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Poets notice what other people miss. Nationally-known poet Molly Fisk's Blow-Drying a Chicken ($14.89), is a book on love, death, grammar, lingerie, small towns, and the natural world that will get you laughing, crying, and thinking.
Poet Molly Fisk writes weekly essays for community radio stations in California, Colorado, Illinois and Wisconsin. She's the author of the poetry collections, The More Difficult Beauty, Listening to Winter, and Salt Water Poems. Fisk has been awarded grants by the National Endowment for the Arts, the California Arts Council, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She's the owner of Poetry Boot Camp (poetrybootcamp.com).
I Know (Je sais) ($20.00) is a collection of 469 observations on life and the universe by a scientist whose eye for detail is keen and whose sense of humor is refreshing. Translated from the French by the author with Sixteen Rivers poet Lynne Knight, and published by Sixteen Rivers Press in a bilingual edition, the book is profound without being ponderous, instructive without being pedantic, and engaging even at its most serious. Although I Know (Je sais) was inspired by Brainard's I Remember and Perec's Je me souviens, it remains unique. Thanks to the author's unusually perceptive and fluid mind, the range of the book is enormous, from light rays and irony to the animal world to human love and disappointment.
Ito Naga is the nom de plume of a prominent French astrophysicist living in Paris. He is the author of three books, all published in France by Cheyne éditeur: NGC 224 (2013); Iro mo ka mo, la couleur et le parfum (2010), now in its third printing; and Je sais (2006), now in its seventh printing. He also contributes regularly to the Italian journal Sud.
Left Coast Writers Book Launch!
When Lynne Ashdown, her new lover, and more than fifty Italian male cyclists departed Italy in June of 1990, no one had yet ventured into the long-closed reaches of Eastern Europe since the falling of the Iron Curtain more than forty years before. They would be cycling almost a thousand miles from Verona, across Northern Italy, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland to Warsaw, in just ten days. Ashdown hadn't realized she would be the only woman cycling with the fifty-four men.
One American Woman Fifty Italian Men ($17.95) tells not only of a sweeping journey of adventure, romantic disaster, and cultural collision, but also of a revelation of Ashdown's identity, forged by her will in the constant pain of trying to keep up with the men who were stronger. This trip back in time shows the stark contrasts between the world she knew as an American and the world she saw in impoverished Eastern Europe. This true story, rich with images of the countries the cycled through, describes the warmth and the cycling lives of the Italians, as well as the lives of people who lived under communism for so long and the values that survive all governments.
Besides cycling across Eastern Europe, Lynne Ashdown has cycled alone halfway across the U.S., and through Germany, France, Italy, and Greece. Recently she walked 400 miles alone across northern Spain on the Santiago de Compostela Pilgrimage Trail. She is a writer, a searcher, and an incurable adventurer, specializing in over-reaching. At 42 she earned her B.A. from U.C. Berkeley in (Third World) Development Studies, where she also studied journalism. She wrote always in the context of her work, taking inspiration from great writers, from years of seminars and writers' groups, and from her travels, writing her adventures for magazines and newspapers. She worked as a singer-guitarist while raising her children, and as a highly-certified feng shui practitioner for over twenty years.
Please note: this event is cancelled.
The 7 Secrets of World Class Athletes ($16.45) takes you into the minds of super-star athletes when they are on top of their game. The fascinating concept is that regardless of what sport they are playing, they have to be experiencing identical processes in their minds. That is because the mind-body connection works the same for everyone.
Buddy Biancalana is a retired Major League Baseball shortstop. Biancalana played for two teams in his career: the Kansas City Royals (1982–1987) and Houston Astros (1987). Biancalana was a member of the Royals team that won the World Series in 1985.
Celebrating educators, who go far above and beyond the call of duty, American Teacher: Heroes in the Classroom ($45.00) shines a spotlight on one of the most underappreciated, undercompensated, yet critically important professions in the world. Over the course of two years, Katrina Fried has interviewed and written the stories of 50 extraordinary teachers from kindergarten through 12th grade, selected from public and charter schools across the United States. The result is a collection of inspiring and informative first person-narratives accompanied by heartfelt letters from students and captivating portraits taken by celebrated photographers from around the country such as Peter Feldstein, Roman Cho, Paul Natkin and Laura Straus.
Katrina Fried has previously written Everyday Heroes: 50 Americans Changing The World One Nonprofit At A Time, American Farmer, and as Senior Editor and Assoc. Publisher of Welcome Books has edited or produced numerous award-winning and bestselling titles including: Artists in Love, The Oxford Project, Gay in America, The Last Good War, Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town, Cooking with Italian Grandmothers, Primal Cuts, On The Street, and Red Carpet. Creating unique visual narratives that push the boundaries and traditional limitations of illustrated books is her greatest passion. She lives and works in NYC and Northern CA.
You can watch Katrina and one of the teachers on MSNBC here, read Katrina's piece "8 Teachers You'll Wish You Had When You Were in School" on Education Nation here, and read "The 12 Rules the Best Teachers Live By" on the Huffington Post here.
John Muir (1848-1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, whose writings contributed to the preservation of Yosemite and other natural parks, and helped spark the modern environmental movement. He is the founder of the Sierra Club, which numbers hundreds of thousands of members. John Muir: Spritiual Writings ($20.00) draws on his letters, journals, and other writings, to explore the deep spiritual dimension of his affinity with nature an aspect of his work that is seldom explored.
Tim Flinders is the author of Sacred Surround: The Thought and Spirituality of Thomas Berry. An educator and writer, he lectures on contemplative spirituality at the Sophia Center, Holy Names University, Oakland, CA and is a research fellow at the Spirituality and health Institute, Santa Clara University. He and his wife Carol are founders of the Two Rock Institute in Tomales, California.
Since opening Manresa in Los Gatos in 2002, David Kinch has done more to create a sense of place through his food—specifically where the Santa Cruz Mountains meet the sea—than any other chef on the West Coast.
The restaurant's thought-provoking dishes and unconventional pairings draw on techniques both traditional and modern that combine with the heart of the Manresa experience: fruits and vegetables. Through a pioneering collaboration between farm and restaurant, nearby Love Apple Farms supplies nearly all of the restaurant's exquisite produce. Manresa: An Edible Reflection ($50.00) is an ode to the mountains, fields, and sea; it shares the philosophies and passions of a brilliant chef whose restaurant draws its inspiration globally, while always keeping a profound connection to the people, producers, and bounty of the land that surrounds it.
David Kinch's distinctive style of American cooking has placed him on the world culinary map and assured his legacy in the advancement of California cuisine. He was named Best Chef: Pacific by the James Beard Foundation and Chef of the Year by GQ, and his restaurant, Manresa, holds two Michelin stars. He lives in Northern California.
What do you do while waiting at a red light? Your mind wanders and you think of sometimes funny, sometimes serious, sometimes quirky stuff. You watch the world go on around you. Waiting at Red Lights ($14.95) by Ed Baxter is just that. Thoughts that pop into and fly out of your mind so quickly you have to record them.
Ed is a member of the Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame, spent over three decades at broadcast icon KGO in San Francisco. He substituted for Paul Harvey on the country's number one radio broadcast through much of the nineties. Along the way he picked up more than 50 journalism awards including the Edward R. Murrow award for "Best Newscast". So most of his friends and advisors told him to write a book recounting his experiences. Ed chose these reflections instead.
In Return of the Light: A Political Fable in Which the American People Retake Their Country ($10.95), it is the night of the Winter Solstice in 2120. At one of thousands of community gatherings across the United States, a storyteller does the annual retelling of how, back in 2023, a decade-long movement culminated in the people taking over their own government, making it a means for mobilizing their collective power to promote peace, social justice, environmental responsibility, and a society hospitable to the needs of the human spirit.
Part vision of the road forward for today's concerned citizens, part organizing tool, this novel is a wonderful source of hope and inspiration.
Michael Goldstein blogs in the Huffington Post and OpenSalon.com, focusing on the need to move beyond the teeter-totter of the two-party system and the means to do so. Goldstein works as a mediator and death-penalty appeals lawyer in Northern California
Attending speakers include:
Gregg Chadwick
Joyce Jenkins
Erin Byrne
Georgia Hesse
Linda Watanabe McFerrin
Mikkel Aaland
Willis Barnstone
"The Dude" himself, Jeff Dowd,
In Burning the Midnight Oil ($15.95), word-wrangler extraordinaire Phil Cousineau has gathered an eclectic and electric collection of soulful poems and prose from great thinkers throughout the ages. Whether beguiling readers with glorious poetry or consoling them with prayers from fellow restless souls, Cousineau can relieve any insomniac's unease. From St. John of the Cross to Annie Dillard, Beethoven to "The Song of Songs, " this refreshingly insightful anthology soothes and inspires all who struggle through the dark of the night. The night writers in Cousineau's vesperal collection range from saints, poets, and shamans to astronomers and naturalists, and tells of ancient tales and shining passages from the most brilliant (albeit insomniac) writers of today. These poetic ponderances sing of the falling darkness, revel in dream-time, convey the ache of melancholy, conspire against sleeplessness, vanquish loneliness, contemplate the night sky, rhapsodize on love, and languorously greet the first rays of dawn.
Phil Cousineau is an award-winning writer and filmmaker, teacher and editor, independent scholar and travel leader, storyteller and TV host. His fascination with art, literature, and the history of culture has taken him from Michigan to Marrakesh, Iceland to the Amazon, in a worldwide search for what the ancients called "the soul of the world." The author of 26 nonfiction books, he's a freelance writer, filmmaker, and an expert on film and mythology. He lives in San Francisco.
Alice Waters, the iconic food luminary, presents 200 new recipes that
share her passion for the many delicious varieties of vegetables,
fruits, and herbs that you can cultivate in your own kitchen garden or
find at your local farmers' market.
A beautiful vegetable-focused book, The Art of Simple Food II: Recipes, Flavor, and Inspiration from the New Kitchen Garden ($35.00) showcases flavor as inspiration and embodies Alice's vision for eating what grows in the earth all year long. She shares her understanding of the whole plant, demystifying the process of growing and cooking your own food, and reveals the vital links between taste, cooking, gardening, and taking care of the land. Along the way, she inspires you to feed yourself deliciously through the seasons. Advice for growing your own fruits and vegetables abounds in the book—whether you are planting a garden in your backyard or on your front porch or fire escape. It is gleaned from her close relationships with local, sustainable farmers.
Alice Waters is the owner of Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkeley, California. She founded the Edible Schoolyard Project and has received the French Legion of Honor and three James Beard Awards. Her most recent books are the New York Times bestsellers 40 Years of Chez Panisse and The Art of Simple Food, as well as In the Green Kitchen and The Edible Schoolyard: A Universal Idea.
Sat., Jan. 4 • 10:00-4:00pm • $105
Character is in the foreground of all fiction. This class shows how to create dynamic characters that will emotionally engage the reader. Writing exercises are designed to fold into a work in progress, whether it's a novel, short story, or nonfiction work.
Nina Schuyler is the author of the novels The Translator and The Painting, and many short stories. She teaches creative writing in the graduate program at USF.
In this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks"--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity in Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time ($30.00).
Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and 22 recipes.
Adrian Miller is a writer, attorney, and certified barbecue judge who lives in Denver, CO. He served as a special assistant to President Bill Clinton, a senior policy analyst for Colorado Governor Bill Ritter Jr., and a Southern Foodways Alliance board member.
The Absence of Mercy ($14.99) centers on the peaceful town of Wintersville, Ohio—a place where neighbors feel more like family, the Chief of Police knows the residents by name, and the sound of children's laughter echoes along the neighborhood streets. That is, until the dead body of a fifteen-year-old boy is discovered in the woods near town, and a brutal attack on a sixteen-year-old girl follows soon after, scarring this once "safe" town forever.
As the town's medical examiner, Dr. Ben Stevenson, becomes involved in the investigation and more clues emerge, he begins to fear for the safety of his wife and two sons—eight-year-old Joel and sixteen-year-old Thomas—and ultimately he is forced to confront a truth that will haunt him forever.
John Burley attended medical school in Chicago and completed his emergency medicine residency training at University of Maryland Medical Center/Shock Trauma in Baltimore. He currently serves as an emergency medicine physician in northern California, where he lives with his wife, daughter, Great Dane, and English Bulldog. This is his first novel.
Francis Weller, psychotherapist and author of Entering the Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual and the Soul of the World ($15.95), will offer an afternoon talk on the ways grief touches our lives. He will delve into the soul's relationship with grief, how grief shared deepens our capacity for compassion and eases the congested sorrows that cloud our hearts. He will explore the obstacles to grief that hinder our ability to empty the bowl of grief we carry and recall that "Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."
Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist. To further this work, he founded and directs WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from traditional cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western cultures. Francis received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin Green Bay and two Master's Degrees from John F. Kennedy University in Clinical Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology. His writings have appeared in anthologies and journals exploring the confluence between psyche, nature and culture.
Embodying the selfless love, miraculous energy, dazzling grace, pure joy, and unfathomable mystery of the Divine Mother, Amma embraces and comforts millions of people around the world, providing food, housing, health care, education, and spiritual values. Compassion, she says, is the only power that can save the world. Her longtime follower Janine Canan MD, a psychiatrist and a poet, offers a garland of 108 of Amma's most penetrating and inspiring teachings.
Janine will introduce Garland of Love by Mata Amritanandamayi, 108 sayings by the renowned international humanitarian and spiritual leader from India, selected by American poet & psychiatrist Janine Canan MD for inspiration & contemplation in a small handy book with several photos of Amma.
Janine Canan is the author of 20 books including the award-winning anthologies Messages from Amma: In the Language of the Heart and She Rises like the Sun: Invocations of the Goddess by Contemporary American Women Poets; acclaimed translations of two Belle Époque poets, Francis Jammes and Else Lasker-Schüler; two illustrated storybooks, Journeys with Justine and Walk Now in Beauty: The Legend of Changing Woman (part of the Navajo Literacy Project); a collection of essays, Goddesses Goddesses; and many volumes of poetry including Changing Woman, a Small Press Review pick, her NEA grant-recipient first book, Of Your Seed, and most recently, Ardor: Poems of Life. Janine lives in California, graduated from Stanford with distinction and NYU School of Medicine, is a psychiatrist and consultant for Indian humanitarian Mata Amritanandamayi. Her writing has appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies. For more information, visit JanineCanan.com or Facebook. - See more at: http://thedanobrienproject.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-moment-with-janine-canan.html#sthash.hgrK27X7.dpuf
Scientific revelation and planetary crisis are now expanding the scope of questions that have always stirred when people gaze into the night sky: How big and how old is all of this? How did we come to be and where are we going? Join June and her friends for the ultimate campfire story. In Mountain: An Evolutionary Epic ($12.95), journey with June and her friends for a week in the backcountry, as they take in the evolving saga of the cosmos and work out their own unfolding lives within that epic context. Share their everyday—and life-shifting—dramas, from love and grief to work and creativity, from spiritual practice to climate crisis, from war to classroom.
William Carney's poetry has been awarded two American Academy of Poets prizes and a Hutchinson Fellowship at Williams College. His previous books include Cities, a nuclear peace epic. As a landscape architect, he oversaw the design and construction of Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco. He started telling the story of the universe as a camp naturalist in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a field biologist at Philmont National Scout Ranch in New Mexico.
8 Mondays • Jan. 6 - Feb. 24 • 8:30-10:15am • $250
The advance class makes extensive use of contemporary materials, including newspaper articles and novels.
Gisella Petrone has a Masters degree from the University of Calabria. She has taught English, Italian, Latin, Roman History, and Italian cooking.
8 Mondays, Jan. 6 - Feb. 24 • 10:00-12:00pm • $250
Lisez à la maison un livre, des textes d'actualité puis discutez en classe et cultivez votre français en échangeant des idées. Révision de grammaire selon vos besoins. Josette Charbit Schwartz has taught French in Marin at the Lycee Francais, The Branson School, and French American International in San Francisco. Born in Paris, Josette has lived in Marin County for 30 years and has a degree in Bilingual Education from France. Josette's classes often read poems, break out in song, and discuss the joys of French culture.
8 Mon., Jan. 6 - Feb. 24 • 1:00-3:30pm • $250
This course gives the essentials of everyday topics: salutations, food, and communicating in simple, correct sentences. Josette Charbit Schwartz has taught French in Marin at the Lycee Francais, The Branson School, and French American International in San Francisco. Born in Paris, Josette has lived in Marin County for 30 years and has a degree in Bilingual Education from France. Josette's classes often read poems, break out in song, and discuss the joys of French culture.
In Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day ($16.95), word-wrangler extraordinaire Phil Cousineau has gathered an eclectic and electric collection of soulful poems and prose from great thinkers throughout the ages. Whether beguiling readers with glorious poetry or consoling them with prayers from fellow restless souls, Cousineau can relieve any insomniac's unease.
Left Coast Writers provides literary connections, support, readings, writing tips, literary chat, unabashed networking, and great fun. LCW hosts a variety of activities to launch the books of members and explore publishing alternatives. See www.bookpassage.com/left-coast-writers.
And instantly you're under the spell of Ruby Davidson. Self-assured, kind, always willing to take a stand for people less fortunate, at "five foot ten inches, with masses of red hair and a pompadour that increases her stature to six feet," she's also strikingly beautiful. Ruby loves her husband, adores her nephews and nieces, and more or less dutifully respects the tightly knit Jewish family into which she has married. Her life is filled with triumphs and failings, joy and sadness, lived with all possible grace, and told in a spirit of admirable and honest reflection. A full life, yes, but not an untroubled one, because Ruby also still loves her high-school sweetheart. How she comes to terms with this old, old conundrum and how it affects the lives of everyone around her shape the heart of Where Somebody Waits.
Margaret Kaufman, poet and fiction writer, is the author of five books of poetry, including letterpress limited editions published by the Gefn Press (London), The Janus Press (Vermont), and Protean Press (San Francisco). Her first full-length collection, Snake at the Wrist, was published by Sixteen Rivers Press in 2002. A resident of Kentfield, California, Kaufman leads poetry workshops, teaches at the Fromm Institute at the University of San Francisco, and edits both fiction and poetry.
8 Tues., Jan. 7 - March 11 (no class Feb. 11 & 18) • 10:30-12:30pm • $250
Text: "Grammaire Progressive du Francais/Perfectionnement "- 600 exercices by Maia Gregoire
The class will discuss and debate current issues, and students will read a popular novel in French. Genevieve Blaise-Sullivan has taught French at College of Marin for over 30 years. She graduated from the Sorbonne with degrees in French, Russian, and Bulgarian.
8 Tues., Jan. 7 - March 11 (no class Feb. 11 & 18) • 1:00-3:30pm • $250
Text: "En Bonne Forme" by Simone Renaud-Dietiker - 8th edition
This class offers selections from French authors and a review of French grammar. Genevieve Blaise-Sullivan has taught French at College of Marin for over 30 years. She graduated from the Sorbonne with degrees in French, Russian, and Bulgarian.
8 Tuesdays • Jan. 7 - Feb. 25 • 6:00-8:00pm • $250
This class will introduce basic Italian grammar and vocabulary. Silvia Iannelli is a private Italian tutor who was born and raised in Rome. She creates a fun and welcoming environment for her students, motivating them through activities and exercises. Her personal quote is: "La traduzione della parola e' nel cuore ~ The translation of a word is in the heart."
8 Wednesdays., Jan. 8 - Feb. 26 • 10:00-12:00pm • $250
Further study of tenses and grammatical concepts through simple dialogues, as well as reviewing regular and irregular verbs. Josette Charbit Schwartz has taught French in Marin at the Lycee Francais, The Branson School, and French American International in San Francisco. Born in Paris, Josette has lived in Marin County for 30 years and has a degree in Bilingual Education from France. Josette's classes often read poems, break out in song, and discuss the joys of French culture.
Meet and greet!
Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober are professionals,
wives, and mothers with five young children between them. They
understand the challenges and rewards of two-career households. They
also know that families thrive not in spite of working mothers but
because of them. You can have a great career, a great marriage, and be a
great mother. The key is tapping into your best resource and most
powerful ally—the man you married.
After interviewing hundreds of parents and employers, surveying more than a thousand working mothers, and combing through the latest government and social science research, the authors have discovered that kids, husbands, and wives all reap huge benefits when couples commit to share equally as breadwinners and caregivers. Mothers work without guilt, fathers bond with their kids, and children blossom with the attention of two involved parents. Getting to 50/50: How Working Parents Can Have It All ($18.95) presents real-world solutions for parents who want to get ahead in their careers and still get to their children's soccer games.
Sharon Meers leads strategy for Magento, eBay's global e-commerce platform. Formerly, Meers was a managing director at Goldman Sachs, where she worked for 16 years and was co-chair of the Women's Network in the Investment Management Division. Joanna Strober is the Founder and CEO of an online company developing a platform and tools to help fight and prevent childhood obesity. Formerly, she was a direct venture capital investor and private equity investor for over 20 years. Sharon and Joanna both live in the San Francisco Bay Area with their husbands and children.
8 Wednesdays • Jan. 8 - Feb. 26 • 1:15-3:00pm • $250
Students will start reading short novels by modern Italian writers, as well as reviewing difficult grammar structures and the subjunctive tense. Material will be provided.
Gisella Petrone has a Masters degree from the University of Calabria. She has taught English, Italian, Latin, Roman History, and Italian cooking.
6 Wednesdays • Jan. 8 - Feb. 12 • 3:30-5:30pm • $185
This course is for students who are interested in honing their language skills by reading and reviewing a modern Italian novella in class. Silvia Iannelli is a private Italian tutor who was born and raised in Rome. She creates a fun and welcoming environment for her students, motivating them through activities and exercises. Her personal quote is: "La traduzione della parola e' nel cuore ~ The translation of a word is in the heart."
8 Thursdays, Jan. 9 - Feb. 27 • 11:15-1:15pm • $250
Improve your French with current events, varied texts, and dialogues. The class goes further with grammar and verb tenses. Josette Charbit Schwartz has taught French in Marin at the Lycee Francais, The Branson School, and French American International in San Francisco. Born in Paris, Josette has lived in Marin County for 30 years and has a degree in Bilingual Education from France. Josette's classes often read poems, break out in song, and discuss the joys of French culture.
8 Thursdays • Jan. 9 - Feb. 27 • 12:45-2:30 pm • $250
Students will continue to study basic Italian grammar as well as present and past tense. Textbook is Studio Italiano.
Gisella Petrone has a Masters degree from the University of Calabria. She has taught English, Italian, Latin, Roman History, and Italian cooking.
8 Thurs., Jan. 9 - March 20 (no class Feb. 13, 20, & March 13) • 2:00-4:00pm • $250
Texts: Grammaire Progressive du Francais/Intermediaire - 600 exercices, Maia Gregoire and Odile Thievenaz (Nouvelle edition) & Graded French Reader/2e etape (4th edition), Camille Bauer
The class will include the subjunctive and conditional tenses. Genevieve Blaise-Sullivan has taught French at College of Marin for over 30 years. She graduated from the Sorbonne with degrees in French, Russian, and Bulgarian.
8 Thursdays • Jan. 9 - Feb. 27 • 6:00-8:00pm • $250
This course will encourage all students to communicate correctly using past, present, and future verb tenses along with common words and everyday expressions. Silvia Iannelli is a private Italian tutor who was born and raised in Rome. She creates a fun and welcoming environment for her students, motivating them through activities and exercises. Her personal quote is: "La traduzione della parola e' nel cuore ~ The translation of a word is in the heart."
Are you ready to get your sugar and carb cravings under control? The 21-Day Sugar Detox: Bust Sugar & Carb Cravings Naturally ($34.95) is a clear-cut, effective, whole-foods-based nutrition action plan that will naturally re-set your body and your habits! More than 10,000 people have already succeeded with this easy-to-follow meal plan and more than 75 recipes suitable for all
levels of the program. Choose
the level that's best for you—and bust a lifetime of sugar and carb
cravings in just three weeks.. Now it's your turn! In just three weeks, you can free yourself from cravings, regain your energy, and feel great again.
This simple detox plan will help you break the stronghold of your worst go-to foods: the sweets, the refined grains you grab on the go, even the many seemingly "okay" foods that contain hidden sugars. These foods taste great, but they make you look and feel terrible. They rob you of your focus, spawn irrational mid-afternoon cravings, and make it so you can't even get through the day without wanting—no, needing—to prop up your energy level with caffeine or, worse, even more sugar!
Diane Sanfilippo holds a BS from Syracuse University and is a Certified Nutrition Consultant who specializes in blood sugar regulation and digestive health. She is the New York Times bestselling author of Practical Paleo: A Customized Approach to Health and a Whole-Foods Lifestyle and writes for her popular health blog www.balancedbites.com, teaches nutrition seminars nationwide and has a top-rated weekly health podcast in iTunes, "The Balanced Bites Podcast."
Eight Thursdays: Jan. 9 - Mar. 6 (No class Feb. 20) • 6:30-8:30pm • $320
Restricted registration - please call for information
Make space for your writing. Making commitments and setting goals is one way to find the consistency you need. The habit of writing is what helps us access our creativity. Use the support of other writers and Keenan's guidance and techniques to keep moving forward.
4 Fridays • Jan. 10-31 • 10:00-12:00pm • $120
Survey some of the painters and sculptors who responded to changing cultural patterns in the Bay Area, focusing on the high spots: the Arts and Crafts Movement of 1890-1920; the Society of Six; the California colorists; and Bay Area abstraction and figurative artists, including David Park and Richard Diebenkorn. Look at the sculpture by Ruth Asawa (with a map for a self-guided tour of her work).
Kerrin Meis taught art history at SFSU for ten years and now lectures for the College of Marin and Dominican University. She leads study tours in Europe. Her Book Passage classes have been big favorites for years.
Sat., Jan. 11 • 10:00-4:00 pm • $105
Please note that the date has changed
This workshop focuses on the basic craft elements of fine storytelling: plot, character, point of view, setting, imagery, dialogue, description, pacing, voice, and theme. After deconstructing the skill-set of some brilliant authors, participants will write from prompts, beginning a novel or short story which they will then read and discuss with fellow participants.
Ethel Rohan is the author of two story collections: Goodnight Nobody, and Cut Through the Bone.
Sat., Jan. 11 • 10:00-4:00pm • $105
This workshop focuses on the craft of fine storytelling: plot, character, point of view, setting, imagery, dialogue, description, pacing, voice, and theme. After deconstructing the skill-set of some brilliant authors, participants will write from prompts, beginning a novel or short story which they will then read and discuss with fellow participants. Ethel Rohan is the author of two story collections: Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone.
Sat., Jan. 11 • 10:00-2:00pm • $60
48-hour advance registration • Limit of six
You've written a brilliant story and can't wait to hear what others think. You're stuck and need a critique. What to do? Bring your manuscript, or even just an idea, to this on-thespot workshop, and we'll critique it. Amy Novesky is a children's book editor, author, and experienced workshop leader.
Author David Christopher has elegantly crafted a new narrative that translates the scientific facts of the Universe into a soulful story of creation. The Holy Universe: A New Story of Creation for the Heart, Soul, and Spirit ($17.95) breathes life into the cold, scientific worldview of the universe, transforming our physical history into a living story—and provides us with powerful insights into navigating the global ecological, social, and spiritual crises now facing our world, and provocatively argues the crises we face today just might be the best thing that ever happened to humanity.
David Christopher is a "spiritual but not necessarily religious" thinker, speaker, and researcher. He is most influenced by Brian Swimme, Thomas Berry, Miriam MacGillis, and James Lovelock, as well as those in the discipline of "Big History" such as David Christian and Fred Spier. He lives in Santa Rosa, California.
Marin author Ace Remas reveals the joys and terrors of the Buddhist path in his memoir, Just Passin' Through: My Rough Ride to Buddha Land ($16.95). Inspired by the Buddhist message implicit in a Nevada cowboy's poem, he offers an affirming but realistic account of spiritual practice.
The Marin County Diet: Feed Your Children Right From Birth ($21.95) book contains everything a parent needs to know to design an optimal diet for the healthy child from infancy through the teenage years. It addresses the need for a practical nutrition book that contains evidence based information rather than "faith based" reasoning passed off as "science." It addresses the daily nutritional health issues of children in a specific, truthful, and friendly way. In addition to parents, this book will be of special interest to nursery schools, elementary and high school teachers, coaches, all health care providers, family physicians, pediatricians, and nurses who work with children, including pediatric and family nurse practitioners
Although Albert C. Goldberg, MD is a Board Certified Pediatrician with years of experience nurturing thousands of children (and their parents), he has recruited the experience of many other experts in nutrition. For the past twenty five years Dr. Goldberg has worked in countries such as Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Honduras, India, Mexico, Nepal, Philippines, Peru, Venezuela, and Vietnam, where poverty, ignorance, social disintegration and war have contributed to nutritional diseases, and he has brought back with him a keen understanding of the multi-cultural effects upon diet. In 2001 Dr. Goldberg was selected as one of fifty "Unsung Heroes Of Compassion" from around the world and was acknowledged personally by the His Holiness the XIV Dalai Lama.
From world leading technology companies such as Acorn Products who design, engineer and manufacture products for Apple, Cisco, Logitech and Siemens Medical. From CEOs to architects, homeowners, physicians and retailers, the renowned artist and consultant, Caroline Patrick BorNei brings the knowledge of Feng Shui to not only to large corporations, but to the humble homes of thousands of clients.
Her new book, Diary of a Feng Shui Consultant and Visual Artist ($26.00), describes years of her experiences teaching students and clients to understand Chi flow and how to implement healing, life-affirming Feng Shui design and placement of the essential elements into their lives.
Told as stories from her long-established newspaper column, and integrated with stunning color images of the author's paintings, Diary of a Feng Shui Consultant and Visual Artist is unlike any other book on Feng Shui. She addresses a wide of variety of subjects, including gardens, children, health, homes and real estate, pets, relationships, workplaces and money matters.
Caroline Patrick BorNei is a Certified Feng Shui Practitioner and a Red Ribbon Professional of the International Feng Shui Guild; she makes frequent media and public appearances and continues to teach the basic and advanced techniques of Feng Shui. Her newspaper column called "West Meets East" educated readers about the Art of Placement in an easy to understand and humorous manner for 14 years. Caroline now writes monthly columns for the Sonoma Life ad magazine which runs in several other publications such as Santa Barbara, San Diego, Bakersfield, Los Angeles and soon to come, other US cities and Europe.
Sisterhood in Sports tells the stories of all kinds of female athletes in a variety of sports. Their natural tendency to use talking as a primary form of communication is essential to their experiences and successes in sports. Women and girls tend to have BFFs, collaborate during periods of stress, express empathy for one another, worry about themselves and others, and desire to have fun in sports, which makes their experiences of sports and competition different from their male counterparts. Female strengths are grounded in both mind and body, and they take these strengths onto the court, field, and track.
Joan Steidinger, Ph.D., is a Certified Consultant through the Association of Applied Sports Psychology and on the United States Olympic Committee's Sport Psychology Registry. She has written columns online for PsychologyToday.com and SFGate.com. She has worked as a sports psychologist for close to 30 years with offices in Mill Valley and San Francisco. In the 1990s, she was a competitive ultrarunner and competitive Ride and Tie participant.
Actors fascinate us in part because they live out the truths we cannot - or do not - want to live out ourselves. In his latest book, Caught in the Act: Actors Acting ($65.00), acclaimed photographer Howard Schatz develops upon his well-received monthly feature forVanity Fair,"In Character." Schatz' mastery of his craft is demonstrated as he himself acts, taking on the role of a director and giving his subjects detailed situations to explore, which are listed with the resulting image. The actors featured here - including John Malkovich, Pierce Brosnan, Michael Douglas, Colin Firth, Laurence Fishburne, Whoopi Goldberg, Michael C. Hall, Hugh Laurie, Amy Poehler, and Geoffrey Rush, among other illustrious greats - demonstrate their skill for improvisation while Schatz captures the complexity of their emotional and physical range. This inventive collection is a richly entertaining revelation of the fantasy of transformation. Schatz does not simply create characters from these actors - he helps to reveal their humanity.
Howard Schatz
is an internationally known, critically acclaimed, award-winning
photographer. His work has been published in 19 books, and his images
are regularly featured in illustrious publications such as Time, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated, ESPN Magazine, Vogue, GQ, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker.
Schatz has worked with such prominent clients as Ralph Lauren RLX,
Escada, Sergio Tacchini, Nike, Reebok, Wolford, Etienne Aigner, Sony,
Adidas, AT&T, and Mercedes-Benz. Schatz has won nearly every award
in his field, putting his talent on par with that of the A-list subjects
of his work.
Beverly J. Ornstein worked for ten years as a producer at KQED-TV in San Francisco before taking on the role of executive producer at Schatz Ornstein Studio. She has overseen the production of over 20 books of photography.
6 Mon., Jan. 13 - Feb. 17 • 12:40-2:20pm • $190
Students continue work in Ultimate Italian. Emphasis is on conversation and review of various difficult grammatical structures. Wendy Walsh has a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from UCB. She has been teaching Italian language, literature, and cooking since 1979, and leads a yearly Language Study Tour Program to Italy. Buy a panino in the cafe and join Wendy before or after your class for informal Italian conversation.
Six Mondays• Jan. 13 - Feb. 17 • 6:00-8:00pm • $220
You know those favorite sentences? The ones you wish you wrote? In this class, we'll learn how to craft sentences that flow,
jar, create suspense, or lead your reader to an unexpected place. We'll draw upon published work, including Faulkner, Conrad, Fitzgerald, and Woolf, and focus on syntax, rhythm, sound, diction, voice, schemes, tropes, and imagery. By the end, you'll know the power of anaphora, asyndeton, and synecdoche.
Nina Schuyler is the author of the novels The Translator and The Painting, and many short stories. She teaches creative writing in the graduate program at USF.
In 1975, fresh out of law school and working a numbing job at the Treasury Department, John Rizzo took "a total shot in the dark" and sent his resume to the CIA. He had no notion that more than thirty years later, after serving under eleven CIA directors and seven Presidents, he would become a notorious public figure—a symbol and victim of the toxic winds swirling in post-9/11 Washington. From approval of the rules governing waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" to serving as the point person answering for the Iran Contra scandal, John Rizzo witnessed and participated in virtually all of the significant operations of the CIA's modern history.
In Company Man:Thirty Years of Controversy and Crisis in the CIA ($28.00), Rizzo charts the CIA's evolution from shadowy entity to an organization exposed to new laws, rules, and a seemingly never-ending string of public controversies, from Iran-Contra to Valerie Plame. Rizzo offers a direct window into the CIA's actions in the years after the 9/11 attacks, when he served as the agency's top lawyer, with oversight of actions that remain the subject of intense debate today, including CIA black sites and the infamous memos surrounding the interrogation of Al Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah. Spanning more than three decades, Company Man is the most comprehensive insider account of the CIA ever written. Filled with revelatory stories set against a backdrop of some of Washington's biggest political dramas, it is a groundbreaking, timely, and remarkable personal history of American intelligence.
John Rizzo had a thirty-four-year career as a lawyer at CIA, culminating with seven years as the Agency's chief legal officer. In the post-9/11 era, he helped create and implement the full spectrum of aggressive counterterrorist operations against Al Qaeda, including the so-called "enhanced interrogation program" and lethal strikes against the Al Qaeda leadership. Since retiring from the CIA, he has served as senior counsel at a Washington, D.C., law firm and is a visiting scholar at the Hoover Institution. He is a graduate of Brown University and George Washington University Law School.
6 Tues., Jan. 14 - Feb. 18 • 8:30-10:15am • $190
Students will finish Ultimate Italian. Emphasis is on conversation, and continual review of various difficult grammatical structures. Wendy Walsh has a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from UCB. She has been teaching Italian language, literature, and cooking since 1979, and leads a yearly Language Study Tour Program to Italy. Buy a panino in the cafe and join Wendy before or after your class for informal Italian conversation.
Six Tuesdays • Jan. 14 - Feb. 18 • 6:30-9:00pm • $350
Class Credit: Participants in this class may receive credit at Dominican University: bookpassage.com/dominican-credit
Don George's six-week intensive travel writing class is patterned on a graduate school creative writing workshop. The emphasis is on the craft of travel writing. Weekly assignments progress from a few paragraphs to full-length articles,
with the goal of writing publishable pieces. Students learn to research stories, write query letters, work with editors, and market their articles. This highly successful class has led to numerous published stories, including many tales in the annual Best Travel Writing and Lonely Planet anthologies.
In conversation with Kelly Corrigan
Ticket: $29.50 (book included)
After three acclaimed novels, the New York Times bestseller and fan favorite turns to memoir in a hilarious, candid, and deeply poignant account of his life so far.
It's impossible to get through a chapter of Gary Shteyngart's first memoir without laughing: newly landed immigrants; unrequited love; American and Soviet absurdities; incomparable wit and word play; an audacious sense of fun; and, best of all, a lovable, stumbling, lusting hero: this time, Gary himself. But Little Failure: A Memoir ($27.00) is also Gary's most mature, open-hearted, and emotionally rich book to date, telling the story of a man coming to terms with his legacy.
July 5, 1972. Gary is born in Leningrad, USSR. He will grow into an asthmatic, Lenin-loving toddler; a seven-year-old in a ratty fur overcoat, newly arrived in Queens, New York; a baffled, bullied child of Hebrew School; a high school student and aspiring Republican celebrating George Bush Sr.'s victory in a Marriott hotel; an undergrad of impossible longings at Oberlin; a post-grad New Yorker with a psychoanalyst, a drinking problem, and a desire to depict the world in words; and a forty-year-old about to write his first memoir, armed with a receding hairline, some hard-earned wisdom, a fiancee, and an exceptionally good sense of humor.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novels Super Sad True Love Story, which won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize and was selected as one of the best books of the year by more than forty news journals and magazines around the world; Absurdistan, which was chosen as one of the ten best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review and Time magazine; and The Russian Debutante's Handbook, winner of the Stephen Crane Award for First Fiction and the National Jewish Book Award for Fiction. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Travel + Leisure, the New York Times, and many other publications and has been translated into twenty-six languages.
Eight Wed: Jan. 15-Mar. 5 • 10:00-12:00 pm • $250
Silvia Iannelli is a private Italian tutor who was born and raised in Rome. She creates a fun and welcoming environment for her students, motivating them through activities and exercises. Her personal quote is: "La traduzione della parola e' nel cuore ~ The translation of a word is in the heart."
A haunting, beautiful first novel by the bestselling author of A Long Way Gone.
When Ishmael Beah's A Long Way Gone was published in 2007, it soared to the top of bestseller lists, becoming an instant classic: a harrowing account of Sierra Leone's civil war and the fate of child soldiers that "everyone in the world should read" (The Washington Post). Now Beah, whom Dave Eggers has called "arguably the most read African writer in contemporary literature," has returned with his first novel, an affecting, tender parable about postwar life in Sierra Leone.
At the center of Radiance of Tomorrow ($25.00) are Benjamin and Bockarie, two longtime friends who return to their hometown, Imperi, after the civil war. The village is in ruins, the ground covered in bones. As more villagers begin to come back, Benjamin and Bockarie try to forge a new community by taking up their former posts as teachers, but they're beset by obstacles: a scarcity of food; a rash of murders, thievery, rape, and retaliation; and the depredations of a foreign mining company intent on sullying the town's water supply and blocking its paths with electric wires. As Benjamin and Bockarie search for a way to restore order, they're forced to reckon with the uncertainty of their past and future alike. With the gentle lyricism of a dream and the moral clarity of a fable, Radiance of Tomorrow is a powerful novel about preserving what means the most to us, even in uncertain times.
Ishmael Beah was born in Sierra Leone in 1980. He came to the United States when he was seventeen and graduated from Oberlin College in 2004. He is a UNICEF Ambassador and Advocate for Children Affected by War; a member of the Human Rights Watch Children's Rights Advisory Committee; a visiting scholar at the Center for International Conflict Resolution at Columbia University; a cofounder of the Network of Young People Affected by War (NYPAW); and the president of the Ishmael Beah Foundation. He has spoken before the United Nations, the Council on Foreign Relations, and many panels on the effects of war on children. He lives in New York.
6 Thurs., Jan. 16 - Feb. 20 • 9:00-11:00am • $190
Wendy Walsh has a Ph.D. in Italian Literature from UCB. She has been teaching Italian language, literature, and cooking since 1979, and leads a yearly Language Study Tour Program to Italy. Buy a panino in the cafe and join Wendy before or after your class for informal Italian conversation.
Taking the locavore movement to heart, bestselling author and social innovator Vicki Robin pledged for one month to eat only food sourced within a 10-mile radius of her home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, Washington. Her sustainable diet not only brings to light society's unhealthy dependency on mass-produced, prepackaged foods but also helps her reconnect with her body and her environment.
Like Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and the bestselling books of Michael Pollan, Blessing the Hands That Feed Us ($26.95) is part personal narrative and part global manifesto. By challenging herself to eat and buy local, Robin exposes the cause and effect of the food business, from the processed goods laden with sugar, fat, and preservatives to the trucks burning through fuel to bring them to a shelf near you.
Vicki Robin is a renowned innovator, writer, and speaker. In addition to coauthoring the bestselling Your Money or Your Life, Robin has been at the forefront of the sustainable living movement. She has received awards from Co-Op America and Sustainable Northwest and was profiled in Utne Magazine's book Visionaries: People and Ideas to Change Your Life. She lives on Whidbey Island in Washington.
Whether you're aiming for a New York Times bestseller or a short personal essay to share with family and friends, a popular blogger and memoirist shows you the way in this witty writing guide and disarmingly candid account of discovering her own voice.
"Theo Pauline Nestor is a writer who, I am positive, will be heard from," wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frank McCourt, and hear from her we do in this enthralling memoir that doubles as a witty and richly told writing guide. Yet the real promise in Writing Is My Drink ($15.00) lies in Nestor's uncanny ability as a storyteller and teacher to make sure we'll also hear from you, the reader. Brimming with stories from her own writing life, and paired with practical "Try This" sections designed to challenge and inspire, this disarmingly candid account of a writer's search for her voice delivers charming, wise, and often hilarious guidance that will motivate writers at every stage of their careers.
Theo Pauline Nestor is the author of How to Sleep Alone in a King-Size Bed, which was a 2008 Kirkus Review Top Picks for Reading Groups and a Target Breakout Book. An award-winning instructor, Nestor teaches the Certificate in Memoir Writing for the University of Washington in Seattle.
Eight Fri: Jan. 17-Mar. 7 • 12:30-2:30 pm • $250
Silvia Iannelli is a private Italian tutor who was born and raised in Rome. She creates a fun and welcoming environment for her students, motivating them through activities and exercises. Her personal quote is: "La traduzione della parola e' nel cuore ~ The translation of a word is in the heart."
Fri. Jan. 17, 6:00-7:30 pm • $40
Join us for an evening of creativity as legendary wordsmith Phil Cousineau guides us through the writer's journey, starting with the first spark of inspiration. Cousineau looks at how to find mentors, struggle with critics, and collaborate with designers, editors, and marketing professionals.
In the tiny town of Titan Falls, New Hampshire, the paper mill dictates a quiet, steady rhythm of life. But one day a tragic bus accident sets two families on a course toward destruction, irrevocably altering the lives of everyone in their wake. June McAllister is the wife of the local mill owner and undisputed first lady in town. But the Snow family, a group of itinerant ne'er-do-wells who live on a decrepit and cursed property, have brought her--and the town--nothing but grief.
June will do anything to cover up a dark secret she discovers after the crash, one that threatens to upend her picture-perfect life, even if it means driving the Snow family out of town. But she has never gone up against a force as fierce as the young Mercy Snow. Mercy is determined to protect her rebellious brother, whom the town blames for the accident, despite his innocence. And she has a secret of her own. When an old skeleton is discovered not far from the crash, it beckons Mercy to solve a mystery buried deep within the town's past.
Hauntingly beautiful, wrapped in a lush, cold atmosphere, Mercy Snow ($25.00) is a ghostly, magical, psychological tale of redemption and mercy.
Tiffany Baker is the author of The Gilly Salt Sisters and The Little Giant of Aberdeen County, which was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller. She holds an MFA (creative writing) and a PhD (Victorian Literature) from UC Irvine, and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband and three children.
Sat., Jan. 18. • 9:30-1:30pm • $65
Whatever you have lost—keys, single socks, your empathy for a nasty neighbor, your marriage, your parents, your sense of optimism in the face of loss–you can bring it back to life with words. In this class, you will read excerpts from fabulous writers working with memories, learn techniques for delving into our own, and find ways to keep working with this rich material at home.
Monica Wesolowska is the author of the memoir Holding Silvan: A Brief Life. With an introduction by Erica Jong, Holding Silvan explores motherhood, modern medicine, and grief. She has taught at UC Berkeley Extension and elsewhere for over a decade.
Todd Porter and Diane Cu are photographers who publish the immensely
popular food, gardening, and lifestyle blog WhiteonRiceCouple.com.
Inspired by their love of cooking, growing vegetables and over 38 fruit
trees in their suburban garden, Todd and Diane love sharing recipes that
are fresh and seasonally simple. Their cookbook, Bountiful: Recipes Inspired by Our Garden ($35.00), offers 100 seasonal, flavorful, and approachable recipes -- 90 of which
have not been seen on the blog -- each featuring a vegetable or fruit as
the star of the meal. Blueberry Frangipane Tarts, Wilted Mizuna Shrimp
Salad, Blood Orange Bars and Gin Cocktail with Pomegranate &
Grapefruit are just a few examples of recipes that are inspired from
their garden bounty.
Peppered with personal stories from Todd's childhood on a cattle ranch in Oregon and Diane's journey from Vietnam to the United States, this cookbook shares the couples' beautiful love story as well as their diverse recipes that reflects their love of fresh and healthy produce, seasonally ripe fruit and sharing a home cooked meal with those you love.
Sat., Jan. 18 • 1:00-5:00pm • $70
Advanced registration required to receive supply list.
Make your travel experiences memorable by keeping an art journal! In this workshop you will transform a blank journal into a creative expression of your journey using art media, magazine pictures, and collage to prep your pages for writing. You'll learn how to create journal pockets and storage areas to hold trip memorabilia, and get tips on how to alter and incorporate travel photos into your journal.
In Astor Place Vintage ($16.00), Amanda Rosenbloom, proprietor of Astor Place Vintage, thinks she's on just another call to appraise and possibly purchase clothing from a wealthy, elderly woman. But after discovering a journal sewn into a fur muff, Amanda gets much more than she anticipated. The pages of the journal reveal the life of Olive Westcott, a young woman who had moved to Manhattan in 1907. Olive was set on pursuing a career as a department store buyer in an era when Victorian ideas, limiting a woman's sphere to marriage and motherhood, were only beginning to give way to modern ways of thinking. As Amanda reads the journal, her life begins to unravel until she can no longer ignore this voice from the past. Despite being separated by one hundred years, Amanda finds she's connected to Olive in ways neither could ever have imagined.
Stephanie Lehmann received her BA at UC Berkeley and a MA in English from New York University. She has taught novel writing at Mediabistro and online at Salon.com, where her essays have been published. She is the author of several books, including The Art of Undressing.
Elizabeth Cohen's writing has been called "frank, funny . . . courageous" (New York Times Book Review) with "language that's light, beautiful, and razor-sharp" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Now, in her provocative and whimsical new short story collection, The Hypothetical Girl ($14.95), she explores the world of online dating, with a menagerie of characters that are ordinary, dissatisfied, and desperate to find love. Under fictitious personas, they flirt and court, but in spite of dating's technological advances, finding a suitable lover turns out to be just as confusing, embittering, and isolating as ever—and maybe even more so.
Alternating between quirky humor, painful awkwardness, and the outright painful, Elizabeth Cohen offers an insightful, heartrending, and comical look at love in the age of the internet. The Hypothetical Girl will resonate with any reader who has ever ventured into the dating world (digital or physical), or is at all curious about the intersection of love and technology today.
Elizabeth Cohen is an assistant professor of English at Plattsburgh State University. Her memoir, The Family on Beartown Road, was a New York Times Notable Book, and her articles, stories, and poetry have appeared in Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, Salon, Tablet, and the Yale Review.
What is the purpose of life on earth? In An Unknown World: Notes on the Meaning of the Earth ($15.95), philosopher Jacob Needleman frames man's role on the planet in a completely new and fresh way, moving beyond the usual environmental concerns to reveal how the care and maintenance of a world is something vital and basic to our existence as authentic human beings.
The acclaimed author of The American Soul, The Essential Marcus Aurelius, Lost Christianity, and Money and the Meaning of Life, Jacob Needleman is a professor of philosophy at San Francisco State University and former director of the Center for the Study of New Religions at the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley.
What if there were a single skill that could directly and radically improve our relationships and our emotional lives? Empathy, teaches Karla McLaren, is that skill. With The Art of Empathy: A Complete Guide to Life's Most Essential Skill ($18.95), this acclaimed author teaches us how to perceive and feel the experiences of others with clarity and authenticity-to connect with them more deeply and effectively. Informed by current insights from neuroscience, social psychology, and healing traditions, this book teaches readers why empathy is not a mystical phenomenon but a natural, innate ability that we can strengthen and develop, how to identify and regulate our own emotions and boundaries, and so much more.
Karla McLaren is an empath, pioneering educator, researcher, and award-winning author whose empathic approach to emotions revalues even the most "negative" emotions, and opens startling new pathways into the depths of the soul. She is the author of The Language of Emotions, and the online course Emotional Flow (2012). Karla has taught at such venues as the University of San Francisco, Naropa University, Kripalu, and the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and she is currently developing new forms of empathy and social interaction curricula for autistics and other neurologically diverse people. She lives in Sonoma County, California. For more information, visit karlamclaren.com.
Introduced by Don George
Modern budget travel was practically invented by Arthur Frommer a few decades ago with his famous book Europe on $5 a Day. He remains the nation's foremost authority on leisure travel along with his daughter, Pauline Frommer. They discuss the relaunch of the Frommer Guidebooks, with 30 new travel guides in two formats: EasyGuides, and Day by Day Guides.
Since the Industrial Revolution, manufacturers have built things by a process known as "heat, beat, and treat." They use enormous amounts of energy to heat raw material, shape it with heavy machinery, and maintain its design, strength, and durability with toxic chemicals. Now, in a world of depleted natural resources, entrepreneurs and scientists are turning to nature to inspire future products that are more energy- and cost-efficient. Biomimicry, the science of employing nature to advance sustainable technology, is arguably one of the hottest new business concepts. At the center of this growing movement has been award-winning inventor and biomimetic entrepreneur Jay Harman.
Jay Harman is a scientist, inventor, and entrepreneur dedicated to creating breakthrough technologies through biomimicry that will radically reduce energy consumption worldwide. He continues to conduct field research leading to new biomimetic products. Harman is CEO of PAX Scientific based in San Rafael, CA.
Suspenseful, comic, and touching, the ninth and final novel in Armistead Maupin's bestselling "Tales of the City" series follows one of modern literature's most unforgettable and enduring characters -- Anna Madrigal, the legendary transgender landlady of 28 Barbary Lane -- on a road trip that will take her deep into her past in The Days of Anna Madrigal ($26.99)
Now a fragile ninety-two, and committed to the notion of "leaving like a
lady," Anna Madrigal has seemingly found peace in the bosom of her
"logical family" in San Francisco: her devoted young caretaker Jake
Greenleaf; her former tenant Brian Hawkins; Brian's daughter Shawna; as
well as Michael Tolliver and Mary Ann Singleton, who have known and
loved Anna for nearly four decades.
Some members of Anna's family are bound for the other-worldly landscape of Burning Man, the art community in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada where 60,000 revelers will build a temporary city (Michael calls it "a Fellini carnival on Mars") designed to last only a week. Anna herself has another Nevada destination in mind: a lonely stretch of road outside of Winnemucca where the 16-year-old boy she used to be ran away from the whorehouse he called home. With Brian and his beat-up RV, she journeys into the dusty troubled heart of her Depression childhood, where she will unearth a lifetime of secrets and dreams and attend to unfinished business she has long avoided.
Armistead Maupin is the author of the nine-volume "Tales of the City" series that includes Tales of the City, More Tales of the City, Further Tales of the City, Babycakes, Significant Others, Sure of You, Michael Tolliver Lives, and Mary Ann in Autumn. The first three books were made into television miniseries starring Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. Maupin's other books include Maybe the Moon and The Night Listener, which was made into a film starring Robin Williams and Toni Collette. A stage musical version of Tales of the City premiered at San Francisco's American Conservatory Theater in May, 2011. Maupin lives in Santa Fe with his husband, photograher Christopher Turner.
While accompanying a crew on a bombing run, John's plane is shot down
over the island of Attu. But surviving the crash is only the beginning
of his ordeal in this harsh and unforgiving fury of a wilderness known
as "the Birthplace of Winds." In the days ahead, John must battle the
elements, starvation, and his own regrets while evading discovery by the
Japanese. Alone in their home 3,000 miles to the south, Helen struggles with her
husband's absence-a silence that exposes the truth of her sheltered,
untested life. Caught in extraordinary circumstances, in this new world
of the missing, she is forced to reimagine who she is-and what she is
capable of doing. Somehow, she will find John and bring him home, a
quest that takes her into the farthest reaches of the war, beyond the
safety of everything she knows.
An evocative, richly atmospheric story of life and death, commitment and sacrifice, The Wind Is Not a River ($26.99) is a sweeping story of survival that illuminates the fragility of life and the fierce power of love.
Brian Payton has written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune, and the Boston Globe. He is the author of Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness, which was chosen as a Barnes and Noble Book Club Pick, an NPR Pearl's Pick, and a 2006 U.S. National Outdoor Book Awards Book of the Year. Another work of nonfiction, The Ice Passage, and a novel, Hail Mary Corner, were published to acclaim in Canada. He lives with his family in Vancouver.
for the first time on why attorney general Robert F. Kennedy wasn't
killed in 1963 instead of on why President John F. Kennedy was, Mark
Shaw offers a stunning and provocative assassination theory that leads
directly to the family patriarch, Joseph P. Kennedy. Mining fresh
information and more than forty new interviews, Shaw weaves a
spellbinding narrative involving Mafia don Carlos Marcello; Jack Ruby
(Lee Harvey Oswald's killer); Ruby's attorney, Melvin Belli; and,
ultimately, the Kennedy brothers and their father.
In The Poison Patriarch ($24.95), Shaw addresses these tantalizing questions: Why, shortly after his brother's death, did a grief-stricken RFK tell a colleague, "I thought they would get one of us . . . I thought it would be me"? Why was Belli, an attorney with almost no defense experience (but proven ties to the Mafia), chosen as Jack Ruby's attorney? How does Belli's Mafia connection call into question his legal strategy, which ultimately led to the Ruby's first-degree murder conviction and death sentence? What was Joseph Kennedy's relationship to organized crime? And how was his insistence that JFK appoint RFK as attorney general tantamount to signing the president's death warrant?
For fifty years, Shaw maintains, researchers investigating the president's murder in Dallas have been looking at the wrong motives and actors. The Poison Patriarch offers a shocking reassessment—one that is sure to alter the course of future assassination debates.
Mark Shaw author of twenty-plus books, is a former criminal defense attorney who has served as a legal analyst for ABC, ESPN, and USA Today. He is a member of the Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, DC, and the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering critical thinking on a range of historical topics, including the assassinations of the 1960s. He lives in Superior, Colorado.
Please note: this event has been cancelled.
Why is it that some of the greatest works of literature have been produced by writers in the grip of alcoholism, an addiction that cost them personal happiness and caused harm to those who loved them?
In The Trip to Echo Spring: On Writers and Drinking ($26.00) Olivia Laing examines the
link between creativity and alcohol through the work and lives of six of
America's finest writers: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway,
Tennessee Williams, John Berryman, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver. All six of these men were alcoholics, and the subject of drinking surfaces in some of their finest work, from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to A Moveable Feast.
Often, they did their drinking together: Hemingway and Fitzgerald
ricocheting through the cafes of Paris in the 1920s; Carver and Cheever
speeding to the liquor store in Iowa in the icy winter of 1973.
Olivia Laing is the author of To the River, published by Canongate to critical acclaim, and shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. She was deputy books editor of the Observer, and writes for The Guardian, New Statesman, and The Times Literary Supplement, among other publications. She lives in Cambridge.
In her masterful new novel, Nancy Horan has recreated a love story that is as unique, passionate, and overwhelmingly powerful as the one between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney depicted so memorably in Loving Frank. Under the Wide and Starry Sky ($26.00) chronicles the unconventional love affair of Scottish literary giant Robert Louis Stevenson, author of classics including Treasure Island and The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and American divorcee Fanny Van de Grift Osbourne. They meet in rural France in 1875, when Fanny, having run away from her philandering husband back in California, takes refuge there with her children. Stevenson too is escaping from his life, running from family pressure to become a lawyer. And so begins a turbulent love affair that will last two decades and span the world.
Nancy Horan is the author of Loving Frank. She is also a journalist whose work has appeared in numerous publications. She has two sons, and lives with her husband on an island in Puget Sound.
6 Thursdays., Jan. 23 - Feb. 27 • 7:00-9:00pm • $150
"To have great poets," Walt Whitman said, "There must be great audiences too." What makes a poem worth reading? This group looks at famous poets from several centuries and from several literatures. Widely-published local poet and author John Hart co-edits the venerable all-poetry journal Blue Unicorn, now in its 36th year.
In Saints of the Shadow Bible ($26.00), Rebus is back on the force, albeit with a demotion and a chip on his
shoulder. He is investigating a car accident when news arrives that a
case from 30 years ago is being reopened. Rebus's team from those days
is suspected of helping a murderer escape justice to further their own
Malcolm Fox, in what will be his last case as an internal affairs cop, is tasked with finding out the truth. Past and present are about to collide in shocking and murderous fashion. What does Rebus have to hide? And whose side is he really on? His colleagues back then called themselves "The Saints," and swore a bond on something called the Shadow Bible. But times have changed and the crimes of the past may not stay hidden much longer -- and may also play a role in the present, as Scotland gears up for a referendum on independence.
Allegiances are being formed, enemies made, and huge questions asked. Who are the saints and who the sinners? And can the one ever become the other?
Ian Rankin is a #1 international bestselling author. Winner of an Edgar Award and the recipient of a Gold Dagger for fiction and the Chandler-Fulbright Award, he lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, with his wife and their two sons.
Marla Fibish and Bruce Victor are Noctambule. They take their name from one of the songs on their acclaimed CD Travel in the Shadows, their setting of a Robert Service poem about a nocturnal ramble through the streets and less savory back alleys of Paris. The recording is centered on the idea of the 'night journey,' as explored in a broad variety of poetry -- the opportunity to see and experience things differently once the usual sources of light have been extinguished. All the songs are original settings of poetry from a variety of poets-- Tennyson, Neruda, Roethke, St. Vincent Millay, and several from Robert Service. There are two original instrumental pieces as well – a reel and a waltz – as well as one traditional song. The music is rendered with lush beauty, sensitivity and humor on an unusual array of strings - various guitars in varied tunings, mandola, mandolin, bouzouki, tenor guitar, accordion, and their blended voices.
Marla Fibish is a long-time feature of the Bay Area Irish music scene, bringing a musicality and excitement to the tradition that is seldom heard on the mandolin. In addition to the mandolin, Marla brings mandola, tenor guitar, bouzouki, accordion, and her alto voice to the Noctambule sound.
Bruce Victor is an eclectic and accomplished guitarist and composer, who plays several different guitars in several different tunings. Seemingly resisting any single musical genre, he has been labeled a 'poly-stylist,' and has played with The Sirens of San Francisco, The Triplicates, and as a solo performer. He is also a practicing psychiatrist and was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco.
You'll find lots more info about them, and you can hear sample tracks from the album at www.noctambulemusic.com.
Here is a link to a video of Marla and Bruce playing their setting of Roethke's 'Night Journey': http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaLLq9y1imw
Sat., Jan. 25 • 9:30-3:30pm • $105
In this workshop, students will study the components of personal essay through lecture and writing exercises and will learn how to structure and craft creative nonfiction in a way that is both joyful and rewarding. Victoria Zackheim wrote The Bone Weaver and has edited five anthologies. She wrote the documentary "Where Birds Never Sang," which aired on PBS.
In The Last Death of Jack Harbin ($15.95), before the outbreak of the Gulf War two eighteen-year-old football stars and best friends from Jarrett Creek, Texas, signed up for the army. But Woody Patterson was rejected and stayed home to marry the girl they both loved, while Jack Harbin came back from the war badly damaged. The men haven't spoken since. Just as they are about to reconcile, Jack is brutally murdered. With the chief of police out of commission, it's up to trusted ex-chief Samuel Craddock to investigate. Against the backdrop of small-town loyalties and betrayals, Craddock discovers dark secrets of the past and present to solve the mystery of Jack's death.
Terry Shames is the author of A Killing at Cotton Hill, the first Samuel Craddock Mystery. She is the coeditor of Fire in the Hills, a book of stories, poems, and photographs about the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire. She grew up in Texas and continues to be fascinated by the convoluted loyalties and betrayals of the small town where her grandfather was the mayor. Terry is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. Visit Terry Shames online at www.terryshames.com.
$5 for members; $10 for non-members
Rough Translations ($20.95), Molly Giles's engaging collection of stories, was the winner not only of the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction but also of the 1985 San Francisco Bay Area Book Reviewers Association (BABRA) Award for Fiction and the 1986 Boston Globe Fiction Award. Many of the stories in Rough Translations have been anthologized and adapted for radio performance.
A master of the complexities of language, Molly Giles writes of the missed connections in life and of the rough translations that we employ when we try to convey, through words and gestures, what we are thinking and what we want from our loved ones. Giles's stories have appeared in Playgirl, Redbook, North American Review, New England Review, and Ascent, among other publications.
Giles is also the author of Creek Walk, a novel, Iron Shoes, and a chapbook of flash fictions, Bothered. She has taught Creative Writing at San Francisco State University and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville and has led workshops at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, the Napa Writers' Conference, and Naropa. She has edited Amy Tan and many other published writers and currently mentors through Book Passage's Path to Publishing program.
The Marin branch of the California Writers Club celebrates 14 years with Book Passage. Meetings are open to the public. See www.cwcmarinwriters.com for information.
Mill Valley Community Center • $69
Dr. Robert Lustig is a leading thinker on the science and politics that have led to the pandemic of chronic disease over the last 30 years. He will present tactics for readjusting the key hormones that regulate hunger, reward and stress, and will share strategies to improve the health of the next generation.
Inspired by the fabulous women among us in the Bay Area, Speak to Me was created to stimulate thought and discussion,
facilitate the swapping of stories and experiences, and enjoy the sense of community we share in this great place we call home. For more information, visit www.speaktome.org.
Eight Wednesdays, Jan. 29-Mar. 26 (no class Feb. 26) • 3:15-5:15 pm • $295
For nonfiction and fiction writers looking for a focused, individualized course of study, this eight-week class mimics the experience of working closely with a faculty advisor in a low-residency MFA program. Includes ongoing workshops of your writing project(s), assigned readings and discussion, and Jasmin's written comments on up to 20 pages of creative work every four weeks. The process provides plentiful feedback and clear next steps for each writer to break new ground and advance in his or her work. Darznik is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Daughter. She earned her PhD from Princeton and has received an Outstanding Faculty Award for her teaching.
In Sustenance ($20.00), Elizabeth Wholey explores Italy's Upper Tiber Valley and theways in which its peasants fed and sustained themselves throughout history. Through close association with the farmers and food producers of the region, she has created a beautiful and valuable guide to the history, culture, and rustic cuisine of this still largely rural area.
Eight Wednesdays, Jan. 29-Mar. 26 (no class 2/26) • 6:00-8:00 pm • $295
This eight-week workshop will help you transform your personal life stories into the stuff of rich memoirs. Jasmin Darznik is the New York Times bestselling author of The Good Daughter: A Memoir of My Mother's Hidden Life. She offers inspiration and practical advice, including tips on how to get started, interview family members, and manage the emotional and ethical challenges of writing a memoir. Darznik is the author of the New York Times bestseller The Good Daughter. She earned her PhD from Princeton and has received an Outstanding Faculty Award for her teaching.
Dr. Ellen Cutler's newest book, Clearing the Way to Health and Wellness ($22.95), provides an overview of the system of healing she created. BioSET® (Bioenergetic Sensitivity and Enzyme Therapy) incorporates enzyme therapy with nutritional counseling, detoxification, and the identification and clearing of food and other sensitivities. Dr. Cutler provides a number of case studies to document the effectiveness of BioSET in a wide range of health problems. She also explains to readers how they can help themselves with proper diet, supplementation, and desensitization.
Ticket: $30.50 (includes copy of The Invention of Wings)
From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women
Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful's cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.
Kidd's sweeping novel, The Invention of Wings ($27.95), is set in motion on Sarah's eleventh
birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to
be her handmaid.We follow their remarkable journeys over the next
thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically
shaping each other's destinies and forming a complex relationship marked
by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.
As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women's rights movements.This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.
Sue Monk Kidd is the author of three novels, The Secret Life of Bees (New York Times bestseller), The Mermaid Chair (#1 New York Times bestseller), and, most recently, The Invention of Wings. She is also the author of the memoirs The Dance of the Dissident Daughter, When the Heart Waits, and, with her daughter Ann Kidd Taylor, the New York Times bestseller Traveling with Pomegranates.
Aya ($12.00) is story about a curious, busy little panda who delights in searching for beautiful things to see, and delicious foods to eat. While climbing the bamboo in her forest home, she notices a beautiful place in the distance and decides she must travel to see it. Along the way, Aya's curiosity helps her to become friends with a kind Buddhist monk who encourages her to stop her busyness long enough to notice another beautiful place, the one inside of her heart.
Sat., Feb. 1 • 1:00-4:00pm • $60
Whether you're traditionally published or selfpublished, a platform matters more today than it ever has. Brooke Warner explores why this is the case; the nuts and bolts of starting and/or building a platform; and why, as an author, you must get out in front of your idea long before your book is published. She is founder of Warner Coaching Inc., publisher of She Writes Press, and author of What's Your Book?
Sat. Feb. 1, 10:00-4:00pm & Sun., Feb. 2, 10:00-1:00pm, $165
In this two-day weekend course, David Corbett, prize-winning author of The Art Of Character, will guide students through an in-depth examination of how to frame a story's conflict through compelling, essential characters. Through a deep analysis of the major dramatic roles—protagonist, opponent, and a variety of secondary characters—the class will explore both the "Unity of Opposites" and "Four-Corner Conflict," learning how to create moral and emotional complexity, heightened suspense, and dramatic tension. The class will also tackle specific story structure problems with unique conflict issues: the love story, the mystery, stories lacking an opponent, and more.
Real Happiness at Work: Meditations for Accomplishment, Achievement, and Peace ($13.95) brings the profound benefits of meditation to an area where people could use it most-the workplace. And it's written by one of the world's leading meditation teachers.
A follow-up to Real Happiness, the New York Times bestseller, Sharon Salzberg's Real Happiness at Work is a practical guide to improving work life through mindfulness, compassion, and ingenuity. It's about being committed without being consumed, competitive without being cruel, managing time and emotions to counterbalance stress and frustration. It shows readers how to be more creative, organized, and accomplished in order to do better, more productive work.
Sharon Salzberg cofounded the Insight Meditation Society with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. In addition to Real Happiness, she is the author of eight other books, including the bestsellers Lovingkindness and Faith. A teacher for 40 years, she has been a contributing editor at O, The Oprah Magazine and has written for Time, Real Simple, Good Housekeeping, Self, Yoga Journal, More, and others. She divides her time between Barre, Massachusetts, home of the IMS, and New York City.
In his highly-acclaimed book, Dancing with Fire: A Mindful Way to Loving Relationships ($16.95), psychotherapist John Amodeo shows how emotionally fulfilling relationships and spiritual development are two sides of the same coin of awakening. He suggests that the Buddha's teaching about the root of suffering is often misunderstood. It is not desire and attachment that cause suffering; desire is the fire that springs from the basic life force. Drawing upon the science of human bonding, Amodeo illuminates how suffering spreads when we're disconnected from ourselves and others—and is fueled by clinging to habits and beliefs that divert us from a deeper intimacy with life.
John Amodeo. PhD, a licensed marriage and family therapist for over thirty years, is the author of The Authentic Heart and Love & Betrayal. He conducts workshops internationally on relationships and couples therapy and has been a featured guest on CNN, Donahue, and New Dimension Radio.
Written by pre-eminent travel writer Don George and bursting with invaluable advice, The Lonely Planet Guide to Travel Writing is an inspiring and practical guide for anyone who has ever yearned to turn their travels into saleable tales. Packed with insider hints and tips, practical writing exercises and examples of travel writing excellence, this guide helps you bring the dream job of Travel Writer within scribbling distance of reality.
Left Coast Writers provides literary connections, support, readings, writing tips, literary chat, unabashed networking, and great fun. LCW hosts a variety of activities to launch the books of members and explore publishing alternatives. See www.bookpassage.com/left-coast-writers.
Tanya Selvaratnam writes from the personal experience of attempting to conceive at age 37. The Big Lie: Motherhood, Feminism, and the Reality of the Biological Clock ($19.95) is part memoir, part manifesto about the complicated information surrounding delayed motherhood. Selvaratnam is a writer, producer, actor, and activist living in New York.
Ferry Building Board Room
Presented by CUESA
Sarah Elton presents her new book Consumed: Sustainable Food for a Finite Planet. She describes efforts of those who are developing a new way of food production that is more resilient in a time of climate change. Elton is the author of the award-winning Locavore.
Priority seating with book purchase from Book Passage
Angelico Hall, Dominican University
If the Big Data revolution has a presiding genius, it is MIT's Alex "Sandy" Pentland. Over years of groundbreaking experiments, he has distilled remarkable discoveries significant enough to become the bedrock of a whole new scientific field: social physics. Social Physics: How Good Ideas Spread—The Lessons From a New Science ($27.95) will change the way we think about how we learn and how our social groups work.
Book Passage is pleased to work with the Institute of Leadership Studies at Dominican University of California in San Rafael to present these outstanding events sponsored by Private Ocean.
Four Thursdays • Feb. 6-27 • 3:00-5:00pm • $160
This session is designed for those who are writing or close to finishing their memoirs. Find the "flow" in your story and discover the secrets of transforming life experiences into memoir. You'll learn to uncover your essential material and craft it into engaging, compelling pieces. Includes instruction, in-class writing, and an opportunity to bring writing for feedback.
What's the best way to mend a broken heart? Forget ice cream, wine, and sappy movies. Journalist Meghan Laslocky's advice is to read through the pain. The Little Book of Heartbreak ($15.00) is not another self-help book about moving on, but a quirky exploration of all things lovelorn, and a history of the, culture, music, art, film and literature of love lost.
Tickets: $32 (includes signed book)
Angelico Hall, Dominican University
Please note: online sales are now closed. Tickets may be purchased at the door.
Read the SF Chronicle review of Ripper!
Isabel Allende—the New York Times bestselling author of Maya's Notebook and Island Beneath the Sea—demonstrates her remarkable literary versatility with Ripper, an atmospheric, fast-paced mystery involving a brilliant teenage sleuth who must unmask a serial killer in San Francisco. When a string of strange murders occurs across the city, Amanda Jackson, Deputy Chief of Homicide for the SFPD, plunges into her own investigation, discovering, before the police do, that the deaths may be connected.
Book Passage is pleased to work with the Institute of Leadership Studies at Dominican University of California in San Rafael to present these outstanding events sponsored by Private Ocean.
3 Fri. & 1 Wed. • Feb. 7, 14, 26, & 28 • 10:00-12:00pm on Fridays & 3:00-5:00pm on Wednesdays • $120
Study this fantastic repository of the relics of lost Hittite and Urartian civilizations, as well as ancient Roman, Biblical, Seljuk, Armenian and Crusader structures. Examine the earliest "temple" at Gobekli Tepe with its 12,000-year-old carvings, the colossal sculpture of Mt. Nemrut, the Abdurrahman mosque of Urfa, and the beehive architecture of Harran. Highlights include: Byzantine Trabzon's Santa Sofia, the Sumeli Monastery, and the magnificent carvings on the Armenian Church on Akdamar Island, plus the ghostly ruined Christian city at Ani. At Gaziantep, the class will examine the Roman mosaics from Zeugma, the magnificent Ulu mosque at Dyarbakir and Ishak Pasha Palace, the Taj Mahal of Turkey! Kerrin Meis leads a tour to Eastern Turkey in May.
Suggested Reading:
Eastern Turkey: The Bradt Travel Guide by Diana Darke
Kerrin Meis taught art history at SFSU for ten years and now lectures for the College of Marin and Dominican University. She leads study tours in Europe. Her Book Passage classes have been big favorites for years.
Six Fridays: Feb. 7-Mar. 21 (no class Feb. 21) • 10:00-12:00 pm • $240
This class is for anyone who has a clear sense of the book they want to write, and may even have written a good portion of it, but has not been able to complete it. Class will present strategies for maintaining a consistent flow of your writing, helping you get unstuck, tips on structure and completing the project. (for new and continuing students)
"If it weren't for Leslie Keenan's courses at Book Passage, I would never have written a word of fiction, and I would never have been published. To this day, I still use the tools she gave me for understanding my process, finding my voice, and fighting my fears."
- Tammy Kaehler, author of Dead Man's Switch, Poisoned Pen Press
"Leslie is inspiring, compassionate and has a natural gift for creating a safe place for a writer."
- Student, Is There a Book in You?
Special for teens!
From the bestselling author of Cinder and Scarlet comes the third book in the Lunar Chronicles. In Marissa Meyer's Cress ($18.99), Cinder and Scarlet are fugitives plotting to overthrow the wicked Queen Levana. Their only hope is Cress, a brilliant hacker who has spent her life trapped on a satellite by the evil queen.
The young Mary Cassatt never thought moving to Paris after the Civil War to be an artist was going to be easy, but when, after a decade of work, her submission to the Paris Salon is rejected, Mary's fierce determination wavers. Her father is begging her to return to Philadelphia to find a husband before it is too late, her sister Lydia is falling mysteriously ill, and worse, Mary is beginning to doubt herself. Then one evening a friend introduces her to Edgar Degas and her life changes forever. Years later she will learn that he had begged for the introduction, but in that moment their meeting seems a miracle. So begins the defining period of her life and the most tempestuous of relationships.
In I Always Loved You ($27.95), Robin Oliveira brilliantly re-creates the irresistible world of Belle Époque Paris, writing with grace and uncommon insight into the passion and foibles of the human heart.
Robin Oliveira is the New York Times bestselling author of My Name Is Mary Sutter. She holds a BA in Russian and studied at the Pushkin Language Institute in Moscow. She received an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is also a registered nurse, specializing in critical care. She lives in Seattle, Washington.
Sat., Feb. 8 • 10:00-1:00pm • $40
The blank page, canvas, or stage is daunting. Fear kills our ideas. Together, we break through our barriers and dare to be creative. This class gives you the tools to begin, to stay motivated, and to finish your creative projects. Diane Conway is a life coach and the author of What Would You Do If You Had No Fear? Living Your Dreams While Quakin' in Your Boots.
Sat., Feb. 8 • 10:30-12:30pm • $50
What's going on in the art world? What are galleries and museums looking for now? What makes the Bay Area a unique place for artists? This workshop will help emerging and established artists learn the basic business strategies required for success. Topics include: how to create an artist-friendly business plan, how to think like an entrepreneur, and how to use professional networks to advance your career.
Mary Edwards is a Career & Life Coach for artists and creative entrepreneurs. She works with painters, sculptors, photographers, designers, graphic artists, and other creative people. Mary has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and has taught workshops and classes for artists throughout the Bay Area.
Join author Suzanne Himmelwright for an ensemble reading from her memoir Shadow Time: Living with and Surviving My Husband's Dementia ($15.00). In documenting the sad fate of one couple's love, Himmelwright hopes others experiencing the tangled emotions of similar situations will feel less alone and might possibly find joy again.
Once viewed with suspicion as a New Age indulgence or fringe religious practice, hospice is now a $14 billion a year business and arguably the most successful segment of health care in America. However, talking about death still remains taboo and socially inappropriate to discuss. Why are we constantly trying to avoid the unavoidable? In Changing the Way We Die ($16.96), Fran Smith and Sheila Himmel not only address the discomfort that surrounds death, but also suggest that there is a better way to die. Through the stories of patients, caregivers, and researchers, Smith and Himmel examine the remarkable shift in practices around dying and look at the changes ahead if profits replace a dying-well philosophy.
Of course, talking about death will not make the idea of dying any less painful or uncomfortable, but it is time that we take advantage of options that may create a more peaceful environment for ourselves or our loved ones—and not as a last resort. By sharing the stories of patients, caregivers, and their own death-related experiences, the authors change the way we perceive death and dying. Once we accept that relentlessly fighting death may sometimes cause more harm than good, we can really take advantage of the benefits that hospice care has to offer. Changing the Way We Die advocates living our lives, rather than constantly fighting against death.
Fran Smith has written for O: The Oprah Magazine, Redbook, Salon, Good Housekeeping, and many other newspapers and websites. A former John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University and Pulitzer Prize winner, she lives in Dobbs Ferry, NY.
Sheila Himmel is a Psychology Today blogger and the coauthor of Hungry: A Mother and Daughter Fight Anorexia. Her work has appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Robb Report, and M Magazine. As restaurant critic of the San Jose Mercury News, she won a James Beard Award for feature writing. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Today's increasingly busy lifestyles can make enjoying whole-grains and natural, seasonal foods in the morning seem like a challenge, forcing many of us to rely on store-bought yogurts, sugary prepared cereals, and other fast but not so healthy choices. Luckily, Megan Gordon's Whole-Grain Mornings: New Breakfast Recipes to Span the Seasons ($22.00) offers a beautifully illustrated collection of sixty-five wholesome and inventive breakfast recipes that are so easy and convenient they are perfect for any day of the week. Seasonal recipes like Greens and Grains Scramble and Strawberry Rhubarb Quick Jam complement breakfast staples like Whole-Grain Pancake Mix and The Very Best Oatmeal. Natural sweeteners top tasty fare, such as infused honey drizzled over Rosemary Apricot Oatcakes, and a variety of homemade yogurts make even the staunchest avoider of breakfast eager to pull up a chair.
Featured throughout is an inspiring account of the author's own personal journey, from her business success as the founder of Marge Granola and her relocation from San Francisco to Seattle, to stories of nostalgia and new-found love. Whether one is thumbing through the pages to savor the stories or just looking for a simple, easy-to-follow guide to the most important meal, Whole-Grain Mornings is a delightfully nourishing way to start the day.
Megan Gordon is a writer, recipe developer and culinary educator living in Seattle, WA. She writer regularly for the Kitchn and on her blog "A Sweet Spoonful." Her work has appeared in numerous national magazines including Better Homes and Gardens, Ready Made Magazine and the Edible publications. When not writing about food, Megan operates runs Marge, the granola company she founded in 2010. Marge Granola is distributed nationally and has been recognized by the Wall Street Journal, Sunset Magazine and Whole Living. Visit her blog at www.asweetspoonful.com.
Mykonos After Midnight ($14.95) is the fifth and latest in the fast paced Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series
Mykonos holds tight to its past even as it transforms from an obscure, impoverished Aegean island into a tourist mecca and summertime playground for the world's rich, a process making the Mykonian people some of the wealthiest in Greece.
A legendary
nightclub owner, has been found savagely bludgeoned in his home. All
evidence points to obvious thugs. Yet the murder has put long hidden,
politically explosive secrets in play and drawn a dangerous foreign
investor to the island paradise. Andreas Kaldis, feared head of Greece's
special crimes division, is certain there's a far more complex solution
to the murder than robbery, and he vows to find it.
His quest for answers cuts straight into the entrenched cultural contradictions that give Mykonos so much of its magic and soon has him battling ruthless opportunists preying on his country's weakened financial condition. Kaldis learns there is a high, unexpected price to pay for his curiosity as he becomes locked in a war with a powerful, clandestine international force willing to do whatever it takes to change and wrest control of Mykonos, no matter the collateral damage. Such is global crime. And the need for a wily hero to stand against it.
Jeffrey Siger was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He practiced law at a major Wall Street law firm and while there served as Special Counsel to the citizens group responsible for reporting on New York City's prison conditions. He left Wall Street to establish his own New York City law firm and continued as one of its name partners until giving it all up to write full-time among the people, life, and politics of his beloved Mykonos, his adopted home of thirty years. When not in Greece, he enjoys his other home, a farm outside New York City.
Award-winning author Willy Vlautin demonstrates his extraordinary talent for confronting issues facing modern America, illuminated through the lives of three memorable characters who are looking for a way out of their financial, familial, and existential crises, in his heartbreaking and hopeful fourth novel The Free ($14.99).
Leroy Kervin is a 31 year old Iraqi War veteran living with a traumatic brain injury. Unable to dress or feed himself, or cope with his emotions, he has spent the last seven years in a group home. There he spends his days watching old sci-fi movies until he awakens one night with a clear mind and memories of his girlfriend.
Freddie McCall is a middle aged father working two jobs. He's lost his wife and kids, and is close to losing his house. He's buried in debt, unable to pay the medical bills from his daughter's childhood illness. As Freddie's situation becomes more desperate he undertakes a risky endeavor he hopes will solve his problems but could possibly end in disaster.
Pauline Hawkins takes care of everyone else around her. She cares for her mentally ill father out of a deep sense of obligation. As a nurse at the local hospital, she treats her patients and their families with a familiar warmth and tenderness. When Pauline becomes attached to a young runaway, she learns the difficult lesson that you can't help someone who doesn't help themselves.
The lives of these three characters intersect as they look for meaning in desperate times. Willy Vlautin covers themes ranging from health care to the economic downturn and housing crisis, to the toll war takes on veterans and their families. The Free is an extraordinary portrait of contemporary America and a testament to the resiliency of the human heart.
Born and raised in Reno, Nevada, Vlautin started playing guitar and writing songs as a teenager and quickly became immersed in music. It was a Paul Kelly song, based on Raymond Carver's Too Much Water So Close to Home that inspired him to start writing stories. He is the author of three well recieved novels, The Motel Life, which has been made into a movie starring Dakota Fanning, Emile Hersh, and Stephen Dorff; Northline, and Lean on Pete, which won two Oregon Book Awards. He is a founding member of the alternative country band Richmond Fontaine, who have produced eight studio albums.
5 Mon.: Feb. 10, Mar. 10, Apr. 7, May 12, & June 9 • 1:00-3:00pm • $105
Carol Benet has been teaching her popular classes on literary awards for 22 years at Book Passage. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, where she won an Outstanding Teaching Award. She also received an M.A. in French Literature from the University of Michigan.
Reading List:
February: City of Bohane, Kevin Barry ($15.00) - Impac Dublin Literary Award
March: The Hunger Angel, Herta Mueller ($16.00) - Nobel Prize Winner
April: Restless, William Boyd ($16.00) - Costa Award-formerly Whitbread
May: Spilt Milk, Chico Buarque ($15.00) - Premio Jabuti and Portugal Telecom Awards
June: Tenth of December, George Saunders ($15.00) - Pen/Saul Bellow Award
Left Coast Writers® Event
Join the Left Coast Writers® as they celebrate Undercover Love: Lust, Literature, and Lingerie. What our world needs is a lot more love. Of course in these busy days, it might be hard to find the elusive amour, let alone bask in its healing influence. So we provide the antidote for modern, time- and love-starved lives.
5 Mon.: Feb. 10, Mar. 10, Apr. 7, May 12, & June 9 • 7:00-9:00pm • $105
Carol Benet has been teaching her popular classes on literary awards for 22 years at Book Passage. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UC Berkeley, where she won an Outstanding Teaching Award. She also received an M.A. in French Literature from the University of Michigan.
Reading List:
February: City of Bohane, Kevin Barry ($15.00) - Impac Dublin Literary Award
March: The Hunger Angel, Herta Mueller ($16.00) - Nobel Prize Winner
April: Restless, William Boyd ($16.00) - Costa Award-formerly Whitbread
May: Spilt Milk, Chico Buarque ($15.00) - Premio Jabuti and Portugal Telecom Awards
June: Tenth of December, George Saunders ($15.00) - Pen/Saul Bellow Award
In the 1980s Jimmy Rabbitte formed the Commitments, a ragtag, blue-collar collective of Irish youths determined to bring the soul music stylings of James Brown and Percy Sledge to Dublin. Time proves a great equalizer for Jimmy as he's now approaching fifty with a loving wife, four kids, and a recent cancer diagnosis that leaves him feeling shattered and frightened.
Jimmy still loves his music, and he still loves to hustle—his new thing is finding old bands and then finding the people who loved them enough to pay for their resurrected albums. As he battles his illness on his path through Dublin, Jimmy manages to reconnect with his own past, most notably Commitments guitarist Liam "Outspan" Foster and the still beautiful backup vocalist Imelda Quirk. Jimmy also learns the trumpet, reunites with his long-lost brother, and rediscovers the joys of fatherhood.
An immensely funny and poignant novel, The Guts ($27.95) captures friendship, family, the power of music, the specter of death, and the zeal for life.
Roddy Doyle is the author of nine novels, two short story collections, and a nonfiction book. In 1993 he won the Booker Prize for his novel Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha. His 1991 novel, The Van, was a Booker Prize finalist. He lives in Dublin.
5 Tuesdays: Feb. 11, Mar. 11, April 8, May 13, & June 10 • 10:30-12:30pm • $105
Pat Holt leads a discussion of books that have captured the contemporary imagination. Holt is the former book review editor of the San Francisco Chronicle and publisher of Holt Uncensored.
Reading List:
Feb.: A Tale for the Time Being, Ruth Ozeki $16.00
Mar.: City of Women, David Gillham $16.00
Apr.: Me, Who Dove Into the Heart of the World, Sabina Bergman $15.00
May: Pigeon English, Stephen Kelman $13.95
June: The Garden of Evening Mists, Tan Twan Eng $15.99
Dept. of Speculation ($22.95) is a portrait of a marriage. It is also a beguiling rumination on the mysteries of intimacy, trust, faith, knowledge, and the condition of universal shipwreck that unites us all.
Jenny Offill's heroine, referred to in these pages as simply "the wife," once exchanged love letters with her husband postmarked Dept. of Speculation, their code name for all the uncertainty that inheres in life and in the strangely fluid confines of a long relationship. As they confront an array of common catastrophes-a colicky baby, a faltering marriage, stalled ambitions-the wife analyzes her predicament, invoking everything from Keats and Kafka to the thought experiments of the Stoics to the lessons of doomed Russian cosmonauts. She muses on the consuming, capacious experience of maternal love, and the near total destruction of the self that ensues from it as she confronts the friction between domestic life and the seductions and demands of art.
With cool precision, in language that shimmers with rage and wit and fierce longing, Jenny Offill has crafted an exquisitely suspenseful love story that has the velocity of a train hurtling through the night at top speed. Exceptionally lean and compact, Dept. of Speculation is a novel to be devoured in a single sitting, though its bracing emotional insights and piercing meditations on despair and love will linger long after the last page.
Jenny Offill is the author of the novel Last Things, which was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the New York Times and was a finalist for the L.A. Times First Book Award. She is the coeditor, with Elissa Schappell, of two anthologies of essays, The Friend Who Got Away and Money Changes Everything. Her children's books include 17 Things I'm Not Allowed to Do Anymore, 11 Experiments That Failed, and Sparky. She teaches in the writing programs at Queens University, Brooklyn College, and Columbia University.
Third-generation farmer Gary Romano, owner of Sierra Valley Farms, speaks from experience about today's most vital issues: how to live with purpose and how to protect our food supply. In Why I Farm: Risking It All for a Life on the Land ($15.00), Romano documents a disappearing way of life and issues a wake-up call, describing his metamorphosis from a small boy growing up on a farm to an adult white-collar worker and his ultimate return to the land. If you've ever wanted to claim a patch of earth, this book offers hard-earned counsel about small farming in the twenty-first century. Part memoir, part call to action, Romano details the challenges and joys of living off the land, what's at stake, and why this way of life must be protected for future farmers.
After a childhood spent pulling weeds and planting seeds, Gary Romano received a master's degree in recreation administration from California State University, Chico, and worked as a park ranger and county park administrator before returning to the farm.
One Book One Marin Launch
An unforgettably charming memoir, Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer ($16.00) is full of hilarious moments, fascinating farmer's tips, and a great deal of heart. When Novella Carpenter—captivated by the idea of backyard self-sufficiency—moved to inner city Oakland and discovered a weed-choked, garbage-strewn abandoned lot next door to her house, she closed her eyes and pictured heirloom tomatoes and a chicken coop. The story of how her urban farm grew from a few chickens to one populated with turkeys, geese, rabbits, ducks, and two three-hundred-pound pigs will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever considered leaving the city behind for a more natural lifestyle.
Novella Carpenter grew up in rural Idaho and Washington State. She went to University of Washington in Seattle where she majored in Biology and English. She studied under Michael Pollan for two years while attending Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Her writing has appeared on Salon.com, Saveur.com, and sfgate.com (the San Francisco Chronicle's website), and in Food & Wine and Mother Jones. She lives in Oakland, California.
In conversation with Tiffany Baker
Love Water Memory ($16.00) is a bittersweet masterpiece filled with longing and hope, Jennie Shortridge's emotional novel explores the raw, tender complexities of relationships and personal identity.
Who is Lucie Walker? Even Lucie herself can't answer that question after she comes to, confused and up to her knees in the chilly San Francisco Bay. Back home in Seattle, she adjusts to life with amnesia, growing unsettled by the clues she finds to the selfish, carefully guarded person she used to be. Will she ever fall in love with her handsome, kindhearted fiancé, Grady? Can he devote himself to the vulnerable, easygoing Lucie 2.0, who is so unlike her controlling former self? When Lucie learns that Grady has been hiding some very painful secrets that could change the course of their relationship, she musters the courage to search for the shocking, long-repressed childhood memories that will finally set her free.
Jennie Shortridge has published five novels: Love Water Memory, When She Flew, Love and Biology at the Center of the Universe, Eating Heaven, and Riding with the Queen. When not writing, teaching writing workshops, or volunteering with kids, Jennie stays busy as a founding member of Seattle7Writers.org, a collective of Northwest authors devoted both to raising funds for community literacy projects and to raising awareness of Northwest literature.
Funk visits the front lines of the melt, the drought, and the deluge to make a human accounting of the booming business of global warming. By letting climate change continue unchecked, we are choosing to adapt to a warming world. Containing the resulting surge will be big business; some will benefit, but much of the planet will suffer. McKenzie Funk has investigated both sides, and what he has found will shock us all. To understand how the world is preparing to warm, Windfall follows the money.