Robert Williams celebrates his new book Robert Williams: The Father of Exponential Imagination published by Fantagraphics Robert Williams: The Father of Exponential Imagination is a comprehensive, career-spanning collection of the iconic painter's fine art, including over 300 oil paintings as well as drawings, sculptures, and more. Simply put, this is the definitive volume that Williams has been working towards his entire career. In the late 20th and early 21st century, diverse forms of commonplace and popular art appeared to be…

Melville House Publishers is celebrated by City Lights! Three authors with recently released books join us for an evening of spirited discussion Malcolm Harris in conversation with Curtis White, moderated by Jenny Odell Malcolm Harris celebrates the release of SHIT IS FUCKED UP AND BULLSHIT: History Since the End of History  Curtis White celebrates the release of Living in a World that Can't Be Fixed: Reimagining Counterculture Today Jenny Odell is the author of How to Do Nothing ----------------- about…

discussing the subject of her new book Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism from Repeater Books Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good.Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it’s hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public…

Ilya Kaminski and Tess Taylor celebrating the release of Tess Taylor's Rift Zone:poems published by Red Hen Press and Last West published by Museum of Modern Art Book RIFT ZONE, Taylor's much-anticipated third book traces literal and metaphoric fault lines—rifts between past and present, childhood and adulthood, what is and what was. Circling Taylor's hometown—an ordinary California suburb lying along the Hayward fault—these poems unearth strata that include a Spanish land grant, a bloody land grab, gun violence, valley girls,…

discussing Peniel E. Joseph's new book The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. published by Basic Books This dual biography of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the twentieth century's most iconic African American leaders. To most Americans, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle…

Frank Wilderson III discussing the subject of his new book Afropessimism published by Liveright Books / W.W. Norton In the tradition of Edward Said's Orientalism and Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks, Afropessimism is an unparalleled account of the non-analogous experience of being Black. A seminal work that strikingly combines groundbreaking philosophy with searing flights of memoir, Afropessimism presents the tenets of an increasingly influential intellectual movement that theorizes blackness through the lens of perpetual slavery. Rather than interpreting slavery…

CANCELED - Maurice Carlos Ruffin reading from We Cast A Shadow published by One World About We Cast a Shadow: "An incisive and necessary" (Roxane Gay) debut for fans of Get Out and Paul Beatty's The Sellout, about a father's obsessive quest to protect his son—even if it means turning him white Longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize • "Stunning and audacious . . . at once a pitch-black comedy, a chilling horror story and an endlessly perceptive novel…

discussing the subject of his new book All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It published by Verso Books (part of the Jacobin Series) American history told from the vantage of immigration politics It is often said that with the election of Donald Trump nativism was raised from the dead. After all, here was a president who organized his campaign around a rhetoric of unvarnished racism and xenophobia. Among his first acts on taking…

celebrating the release of Little Hill published by City Lights Books Opening reading by Cedar Sigo Award-winning poet explores new formal terrain in seven long poems against the violence of the present political moment. The third full-length collection from Bay Area poet Alli Warren, Little Hill comprises seven long poems written with propulsive prosody in a daybook fashion, examining our present, politically charged moment. These poems are at once energetic and contemplative, intimate and direct, as Warren focuses her attention…

celebrating his new graphic novel Windows on the World Co-authored with Zack Anderson Illustrations by Jon Sack published by Fantagraphics Books Set in a New York City in mourning, this poignant graphic novel explores the push-and-pull between love and obligation. On the morning of September 11, 2001, an undocumented worker named Balthazar busses tables at New York City's famous Windows on the World restaurant. Back in Mexico, his family watches their TV screen in horror as the Twin Towers collapse.…

Ainissa Ramirez discussing the subject of her new book The Alchemy of Us: How Humans and Matter Transformed One Another from The MIT Press   In the bestselling tradition of Stuff Matters and The Disappearing Spoon: a clever and engaging look at materials, the innovations they made possible, and how these technologies changed us. In The Alchemy of Us, scientist and science writer Ainissa Ramirez examines eight inventions—clocks, steel rails, copper communication cables, photographic film, light bulbs, hard disks, scientific…

Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco by Alia Volz published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt A blazingly funny, heartfelt memoir from the daughter of the larger-than-life woman who ran Sticky Fingers Brownies, an underground bakery that distributed thousands of marijuana brownies per month and helped provide medical marijuana to AIDS patients in San Francisco—for fans of Armistead Maupin and Patricia Lockwood During the '70s in San Francisco, Alia's mother ran the underground Sticky Fingers Brownies, delivering…

celebrating the release of her new short fiction collection Sansei and Sensibility published by Coffee House Press Generations of Japanese Americans merge with Jane Austen's characters in these lively stories, pairing uniquely American histories with reimagined classics. In these buoyant and inventive stories, Japanese Americans shift the boundaries of Jane Austen's classic tales, questioning what inheritance—familial, cultural, artistic—really means. In ’60s California and beyond, a woman examines the contents of her dead aunt’s freezer, Mr. Darcy is captain of the…

Margaret Randall in conversation with Garrett Caples discussing the subject of Margaret Randall's new book I Never Left Home: Poet, Feminist, Revolutionary from Duke University Press In 1969, poet and revolutionary Margaret Randall was forced underground when the Mexican government cracked down on all those who took part in the 1968 student movement. Needing to leave the country, she sent her four young children alone to Cuba while she scrambled to find safe passage out of Mexico. In I Never…

celebrating the release of the the new crime fiction anthology Berkeley Noir Edited by Jerry Thompson and Owen Hill published by Akashic Books Berkeley brings its own unique blend of Bay Area noir, complementing the grit and grime that preceded it in San Francisco Noir and Oakland Noir. Akashic Books continues its award-winning series of original noir anthologies, launched in 2004 with Brooklyn Noir. Each book comprises all new stories, each one set in a distinct neighborhood or location within…

discussing the subject of their new book Killer Apps: War, Media, Machine published by Duke University Press In Killer Apps Jeremy Packer and Joshua Reeves provide a detailed account of the rise of automation in warfare, showing how media systems are central to building weapons systems with artificial intelligence in order to more efficiently select and eliminate military targets. Drawing on the insights of a wide range of political and media theorists, Packer and Reeves develop a new theory for…

Book Release Party for Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power by Jennifer Worley from Harper Collins A riveting true story of a young woman's days stripping in grunge-era San Francisco where a radical group of dancers banded together to unionize and run the club on their own terms. When graduate student Jenny Worley needed a fast way to earn more money, she found herself at the door of the Lusty Lady Theater in San Francisco, auditioning on…