LIVE! From City Lights

Barry Gifford celebrating the release of his new anthology, Roy's World: Stories 1973-2020, published by Seven Stories Press. Barry Gifford is joined by flimmaker Rob Christopher to explore the rich landscape of his seminal Roy Stores, a tie-in to the new documentary, Roy's World: Barry Gifford's Chicago. Barry Gifford writes distinctly American stories for readers around the globe. From screenplays and librettos to his acclaimed Sailor and Lula novels, Gifford's writing is as distinctive as it is difficult to classify. His novel Wild at Heart was adapted into the 1990 Palme d’Or-winning film of the same name. Gifford lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. Rob Christopher wrote, directed, and starred in the acclaimed fiction feature Pause of the Clock, which had its World Premiere at the Denver Film Festival in 2015 and screened at the Gene Siskel Film Center in 2016. He wrote the introduction to the young adult edition of Sad Stories of the Death of Kings by Barry Gifford and edited several Roy stories for publication on the website Chicagoist

Uche Nduka and Sophia Dahlin: Celebrating City Lights Spotlights Series Vol. 19 & 20. Uche Nduka reading from Facing You, Spotlight Series No. 19, and Sophia Dahlin reading from Natch, Spotlight Series No. 20. Uche Nduka is an itinerant poet and professor living in Brooklyn. He was born in Nigeria, was raised bilingual in Igbo and English, and earned his BA from the University of Nigeria. He left Nigeria in 1994 and settled in Germany after winning a fellowship from the Goethe Institute. In 2007, he immigrated to the United States, where he would earn his MFA from Long Island University, Brooklyn. Sophia Dahlin earned her BA from Bard College and her MFA from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. Her work has appeared in many journals, including BOMB, Fence, Lambda Literary, Denver Quarterly, and The Recluse. With Jacob Kahn, she edits the chapbook press Eyelet. She lives in Oakland, California, where she teaches with California Poets in the Schools.

Kerri Arsenault in conversation with Kurt Andersen discussing their two new books. Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains, by Kerri Arsenault, (St. Martin’s Press) and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, by Kurt Andersen, (Random House). This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom. Kerri Arsenault serves on the board of the National Books Critics Circle, is the Book Review Editor at Orion magazine, and Contributing Editor at Lithub. Arsenault received her MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and studied in Malmö University’s Communication for Development master’s programme. Her writing has appeared in Freeman’s, Lithub, Oprah.com, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among other publications. She lives in New England. Mill Town is her first book. Kurt Andersen is author of Heyday and Turn of the Century and frequently writes for New York and Vanity Fair. He is host and cocreator of the Peabody Award–winning public radio program Studio 360. In 2006, he founded Very Short List, an email service for connoisseurs of culture who would never call themselves "connoisseurs." He was cofounder of Spy magazine, and has been a columnist and critic for the New Yorker and Time. Andersen lives with his wife and daughters in Brooklyn.

Celebrating RESISTENCIA: Poems of Protest and Revolution with Mark Eisner, Tina Escaja, Romina Funes, Rebeca Lane, Jack Hirschman, and Jessica Powell. Co-presented by the Red Poppy Art House and Tin House Books. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom. Carolina De Robertis, Resistencia translator, a writer of Uruguayan origins, is the author of four novels, most recently Cantoras, which received a Stonewall Book Award and a Reading Women Award. Mark Eisner, co-editor of Resistencia: In 2004 Mark was involved in the early stages of the Red Poppy Art House. Tina Escaja, co-editor of Resistencia, is a Spanish American author, digital artist, and Distinguished Professor at the University of Vermont. Romina Funes, poeta, was born in General San Martin, Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1981. For the past decade, Romina has organized "Letras & Música.” Jack Hirschman, Resistencia translator, is Poet Laureate emeritus of San Francisco. Rebeca Lane, contributing poet/rapper, was born in Guatemala City. As a teenager she became involved with social movements. Jessica Powell, Resistencia translator, has published dozens of translations of literary works by a wide variety of Latin American writers.

Jenny Bhatt in conversation with Devi S. Laskar discussing Janny Bhatt's new short fiction collection, EACH OF US KILLERS: Stories, published by 7.13 Books. Set in the American Midwest, England, and India the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. This event was originally broadcast live on Zoom. Jenny Bhatt is a writer, literary translator, and literary critic. She is the host of the Desi Books podcast. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in various venues in the US, UK, and India, including NPR, The Washington Post, Electric Literature, The Atlantic, BBC Culture, Literary Hub, Longreads, The Millions, and others. Her fiction has been nominated for Pushcart Prizes and the 2017 Best American Short Stories. Devi S. Laskar is the author of The Atlas of Reds and Blues, winner of 7th annual Crook's Corner Book Prize (2020) for best debut novel set in the South, winner of the 2020 Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association; selected by The Georgia Center for the Book as a 2019 book "All Georgians Should Read," long-listed for the 9th annual DSC Prize in South Asian Literature and long-listed for the 2019 Golden Poppy Award sponsored by the NCIBA.

John Freeman celebrates his new collection of poetry, The Park, published by Copper Canyon Press. He's joined by D.A. Powell, also reading from his own new work. This event was originally broadcast on Zoom. John Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary biannual of new writing, and executive editor of Literary Hub. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing (forthcoming), as well as a trilogy of anthologies about inequality, including Tales of Two Americas: Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation, and Tales of Two Planets (forthcoming), which features storytellers from around the globe on the climate crisis. Maps, his debut collection of poems, was published in 2017. His work has been translated into more than twenty languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. He is the former editor of Granta and is a Writer in Residence at New York University. D. A. Powell is the author of five collections of poetry, including Chronic, winner of the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, and Repast: Tea,Lunch, and Cocktails. Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys received the National Book Critics Circle Award in Poetry. He lives in San Francisco.

Jennifer Worley discusses her book, Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power, published by Harper Collins. This event was originally broadcasted via Zoom. Neon Girls is 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. Jennifer Worley is a professor of English at City College of San Francisco and recently finished her term as President of the faculty union, AFT 2121. Her film Sex On Wheels, documents the history of San Francisco's sex industry and sex worker activism and has played at film festivals and universities worldwide. Her writing has appeared in Bitch, Captive Genders, Invisible Suburbs, The Queerist, and PRI's Outright Radio. [editor's note: at the time of this recording, City Lights Bookstore was only open for curbside pickup and online order. The store has since opened fully and the hours are 12-8PM every day.]

Frank Wilderson III in conversation with Justin Desmangles, discussing Frank's new book, "Afropessimism." This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. Professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson III has received an NEA Literature Fellowship and a Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award for Creative Nonfiction, among other awards. Justin Desmangles is chairman of the Before Columbus Foundation, administrator of the American Book Award, and host of the radio broadcast New Day Jazz, now in its fifteenth year. A member of the board of directors of the Oakland Book Festival, Mr. Desmangles is also a program producer at the African-American Center of the San Francisco Public Library.

Cara Black and Jacqueline Winspear discussing the writing of fiction that takes place in World War II Europe. They explore topics that closely parallel many of the issues of the day as well as discussing the challenge and complexities of placing one's writing in a dynamic historic period. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. Cara Black's most recent book is "Three Hours in Paris," published by Soho Press. Jacqueline Winspear's essay "Writing about War" will be published in the new anthology, "Private Investigations: Mystery Writers On The Secrets", "Riddles and Wonders In Their Lives," published by Seal Press. Cara Black, doyenne of the Parisian crime novel, is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this gripping story about one young woman with the temerity—and drive—to take on Hitler himself. Cara Black is also the author of the bestselling Aimee Leduc Series. The most recent release in that series being "Murder in Bel-Air" published by Soho Books. Jacqueline Winspear is the author of the Masie Dobb's Series, following the exploits of the renowned psychologist and investigator Masie Dobbs through her exploits in WW2 London. The most recent novel in the series is T"he American Agent (number 15)" published by Harper Collins. Additional books in the series include: "To Die But Once; In This Grave Hour; Journey to Munich" and many others.

Katherine Silver in conversation with Mauro Javier Cárdenas, discussing Katherine's new translations of the work of Julio Ramón Ribeyro ("The Word of the Speechless : Selected Stories," published by NYRB) and Juan Carlos Onetti ("A Dream Come True: the Complete Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti," published by Archipelago Press). This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. Katherine Silver has translated more than thirty books, mostly of literature from the Americas. Her most recent and forthcoming translations include works by María Sonia Cristoff, Julio Ramón Ribeyro, Julio Cortázar, Daniel Sada, Horacio Castellanos Moya, César Aira, and Pedro Lemebel. She has received numerous awards and prizes, including three National Endowment for the Arts translation fellowships. She was recently translator-in-residence at the University of Iowa, and is the former director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. In 2019 What Books Press published her book Echo under Story. Mauro Javier Cardenas grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and graduated with a degree in Economics from Stanford University. He's the author of The Revolutionaries Try Again (Coffee House Press). In 2016 he received a Joseph Henry Jackson Award and in 2017 the Hay Festival included him in Bogota 39, a selection of the best young Latin American novelists. His interviews and essays on/with László Krasznahorkai, Antonio Lobo Antunes, Javier Marias, Horacio Castellanos Moya, Juan Villoro, and Tatiana Huezo have appeared in Music & Literature, San Francisco Chronicle, BOMB, ZYZZYVA, and The Quarterly Conversation.