Same Page SF | Garth Greenwell, three Saturday readings, and the history of the bodice-ripper 👗
Plus, did you know elephants can hear through their feet?
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 share and signal-boost author events, book clubs, new releases, and community gatherings happening across our city.
On to the goings-on!
No matter how old I get, I still think of September as back-to-school season - and it would appear the literary world does, too. Here’s what you’ll want to attend if:
1) You’re intrigued by the power of deep listening
Elizabeth Rosner on Third Ear: Reflections on the Art and Science of Listening at the Helen Crocker Russell Library of Horticulture (Botanical Gardens). Tuesday 9/10, 5pm, free with RSVP.
In partnership with Green Apple, join Elizabeth Rosner at the Botanical Gardens to celebrate her new book Third Ear, which weaves together personal narrative and scholarly inquiry to examine the power of listening. A daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rosner shares stories from growing up in a home where six languages were spoken to interrogate how psychotherapy, neurolinguistics, and creativity can illuminate the complex ways humans - and other species! - are impacted by the sounds and silences of others.
2) You’ve been awaiting Garth Greenwell’s newest for years
Garth Greenwell on Small Rain at Green Apple Books on the Park and via Zoom. Wednesday 9/11, 7pm, free.
Join acclaimed author Garth Greenwell, whose previous works were finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award (among others!), to celebrate his eagerly anticipated new novel. Small Rain follows a man in medical crisis; confined to bed and plunged into the dysfunctional American healthcare system, he struggles to understand what’s happening to his body as someone who has lived primarily in his mind. Kaveh Akbar called it “a classic, a dawn serenade, a little miracle of exigent joy. I'll be rereading it the rest of my life.”
3) You’re obsessed with Bridgerton and early erotic literature
Bridgerton and the Bodice-Ripper at Bartlett Hall Restaurant and Brewery. Wednesday 9/11, 6-8:30pm, $13.50 in advance or $17 at door.
Profs and Pints San Francisco, which brings scholars into bars, cafés, and other off-campus venues to share their knowledge (a concept that brings my nerdy heart joy!), is welcoming Professor Julia Fawcett, an expert on daily life in eighteenth-century London, for an “examination of the hit Netflix drama in the context of boundary-pushing erotic literature.” Learn how so-called bodice-rippers experimented with radical ideas about sex, gender, race, class, and privacy. Period attire encouraged!
4) You’re into “California noir”
Ruth Madievsky on All-Night Pharmacy at Fabulosa. Thursday 9/12, 7pm, free with RSVP.
Join Ruth Madievsky for a discussion of her bestseller All-Night Pharmacy, now out in paperback. A fever dream of an LA novel about an unnamed young woman who commits a drunken act of violence just before her charismatic and domineering sister vanishes, Believer said it “feels like a Phoebe Bridgers song - spooky and sexy, stringing pop culture together with the abject, and always swelling with feeling.”
5) You’d like to hear from not one but many authors
You’ve got options - all happening this Saturday 9/14!
The 2024 Asian American Literary Festival is kicking off with a book fair at Kearny Street Workshop and Chinese Culture Center featuring a keynote address from poet and activist Nellie Wong and readings from participating authors. 4-7pm, free. (They’ve also got some spectacular events coming up the following week - see their full schedule here.)
Babylon Salon is back at The Sycamore’s outdoor patio for their fall show. Readers include Leigh Lucas, whose chapbook Landsickness is one of the most memorable I’ve read in years, Dominic Lim, Sheri T. Joseph, Naomi J. Williams, and Caroline Paul. 5:30pm, free.
In partnership with Telegraph Hill Arts and Literature, Telegraph Hill Books is hosting Indigenous Stories Night, with readings from Jon Hickey, Brendan Basham, and Matt Kizer. 7-9pm, free with RSVP.
Also
MONDAY Local author Doug Goodkin on Jazz, Joy, and Justice: The Stories Every American Should Know at Green Apple Books on the Park | Jenny Rosenstrach on Get Simple at Omnivore | Bimonthly meeting of Babes Who Book at Sour Cherry Comics
TUESDAY Poetic Tuesdays with MoAD at Yerba Buena Gardens | Jared Stearns on Pure: The Sexual Revolution of Marilyn Chambers at Fabulosa | Open Mic Night at SFPL Park | Melina Gaze and Sucia Urrea of Vulgar, the bilingual sex-ed and research collective based in Mexico City, on their contribution to new anthology The People’s Book of Human Sexuality via SFPL Zoom | Virtual launch for Elif Shafak’s new novel There Are Rivers in the Sky via City Lights Zoom
WEDNESDAY Open Mic Night at Black Bird hosted by Laura Booth | Zine Swap at Sour Cherry Comics | Poesía en Fulton at SFPL Main | InFocus: An Open Forum for Diverse Storytellers at Chase Center | adrienne maree brown on Loving Corrections, a roadmap towards collective power, righting wrongs, and true belonging, via City Lights Zoom
THURSDAY Poolside Poets presented by Decentered Arts at the Phoenix Hotel | Professor and author Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús on Excited Delirium: Race, Police Violence, and the Invention of a Disease at Book Passage | Urban design critic John King on Portal: San Francisco’s Ferry Building and the Reinvention of American Cities at the Center for Architecture + Design | Workshop on speculative fiction and world-building at Mechanics’ Institute
FRIDAY Launch party for Lucky Star Magazine at Adobe Books
SATURDAY 15th Anniversary Party for Mission: Comics | 50th Anniversary Party (!) for Russian Hill Bookstore | Day Dreamer’s Poetry Showcase at Medicine for Nightmares | Book-signing, wine, and bites to celebrate Tu David Phu’s The Memory of Taste: Vietnamese American Recipes from Phú Quoc, Oakland, and the Spaces Between | Meet-and-greet with Food Network star Tyler Florence for his new cookbook American Grill at the Ferry Building | Artist Chitra Ganesh on Tiger in the Looking Glass at Gallery Wendi Norris | Poetry in Parks, an all-ages literary festival held in a different state park each year, at San Rafael’s China Camp Village
SUNDAY Writer-director Clement Goldberg on their debut novel New Mistakes, in which “classic human follies of desire and ambition foreground a revelatory awakening the planet needs,” at Fabulosa | AI researcher Pedro Domingos on his first novel 2040: A Silicon Valley Satire at Book Passage | Steve Sando on The Bean Book at Omnivore | Meeting of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Book Club at Borderlands to discuss Trust by Hernan Diaz | SF in SF presents Annalee Newitz, Andrea Stewart & Julia Vee at the The Lost Church
Local & literary news
Genny Lim has been chosen as SF’s ninth Poet Laureate Fall classes at The Writer’ Grotto are open for registration | Two weeks to complete the Summer Reading Challenge held by Green Apple Books and Friends & Neighbors | Green Apple Books is partnering with The Fillmore to celebrate their fall 2024 season, with a limited-edition tote bag and ticket giveaways at their three locations | Book Passage is welcoming Matthew Félix for his virtual creativity-focused book club, back by popular demand
Book-adjacent gatherings
Not *about* books, but around them
🧑🏫 Medicine for Nightmares is hosting You Are Not A Loan!, a teach-in with Debt Collective. Learn how they’re organizing alongside labor and tenant unions to combat the financialization of basic needs like housing, education and healthcare. Wednesday 9/11, 6-8:30pm, free.
🫢 DNA Lounge is hosting Mortified, a comic excavation of teen-angst artifacts - journals, poems, letters, lyrics, home movies, schoolwork - as shared by their original authors. Prepare to laugh, cry, and cringe! Friday 9/13, 7:30-9:30pm, general admission is $20 in advance and $30 at the door.
🧶 Black Bird Bookstore and Cafe is welcoming fiber artist (and part-time bookseller!) Ahndiya of Ahndiya Studio for a backyard crochet pop-up Sunday afternoon. She’ll also offer a two-hour workshop; you can bring your own supplies or purchase a beginner’s kit. Sunday 9/15, 12-4pm, $50 for the class.
Phew!
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Cheers,
Christina
Book recommendations are my love language.
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