City Lights, in conjunction with Heyday Books, presents Jane Smiley in conversation with Steve Wasserman to celebrate the publication of "The Questions that Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom" by Jane Smiley, published by Heyday Books. 

Smiley’s new book offers essays on some of the aesthetic and cultural issues that mark any serious engagement with reading and writing. She dives into the complexities of character and history and how she is inspired by literature of all kinds in her own writing. She shares her analysis and research on the works of classic authors such as Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Mark Twain, and many others. Smiley shares her personal journey as a writer moving from Iowa to California and reflects on her findings within the diverse literature of the state, which often highlights issues of race, class, and sex. 

Jane Smiley is a novelist and essayist. She has won various awards for her work, including the Pulitzer Prize for her novel "A Thousand Acres." She has written for numerous magazines and newspapers such as The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, and the Nation. Her most recent novel, "A Dangerous Business," was published in 2022.

Steve Wasserman is the publisher of Heyday Books. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press, editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He has written for numerous publications, including The Village Voice, Threepenny Review, The Progressive, and many others. 

You can purchase copies of "The Questions that Matter Most: Reading, Writing, and the Exercise of Freedom" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/questions-that-matter-most-reading-wr/. 

This was a virtual event hosted by Peter Maravelis and made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation.

Jane Smiley in conversation with Steve Wasserman

City Lights & Semiotext(e) celebrate the publication of "Stubble Archipelago" by Wayne Koestenbaum with a conversation between the author & Tausif Noor.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/stubble-archipelago/

Wild new adventures in word-infatuated flânerie from a celebrated literary provocateur. This book of thirty-six poetic bulletins by the humiliation-advice-giver Wayne Koestenbaum will teach you how to cruise, dream, decode a crowded consciousness, find nuggets of satisfaction in unaccustomed corners, & sew a language glove roomy enough to contain materials gathered while meandering. Koestenbaum wrote many of these poems while walking around New York City. He’d jot down phrases in a notebook or dictate them into his phone. At home, he’d incorporate these fragmented gleanings into overflowing quasi sonnets. Thus each poem functions as a coded diary entry, including specific references to sidewalk events & peripatetic perceptions. Flirting, remembering, eavesdropping, gazing, squeezing, sequestering: Koestenbaum invents a novel way to cram dirty liberty into the tight yet commodious space of the sonnet, a fourteen-lined cruise ship that contains ample suites for behavior modification, libidinal experiment, aura-filled memory orgies, psychedelic Bildungsromane, lap dissolves, archival plunges, & other mental saunterings that conjure the unlikely marriage of Kenneth Anger & Marianne Moore. Carnal pudding, anyone? These engorged lyrics don’t rhyme; & though each builds on a carapace of fourteen lines, many of the lines spawn additional, indented tributaries, like hoop earrings dangling from the stanzas’ lobes. Koestenbaum’s poems are comic, ribald, compressed, symphonic. They take liberties with ordinary language, & open up new pockets for sensation in the sorrowing overcoat of the “now.” Stubble—a libidinal detail—matters when you’re stranded on the archipelago of your most unsanctioned yet tenaciously harbored impulses.

Wayne Koestenbaum—poet, critic, novelist, artist, performer—has published nineteen books, including "The Queen’s Throat," a groundbreaking study of sexuality & the human voice which was a National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist. Additional books to his credit include: "Camp Marmalade," "Notes on Glaze," "The Pink Trance Notebooks," "My 1980s & Other Essays," "Hotel Theory," "The Anatomy of Harpo Marx," "Humiliation," "Jackie Under My Skin," & "The Cheerful Scapegoat." His essays & poems have been widely published in periodicals & anthologies, including "The Best American Poetry," "The Best American Essays," The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Paris Review, London Review of Books, The Believer, The Iowa Review, Cabinet, and Artforum. Formerly an Associate Professor of English at Yale & a Visiting Professor in the Yale School of Art’s painting department, he is a Distinguished Professor of English, French, & Comparative Literature at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City.

Tausif Noor is a critic, curator, & PhD student in global modern art history at the University of California, Berkeley. His writing & essays have appeared in publications such as Artforum, the Poetry Project Newsletter, the New York Review of Books, & the New Yorker, as well as in various exhibition catalogues, artist books, & edited volumes. He lives in Oakland, CA.

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Monday, March 25, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Wayne Koestenbaum with Tausif Noor

City Lights, ALTA Journal, & Heyday Books celebrate the publication of "The Forgetters: Stories" by Greg Sarris (Heyday Books).

Purchase books by Greg Sarris here: https://citylights.com/?search_type=author&s=Greg+Sarris

Celebrated storyteller & tribal leader Greg Sarris offers a contemplative & enchanting story cycle in "The Forgetters," a collection that blends into an unsuspected harmony shimmering with waking life, human & animal forms, & eras bygone & still-to-come. Borrowing from the cadence of Native American creation stories & the enchantment of magical realism, these tales combine to reveal the foibles & folly that beset us & the lessons that recall us to ourselves & the world.

"The Forgetters" excavates multilayered tales of California’s Indigenous exiles, camp workers, shapeshifters, & medicine people as they interweave with the paths of settlers, migrants, & other wayfarers across the arc of recent centuries & beyond. Narrated by the enigmatic crow sisters, Question Woman & Answer Woman, this collection returns to Sonoma Mountain & traverses the homelands of the Coast Miwok & Southern Pomo. Rooted in today’s Marin & Sonoma counties, these transporting tales glimmer with an intimate connection to place & past—from ancient mythic time when all the animals were people to a speculative future when the people return as environmental refugees to the mountain from which they came.

Greg Sarris is serving his sixteenth term as Chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria & his first term as board chair for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His publications include "Keeping Slug Woman Alive" (1993), "Grand Avenue" (1994, reissued 2015), "Watermelon Nights" (1998, reissued 2021), "How a Mountain Was Made" (2017, published by Heyday), and "Becoming Story" (2022, published by Heyday). Greg lives & works in Sonoma County. Visit his website at: greg-sarris.com

Blaise Zerega is Alta Journal’s editorial director. His journalism has appeared in Conde Nast Portfolio (deputy editor & part of founding team), WIRED (managing editor), the New Yorker, Forbes, & other publications. Additionally, he was the editor of Red Herring magazine, once the bible of Silicon Valley.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Greg Sarris In Conversation with Blaise Zerega

Ana Raquel Minian in conversation with Irma Herrera discussing Minian's, "In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States," published by Viking.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/in-the-shadow-of-liberty-immigrant-det/

In 2018, many Americans watched in horror as children were torn from their parents at the US-Mexico border under Trump’s “family separation” policy. But as historian Ana Raquel Minian reveals in "In the Shadow of Liberty," this was only the latest chapter in a saga tracing back to the 1800s—one in which immigrants to the United States have been held without recourse to their constitutional rights. Braiding together the vivid stories of four migrants seeking to escape the turmoil of their homelands for the promise of America, "In the Shadow of Liberty" gives this history a human face, telling the dramatic story of a Central American asylum seeker, a Cuban exile, a European war bride, & a Chinese refugee.


As we travel alongside these indelible characters, "In the Shadow of Liberty" explores how sites of rightlessness have evolved, & what their existence has meant for our body politic. Though these “black sites” exist out of view for the average American, their reach extends into all of our lives: the explosive growth of the for-profit prison industry traces its origins to the immigrant detention system, as does the emergence of Guantanamo & the gradual unraveling of the right to bail & the presumption of innocence. Through these narratives, we see how the changing political climate surrounding immigration has played out in individual lives, & at what cost. But as these stories demonstrate, it doesn’t have to be like this, & a better way might be possible.

Ana Raquel Minian is a professor of history at Stanford University & the author of the award-winning book "Undocumented Lives," published by Harvard University Press in 2018. A recipient of the Andrew Carnegie fellowship, their writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, & Foreign Affairs, among other outlets. Originally from Mexico City, they now live with their partner in the Bay Area.

Irma Herrera is a writer, solo performer, & former lawyer based in the Bay Area. Her play "Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?" explores what it means to be American by weaving personal stories, humor, & historical events.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, April 18, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Ana Raquel Minian in conversation with Irma Herrera

City Lights, Fern Books, Center for the Art of Translation, & Villa Albertine San Francisco celebrate the publication of "Like a Sky Inside" by Jakuta Alikavazovic – translated from the French by Daniel Levin Becker, published by Fern Books. 

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/european-literature/like-a-sky-inside/


In March 2020, a young woman spends the night in the Louvre. At home: her nine-month-old son. In her overnight bag: a notebook, a toiletry kit, a duvet, a cube of nougat, & something that shouldn’t be there. In her head: memories of the Venus de Milo, of land art & the American road, of romance & travel & immigration & war — & of her father, who after each of their many visits to the Louvre would ask just how she’d go about stealing the Mona Lisa.


Jakuta Alikavazovic is a French writer of Bosnian & Montenegrin origins. She has received the Prix Goncourt for a first novel & the Prix Médicis for non-fiction, among other European awards & nominations. She is a columnist for the newspaper Libération & the translator into French of authors including David Foster Wallace & Toni Morrison.


JiaJing Liu is a translator (English-Chinese-French), writer, & editor who lives in San Francisco. She studied translation at Université Aix-Marseille, & was a researcher at the Beijing bureau of Libération. Her writings have appeared in Popula, Civil, The Awl, LEAP, The Art Newspaper, & other publications. She recently served as assistant curator for the exhibition, Shifting Fields: Contemporary Chinese Painting, at the Stanford Art Gallery. She is the development manager at Heyday, an independent, nonprofit publisher in Berkeley, California.

Originally broadcast from City Lights' Poetry Room on Thursday, May 2, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Jakuta Alikavazovic in conversation with JiaJing Liu

City Lights and Akashic Books celebrate the publication of "Joyce Carol Oates: Letters to a Biographer," edited by Greg Johnson, published by Akashic Books. 

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/new-nonfiction-in-hardcover/joyce-carol-oates-letters-to-a-biograp/

This rich compilation of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters across four decades displays her warmth and generosity, her droll and sometimes wicked sense of humor, her phenomenal energy, and most of all, her mastery of the lost art of letter writing. In this generous selection of Joyce Carol Oates’s letters to her biographer and friend Greg Johnson, readers will discover a never-before-seen dimension of her phenomenal talent.

Whereas her academic essays and book reviews are eloquent in a formal way, in these letters she is wholly relaxed, even when she is serious in her concerns. Like Johnson, she was always engaged in work, whether a long novel or a brief essay, and the letters give a fascinating glimpse into Oates’s writing practice.

Joyce Carol Oates is the celebrated author of a number of works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She is the editor of "New Jersey Noir," "Prison Noir," and "Cutting Edge: New Stories of Mystery and Crime by Women Writers;" and a recipient of the National Book Award, the PEN America Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Humanities Medal, and a World Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She lives in Princeton, New Jersey. "A Darker Shade of Noir: New Stories of Body Horror by Women Writers" is her latest work.

Steve Wasserman is the publisher of Heyday Books. He is a former editor-at-large for Yale University Press and editorial director of Times Books/Random House and publisher of Hill & Wang and The Noonday Press at Farrar, Straus and Giroux. A founder of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California, Wasserman was a principal architect of the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books during the nine years he served as editor of the Los Angeles Times Book Review (1996–2005). He has written for many publications, including "The Village Voice," "Threepenny Review," "The Nation," "The New Republic," "The American Conservative," "The Progressive," "Columbia Journalism Review," "Los Angeles Times," and the "(London) Times Literary Supplement."

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Thursday, March 18, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation

Joyce Carol Oates in conversation with Steve Wasserman

City Lights and Melville House present Yanis Varoufakis in conversation with Peter Maravelis, discussing "Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism" by Yanis Varoufakis, published by Melville House.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/topographies/technofeudalism/

Perhaps we were too distracted by the pandemic, or the endless financial crises, or the rise of TikTok. But under cover of them all, a new and more exploitative system has been taking hold. Insane sums of money that were supposed to re-float our economies after the crash of 2008 went to big tech instead. With it they funded the construction of their private cloud fiefdoms and privatized the internet.

Technofeudalism says Yanis Varoufakis, is the new power that is reshaping our lives and the world, and is the greatest current threat to the liberal individual, to our efforts to avert climate catastrophe—and to democracy itself. It also lies behind the new geopolitical tensions, especially the New Cold War between the United States and China.


Drawing on stories from Greek myth and pop culture, from Homer to Mad Men, Varoufakis explains this revolutionary transformation: how it enslaves our minds, how it rewrites the rules of global power, and, ultimately, what it will take overthrow it.

Yanis Varoufakis is an economist and academic, a bestselling author, and the former finance minister of Greece. He is a co-founder of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025. His books include "And the Weak Suffer What They Must?," "Talking to My Daughter About the Economy," "Adults in the Room," and "Foundations of Economics."

Praise for "Technofeudalism:"

“Blending intellectual memoir, history, and economic and technological history, Varoufakis creates an intimate atmosphere that is a genuine pleasure to read … It’s hard to read this book and deny its power … illuminating.” — The Washington Post

“An outstanding economist and political analyst.” — Noam Chomsky

"Arresting … an ambitious thinker and a lively writer … Varoufakis is right that we are in thrall to digital platforms, who hold our data hostage and prevent us from switching to 'a competing cloud fief'" ― The Times (London)

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Tuesday, July 16, 2024. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. https://citylights.com/foundation/

Yanis Varoufakis

Tarek El-Ariss in conversation with Peter Maravelis, celebrating the publication of "Water on Fire: A Memoir of War" by Tarek El-Ariss, published by Other Press.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/middle-east/water-on-fire-memoir-of-war/

"Water on Fire" tells a story of immigration that starts in a Beirut devastated by the Lebanese Civil War (1975–90), continues with experiences of displacement in Europe and Africa, moves to northeastern American towns battered by lake-effect snow and economic woes, and ends in New York City on 9/11. A story of loss, but also of evolution, it models a kind of resilience inflected with humor, daring, and irreverence.

Alternating between his perspective as a child and an adult, Tarek El-Ariss explores how we live with trauma, poignantly illustrating the profound impact of war on our perception of the world, our fears and longings. His memoir is at once historical and universal, intellectual and introspective, the outcome of a long and painful process of excavation that reveals internal turmoil and the predicament of conflict and separation. A contemporary “interpretation of dreams” dealing with monsters, invisible creatures, skin outbreaks, and the sea, it is a book about objects and elements, like water and fire, and about how encountering these elements triggers associations, connecting present and past, time and space.


Tarek El-Ariss is the James Wright Professor and Chair of Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College and was a Guggenheim Fellow (2021–22). Trained in philosophy, comparative literature, and visual and cultural studies at the American University of Beirut, the University of Rochester, and Cornell University, he is the author of "Trials of Arab Modernity: Literary Affects and the New Political" and "Leaks, Hacks, and Scandals: Arab Culture in the Digital Age," and editor of the MLA anthology "The Arab Renaissance: A Bilingual Anthology of the Nahda."

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Friday, May 17, 2024. Special thanks to Judith Gurewich. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation/

Tarek El-Ariss

City Lights celebrates the publication of "Blessings," a novel by Chukwuebuka Ibeh, published by Doubleday.

Purchase here: https://citylights.com/blessings/

Obiefuna has always been the black sheep of his family—sensitive where his father, Anozie, is pragmatic, a dancer where his brother, Ekene, is a natural athlete. But when Obiefuna’s father witnesses an intimate moment between his teenage son and another boy, his deepest fears are confirmed, and Obiefuna is banished to boarding school. As he navigates his new school’s strict hierarchy and unpredictable violence, Obiefuna both finds and hides who he truly is. Back home, his mother, Uzoamaka, must contend with the absence of her beloved son, her husband’s cryptic reasons for sending him away, and the hard truths that they’ve all been hiding from. As Nigeria teeters on the brink of criminalizing same-sex relationships, Obiefuna’s identity becomes more dangerous than ever before, and the life he wants drifts further out of reach. Set in post-military Nigeria and culminating in the Same Sex Marriage Prohibition Act of 2013, "Blessings" is an elegant and exquisitely moving story that asks how to live freely in a country that forbids one’s truest self, and what it takes for love to flourish despite it all.

Chukwuebuka Ibeh is a writer from Port Harcourt, Nigeria, born in 2000. His writing has appeared in McSweeney's, New England Review of Books and Lolwe, amongst others, and he is a staff writer at Brittle Paper. He was the runner-up for the 2021 J.F. Powers Prize for Fiction, was a finalist for the Gerald Kraak Award, and was profiled as one of the “Most Promising New Voices of Nigerian Fiction” by Electric Literature. He has studied creative writing under Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dave Eggers, and Tash Aw, and is currently a an MFA student at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

francesca ekwuyasi is a learner, artist, and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel, "Butter Honey Pig Bread" (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). "Butter Honey Pig Bread" was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin Literary Award. "Butter Honey Pig Bread" placed second on CBC’s "Canada Reads: Canada’s Annual Battle of the Books," where it was selected as one of five contenders in 2021 for “the one book that all of Canada should read.” francesca’s writing has appeared in the Malahat Review, Transition Magazine, Room Magazine, Brittle Paper, the Ex-Puritan, C-Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Canadian Art, Chatelain and elsewhere. Her short story, "Ọrun is Heaven" was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. She co-authored, "Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements" (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), a multi-genre collaborative book with Roger Mooking.

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Thursday, July 11, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis. Made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation. citylights.com/foundation/

Chukwuebuka Ibeh in conversation with francesca ekwuyasi

Bushra Rehman in conversation with May-lee Chai, celebrating the publication of "Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion" by Bushra Rehman, published by Flatiron Books.

You can purchase copies of "Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion" directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/general-fiction/roses-in-the-mouth-of-a-lion-2/

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Tuesday, July 30, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis.

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Bushra Rehman in conversation with May-lee Chai

Mosab Abu Toha reading from “Forest of Noise: Poems” by Mosab Abu Toha, published by Knopf Publishing Group

You can purchase copies of “Forest of Noise: Poems” directly from City Lights here: https://citylights.com/forest-of-noise-poems/ 

Originally broadcast via Zoom on Monday, November 4, 2024. Hosted by Peter Maravelis.

This event was made possible by support from the City Lights Foundation: citylights.com/foundation

Find more recent events at our YouTube channel: CityLightsBooks

Mosab Abu Toha reading from "Forest of Noise: Poems"

The official podcast for City Lights Publishers & Booksellers in San Francisco. Featuring readings and archives. Hosted by City Lights events coordinator Peter Maravelis.

Jane Smiley in conversation with Steve Wasserman

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