Name: How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir with Truong Tran
Start: 2026-10-18T14:00:00-0700
End: 2026-10-18T16:00:00-0700

How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir with Truong Tran

Sunday October 18, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm PDT

City Lights

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FREE

Co-presented with City Lights

How to Exi(s)t: A Poet’s Memoir is an experiment in nonlinear autobiography by the author of the American Book Award–winning Book of the Other, Truong Tran. Beginning in the present—at a writing residency in the aftermath of this success—How to Exi(s)t unpeels the layers between present and past in bursts of brief poetic essays. Unsparing, even caustic in its insistence on racism as a dominant note of American life, but marked by surprising tenderness and humor, How to Exi(s)t is a compelling portrayal of Tran’s pedagogical philosophy as well as an interrogation of a poetic language that conceals as much as it reveals. In conversation with Garrett Caples.

Moderators

Garrett Caples

Garrett Caples is a poet moonlighting as an editor at City Lights, yet his most recent book is Proses (Wave 2024), a collection of tales. No one knows what he's up to.

Speakers

Truong Tran

Poet and visual artist Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He earned his MFA from San Francisco State University and is the author of five collections of poetry: The Book of Perceptions (1999), a finalist for a Kiriyama Prize; placing the accents (1999), a finalist for a W... Read More →

Sunday October 18, 2026 2:00pm - 4:00pm PDT
City Lights 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco

Storytelling/Memoir, FREE

City San Francisco

Litquake 2026

Garrett Caples

Truong Tran

Get help with the event

Litquake 2026

Garrett Caples

Truong Tran

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