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Saturday, October 17
 

10:00am PDT

FilBookFest
Saturday October 17, 2026 10:00am - 5:30pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE

Part of Words Around the World

Co-presented with Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, the Filipino American Center at SFPL, PAWA, and the San Francisco Public Library

The Filipino American International Book Festival (FilBookFest) returns in October for its 8th iteration, continuing its legacy as the largest Filipino American literary festival in the United States. Held during Filipino American History Month, FilBookFest brings together an exciting array of writers, scholars, and creatives from across the globe, including the U.S., Canada, and the Philippines, to the iconic San Francisco Public Library. Keynote speakers for 2026 include Randy Ribay, author of Patron Saints of Nothing & Nest of Tongues; Dr. Robyn Rodriguez, author of Contemporary Asian American Activism: Building Movements for Liberation; and Professor M. Evelina Galang, author of When the Hibiscus Falls and recipient of the inaugural PAWA Lifetime Achievement Award. Other featured authors include Mia Alvar, Marivi Soliven, Mia Manansala (US); Yvette Tan, Jet Tagasa and Jaya Jacobo (Philippines); Candy Gourlay (UK), as well as children’s authors Tracy Badua (US) and Analene Go (Canada). The festival will also feature a bustling marketplace with tables from PAWA Books, Arkipelago Books, Eastwind Books, and Bel Canto Books. For a full program schedule and author lineup, visit filbookfestival.org. 
Saturday October 17, 2026 10:00am - 5:30pm PDT
SFPL Main Branch 100 Larkin St, San Francisco
  Words Around the World, FREE

12:00pm PDT

Read the Room: Books Not Bans
Saturday October 17, 2026 12:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Kerouac Alley
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Books Not Bans together with City Lights and Litquake present a party for everyone who loves reading. Join us for an afternoon filled with connection, revelry, music, games and stories. Featuring performances, readings, and all kinds of stuff from Syr Hayati Beker, Shoshana von Blanckensee, Kevin Dublin, W.S. Gong, Hyazinth, Sean Owens, and Sumiko Saulson. Hosted by Books Not Bans founder Becka Robbins. Proceeds from this event support Books Not Bans.


Moderators
avatar for Becka Robbins
Speakers
avatar for Sean Owens

Sean Owens

Dubbed "SF's Best Comic Playwright" by the now-defunct SF Weekly, Sean Owens has written (and performed) over 50 short and full-length plays in the Bay Area and abroad. Their solo musical, "GIRLESQUE" has delighted audiences in the Bay Area, New York and Canada.  Sean created the... Read More →
avatar for Kevin Dublin

Kevin Dublin

Kevin Dublin is an educator, advocate, and writer of poetry, prose, scripts, and code from Smithfield, NC. Currently Director of the Elder Writing Project, a community-based outreach program of the Litquake Foundation that brings creative writing and storytelling workshops to retirement communities... Read More →
avatar for Shoshana von Blanckensee

Shoshana von Blanckensee

Shoshana von Blanckensee lives in Berkeley, California, with her partner and kids. She is an Oncology Nurse by day, and a writer by any available moment. Girls Girls Girls is her debut novel.
avatar for W.S. Gong

W.S. Gong

W.S. Gong is a writer and editor based in San Francisco. An alumnus of Bread Loaf, Tin House, Kenyon, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, his work appears in Fourteen Hills. He is at work on a novel.
avatar for Sumiko Saulson

Sumiko Saulson

Sumiko Saulson is the BayCon/Westercon 2026 Poet Laureate, a Two-Time Bram Stoker Award® for Poetry for The Rat King (2022, Dooky Zines) and Melancholia (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press). Four-Time Elgin Speculative Poetry Award nominee for these and Doodooality: Shots fired from U... Read More →
avatar for Syr Hayati Beker

Syr Hayati Beker

Syr Hayati Beker (they/them) is a writer and experience creator in search of the queer love language of climate change. Their first book, What A Fish Looks Like, was a 2025 Otherwise Honoree. Syr is the co-founder of Queer Cat Productions immersive theater company and is part of the experimental performance group GH{}ST. Find their work at syrbeker.com and in theaters, pirate ships, galleries, and queer bars near you... Read More →
avatar for Hyazinth Baumann

Hyazinth Baumann

Hyazinth Baumann is a trans multi-discplinary artist living in Oakland, CA. They currently work for Books Not Bans as an outreach coordinator. You can find their work on their website at Hyazinths.com
Saturday October 17, 2026 12:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
Kerouac Alley 275 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Party, FREE

12:30pm PDT

ZYZZYVA Movie Matinee: Amarcord
Saturday October 17, 2026 12:30pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 9:00pm PDT
Roxie Theater
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$16

Co-presented with ZYZZYVA and the Roxie

For this festival installment of our year-round film series, Andrew Sean Greer introduces a special screening of Amarcord, the dramatic comedy directed by Federico Fellini. Fellini recreates his hometown of Rimini in this carnivalesque film, where the director satirizes his childhood. Winner of an Academy Award for best foreign-language film, Amarcord remains one of the director’s best-loved creations, beautifully weaving together Giuseppe Rotunno’s colorful cinematography, Danilo Donati’s extravagant costumes and sets, and Nino Rota’s nostalgia-tinged score. Following the screening, Greer will appear in conversation with Ingrid Rojas Contreras about his film selection and most recent book, Villa Coco, in which a young man takes an unspecified job with a charismatic elderly baronessa at her crumbling villa in the Tuscan hills. Co-hosted by ZYZZYVA editor Oscar Villalon. Doors at 12:00pm for book sales/signing. 
Moderators
avatar for Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras

Ingrid Rojas Contreras was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. Her memoir The Man Who Could Move Clouds was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. It won a California Book Award. Her debut novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree was a National Bestseller, and a recipient of a California Book Award. Her essays and short stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, The Believer, and Zyzzyva, among others. She lives in California... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer

Andrew Sean Greer is the author of eight works of fiction, including the bestsellers Less and its companion Less Is Lost. He lives in San Francisco and Venice, Italy. His latest novel is Villa Coco.
Saturday October 17, 2026 12:30pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 9:00pm PDT
Roxie Theater 3117 16th St, San Francisco
  Film Screening

2:00pm PDT

Dorothy Lazard: Behind the Desk at the Main
Saturday October 17, 2026 2:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora

Dorothy Lazard’s celebrated 2023 memoir What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World traced the beloved Oakland librarian’s coming of age through books. Now she’s back to tell more of her story, relating her experiences over two decades at the Oakland Public Library. Along the way, she makes a powerful case for the essential role of the public library as a pillar of democratic ideals, and she crafts a tribute to the library workers who have devoted their careers to supporting intellectual freedom as well as to the countless Oaklanders whom she had the privilege of serving. Lazard will be joined in conversation by Pendarvis Harshaw, community engagement reporter at KQED. Doors at 1:30pm.

Moderators
avatar for Pendarvis Harshaw

Pendarvis Harshaw

Pendarvis Harshaw is a journalist from Oakland, covering arts and culture in the Bay Area for KQED. 
Speakers
avatar for Dorothy Lazard

Dorothy Lazard

Dorothy Lazard worked as a librarian for nearly forty years. In 2000 she joined the staff at the Oakland Main Library where she provided reference services and programming for Oakland's diverse community. From 2009 until her retirement in 2021, she was the head librarian of OPL's Oakland History... Read More →
Saturday October 17, 2026 2:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora 685 Mission St, San Francisco
  Nonfiction, FREE

7:00pm PDT

An Evening Spell: Trans Poetry & Hardware Hang
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Crown
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

An evening time experimental live hardware performance, reading, and party featuring trans hardware musicians and poets. Featured musicians Cat Laugian and Daria Lourd. Curated by Jaelynn Walls. 
Moderators
avatar for Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls

Jaelynn Walls is an Oakland-based curator, administrator and author. Their novel The Queer Girl is Going to Be Okay (Levine Querido, 2023) was named a Publishers Weekly Best of the Year YA novel. They have written for Teen Vogue, Artsy, Google Arts and Culture, and was a 2022 Lambda... Read More →
Speakers
CL
avatar for Daria Lourd

Daria Lourd

Daria Lourd is an Oakland-based audio producer, DJ, and hardware musician. Lourd is a trailblazer in the Bay Area electronic music scene as of the last decade, originally hailing from Memphis, TN. She is best known for her prolific catalogue of energetic, emotional and sample-heavy... Read More →
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
The Crown 2523 Broadway, Oakland
  Poetry, FREE

7:00pm PDT

Picturing the Past: Graphic Novelists on History and Memory
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Mrs. Dalloway's
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Sponsored by Berkeleyside

Through memoir, history, fiction, or a combination, these four talented creators use cartoons to give readers a vivid glimpse into the past. Frederick Noland shares the epic story of Major Taylor, the “world’s fastest man,” a global cycling sensation despite the incessant racism the Black athlete encountered. In Armaveni, Nadine Takvorian draws on her own family history to relate the heartbreaking history of the Armenian genocide. Emil Wilson’s The Nightingales blends fact and fiction in a personal story of the 1980s AIDS crisis. And Maria van Lieshout’s graphic novel Song of a Blackbird pairs the stories of two Dutch teens, one contemporary and one bearing witness to Nazi atrocities. Brief visual presentations will be followed by a conversation led by graphic memoirist Briana Loewinsohn. Doors at 6:30pm.
Moderators
avatar for Briana Loewinsohn

Briana Loewinsohn

Briana Loewinsohn is an American cartoonist. She is the author of the acclaimed graphic memoir Ephemera (Fantagraphics, 2023). It was listed as one of the ALA’s top graphic novels of 2023 and was awarded the 2023 Foreword Indies Editors Prize for non-fiction. Her new book, Rais... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Nadine Takvorian

Nadine Takvorian

Nadine Takvorian is a first-generation Armenian-American author and illustrator of children’s books and graphic novels. From within the Armenian diaspora, Nadine’s family is “Bolsahye”  — from Istanbul, Turkey.

She is passionate about exploring Armenian identity and hi

... Read More →
avatar for Maria van Lieshout

Maria van Lieshout

Maria van Lieshout was born and raised in the Netherlands. She has written and illustrated fifteen picture books for kids. Her historical graphic novel Song of a Blackbird, about a female artist in the Amsterdam resistance during WWII, was inspired by events that affected her o... Read More →
avatar for Frederick Noland

Frederick Noland

Frederick Noland focuses on less-known Black Historical Figures. He created San Francisco Black History, a comics public-art series for the San Francisco Arts Commission; and Respect Black Women, a collection of biographies-in-brief. Noland's work has appeared in The New Yorker... Read More →
avatar for Emil Wilson

Emil Wilson

Emil Wilson is an artist living in San Fransisco, California. The Nightingales is his first graphic novel.
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Mrs. Dalloway's 2904 College Ave, Berkeley CA 94705
  Comics/Graphic Novels, FREE

7:00pm PDT

Jean-Baptiste Phou: Coming Out of My Skin
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Part of Words Around the World
Sponsored by Center for the Art of Translation
Co-presented with Villa Albertine

Having grown up as a Cambodian immigrant in France, Jean-Baptiste Phou has long explored the challenges and contradictions of the Asian diaspora experience throughout his artistic career. However, up until now, he’s always been careful not to raise issues of sexuality—in particular, his homosexuality. In his recent memoir, Coming Out of My Skin, the artist shifts his focus to examining the role his ethnic origin has played in the construction of his sexual identity and his romantic relationships in a predominantly white environment. An astute observer of the various ways in which his body has been perceived, Phou asks: how does a marginalized person develop emotionally and build, reclaim, and express their sexuality? How does this inform the experience of a queer Asian person navigating predominantly white cultural spaces? In conversation with César Cadabes, Artistic Director for the GLBTQ Asian Pacific Alliance (GAPA) Theatre. Doors at 6:30pm
Moderators
avatar for César Cadabes

César Cadabes

César Cadabes is a Hawaii-born and raised, Queer Filipino American writer and solo performance artist based in San Francisco. He's the Artistic Director of GAPA Theatre, an intergenerational theater collective, where he mentors Queer and Trans Asian and Pacific Islander artists (QTAPI) in amplifying... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Jean-Baptiste Phou

Jean-Baptiste Phou

Jean-Baptiste Phou is a French-Cambodian writer, director, and multidisciplinary artist. He is the author of Coming Out of My Skin (Seagull Books, 2023), which he adapted for the stage, and 80 mots du Cambodge (L’Asiathèque, 2023). His writing explores memory, identity, diaspo... Read More →
Saturday October 17, 2026 7:00pm - Sunday October 18, 2026 4:00pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books 1501 Grant Ave, San Francisco
  Words Around the World, FREE
 

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