Same Page SF | Literary journeys, provocative novels, and a whole lot to learn 🧠

Plus, meet me at Analog Night!

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.

Nearly a year ago, I dreamed up Same Page after missing one too many events I only learned about after the fact (and, as a bookseller, working one too many with no attendees). Over these last ten months I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many Same Page readers, and I’d love to meet more. I’ll be tabling this Friday at Black Bird Bookstore & Cafe’s Analog Night, a celebration of real-world craft and community. Come check it out and say hello! 👋

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 - particularly this Thursday! Read on to learn what you’ll want to attend if:

1) You’re looking for a propulsive tale of class, race, and privilege 

Regina Porter on The Rich People Have Gone Away at Booksmith. Tuesday 9/17, 7pm, free with RSVP. 

Join award-winning playwright and author Regina Porter - in conversation with R. O. Kwon - to celebrate the launch of her second novel. Set in Brooklyn in the early days of the pandemic lockdown, The Rich People Have Gone Away follows a diverse group brought together by the search for a missing pregnant woman. Kirkus praised it as “restless, intentionally unsettling … breathtaking” in a starred review.

2) You’re being watched (or doing the watching…)

Secret Nook Presents: Surveillance at Clio’s Bookstore (Oakland). Wednesday 9/18, 7pm, free.

In the infamous words of Joseph Heller, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you.” Join Secret Nook, an experimental reading series based out of Clio’s Bookstore in Oakland, for a literary excavation of surveillance (!) with readings from local authors and creatives Abigail Stewart, Erin Gravley, Hadas Goshen, Giovanna Lomanto, and Rena Tom.

3) You’re enamored by literary passages - literally and figuratively

John McMurtrie on Literary Journeys: Mapping Fictional Travels Across the World of Literature at Book Passage. Wednesday 9/18, 5:30pm, free. 

Join editor John McMurtrie to celebrate the launch of Literary Journeys, a visual guide to over seventy-five momentous journeys in the world of literature, from Homer’s Odyssey to Kerouac’s On the Road to Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. Arranged in chronological order over the course of twenty-five hundred years, they’re lovingly and vividly illustrated with paintings, engravings, photographs, and maps.

Images from Literary Journeys, courtesy of Princeton University Press

4) You want to better understand our city, our country, and our world

There’s a lot to learn - all happening this Thursday!

🏙️ Our city

Alison Owings with Del Seymour on Mayor of the Tenderloin at the Tenderloin Museum. Thursday 9/19, 5:30pm, free with RSVP. 

Oral history-based reporter Alison Owings spent nearly a decade shadowing, interviewing, and writing about Del Seymour, the “Mayor of the Tenderloin.” Her new book bears witness to his extraordinary life and provides a nuanced, on-the-ground history of the Tenderloin’s past decade. (Can’t make it Thursday? Owings will be speaking solo at Bookshop West Portal Wednesday.)

🇺🇲 Our country

• How did American politics become…whatever they are now? Hear from Heather Cox Richardson, the historian behind the explosively popular Substack Letters from an American and book Democracy Awakening: Notes on the State of America, via fireside-style chat with writer and critic Steven Winn. 9/19, 7:30pm, $75 (as always, City Arts & Lectures makes free tickets available to students and educators!).

• If you were to ask me who’s thought the most deeply - and written the most brutally and beautifully - about our country, my answer would be immediate: James Baldwin. Visit the GLBT Historical Museum for an 100th birthday party to celebrate his life and work with readings, drag performances, and cake, plus books for sale from Fabulosa. 9/19, 6-9pm, $20 (free for members).

🌍 Our world and climate 

• Join Nemonte Nenquimo and her husband and co-author Mitch Anderson at Booksmith for the release of We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People. Born into the Waorani tribe of Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest, two decades later she’s emerged as one of the most forceful voices in climate change activism. 9/19, 7pm, free with RSVP. 

• Hear from Genevieve Guenther, the founding director of End Climate Silence, on her new book The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil-Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It at City Lights in partnership with the SF Bay Chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility. 9/19, 7pm, free. 

Also 

MONDAY  Financial expert Megan Gorman on All the Presidents' Money: How the Men Who Governed America Governed Their Money

TUESDAY  Investigative journalist Mara Kardas-Nelson on We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky: The Seductive Promise of Microfinance at Book Passage  |  Global justice organizers Stephanie Guilloud, Anuradha Mittal, Merle Payne and David Solnit on City Lights-published anthology Globalize Liberation: How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World via Zoom  |  Chilean-born journalist and writer Cristián Opacho on Engaños Mutuos: El Golpe Gringo at Medicine for Nightmares  |  Arielle Egozi on Being Bad: Breaking the Rules and Becoming Everything You’re Supposed to Be at Fabulosa  |  Rhymes for Reform via KQED Live featuring SF Poet Laureate Tongo Eisen-Martin

WEDNESDAY  Wordnight presented by USF’s English Department and MFA program at Booksmith  |  Sex-positive author and activist Carol Queen reading from her memoir-in-progress at SFPL Main

THURSDAY   Speaking Axolotl, the Bay Area’s long-running Latinx reading series, featuring Jozer Guerrero and Xochiquetzal Candelaria  |  Sharon K. Gillenwater on Scaling with Soul at Book Passage

FRIDAY  Meeting of the Marina Girls Book Club to discuss The Fiancé Dilemma by Elena Armas at Tacolicious  |  Tim Z. Hernandez on They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir via City Lights Zoom  |  Hyeseung Song on her debut Docile: Memoirs of a Not-So-Perfect Asian Girl in conversation with Grace Loh Prasad

SATURDAY  New Orleans-based chef Nini Nguyen on Dǎc Biêt: An Extra Special Vietnamese Cookbook at Omnivore  |  Book-signing and photo opportunity with Tue Nguyen for Di An: The Salty, Sour, Sweet and Spicy Flavors of Vietnamese Cooking with TwayDaBae at Book Passage  |  Batman Day 2024 at Mission: Comics and Art  |  Book-signing and photo opportunity with pop star Joanna “Jojo” Levesque of “Leave (Get Out)” and “Too Little, Too Late” fame for her memoir Over the Influence  |  Jandy Nelson on When The World Tips Over at Books Inc. Opera Plaza  |  Launch party for Yasmeen Abedifard’s When To Pick a Pomegranate, a collection of contemplative and cathartic short comics, at Silver Sprocket 

SUNDAY  Meeting of the SF Silent Book Club at Obscenity Bar & Lounge  |  Joy Neumeyer on A Survivor's Education: Women, Violence, and the Stories We Don’t Tell at Book Passage

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Local & literary news

Last week 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  |  Illustrator Jenny Jedeikin’s virtual four-week workshop, Write About Your Life in a Comic Strip, kicks off Thursday via Book Passage Zoom  |  Four of the former owners and booksellers of Folio Books plan to reopen in the same space as Noe Valley Books this fall  |  The schedule for Litquake 2024, the largest independent literary festival on the West Coast, has been published (and it looks amazing!)

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Book-adjacent gatherings 

Not *about* books, but around them

• 🎨 Friends & Neighbors SF is hosting All-Star Art Club, a communal art party and potluck. Bring a creative project to work on alongside other artists - the novel you’re writing, a podcast to edit, or the idea you just can’t get out of your head. Tuesday 9/17, 5-10pm, $10 donation requested.

• 🎉 Black Bird Bookstore & Cafe is back with Analog Night - stop by for food, music, wine, and the first-ever Black Bird Flea Market (curated by staff and friends - including yours truly!). Friday 9/20, 7-9pm, free. 

• 🎶 The SFPL Park is welcoming musicians from the San Francisco Symphony for a chamber concert and talk. They’ll be performing classical pieces from a range of composers and sharing their experiences as members of the Symphony. Saturday 9/21, 3-4pm, free.

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Cheers,

Christina

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Book recommendations are my love language.

A bonus for paid subscribers: each week I feature a book I’ve recently read and want to recommend. If you’re into literary fiction that’s part satire, part thriller - think Yellowface by R.F. Kuang - this one’s for you.