"I have never seen a greater monster or miracle than myself." —Michel de Montaigne. Literary memoir transports us into the visceral reality of the life of the author. As we read, we walk as they do, talk as they do, but also fail, hurt, love. But what's it like to bear all? Memoirists Andrea Avery, Julie Barton, Elizabeth Farnsworth, Edward Guthmann, and Nancy Davis Kho discuss bleeding on the page with Juan Alvarado Valdivia. $10 adv / door
Nancy Davis Kho is a writer in Oakland whose work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Post, The Rumpus, and anthologies including 2015’s Listen To Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now (Putnam.) She’s a badge-wielding member of US Magazine’s... Read More →
Andrea Avery is the author of Sonata: A Memoir of Pain and the Piano (Pegasus Books). Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Real Simple, The Oxford American, and The Politics of Women's Bodies. She was the winner of Real Simple's second annual Life Lessons Essay Contest and a... Read More →
Julie Barton is the award winning New York Times bestselling author of Dog Medicine, How My Dog Saved Me From Myself, the story of Julie’s struggle with deep clinical depression and the salvation she found in the unwavering love of a big red dog. Julie has an MFA in Writing from... Read More →
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH is a filmmaker, foreign correspondent, and former chief correspondent and principal substitute anchor of PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Her 2008 documentary, The Judge and the General, co-directed with Patricio Lanfranco, aired on television around the world... Read More →
In both her works of memoir and fiction, Betsy Graziani Fasbinder explores the unending complications of people living, working, and loving one another. As a practicing therapist for more than twenty years, she has been witness to the heartbreak, healing, and heroism of people from... Read More →
Edward Guthmann is a Bay Area journalist and author of the memoir Wild Seed: Searching for My Brother Dan. He was a staff writer and film critic at the San Francisco Chronicle for 25 years, where his writing won accolades from the California Newspaper Publishers Assn. and the American... Read More →
Juan Alvarado Valdivia is a Peruvian American writer who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico and raised in Fremont, CA. He is the author of ¡Cancerlandia!: A Memoir, which received a 2016 International Latino Book Award Honorable Mention for Best Biography in English. A short story... Read More →
