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Wednesday, October 21
 

6:00pm PDT

Nafissa Thompson-Spires: The Four Wives and Five Deaths of Richard Milford
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation


Co-presented with Museum of the African Diaspora


From the author of the multi-award-winning, National Book Award–longlisted, “vivid, fast, funny, way-smart, and verbally inventive” (George Saunders) story collection Heads of the Colored People, comes a sly, spry, literary debut novel. We find ourselves in 1920s Oklahoma, just far enough out of Tulsa, just long enough after the Race Massacre of 1921. For as long as anyone can remember, the Milfords have led plentiful lives on the backs of the townspeople of Newville. On the ominous brink of the Great Depression and at the height of Prohibition, Richard Milford is an infamous moonshiner and womanizer who, it seems, finally crossed the wrong person at the wrong time. He’s dead and buried with only his women to mourn him, but a question remains: Who killed him, and why? Top suspects are his four “wives,” but as their stories burst to light, the very idea of a true story comes apart before our eyes. In conversation with Margaret Wilkerson Sexton. Doors at 5:30pm. 

Moderators
avatar for Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

MARGARET WILKERSON SEXTON studied creative writing at Dartmouth College and law at UC Berkeley. Her most recent novel, On the Rooftop, was a 2022 Reese’s Book Club Pick. The Revisioners won a 2020 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires

Nafissa Thompson-Spires is the author of the award-winning, National Book Award longlisted short story collection, Heads of the Colored People. She earned a doctorate in English from ­­­­Vanderbilt University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from ­­­­­­the University... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Museum of the African Diaspora 685 Mission St, San Francisco
  Fiction, FREE

6:00pm PDT

Rapture: the art that moves us
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Decentered Arts
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

An interactive evening of poetry, music, drumming, and call-and-response performance where audiences are invited to clap, sing, sway, and become part of the rhythm. Rapture transforms the reading into a collective, full-body experience of sound, movement, and shared energy. Featuring poets and performers BB Brown, Trinh Lê, Sun Park, Matt Pacelli, Kimi Sugioka, and Joe Wadlington. Curated by London Pinkney. Doors at 5:30pm. 
Moderators
avatar for London Pinkney

London Pinkney

London Pinkney is a writer and the editor-in-chief of The Ana. She is currently working on her debut essay collection that explores the history & culture of Black Californians.
Speakers
avatar for Kimi Sugioka

Kimi Sugioka

Kimi Sugioka is a poet, songwriter, and educator. She is the current Poet Laureate for the City of Alameda, a post that includes creating platforms for the presentation of a diverse variety of poets and spoken-word artists. Kimi also performs her own work frequently throughout the... Read More →
avatar for Joe Wadlington

Joe Wadlington

Joe Wadlington is a San Francisco writer, events producer, and drag queen. His writing has been published in the New Yorker, Vox, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the recent collection The Dreams I Dream: Letters to San Francisco. As his drag persona, Jubilee, he hosts the m... Read More →
avatar for Trinh Lê

Trinh Lê

Trinh Lê is a Pushcart-nominated poet of Vietnamese origin. They received the 2025 Black Mountain College Award from the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and were a finalist for the 2024 Brett Elizabeth Jenkins Poetry Prize. As a community archivist at the Bay Area Lesbian Arch... Read More →
avatar for Matt Pacelli

Matt Pacelli

Matt Pacelli is a fast casual restaurant chain specializing in warm, deli-style sandwiches anchored by his preservative-free sourdough bread made with a traditional San Francisco starter.
avatar for Sun Park

Sun Park

Sun Park is a visual artist and writer based in San Francisco whose work is informed by their upbringing and departure from the white Protestant church, current study of saju (Korean astrology), and love of the ocean and other Bay Area landscapes. Sun is a current Creative in Resident... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:00pm - 7:30pm PDT
Decentered Arts 1175 Folsom St, San Francisco
  Performance, FREE

6:30pm PDT

Kearny Street Workshop presents APAture Literary Showcase
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Arc Gallery
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$15

APAture, the only festival to put the focus on emerging Asian Pacific American artists, returns from Oct. 17th to Dec. 12th for its 27th year. This year's theme, GENERATION, turns our focus toward what we inherit, what we cultivate, and what we pass on—seeding growth for the future health of our communities while honoring the artistic lineages that have brought us to this moment. As we consider what the next generation of artists will hold and shape, we celebrate creative inheritance as an active, collective practice, one that bridges past, present, and future through art. What do you carry forward, and what will you leave behind? This year's literary showcase features writers Alyson Sagala, Bianca Datta, Brandon Vu, Leslie Nguyen-Okwu, Mai-Linh Hong, May-Li Khoe, Monica Korde, Neha M. Sampat, Rose Wong, and Vina Vo. Doors at 6:00pm. 
Speakers
avatar for Alyson Sagala

Alyson Sagala

Alyson Sagala is a writer from San Jose, CA currently based in Mendocino County. She has received support from the Mendocino Coast Writer’s Conference, Kearny Street Workshop, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Writers Grotto. She is currently working on her first novel.
avatar for Bianca Datta

Bianca Datta

Bianca Datta (she/her) grew up in Maryland and has lived in San Francisco for the past four years. Formally, she trained as a scientist (studying the colors of butterfly wings) and now works on sustainable foods. She is a 2026 Fellow of the Writer's Grotto Rooted and Written program... Read More →
avatar for Brandon Vu

Brandon Vu

Brandon Vu is an educator in the Bay Area. He was a season 22 member of AWP’s Writer-to-Writer Program and was a finalist for the 2025 Goldline Press Chapbook Competition. Additionally, he was a finalist for the 2026 Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize. His work has appeared in... Read More →
avatar for Leslie V. Nguyen-Okwu

Leslie V. Nguyen-Okwu

Leslie V. Nguyen-Okwu is a Vietnamese Nigerian American writer and journalist with bylines in The New York Times, BBC, National Geographic, The Economist, and Harper's Bazaar. She has received fellowships and residencies from the Aspen Institute’s Summer Words, Hedgebrook, Tin House... Read More →
avatar for Mai-Linh Hong

Mai-Linh Hong

Mai-Linh Hong is a Vietnamese American refugee poet and literary scholar. Her debut poetry collection, Continental Drift, won the 2025 Trio Award and was published by Trio House Press in July 2026. Poems appear or are forthcoming in Waxwing, Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Wildness... Read More →
avatar for May-Li Khoe

May-Li Khoe

May-Li Khoe (they/she) is a queer interdisciplinary artist, designer, and writer, born in the Netherlands to Chinese-Indonesian immigrant parents and raised in Vancouver, Canada. In the past, she invented new ways for people and computers to interact, many of which you probably use... Read More →
avatar for Monica Korde

Monica Korde

Monica Korde is a poet and artist from India based in California. She served as Poet Laureate of Belmont (2021–2025) and is the city’s first South Asian immigrant to hold the role. Founder of Project POETRY 360, Monica centers the voices of bipoc, queer, youth, and immigrant artists... Read More →
avatar for Neha M. Sampat

Neha M. Sampat

As a besharam (shameless) brown, queer, disabled woman, Neha M. Sampat centers life on multiple margins through her speaking, writing, creating, and acting up. Their poetry, essays, insight, and art are featured in values-aligned publications and exhibits including The B'K Magazine... Read More →
avatar for Rose Wong

Rose Wong

Rose Wong is Chinese writer and journalist from Hong Kong and Vancouver, Canada and a MFA in Creating Writing candidate at St. Mary’s College of California. Her writing has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Cordella Magazine, Pile Press, the Oregonian, and the Tampa Bay Times... Read More →
avatar for Vina Vo

Vina Vo

Vina Vo is a storyteller, facilitator, and organizer who bridges the cultural and geographic divide caused by displacement and diaspora. Her professional and community work revolve around creating and nurturing communities of belonging through storytelling, interactive learning experiences... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:30pm - 7:30pm PDT
Arc Gallery 1246 Folsom St, San Francisco
  Performance

6:30pm PDT

Artificial Intimacy: Sherry Turkle and A.I.
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
YBCA Screening Room
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Co-presented with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts

Sherry Turkle has spent decades studying how digital technologies isolate us from one another. Now, in her latest book, Artificial Intimacy: Who We Become When We Talk To Machines, the psychologist who pioneered our understanding of human-computer relationships explores the seductive and beguiling nature of chatbots presented as “perfect” companions. How does their popularity point to existing wells of deep loneliness in our current culture, and how does increasing reliance on a one-sided digital ear affect users’ ability to maintain offscreen relationships with other humans? In conversation with New Yorker cartoonist Amy Kurzweil, whose graphic novel Artificial: A Love Story suggests an alternate path in which A.I. isn’t used as a human connection substitute, but rather a tool to support and deepen the real-world relationships we already have. The conversation is part of Free Wednesdays at YBCA, which offers extended gallery hours, hands-on afternoon art-making, and special evening programs—all for free. Doors at 6:00pm.
Moderators
avatar for Amy Kurzweil

Amy Kurzweil

Amy Kurzweil is a New Yorker cartoonist and the author of two award-winning graphic memoirs: Flying Couch and Artificial: A Love Story, which was named a Best Book of 2023 by NPR, The New Yorker, and Kirkus. She is the 2024 winner of the Overseas Press Club’s “Best Cartoon Award... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and
Technology at MIT and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. A
leading expert in humans’ relationship with digital objects, she continues to revolutionize
ou... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 6:30pm - 8:00pm PDT
YBCA Screening Room 701 Mission St, San Francisco
  Nonfiction, FREE

7:00pm PDT

California Journeys
Wednesday October 21, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
KALW
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Co-presented with KALW

Taking the driver’s seat on tonight’s narrative journey through California is Grant Faulkner, whose recent “flash novel” something out there in the distance pairs short, perfectly crystallized prose vignettes with Gail Butensky’s photographs of the American West. Riding shotgun is Irena Smith, whose memoir Troika is a modern-day Odyssey set in California’s Central Coast, as three generations of women share profound family stories and create new ones. As for Angelica Glass, she’ll opt out of driving altogether—her memoir Scavenging Beauty relates her quest to find healing while traversing all the streets in Santa Cruz County by foot. In true travelogue style, their conversation will be accompanied by photos illustrating each author’s journey. Doors at 6:30pm.


Moderators
avatar for Grant Faulkner

Grant Faulkner

Grant Faulkner is the co-founder of Memoir Nation (and also the co-host of the Memoir Nation podcast), the co-founder of the Flash Fiction Institute, the co-founder of 100 Word Story, and an executive producer on America’s Next Great Author. He has published All the Comfort Si... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Irena Smith

Irena Smith

Irena Smith is the author of the award-winning memoir The Golden Ticket: A Life in College Admissions Essays and Troika: Three Generations, Three Days, and a Very American Road Trip. Her obsession with how words work began early (as a child growing up in Soviet Russia, she was known to occasionally stand on furniture and recite Pushkin poems), and her writing focuses on migration, memory, motherhood, generational expectations, the petty indignities of middle... Read More →
avatar for Angelica Glass

Angelica Glass

Angelica Glass had a decades-long career in social work in California, cluminating in directing and helping to design a program that provides support and services to children and families affected by methermphetamine abuse. The mother of two grown sons, she lives with her wife in Santa Cruz... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
KALW 220 Montgomery St, Suite 100, San Francisco, CA 94104
  Nonfiction, FREE

7:00pm PDT

Vigdis Hjorth: Repetition
Wednesday October 21, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books
Buy Tickets/RSVP
FREE, $10-$15 suggested donation

Sponsored by Norway House and Center for the Art of Translation
Part of Words Around the World 

From International Booker Prize– and National Book Award–nominated author Vigdis Hjorth comes her latest novel finally translated into English, Repetition. As winter approaches in Norway and the daylight dwindles, a chance encounter prompts a novelist to reexamine her past. The seismic events following her sixteenth birthday return with haunting vividness, exposing a story both utterly familiar and desperately strange. It was the year she first got drunk, the year she first had sex with a boy. She was watched like a hawk by an anxious mother and a silent, distant father. It was a year of typical teenage fixation and typical teenage frivolity, and of all the usual parental fretting. Until something else took hold, and her family made an unspoken decision and a terrible sacrifice. Only now, decades later, can these events come close to being comprehended. In conversation with Daniela Blei. 


Moderators
avatar for Daniela Blei

Daniela Blei

Daniela Blei is a historian, editor, and academic writing coach with a habit of digging up the past in unlikely places. Her work has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, New Republic, the Atlantic, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere, and she writes and edits for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. She has a Ph.D. from Stanford, was a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley, and has taught at Reed College. For more than a decade, she has coached scholars whose books have gone on to leading unive... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Vigdis Hjorth

Vigdis Hjorth

Vigdis Hjorth is the author of over a dozen prize-winning and best-selling novels. Will and Testament sold 170,000 copies in Norway and has received several awards, including the Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature and the Norwegian Booksellers’ Prize, as well as being nominated... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
Telegraph Hill Books 1501 Grant Ave, San Francisco
  Words Around the World, FREE

8:15pm PDT

All Hallows Eve: An Evening with Ellen Datlow & Friends
Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:15pm - 9:45pm PDT
The Lost Church
Buy Tickets/RSVP
$15 / $3 early bird discount until October 18th (code: earlybird16)

Co-presented with Locus Magazine and SF in SF

Celebrate the spooky season with Ellen Datlow, Hugo Award–winning editor of the new horror anthology All Hallows Eve: Stories of Halloween and Other Festivals of the Dead, a chilling lineup of 19 original short stories delving into our worldwide obsession with that time of year when the veil is lifted, spirits come alive, and the boundary between the living and the dead is far too thin. Joined by anthology contributors and world-class masters of the genre Linda D. Addison, Theresa DeLucci, Brian Evenson, and Jeffrey Ford, Datlow will offer a rare peek behind the publishing curtain, introducing the authors reading from their featured works with insights on how each one was hand-picked for inclusion in her anthology. But that’s not all—Datlow will also sit down with Locus Magazine editor-in-chief Liza Trombi to discuss four-plus decades of her legendary career in the horror genre, and the countless authors she’s shepherded to print. Doors at 7:30pm. 
Moderators
avatar for Liza Trombi

Liza Trombi

LIZA GROEN TROMBI is the four-time Hugo Award winning Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Locus Magazine. A life-long reader of science fiction, fantasy, and horror, she studied literature, history, and translation at university, and worked in several fields before joining the magazine... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford

Jeffrey Ford is the author of the novels The Physiognomy, The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque, The Girl in the Glass, The Shadow Year, and Ahab's Return. His collections are The Fantasy Writer’s Assistant, The Empire of Ice Cream, The Drowned Life, Crackpot Palace, A Natural History... Read More →
avatar for Theresa DeLucci

Theresa DeLucci

Theresa DeLucci's short fiction has appeared in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Tor.com, Weird Horror, and in Fears: Tales of Psychological Horror, edited by Ellen Datlow, and received an honorable mention in The Year's Best Horror Vol. 14. She has talked pop culture for Reactor, W... Read More →
avatar for Linda D. Addison

Linda D. Addison

Linda D. Addison, an award-winning author of five collections, including "How To Recognize A Demon Has Become Your Friend," recipient of HWA Lifetime Achievement Award, and SFPA Grand Master of Fantastic Poetry. Her 2025 books: "Everything Endless" written with Jamal J. Hodge; "An Illegal Feast "with... Read More →
avatar for Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow

Ellen Datlow has been editing sf/f/h short fiction for more than four decades. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Reactor, Tor.com, and Nightfire. She has edited numerous anthologies for adults, young adults, and children, including The Best Horror of the Year ... Read More →
avatar for Brian Evenson

Brian Evenson

Brian Evenson is the author of two dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Good Night, Sleep Tight. His collection Song for the Unraveling of the World won the Shirley Jackson Award and the World Fantasy Award and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times' Ray Bradbury... Read More →
Wednesday October 21, 2026 8:15pm - 9:45pm PDT
The Lost Church 988 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Sci-fi / Fantasy / Horror
 

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