Home » Downtown San Francisco, In Person, Literature

Defying Genre: Writing on the Edge of Conventional Narrative

Thursday, November 7, 2024 - 6:00 pm | Cost: $17.85*
*Members receive a discount

Mechanics’ Institute | 57 Post St, San Francisco, CA 94104

Event Details

Join award-winning Bay Area authors Rita Bullwinkel, Lauren Markham, and Manjula Martin in conversation on creative and thought-provoking storytelling across genres. Through their recent publications – Headshot, a novel set at a teenage girl’s boxing tournament, A Map of Future Ruins, a journalist’s ruminations on the refugee crisis in Greece, and The Last Fire Season, a memoir of life among the California wildfires, these three authors use distinctive subject matter and style to weave vivid narratives that defy categorization.

Praise for Headshot:

“As blazing and distinctive a performance as I’ve beheld in a long while. Bullwinkel’s figurative language is tethered at one end to the distant galaxies, at the other to the cellular structure of her young fighters’ bodies. Whole lives are strung between. I’m amazed.” ―Jonathan Lethem, author of Brooklyn Crime Novel and Motherless Brooklyn

Praise for A Map of Future Ruins:

“This stunning meditation on nostalgia, heritage, and compassion asks us to dismantle the stories we’ve been told—and told ourselves—in order to naturalize the forms of injustice we’ve come to understand as order.” —Leslie Jamison, author of The Empathy Exams

Praise for The Last Fire Season:

“Martin comes in with a one-two punch: Her book is as lyrical as a prose poem but as smartly reported as the best journalism. Her account of living a year in the smoldering, angry, inflamed Northern California woods will thrill, haunt, and ultimately charm you.”—Susan Orlean, author of On Animals

About the Authors

Rita Bullwinkel is the author of Headshot and Belly Up, a story collection that won the Believer Book Award. She is a 2022 recipient of a Whiting Award, the editor of McSweeney’s Quarterly, a contributing editor at NOON, the creator of Oral Florist, and a Picador Guest Professor of Literature at Leipzig University in Germany, where she teaches courses on creative writing, zines, and the uses of invented and foreign languages as tools for world-building.

Lauren Markham is a writer based in California whose work regularly appears in outlets such as Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine and VQR, where she is a contributing editor. She is also the author of the award-winning The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life and the recently-released A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging. Her third book, Immemorial, will be published by Transit Books in 2025.

Manjula Martin is author of The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History. She is coauthor of Fruit Trees for Every Garden, which won the 2020 American Horticultural Society Book Award. Martin edited the anthology Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living, and she was managing editor of the National Magazine Award–winning literary journalZoetrope: All-Story. She lives in Western Sonoma County, California.

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.


Cost: $17.85*
*Members receive a discount
Categories: Downtown San Francisco, In Person, Literature
Address: 57 Post St, San Francisco, CA 94104

Thursday, November 7, 2024

11:00 am   Free First Thursdays at Berkeley Art Museum  FREE*
*Free admission to galleries. Film programs are excluded. No advanced tickets required, but subject to capacity limits
12:00 pm   Open Ears  FREE
12:00 pm   Connecting Cuts: A Papercut Exhibit  FREE
12:01 pm   “Harvest” Food And Autumn Themed Art Exhibition at Marin Society of Artists (San Rafael)  FREE*
*Free
1:00 pm   SFMOMA’s “Free First Thursdays” Free Museum Day for Locals (2024)  FREE*
*All residents of the nine Bay Area counties are invited to spend a day at the museum on us! From 1–8 p.m. on the first Thursday of every month, Bay Area residents can enjoy SFMOMA’s galleries filled with lively and inspiring art and related events — for free.
4:00 pm   “Unstaged” First Thursdays Block Party ✦ Live on Mid-Market (SF)  FREE
4:00 pm   “East Cut Electric” SF’s First Permanent Building Light Projection  FREE*
*Free - All Ages
4:30 pm   HerStory Makers – Celebrating Your Impact  FREE
5:00 pm   SF’s New Monthly Block Party: “Downtown First Thursdays”  FREE
5:00 pm   November 2024 Downtown First Thursday  FREE*
*Only free from 5-8pm
5:15 pm   SF’s NFL Fantasy Football Thursday Watch Party + Happy Hour (’til 6:30p)  FREE*
*Free Entry with RSVP. Drinks for purchase
6:00 pm   Devon Blood Solo Show at 5 Olive Gallery  FREE
6:00 pm   “Women in Public Art” at SF Main Library  FREE
6:00 pm   “Strokes & Flows” Opening Night Art Party at The Midway (SF)  FREE
6:00 pm   “Found” A Gallery Experience by Eluterio Lopez  $10*
*$10+tax
6:30 pm   Shininho Destiny – Open Studio with Yaloo and Wooyoung Ro (SF)  FREE
6:30 pm   Avoiding Scams, Fraud, and Identity Theft  FREE*
*online
7:00 pm   Champs Elysees Film Festival in Berkley (Nov.7-8)  FREE*
*Free screenings on Thursday, November 7. For adults 18+
7:00 pm   Lluís Coloma, Solo Piano – Blues, Boogie Woogie, Jazz  $25
7:00 pm   Book Launch for Fantasy Novel “The Teller of Small Fortunes”  FREE*
*RSVP required
7:00 pm   Tea House Story Slams (Berkeley)  $5*
*Sliding scale $5-15
7:00 pm   “HellaSecret” Free Thursday Night Comedy Show @ Secret Bar (Oakland)  FREE*
*Limited free tickets with code FUNCHEAP (donations appreciated). Otherwise use code FUNCHEAP5 for $5 off early bird and general admission tickets
7:15 pm   “Black Laughs Matter” Comedy: Live at SF’s Only Black-Owned Comedy Club (7:15p + 8:45p)  FREE*
*RSVP Required
7:30 pm   PrettyBoy Chance Album Release Show and Hurricane Benefit  $30*
*All proceeds go to benefit Hurricane Relief in efforts in North Carolina and Florida
7:30 pm   Adam Traum and Gregg Hill: An Evening of New Orleans Songs  $15
8:00 pm   Everybody  $10*
*Students get 50% off, Seniors + Faculty 25% get off
8:00 pm   julie at The UC Theatre  $27.50
9:00 pm   16th & Mission Open Mic (w/out a mic)  FREE*
*Absolutely free for all!
9:00 pm   Every Thursday: “Inner Circle” Dance Party at White Rabbit (SF)  FREE
10:00 pm   Laughter Hours: SF’s NEW Late Night Stand-Up Comedy Show (The Function)  FREE*
*RSVP Required.
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