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Venue: City Lights clear filter
Sunday, October 18
 

2:00pm PDT

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
avatar for Garrett Caples

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
avatar for Truong Tran

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
 
Monday, October 19
 

7:00pm PDT

A Celebration of César Vallejo's Trilce
Monday October 19, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
City Lights
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FREE

Part of Words Around the World
Sponsored by Center for the Art of Translation
Co-presented with City Lights and New York Review of Books


First published in 1922, and rich in startling neologisms and other forms of verbal play, Trilce is a blazingly vivid revelation of what poetry can be, at once a love poem, a poem of erotic urgency and frustration, a poem of family life, of political fury, a lament for the dead, a work of intense privacy and an address to the world. In this new edition of Trilce from NYRB—the recipient of the prestigious Premio Valle Inclán for the best translation from Spanish into English—the translators Helen Dimos and William Rowe accompany each poem with a gloss. Their incisive commentary on these legendarily challenging poems opens them up to new understanding while inviting readers to find their own pathways to and through them.

Speakers
avatar for Helen Dimos

Helen Dimos

Helen Dimos is the author of the collections No Realtor Was Compensated For This Sale (The Elephants, 2017) and Intermissions & Things, Auto-bio-graphy (forthcoming). She has worked as a teacher of poetry, composition and English, as a translator principally from the Greek, and... Read More →
avatar for William Rowe

William Rowe

William Rowe’s Collected Poems were published in 2016 by Crater Press. He has translated a number of Latin American poets, including Rodolfo Hinostroza, Juan L. Ortiz, Hugo Gola, Magdalena Chocano, Néstor Perlongher, and Mario Montalbetti. Three Lyric Poets, his study of Lee H... Read More →
Monday October 19, 2026 7:00pm - 9:00pm PDT
City Lights 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Words Around the World, FREE
 
Tuesday, October 20
 

7:00pm PDT

Brian Evenson: Phantom Limb
Tuesday October 20, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights
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FREE, $10-15 suggested donation

Co-presented with City Lights

Master of literary horror Brian Evenson returns with a long-awaited follow-up to his 2016 novel, Last Days. After destroying the headquarters of an underground amputation cult, a burned and battered Kline finds himself in a holding cell. When he enlists the help of an ex-cop to commute his prison sentence, Kline inadvertently tangles with a schism of the very cult he sought to destroy. Can Kline investigate the sect’s ritualistic murder spree without getting lured into their ranks? Frigid and precise, Phantom Limb interrogates our notions of wholeness, fate, and the lengths we are willing to go to connect with a higher power. In conversation with Colin Winnette. 


Moderators
avatar for Colin Winnette

Colin Winnette

Colin Winnette is a writer from Denton, Texas. His novel Users (2023) was a Finalist for the Pen/Faulkner Award for Fiction, a New Yorker “Best Book of 2023”, a NY Times “Editor’s Choice” pick, and was called “The First Great Novel About Virtual Reality” by The Nation... Read More →
Speakers
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 →
Tuesday October 20, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Sci-fi / Fantasy / Horror, FREE
 
Thursday, October 22
 

7:00pm PDT

Ben Ehrenreich: Hold Still
Thursday October 22, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights
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FREE

Co-presented with City Lights


In the months after his mother Barbara’s death, author and essayist Ben Ehrenreich set himself the task of writing a story every day. Leaving open the question of what a “story” might be, some entries ended up fable-like tales involving animals doing surprising things. Others were closer to journal entries, many of them about his daughter, who was nearly three at the time, and who was trying to understand death herself at the same time that she was voraciously exploring the living world. This deeply moving collection of those daily journeys into storytelling—a finely crafted combination of fiction, memoir, and poetic prose—is both profound and satisfyingly whimsical. In conversation with Daniel Gumbiner.

Moderators
avatar for Daniel Gumbiner

Daniel Gumbiner

Daniel Gumbiner is the author of The Boatbuilder, a nominee for the National Book Award and Fire in the Canyon, a California Book Award Finalist. His short story “The Vermilion Sea,” published in VQR, received the Emily Clark Balch Prize. He is the Editor of The Believer and lives... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Ben Ehrenreich

Ben Ehrenreich

Ben Ehrenreich is the author, most recently, of Hold Still, published October 2026 by City Lights. He has also written two books of nonfiction—the American Book Award-winning Desert Notebooks: A Road Map for the End of Time and The Way to the Spring: Life and Death in Palestine... Read More →
Thursday October 22, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PDT
City Lights 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Storytelling/Memoir, FREE
 
Tuesday, November 10
 

7:00pm PST

Jennifer Croft: Notes on Postcards
Tuesday November 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PST
City Lights
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FREE, $10–15 suggested donation

Co-presented with City Lights Bookstore

Jennifer Croft may be best known as one of our foremost literary translators, bringing such acclaimed international authors as Olga Tokarczuk and Urszula Honek to English-speaking audiences. She’s also gained acclaim for her own writing, including her novel The Extinction of Irina Rey and her hybrid coming-of-age memoir Homesick, called “stunning and surprising” by the New York Times. Now Croft follows up with a second memoir, detailing her lifelong wanderlust and her habit of both collecting and sending postcards along the way. Notes on Postcards utilizes an innovative format to delve into universal topics: love, loss, parenthood, communication, and connection. We’re thrilled to host the memoir’s official pub-day launch at City Lights, featuring Croft in conversation with Britta Stromeyer. Doors at 6:30pm.


Moderators
avatar for Britta Stromeyer

Britta Stromeyer

Britta Stromeyer is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. Her writing appears in The Common, World Literature Today, Tupelo Quarterly, Beyond Words Magazine, Necessary Fiction, On the Seawall, Flash Fiction Magazine, Bending Genres Journal, Marin Independent Journal, and other publications. Britta has authored award-winning children's books and holds an MFA from Dominican University, CA, an M.A. from American University, and a Certificate in Novel Writing from Stanford University... Read More →
Speakers
avatar for Jennifer Croft

Jennifer Croft

Jennifer Croft won a 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship for her novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, the 2020 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for her illustrated memoir Homesick and the 2018 International Booker Prize for her translation from Polish of Nobel laureate Olga T... Read More →
Tuesday November 10, 2026 7:00pm - 8:30pm PST
City Lights 261 Columbus Ave, San Francisco
  Words Around the World, FREE
 

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