Written on the Dock of the Bay is your weekly guide to literary and bookish happenings in the pleasantly literary and bookish Bay Area.
Bay Area Book World Breaking News!
A new bookstore on Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley has lost a lot of bookstores over the years, but there might be a new bookstore opening doors soon -- or, at least, at some point within the next six months. Mad Monk Center for Anachronistic Media, located on Telegraph Avenue, will include a bookstore, media center, restaurant, bar and music venue. As owner Ken Sarachan, who also owns Rasputin Music and Blondie Pizza, said of the project, "It dances around the obscure."
THE INTERSECTION podcast explores 826 Valencia’s planned move to the Tenderloin
The fourth episode of THE INTERSECTION, a podcast exploring change in San Francisco one intersection at a time, delves inside the effects a writing and tutoring center ran by Dave Eggers might have when it comes to the neighborhood. Listen here.
MONDAY, 2/22 - SUNDAY 2/28
Monday, 2/22
All Korea, all the time
Patricia Park writes in Re Jane, "This was my America: all Korean, all the time." Re Jane, as the title suggests, is the contemporary retelling of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. The plot is pretty similar, except when you take a white British girl and turn her into a half-white, half-Korean orphan, the story takes a different turn. Litquake is proud to host the launch of Re Jane in partnership with Green Apple Books on the Park this Monday.
DETAILS: Alamo Drafthouse at the New Mission // 2550 Mission St., SF // 7pm
Tuesday, 2/23
Why we came to the city
Every once in awhile, it’s a good idea to stop reading tragic stories in newspapers and start reading novels about friendship. Kristopher Jansma’s Why We Came to the Cityis a novel about a friendship that struggles through the Great Recession in New York. Kristopher Jansma is coming to the Book Passage to talk about the book.
DETAILS: Book Passage// 51 Tamal Vista Blvd., Corte Madera // 7pm
Wednesday, 2/24
Hand to mouth, words spoken out
Rebound Bookstore has some poetry for San Rafaelians this Wednesday in their cozy literary salon with #77 of their Hand to Mouth/Words Spoken out series. Joseph Zaccardi will be there to read from his new book, A Wolf Stands Alone in Water, and Les Bernstein, author of chapbooks Borderland, Naked Little Creates, and Amid the Din will be there, too.
DETAILS: Rebound Bookstore // 1611 4th St., San Rafael // 7pm
Thursday, 2/25
Cities I’ve never lived in
In Sara Majika’s Cities I've Never Lived In, an artist gets divorced and decides to travel the United States to tour soup kitchens. That’s just one story in this short story collection, but the rest are about similarly lonely female protagonists who are a little lost. Majika will be at City Lights Books this Thursday to take you on these lonely journeys. Oh! And here’s a sneak peak of the collection.
DETAILS: City Lights Books // 261 Columbus Ave., SF // 7pm
Friday, 2/26
Poetry against police brutality
On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group called black.seed shut down the westbound span of the Bay Bridge to bring attention to police brutality. Maybe you saw! Maybe you wished the day of activism included more spoken word poetry. Well, to raise money for the Black Liberation group, there’s a readingat Ale Industries in Fruitvale led by the Association of Black and Brown Writers, Nomadic Press, and Sarah Kobrinsky, former Emeryville Poet Laureate.
DETAILS: Red Bay Coffee // 3098 E. 10th St., Oakland // 6pm
Saturday, 2/27
The language of food
Do you read the back of potato chip bags like bedtime stories? Ever thought Trader Joe’s food descriptions were weirdly poetic? Ever wonder what words like rich and mouthfeel that you find in menus actually mean? In The Language of Food, Stanford University professor and MacArthur Fellow Dan Jurafsky brings literary and linguistic perspectives to menus and restaurant reviews. He’s coming to Omnivore Books to bring the language of food to the bookstore.
DETAILS: Omnivore Books on Food // 3885a Cesar Chavez St., SF // 3pm
Sunday, 2/28
Writing workshop at E.M Wolfman
Writing can be lonely. You can try to hang out with your fictional creations, but there’s always the looming feeling that, well, they just aren’t real. But there are people, out there, who are real, and also writers. Come meet some of them at a drop-in writing workshop this Sunday.
DETAILS: E.M Wolfman General Interest Small Bookstore // 410 13th St., Oakland // 5pm
Got a literary event or some news you think we should share with the world? Email us at thelitographyproject@gmail.com!