Rebel with a Clause, a docu-comedy about grammar guru Ellen Jovin’s traveling advice stand and the conversations and connections it’s sparked. Come for opinions on the Oxford comma, stay for the humanity! Thursday 5/29, 6:15pm, $20.
📷 One of my favorite things about Black Bird is the constant rotation of spectacular art on their walls. They’re holding an opening party and artist talk to celebrate the latest: Richard Sexton’s photography featuring the Outer Sunset neighborhood in the late 1970s. Friday 5/30, 7pm, free.
Let’s keep Same Page going, together.
Did you reach the end of this issue and think, wow, Same Page must be a lot of work?
It is! Same Page is a labor of love, but it’s still a labor - one that requires time and focus. So I’m seeking 200 paid subscribers by July to make it sustainable.
Paid subscribers get weekly book recommendations, priority access to giveaways, and sneak peeks for events likely to sell out. (Founding subscribers also get personalized book suggestions on request!)
THANK YOU to those of you who have upgraded. I’m encouraged by your support and kind words.
I'm grateful to you for doing time-consuming but necessary work to help strengthen the fabric of the Bay Area's in-person literary community.
It would also mean a lot if you pass Same Page along to a bookish friend or two (or more, but let’s be real, we’re all introverts here).
As always, if you have a question to ask or an event to share, I’d love to hear from you! Reply to this email or find me at hello@samepagesf.com.
Cheers,
Christina
Advance notice is my love language.
It’s the start of the month, and you know what that means: a sneak peek of the good stuff! Mark your calendar and gird your TBR.
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