“Mayor of the Tenderloin” Book Talk ft. Del Seymour, Alison Owings, & Leah Garchik

Beacon Press

Long a fixture in the Tenderloin, Del Seymour is well known as an ambassador for the neighborhood and one of its most ardent supporters. His Tenderloin Walking Tours combine a passion for the neighborhood’s history with the experience and perspective of someone who has lived it. His organization Code Tenderloin teaches the unhoused, recovering addicts, sex workers, dealers, ex-felons, and other marginalized people how to get and keep a job. While Del wears his own tale of transformation on his sleeve–he overcame eighteen years of homelessness and addiction–never has his story been told in such rich, thoughtful detail.

In Mayor of the Tenderloin (out 9/10/24 on Beacon Press), author Alison Owings brings the rigor of a journalist and the methodology of an oral historian to bear witness to the extraordinary life of Del Seymour. Owings spent nearly a decade shadowing, interviewing, and writing about Seymour, and the result is a feat of biography: this deep and dedicated account “slips behind the cold statistics and sensationalism surrounding San Francisco’s Tenderloin to reveal a harrowing and life-affirming account” of one man who now “gives back to people struggling with the same daunting setbacks he once faced.”

Owings traces Del’s story and those in his orbit: from his daughters, sobriety buddy, and ex-girlfriend, to a police captain and a psychiatric social worker, housing activists and corporate philanthropists, and Del’s Code Tenderloin students. In doing so, she also conjures a detailed and nuanced look at the Tenderloin over the past decade. “Honest and compelling, Mayor of the Tenderloin follows homelessness in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods as it was lived—in the words of someone who lived it and is now fighting to solve it.”

To celebrate the publication of Mayor of the Tenderloin, the Tenderloin Museum hosts author Alison Owings and Del Seymour for a conversation with longtime SF Chronicle writer Leah Garchik on Thursday September 19, 2024. The event is free, and the book will be available for purchase.

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