LIVE! From City Lights

(From March 2019, during our Ferlinghetti at 100 celebrations) Ronald K.L. Collins and David M. Skover discuss the subject of their book, "The People v. Ferlinghetti : The Fight to Publish Allen Ginsberg's HOWL," published by Rowman & Littlefield. Opening statement by Malcolm Margolin. Lawrence Ferlinghetti's name does not appear in any First Amendment treatise or casebook. And yet when the best-selling poet and proprietor of City Lights Books was indicted under California law for publishing and selling Allen Ginsberg's poem, Howl, Ferglinghetti buttressed the tradition of dissident expression and ended an era when minds were still closed, candid literature still taboo, and when selling banned books was considered a crime. Ronald K.L. Collins is Harold S. Shefelman Scholar, University of Washington School of Law. David M. Skover is Fredric C. Tausend Professor of Law, Seattle University School of Law. Together they have coauthored several books including The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon (Sourcebooks, 2002) and On Dissent: Its Meaning in America (Cambridge, 2013)

Maxim Osipov reading excerpts in Russian of his new book, "Rock, Paper, Scissors and Other Stories," published by New York Review Books in translation. The new edition from NYRB was translated by Boris Dralyuk, Alex Fleming, and Anne Marie Jackson; edited by Boris Dralyuk. Joining Maxim to read passages from the book in English is Sabrina Jaszi. Maxim Osipov (b. 1963) is a Russian writer and cardiologist. In the early 1990s he was a research fellow at the University of California, San Francisco, before returning to Moscow, where he continued to practice medicine and also founded a publishing house that specialized in medical, musical, and theological texts. In 2005, while working at a local hospital in Tarusa, a small town ninety miles from Moscow, Osipov established a charitable foundation to ensure the hospital’s survival. Since 2007, he has published short stories, novellas, essays, and plays, and has won a number of literary prizes for his fiction. He has published five collections of prose, and his plays have been staged all across Russia. Osipov’s writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives in Tarusa.

Gibby Haynes reading from his new novel, Me & Mr. Cigar, published by Soho Press. From the wild and wonderful mind of Gibby Haynes––world famous Butthole Surfers front man/lyricist and self-proclaimed eternal Texan adolescent––comes the surreal tale of seventeen-year-old Oscar Lester and his trusted dog, Mr. Cigar. Gibby Haynes is a musician, visual artist, writer, and filmmaker best known as a founding member of the Butthole Surfers, whose outrageous concerts spawned a global cult following and whose albums have sold millions worldwide. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. Me & Mr. Cigar is his first novel.

(From June 2019) Elliott Sharp in conversation with David Rothenberg to celebrate the release of two new books: "Nightingales in Berlin: Searching for the Perfect Sound" by David Rothenberg, published by University of Chicago Press and "IrRational Music" by Elliott Sharp published by Terra Nova Books. David Rothenberg is the Series Editor of Terra Nova Books and is distinguished professor of philosophy and music at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is the author of many books investigating music in nature, including Why Birds Sing, Survival of the Beautiful, and Bug Music: How Insects Gave Us Rhythm and Noise. His writings have been translated into more than eleven languages and among his twenty one music CDs is One Dark Night I Left My Silent House, on ECM. Elliott Sharp is a composer and multi-instrumentalist. He was awarded the Berlin Prize in Music in 2015 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014. His composition "Storm of the Eye" for violinist Hilary Hahn appeared on her Grammy-winning album In 27 Pieces.

A very special musical episode! Benedicte Maurseth discussing her book, "To Be Nothing: Conversations with Knut Hamre, Hardanger Fiddle Master," published by Terra Nova Press. Benedicte Maurseth is a Norwegian folk musician, composer, and writer. She began her study of the Hardanger fiddle with Knut Hamre at the age of eight. She has toured in Norway and internationally, and has made several recordings on Grappa and ECM. In 2017 she was awarded the NOPA Music Prize for her outstanding contribution to the Norwegian music scene. Terra Nova Books aim to show how environmental issues have cultural and artistic components, in addition to the scientific and political. Combining essays, reportage, fiction, art, and poetry, Terra Nova Books reveal the complex and paradoxical ways the natural and the human are continually redefining each other.

ZYZZYVA celebrates their 117th issue, the Bay Area Issue with an all-star lineup (in order of appearance): Paul Wilner, Meg Hurtado Bloom, Rita Bullwinkel, Kevin Simmonds, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Chia-Chia Lin. Hosted by ZYZZYVA managing editor Oscar Villalon. Paul Wilner is a poet, critic, freelance journalist, and member of the National Book Critics Circle, and a frequent contributor to ZYZZYVA. Meg Hurtado Bloom received her MFA in Creative Writing from St Mary's College of California. Her writing has appeared in Calamity, Lumen, Split Lip, Yellow Chair Review, The Volta, the Columbia Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Rita Bullwinkel is the author of the story collection Belly Up, which won the 2018 Believer Book Award, and is currently being translated into Italian and Greek. Bullwinkel’s writing has been published in Tin House, Conjunctions, BOMB, Vice, NOON, and Guernica. Kevin Simmonds’s books include the poetry collection Bend to It (Salmon Poetry) and Mad for Meat (Salmon Poetry). His work has been published in American Scholar, FIELD, Poetry, and elsewhere. Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s first novel, Fruit of the Drunken Tree (Doubleday), is an Indie Next selection, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and a New York Times editor's choice. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Buzzfeed, Nylon, and Guernica, among others. Chia-Chia Lin is the author of The Unpassing (FSG), a finalist for the 2019 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. Her short stories and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, NewYorker.com, The New York Times, and elsewhere. ZYZZYVA was founded in 1985 in San Francisco with the goal of publishing a superb literary journal featuring West Coast poets, writers, and artists from a wide range of backgrounds. Since then, the journal has evolved into a nationally distributed, widely acclaimed publication also showcasing contributors from across the country and even from around the world. 2020 marks ZYZZYVA’s 35th anniversary.

(From November 2018) Kevin Killian reads from his book, Fascination, published by Semiotext(e) and edited by Andrew Durbin. A memoir of gay life in 1970s Long Island by one of the leading proponents of the New Narrative movement. Fascination brings together an early memoir, Bedrooms Have Windows (1989) and a previously unpublished prose work, Bachelors Get Lonely, by the poet and novelist Kevin Killian, one of the founding members of the New Narrative movement. The two together depict the author's early years struggling to become a writer in the sexed-up, boozy, drug-ridden world of Long Island's North Shore in the 1970s. It concludes with Triangles in the Sand, a new, previously unpublished memoir of Killian's brief affair in the 1970s with the composer Arthur Russell. Fascination offers a moving and often funny view of the loneliness and desire that defined gay life of that era—a time in which Richard Nixon's resignation intersected with David Bowie's Diamond Dogs—from one of the leading voices in experimental gay writing of the past thirty years. “Move along the velvet rope,” Killian writes in Bedrooms Have Windows, “run your shaky fingers past the lacquered Keith Haring graffito: 'You did not live in our time! Be Sorry!'” Kevin Killian was a San Francisco-based poet, novelist, playwright, and art writer. Recent books include the poetry collections Tony Greene Era and Tweaky Village. He is the coauthor of Poet Be Like God: Jack Spicer and the San Francisco Renaissance. With Dodie Bellamy, he coedited Writers Who Love Too Much: New Narrative Writing, 1977–1997.

Carmen Maria Machado with Esmé Weijun Wang in conversation and celebrating the release of Carmen Maria Machado's In The Dream House: A Memoir, published by Graywolf Press. Event co-sponsored by Asian Women's Shelter, Communities United Against Violence, and The California chapter of Survived and Punished. Carmen Maria Machado is the author of Her Body and Other Parties, a finalist for the National Book Award. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she is the writer in residence at the University of Pennsylvania and lives in Philadelphia with her wife. Esmé Weijun Wang is the author of The Collected Schizophrenias and The Border of Paradise. She received the Whiting Award in 2018 and was named one of Granta's Best of Young American Novelists of 2017. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan and lives in San Francisco. RESOURCES: Asian Women's Shelter (AWS) was founded in 1988 to address the needs of women, children and transgender survivors of domestic violence and human trafficking, especially those who are immigrants and refugees. The survivors we work with every day embody the true meaning of courage, hope, and determination. They inspire our unrelenting commitment to end violence in our families, communities, and world. Visit: www.sfaws.org Founded in 1979, Communities United Against Violence (CUAV) works to build the power of LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer) communities to transform violence and oppression. We support the healing and leadership of those impacted by abuse and mobilize our broader communities to replace cycles of trauma with cycles of safety and liberation. As part of the larger social justice movement, CUAV works to create truly safe communities where everyone can thrive. Visit: www.cuav.org The California chapter of Survived and Punished is a collective of about 15 people who are survivors (including survivors who are formerly incarcerated), community organizers, attorneys, victim advocates, policy experts, and scholars. They are building relationships with survivors who are incarcerated at the Central California Women's Facility in Chowchilla, the biggest women’s prison in the U.S. As part of this process, S&P partnered with TGI Justice Project and CCWP in 2018 to launch a survey to hundreds of survivors in women’s and men’s prisons in California. To leanr more visit: survivedandpunished.org

Celebrating the new issue of Freeman's: "The Best New Writing on California," published by Grove. Hosted by John Freeman with readings by Tommy Orange, Rabih Alameddine, Lauren Markham, H.R. Smith, Shobha Rao, Oscar Villalon, and Jaime Cortez. The sixth Freeman's brilliantly showcases some of the world's best writers grappling with the myths and reality of California today. John Freeman was the editor of Granta until 2013. His books include How to Read a Novelist, Tales of Two Cities, Tales of Two Americas, and Maps, his debut collection of poems. He is executive editor at the Literary Hub and teaches at the New School and New York University. His work has appeared in the New Yorker and the Paris Review and has been translated into twenty languages.

(From April 2019) Heather Dundas in conversation with David Wade celebrating the release of Foucault in California : A True Story—Wherein the Great French Philosopher Drops Acid in the Valley of Death by Simeon Wade, Foreword by Heather Dundas, and published by Heyday Books. In The Lives of Michel Foucault, David Macey quotes the iconic French philosopher as speaking "nostalgically…of 'an unforgettable evening on LSD, in carefully prepared doses, in the desert night, with delicious music, [and] nice people.'" This came to pass in 1975, when Foucault spent Memorial Day weekend in Southern California at the invitation of Simeon Wade—ostensibly to guest-lecture at the Claremont Graduate School where Wade was an assistant professor, but in truth to explore what he called the Valley of Death. Led by Wade and Wade's partner Michael Stoneman, Foucault experimented with psychedelic drugs for the first time; by morning he was crying and proclaiming that he knew Truth. Foucault in California is Wade’s firsthand account of that long weekend. Felicitous and often humorous prose vaults readers headlong into the erudite and subversive circles of the Claremont intelligentsia: parties in Wade’s bungalow, intensive dialogues between Foucault and his disciples at a Taoist utopia in the Angeles Forest (whose denizens call Foucault "Country Joe"); and, of course, the fabled synesthetic acid trip in Death Valley, set to the strains of Bach and Stockhausen. Part search for higher consciousness, part bacchanal, this book chronicles a young man’s burgeoning friendship with one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers.