Tales From Two Cities: LA vs. SF Writing Festival | Main Library

EVENT UPDATE: There are no upcoming events known for this event series - please check the organizer website for any updates.

The rich heritage and future of San Francisco and Northern California writers and writing will be the main area of interest in the first edition in the Tales from Two Cities: Writing From California conferences scheduled for October 4 and 5, 2013 in San Francisco with a second conference in LA taking place in February 2014.

With guest authors including Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City), Tobias Wolff (This Boys Life) and many others, the set of two-day conferences will explore how contemporary California defines itself from north to south, from desert to coast, from immigration to innovation.

Tales From Two Cities: Writing From California
– October 4, 2013 | 5:30 pm
– October 5, 2013 | 9:15 am-5 pm
Koret Auditorium at the San Francisco Public Library, 100 Larkin Street
FREE

Friday, October 4, 2013
Schedule

• 1-1:30 pm: Welcome with Luis Herrera, Will Hearst, David Ulin, & Bill Deverell
• 1:30-2:30 pm: The New Publishing with Oscar Villalon, John Tayman, Elaine Katzenberger, & Moderator: Will Hearst
  The conference opens with a discussion, moderated by Will Hearst, which explores “new publishing” in the Bay Area and beyond. How has, and how is, publishing changing? How might the dynamism in publishing, for good or ill, effect or alter regional distinctiveness when it comes to Bay Area literary production? What works? What doesn’t? How can we think of new publishing well beyond easy caricatures of book publishing vs. digital publishing? Is the Bay Area a leader in this arena? Why, how, or why not?
• 2:45-3:15 pm: Poetry Reading with Dana Gioia
  A poetry reading by the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, distinguished poet, and literary scholar.
• 3:30-4:15 pm: Poet’s Lives with Brenda Hillman and Robert Hass in conversation with Matthew Zapruder
  Poet Matthew Zapruder asks Robert Hass and Brenda Hillman if there is a Northern California tradition in poetry and writing? If so, what things make it distinct? And what does it have to do with physical place and geography? Or with historical setting or accident? Or with concepts of redemption, rejuvenation, spiritual or other liberation? Are there neglected and/or misunderstood Northern California poets or poetic traditions? And how might we deepen our understanding of what kind of poetry this region has produced?
• 4:30-5:30 pm: Keynote Interview with Armistead Maupin in conversation with David Ulin. & Introduction: Ralph Lewin
  Introduced by the President and CEO of Cal Humanities Ralph Lewin, this free-wheeling conversation between Los Angeles Times book critic (and conference co-organizer) David Ulin and the writer Armistead Maupin will investigate Maupin’s body of work and the general landscape of writing about, in, and on San Francisco in the last several decades.

Saturday, October 5, 2013
Schedule

• 9:15-10:15 am: Regional Voices with Frances Dinkelspiel, Ellen Ullman, Karen Tei Yamashita, Faith Adiele, & Moderator: Anthea Hartig
  Moderated by Anthea Hartig, the Executive Director of the California Historical Society, this panel is a wide-ranging discussion about regional literary production beyond the limits of San Francisco but still Northern Californian. How are the life stories of our distinguished panelists (their own and those they unspool in their fiction and non-fiction) inflected or influenced by Northern California? Can we speak of general Bay Area literary production or does the work of these writers insist that we think in different terms about region? What’s local, what’s regional, what’s Californian, and how do we know?
• 10:15-11:15 am: Films 1965 San Francicsco – Presented by Richard Moore
  Join us for a time-travel excursion to 1965 to see some of the Bay Area’s most celebrated writers and cultural icons — Gary Snyder and Robert Duncan — captured in this rare series of remarkable cinematic
• 11:30 am-12:30 pm: Universities and Literary Communities with Tobias Wolff, Peter Richardson, Paul Yamazaki, & Laura Cogan
  How do literary communities arise? How are they sustained? What’s the lasting role and influence of single institutions — Stanford’s Stegner program, for example — on the region, the state, the nation? How about bookstores, salons, other ways and places in which writers gather, gain support of one sort or another, and do their work? What are the connections — personal, historical, and otherwise—between such places and programs?
• 1:30-2:30 pm: The Literary Tradition of California – Kevin Starr in conversation with William Deverell
  Kevin Starr’s monumental “Dream Series” is the single most ambitious reckoning of California history ever undertaken. Trained in the American Civilization program at Harvard, Starr is also an astute literary critic and student. This conversation with conference co-organizer William Deverell will explore the meaning, power, and influence of California writers, north and south, then and now, fiction and non.
• 3-4 pm: Sci-Fi and Environmental Writing with Dana Gioia, Kim Stanley Robinson, & Ursula Heise
  Moderated by poet and literary scholar Dana Gioia, this panel explores landscapes of fantasy and fact in California science-fiction and environmental writing. Ecotopia brought nature and science fiction famously together, but so too have other writers, thinkers, and scholars, including our panelists Kim Stanley Robinson and Ursula Heise. This conversation takes up these themes, in past and present, and with particular focus on the current and former work of the panelists themselves.
• 4-5 pm: The City with David Talbot, Phil Bronstein, Gary Kamiya, Michelle Tea; & Moderator: Jane Ganahl
  Moderated by Jane Ganahl, this panel tackles “the city.” What’s the enduring power of San Francisco as literary site, trope, problem, puzzle, mystery, icon? The City in fiction, The City in fact: where do they crossover, diverge, collide? Who are the great interpreters of The City then and now? What’s right, what’s wrong about portrayals? And, as this conference is meant to be the first of two, what questions about San Francisco can we bring to Los Angeles in February of 2014?