LIVE! From City Lights

Day one of two: a weekend of events celebrating the 20-volume milestone of the City Lights Spotlight Series. Hosted by Garrett Caples (Series Editor). With readings by Norma Cole, Anselm Berrigan, Micah Ballard, Cathy Wagner, Eric Baus, Julien Poirier, David Brazil, Barbara Jane Reyes, Carmen Gimenez Smith, and Uche Nduka. In September 2020, City Lights is publishing the next two volumes in the Sp...

Third Man Books (the publishing imprint of Jack White's Third Man Records) returns to City Lights to launch three new titles: IT CAME FROM MEMPHIS by Robert Gordon, CAR MA by Alison Mosshart, and 9 Bar Blues by Sheree Renée Thomas. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom. Robert Gordon is a writer and a filmmaker, a native Memphian who has been exporting the city's authentic weirdness si...

Gary Kamiya with Paul Madonna, celebrating their new book, Spirits of San Francisco: Voyages through the Unknown City, published by Bloomsbury Books. From two bestselling, prizewinning, and critically acclaimed contemporary chroniclers of San Francisco comes a rich, illustrated, idiosyncratic portrait of this great city. Gary Kamiya is a writer, journalist, and historian. He is the author of the b...

City Lights celebrates the award-winning literary periodical's fall issue. Editor Michael Ray and Managing Editor Manjula Martin are joined by several contributors in an afternoon of readings and celebrations. Guests include Frances de Pontes Peebles, Patrick Dacey, and Daniel Orozco. Founded by Francis Ford Coppola in 1997, Zoetrope: All-Story is a quarterly print magazine of short fiction, one-a...

Eileen Myles reading from their new book, For Now, published by Yale University Press. In this raucous meditation, Eileen Myles offers an intimate glimpse into creativity's immediacy. With erudition and wit, Myles recounts their early years as an awakening writer; existential struggles with landlords; storied moments with neighbors, friends, and lovers; and the textures and identities of cities an...

Barry Gifford celebrating the release of his new anthology, Roy's World: Stories 1973-2020, published by Seven Stories Press. Barry Gifford is joined by flimmaker Rob Christopher to explore the rich landscape of his seminal Roy Stores, a tie-in to the new documentary, Roy's World: Barry Gifford's Chicago. Barry Gifford writes distinctly American stories for readers around the globe. From screenpla...

Uche Nduka and Sophia Dahlin: Celebrating City Lights Spotlights Series Vol. 19 & 20. Uche Nduka reading from Facing You, Spotlight Series No. 19, and Sophia Dahlin reading from Natch, Spotlight Series No. 20. Uche Nduka is an itinerant poet and professor living in Brooklyn. He was born in Nigeria, was raised bilingual in Igbo and English, and earned his BA from the University of Nigeria. He left...

Kerri Arsenault in conversation with Kurt Andersen discussing their two new books. Mill Town: Reckoning With What Remains, by Kerri Arsenault, (St. Martin’s Press) and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History, by Kurt Andersen, (Random House). This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom. Kerri Arsenault serves on the board of the National Books Critics Circle, is the Book Rev...

Celebrating RESISTENCIA: Poems of Protest and Revolution with Mark Eisner, Tina Escaja, Romina Funes, Rebeca Lane, Jack Hirschman, and Jessica Powell. Co-presented by the Red Poppy Art House and Tin House Books. This event was originally broadcast live via Zoom. Carolina De Robertis, Resistencia translator, a writer of Uruguayan origins, is the author of four novels, most recently Cantoras, which...

Jenny Bhatt in conversation with Devi S. Laskar discussing Janny Bhatt's new short fiction collection, EACH OF US KILLERS: Stories, published by 7.13 Books. Set in the American Midwest, England, and India the stories in Each of Us Killers are about people trying to realize their dreams and aspirations through their professions. This event was originally broadcast live on Zoom. Jenny Bhatt is a wri...

John Freeman celebrates his new collection of poetry, The Park, published by Copper Canyon Press. He's joined by D.A. Powell, also reading from his own new work. This event was originally broadcast on Zoom. John Freeman is the editor of Freeman's, a literary biannual of new writing, and executive editor of Literary Hub. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing (forthc...

Jennifer Worley discusses her book, Neon Girls: A Stripper's Education in Protest and Power, published by Harper Collins. This event was originally broadcasted via Zoom. Neon Girls is a riveting true story of a young woman's days stripping in grunge-era San Francisco where a radical group of dancers banded together to unionize and run the club on their own terms. Jennifer Worley is a professor of...

Frank Wilderson III in conversation with Justin Desmangles, discussing Frank's new book, "Afropessimism." This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Alderete. Professor and chair of African American studies at the University of California, Irvine, and author of Incognegro: A Memoir of Exile and Apartheid, Frank B. Wilderson III has received an NEA Literature Fellowship...

Cara Black and Jacqueline Winspear discussing the writing of fiction that takes place in World War II Europe. They explore topics that closely parallel many of the issues of the day as well as discussing the challenge and complexities of placing one's writing in a dynamic historic period. This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Peter Maravelis. Cara Black's most recent book is "...

Katherine Silver in conversation with Mauro Javier Cárdenas, discussing Katherine's new translations of the work of Julio Ramón Ribeyro ("The Word of the Speechless : Selected Stories," published by NYRB) and Juan Carlos Onetti ("A Dream Come True: the Complete Stories of Juan Carlos Onetti," published by Archipelago Press). This event was originally broadcast via Zoom and hosted by Josiah Luis Al...

Emerson Whitney discussing and reading from their new book, "Heaven" published by McSweeney's. This event was broadcast live via Zoom, hosted by Caitlyn Wild. At Heaven's center, Whitney seeks to understand their relationship to their mother and grandmother, those first windows into womanhood and all its consequences. Whitney retraces a roving youth in deeply observant, psychedelic prose—all the w...

"Mapping the Bay," San Francisco Poet Laureate Kim Shuck is joined by Thea Matthews and Kevin Madrigal, reading new poetry. Kim Shuck's latest book of poems is Deer Trails, published by City Lights. Kim Shuck is an Ani Yun Wiya (Cherokee)/Polish-American poet, author, weaver, and bead-work artist who draws from Southeastern Native American culture and tradition as well as contemporary urban Indian...

Roy Scranton reading from his novel, I Heart Oklahoma, published by Soho. Suzie's seen it all, but now she's looking for something she lost: a sense of the future. So when the chance comes to work with a maverick video artist on his road movie about Donald Trump's America, she's pretty sure it's a bad idea but she signs up anyway, hoping for an outside shot at starting over. A provocative, genderq...

Aaron Cohen discusses the subject of his new book, Move On Up: Chicago Soul Music and Black Cultural Power, published by the University of Chicago Press. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and a music critic’s passion for the unmistakable Chicago soul sound, Cohen shows us how soul music became the voice of inspiration and change for a city in turmoil. Aaron Cohen is the author of Aretha...

(From February 2019) Chloe Aridjis reading from her novel, "Sea Monsters," published by Catapult Press. Pulsing to the soundtrack of Joy Division, Nick Cave, and Siouxsie and the Banshees, an intoxicating portrait of Mexico in the late 1980s by this brilliant Guggenheim fellow and Prix du Premier Roman Étranger–winning author. Chloe Aridjis is a Mexican-American writer who was born in New York and...

Gillian Conoley and Donna de la Perrière reading from their new poetry collections. Gillian reading from A Little More Red Sun On The Human: New and Selected Poems, published by Nightboat Books; Donna de la Perrière reading from Works of Love & Terror, published by Talisman House. Gillian Conoley was awarded the 2017 Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. A Little More Red Sun...

Kal Spelletich in conversation with Catharine Clark, discussing his new project, Significance Machines and Purposeful Robots. 'Significance Machines and Purposeful Robots' was an exhibit of work by Kal Spelletich at St. Mary's College Museum of Art through December 2019 that includes life size praying robots, photos, sound machines, drawings, videos and interactive sculptures which explore the que...

(From March 2019) City Lights celebrates the release of Lawrence Ferlinghetti's new novel, Little Boy, published by Doubleday Books with special guests reading passages from the book including: Andrew Sean Greer, Armistead Maupin, Michael Krasny, Maxine Hong Kingston, Shobha Rao, and Julien Poirier. A pre-recorded remark by Lawrence plays at the conclusion. This event was part of our Ferlinghetti...

Terry Tempest Williams reading from her new book, Erosion: Essays of Undoing, published by Sarah Critchton Books/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Introduction by City Lights bookseller Ryan Darley. Erosion are fierce, timely, and unsettling essays from an important and beloved writer and conservationist. Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of Ame...

A discussion of Silvina Ocampo, focusing on the two new translations published by City Lights––"Forgotten Journey" & "The Promise"--with the books' translators: Suzanne Jill Levine, Katie Lateef-Jan and Jessica Powell. Opening statement by Elaine Katzenberger, publisher/executive director of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers, who also edited these two books. Silvina Ocampo was born in Buenos Ai...