LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY:Â Summer Travels
Monday, July 9th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Summer’s here, the perfect time to hit the road and … write about it!
Join us for an evening with our writers sharing stories of trips taken, to be taken, and best forgotten.
We’ll be serving wine and snacks and excellent tales of adventure and misadventure. (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Mother Tongue: A Saga of Three Generations of Balkan Women by Tania Romanov
Monday, June 11th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
What is your mother tongue? Sometimes the simplest questions take a book to answer. Tania didn’t know why she spoke Serbian, rather than Croatian, with her mother, Zora. It never occurred to her to ask until she started writing Mother Tongue.
The unrelenting consequences of 100 years of Balkan wars have forced three generations of Croatian womenâKatarina, Zora, and Taniaâto flee their homelands multiple times. Eventually, Tania, a successfully integrated American, journeys back to her fractured homeland with her mother to unravel the secrets of their shared past and history as she looks for answers.
Mother Tongue is an exploration of lives lived in the chaos of the Balkans. It follows countries that dissolved, formed, and reformed; lands that were conquered and subjugated by Fascists and Nazis and nationalists; lives lived in exile, in refugee camps, in new worlds.
âMother Tongue is a story about identity in the context of history. Romanov was born in just one place but the country she came from keeps changing as the tides of history keep sweeping over the Balkans. Framed as a journey to her parentsâ hometown in what is now Croatia, Romanovâs story is really about tracking the improbable line that led to who she is, down through her own life, her parentsâ lives and the lives of her ancestors. The Balkans are a tangle many of us tend to gloss over because we canât get inside it. With this fascinating memoir, Tania Romanov takes us there.â
âTamim Ansary, author of West of Kabul East of New York
âIn Mother Tongueâa story for our timesâwriter, photographer and world traveler Tania Romanov follows the life journeys of three generations of women (Katerina, Zora, and herself) as she pieces together a complex picture of the fragmentation, war and upheaval that has tormented the people of the area known as âthe Balkansâ for (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Confessions of a Cloak Artist by Jeff R. McGowan
Jeff R. McGowan
Monday, May 14th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Spinning rich yarns of travel, young love, and growing up in 1980’s Orange County, Jim Murphy reflects upon his life’s adventures and mishaps to discover where things went wrong along the way. From the tropical oasis of Bali, he examines whether his core principles have helped or hurt his life’s failed relationships and his pursuit of enlightenment. Where did he go wrong? And can he reinvent himself before itâs too late? What he finds is that stories hold meaning, and wounds donât have to define us.
Jeff R. McGowan graduated from UCLA in 1993, then traveled and worked his way around the world for several years. For the last eighteen years he’s taught high school Social Studies, leaving most every summer to travel and learn, and to attempt to find a way to get over himself. He has yet to do so, but remains determined in this quest. His debut novel, Confessions of a Cloak Artist, while (more…)
Rebecca Foust
Poets and friends, it’s National Poetry Month, and we are inviting you to come, have a celebratory glass of vino and read or listen to some of your own or your favorite writers’ poetry at Book Passage in the San Francisco Ferry Plaza.
Marin County Poet Laureate, Rebecca Foust, is our emcee for the evening.
No car? It’s easy to get there by bike, MUNI, BART, or S.F. Ferry.
So come, read, listen, tell your friends. Let’s raise a toast to the time-honored art of poetry.
Poets reading include: Sharon Skolnick-Bagnoli, Marianne Betterly, Elaine Bond,Todd Crawshaw, TC Currie, David Hathwell, Craig McLaughlin, Kunal Mukherjee, MJ Pramik, Carol Sheldon, Rebecca Foust and Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Emcee Rebecca Foustâs five books of poetry include Paradise Drive, reviewed in (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Abandoned Places, with Editor Chris Cornell
Chris Cornell
Monday, March 12th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Join us on Monday night for an evening with editor Chris Cornell.
In Abandoned Places, twenty-one writers embark on a tour of the lonely, the rejected and the uninhabited. This anthology of short genre fiction co-edited by Chris Cornell features stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror by rising new authors and classic tales by Ray Bradbury, Dashiell Hammett, Edgar Allen Poe and M. R. James. (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Shu Wei’s Revenge: A Young Man’s Journey Into the Depths of the Underworld by Jackson Fahnestock
Jackson Fahnestock
Monday, February 12th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
It’s the perfect prelude to a fantastic Chinese New Year and the best Chinese New Year party for the whole family.
Join us as Jackson Fahnestock introduces us to a story about strength of family and friendships, heartbreak, perseverance, and personal tragedy.
The setting is 1898 in the sleepy village of Sanhou, China. Seventeen-year-old Shu Wei, in his role as Town Scribe, makes a disastrous mistake, raising the ire of some crooked town counselors. His fatherâs business is burned to the ground by one of the villainous counselors in retaliation. To make matters worse, a tribunal of these counselors is called that summarily banishes his family from the (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Redemption: How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life by Barbara McVeigh
Barbara McVeigh
Monday, January 8th, 2018 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
“My father is a federal criminal, my father is my hero,” Barbara McVeigh writes in her memoir Redemption, How Ronald Reagan Nearly Ruined My Life. Reagan fired her father for a union strike in 1981 leading him and 11,500 other families into years of strife. She lost her dream to be an oceanographer and her guitar lessons as her family struggled emotionally and financially. She blamed her father for not placing family first. Years later she takes up sailing, her late great uncle’s passion, who had been her best friend. Then bitter truths emerge about the ocean’s health and her fourteen year marriage. Against all odds, Barbara takes the helm of her life and makes a passionate project reclaiming her childhood dreams resulting in two first time films that go international with the most important oceanographer and Brazilian guitarist of our time. Then she confronts the dark shadows of Reagan’s energy and environmental policies revealing horrific truths about America’s “Hero of the Republican Party. Her father is not the federal criminal. Her father is her hero. Barbara has a new dream now and the spirits are guiding her, as they had been all along. (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Salento by Five: Friendship, Food, Music, and Travel Within the Heel of Italy’s Boot by Audrey Fielding
Audrey Fielding
Wednesday, November 8th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Also, a little early in November, join us “in Italy” for an evening with Audrey Fielding, not on Monday, but on Wednesday eve at Book Passage in San Francisco.
Salento by 5 is a collection of richly woven Italian stories, written by three local Italians and two American travelers. A friendship begins in the Rome airport, migrates to Salento, the southernmost Italian region of Puglia, blossoms over food and wine, and culminates in a narrative filled with nostalgic and personal recollections of Salentoâs unique history, culture, and people. Enjoy the bookâs watercolor sketches, the local recipes, and off-the-beaten path travel hints that only the Salento by 5 authors can provide. Whether you are an armchair traveler or looking for a new Italian adventure in a not so well known region, Salento by 5 has a little something for everyone.
Audrey Fielding was born in Bristol, Connecticut. She served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Cuzco, Peru from 1964 to 1966 and taught at Lincoln International School and Costa Rica Academy in San Jose, Costa Rica from 1971 to 1975. For more than twenty years, she was a San Francisco educator. She began studying Italian in Perugia, Italy in (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Places in Time by Maxine Rose Schur
Maxine Rose Schur
Monday, October 9th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
If you love to travel or read well written tales of travel, you’re sure to enjoy and evening with Maxine Rose Schur and a look into her adventures. We hope you’ll drop by and celebrate the magic of a voyage bravely taken and the magic of a story well told. This event is open to the public, so please spread the word!
âAppealingly graceful âŚSchur is gentle and generous, opening herself to the mystery of others and amply rewarded for the effort.â San Francisco ChronicleâThe authorâs reflections on her life-changing journey more than thirty years later are the subject of this remarkable book. Schurâs determination ânot merely to observe, but to accept, even integrateâ with other cultures distinguishes this essay collection from most travel memoirs. More than just a collection of travel stories, Places in Time is a celebration of rural life and the healing power of community.ââForeword Magazine
âWriting with so much humor, suspense and wisdom âŚThis is what travel memoirs should be and so seldom are. ââ San Francisco Chronicle.
Maxine Rose Schur is a childrenâs book author and travel journalist. Her essays have appeared in numerous (more…)
LEFT COAST WRITERS FERRY PLAZA BOOK PARTY: Between Dog and Wolf by David Hathwell
David Hathwell
Monday, September 11th, 2017 || 6pm Book Passage || San Francisco 1 Ferry Building, San Francisco ||www.bookpassage.com
Please join us for this celebratory reading of David Hathwell’s new book, Between Dog and Wolf. The French phrase “entre chien et loup” describes those moments at twilight when the eye, no longer to be trusted, canât distinguish between a dog and a wolf. The poems in David Hathwellâs new collection take place on the thresholdâunsettling, often perilousâbetween light and darkness: between the familiar and the unknown, the expected and the unforeseen, safety and danger.
