In this month’s lit news, we can look forward to Silicon Valley’s version of Litquake, an afternoon with a subversive literary star at San Francisco’s Cafe Zoetrope, and conversations between smart, cool, young women with much to say about feminism, poetry, sex work, and love.
Wednesday, March 9: Jenny Zhang and Charlotte Shane at Green Apple Books, SF
As an editor at Rookie Magazine (Tavi Gevinson’s magnum opus) Jenny Zhang has her figure on the pulse of all that is culturally cool. She’s also an accomplished poet and writer, as seen in her 2012 poetry collection Dear Jenny, We Are All Find. She’ll be in conversation about sex work, relationships, and feminism with Charlotte Shane, the writer and sex worker who gained a buzz with Prostitute Laundry, her 2014 newsletter on Tiny Letter (which later became a book) about life as a young woman in a conflicted and complicated society. Details here.
Friday, March 11: Dana Spiotta at Cafe Zoetrope, SF.
A recent New York Times profile described Dana Spiotta’s writing as “radiant and concentrated.” The novelist, who lives and teaches in Syracuse, New York has come close to winning the National Book Award at least once, and has earned accolades from the likes of George Saunders, who called her gaze “smarty and witty.” Spiotta’s latest novel, Innocents and Others, tells the story of two best friends, growing up in LA in the ’80s. Both become filmmakers. And both find their lives changed after meeting an older, mysterious woman named Jelly who “cold calls powerful men and seduces them not through sex but through listening.” This event features an opening statement from Zoetrope: All Story editor Michael Ray. Details here.