The Green Arcade, San Francisco, California, respectfully acknowledges that we are based in Yelamu, the traditional, un-ceded lands of the Ohlone people. We pay our respect to elders both past and present.
Specializing in books on San Francisco & California history,
the built & the natural environment, politics & social justice, cooking, food & farming, select literature, noir, art, & children's books,
mostly new, some used
The online shop is only a fraction of our inventory. UPCOMING EVENTS: MASKS REQUIRED FOR ALL EVENTS
Wednesday, February 8, 6:30pm Local author Moazzam Sheikh presents his new novella A Footbridge to Hell Called Love
“Witty and wise, Sheikh’s novel follows the amorous adventures of Aslam Rana, adrift between women and literary rivalries in San Francisco—a comic yet probing tale of contemporary mores and the ultimate quest for connection.” —Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Portable Veblen and Stop This Girl.
Moazzam Sheikh was born in Lahore, Pakistan. He studied business, film and library science and is currently a librarian in the Art/Music/Recreation department at the San Francisco public library. In addition, he writes fiction, and translates fiction across Urdu/Hindi/Punjabi/English.
His latest work of translation is Stories of Intizar Husain (Katha). Moazzam is the author of Café Le Whore and OtherStories (Weavers Press, 2013), and The Idol Lover and Other Stories of Pakistan (Ithuriel's Spear, 2008). Thursday, February 9, 6:30pm A Poetry Reading With Lorraine Lupo, Sunnylyn Thibodeux and Rod Roland
Lorraine Lupo loves collaboration. As the Poet-In-Residence at Creative Growth Art Center, she facilitates collaborative poetry workshops which have resulted in the books The Poem Is Telling Me I Remember and Dear Volcano. She has also collaborated with artist and architect Max Jacobson on the video seriesGuy: ASad, Faced Paced Story and the chapbook Dust Exchange (Slacks Books). Lorraine edits the Periodic Postcard, an art and text series distributed by the USPS.
Sunnylyn Thibodeaux is the author of The World Exactly (Cuneiform Press 2020), Universal Fall Precautions (Spuyten Duyvil 2017), As Water Sounds (Bootstrap 2014), and Palm to Pine (2011) as well as over a dozen small books including Against What Light, Room Service Calls, What’s Going On, and Witch Like Me. She lives in San Francisco where she is a teacher, neighborhood activist and co-editor of Auguste Press and Lew Gallery Editions.
Rod Roland is a poet and artist living in San Francisco. His books include ThePlaygroup (Gas Meter, 2012), Thrasher2 (Gas Meter, 2012), Best Loved (Old Gold, 2013), Lunch Poems (2016), and Record of Records (fmsbw, 2021). Tuesday, February 14, 6:30pm George Lakey talks about his most recent book Dancing with History: A Life of Peace of Justice
A memoir of a Quaker activist and master storyteller on his involvement in struggles for peace, civil rights, LGBTQ rights, labor justice, and the environment, whose life is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film.
As part of his international book tour through the US, Canada and the UK, renowned, lifelong activist, sociologist and educator George Lakey will return to The Green Arcade to discuss his new memoir Dancing With History: A Life For Peace And Justice. From his first arrest in the Civil Rights era to his most recent during a climate justice march at the age of 83, George Lakey has committed his life to building a better world through movements for justice. In this memoir, he describes the personal, political, and theoretical—coming out as bisexual to his Quaker community while known as a church leader and family man, protesting against the war in Vietnam by delivering medical supplies through the naval blockade in the South China Sea and risking his life as an unarmed bodyguard for Sri Lankan human rights lawyers. Wednesday, March 1, 7pm, doors open 6:30
At the 3rd Floor Edward McRoskey Loft, 1687 Market St Saket Soni in conversation with Rebecca Solnit
A True Story of Forced Labor and Immigrant Dreams in America
In this revelatory debut, Soni, founder of the labor rights nonprofit Resilience Force, recounts the civil rights crusade of 500 workers from India who were recruited to work for Signal International, an American oil rig builder, under the false promise of a green card. In 2006, the workers arrived at the Mississippi “man camp facility,” which consisted of “sardine-can” housing trailers, inedible food, and broken-down bathrooms. The next year, Soni helped hundreds of the workers organize an escape from the camp, only for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to try to deport them. Saturday, March 4, 7pm, doors open 6:30
At the 3rd Floor Edward McRoskey Loft, 1687 Market St The Poetry Center at SF State & The Green Arcade Present A Special Reading with poet Ed Roberson
C.D. Wright has described Roberson’s work as “lyric poetry of meticulous design and lasting emotional significance,” comparing its musical qualities to the work of saxophonist Steve Lacy, jazz pianist Thelonious Monk, and composer Johann Sebastian Bach. Poet and critic Reginald Gibbons, in his review of The New Wing of the Labyrinth, celebrates Roberson as a “master of a hauntingly meditative rhythm of thought and perception.”
Tuesday, March 7, 6:30pm Dan Berger with Michael Simmons Stayed On Freedom: The Long History of Black Power through One Family’s Journey
A new history of Black Liberation, told through the intertwined story of two grassroots organizers.
The Black Power movement, often associated with its iconic spokespeople, derived much of its energy from the work of people whose stories have never been told. Stayed On Freedom brings into focus two unheralded Black Power activists who dedicated their lives to the fight for freedom.
Zoharah Simmons and Michael Simmons fell in love while organizing tenants and workers in the South. Their commitment to each other and to social change took them on a decades-long journey that traversed first the country and then the world. In centering their lives, historian Dan Berger shows how Black Power united the local and the global across organizations and generations.
Based on hundreds of hours of interviews, Stayed On Freedom is a moving and intimate portrait of two people trying to make a life while working to make a better world. Sunday, March 12, 5:30pm Mirabel Writer’s Group Reading: Picnic, Lightning
The title refers to how Vladimir Nabokov’s recounts his "very photogenic” mother’s demise, as well as the klieg-light effect of sudden, radical changes in the contemporary world.
The Group is David Jefferies, Cynthia Kreuz-Uhr, Joe Metzler, Sari Kossowsky, William Torphy, and Richard Schwarzenberger Wednesday, March 15, 6:30pm Michael Alenyikov & Peter Kupfer: A Reading
Michael Alenyikov Sorrow’s Drive: A Quartet
“These four stunning novellas have an almost magical effect as Alenyikov masterfully weaves together disparate lives and universal themes into something approaching the sublime. He evokes the common goodness of people, as well as the common heartbreaking challenge that we all face and feel compelled to understand. Each story complements and clarifies the others in their exploration of family, of displacement and loneliness, of trying to find a way forward by looking back.” - Trebor Healey, author of A Horse Named Sorrow
Alenyikov’s first book is the acclaimed Ivan and Misha
Peter Kupfer The Glassmaker's Son: Looking for the World My Father Left Behind in Nazi Germany
A blend of lyrical memoir and sober history, The Glassmaker’s Son recounts Peter Kupfer’s decades-long quest to uncover the world his father left behind in Nazi Germany.
"A moving account of a son in search of his father and the home from which his family was expelled. Peter Kupfer’s compelling story leads deep into the abyss of a small Bavarian town during Nazi Germany and into the labyrinth of the human soul. Anyone who is interested in exploring their family roots and in reconciliation with a difficult past should read this book.” - Michael Brenner, International President of the Leo Baeck Institute for the Study of German-Jewish History Saturday, April 15, 5:30pm At the 3rd Floor Edward McRoskey Loft, 1687 Market St A Celebration of the life of poet and writer Jim Nisbet
FEATURED PAST EVENTS:
Sabrina Imbler presents their new book How Far the Light Reaches:
a Life in Ten Sea Creatures In conversation with journalist Heather Smith
Introduced by
Rebecca Solnit Event recorded December 22, 2022
A queer, mixed race writer working in a largely white, male field, science and conservation journalist Sabrina Imbler has always been drawn to the mystery of life in the sea, and particularly to creatures living in hostile or remote environments. Each essay in their debut collection profiles one such creature. Exploring themes of adaptation, survival, sexuality, and care, and weaving the wonders of marine biology with stories of their own family, relationships, and coming of age How Far the Light Reaches is a shimmering, otherworldly debut that attunes us to new visions of our world and its miracles.
Imbler is a freelance science writer based in Brooklyn, New York. Their work has appeared in Atlas Obscura, the New York Times, and The Atlantic. Readings with K.M. Soehnlein and Ron Goldberg From Their New Books: Army of Lovers and Boy with the Bullhorn:
A Memoir and History of ACT Up New York Event recorded December 1, 2022
AIDS has killed at least 35 million people around the globe and World AIDS Day has been held every year since 1988 to raise awareness about the disease and to commemorate those we've lost to it. Two renowned authors and activists join us to mark the day. Poets Tinker Greene and Norman Fischer Tinker Greene returns to the Bay with his book Blue Flame Ring Event recorded Thursday April 14, 2022
“Tinker Greene. Polymath of wilderness and city living. Fan and lover of all the arts, especially poetry. Lots of channeling through things. An empath totally open to receive and collaborate. He builds bridges, the kind Lew Welch would need to get across.”
—Micah Ballard, on Blue Flame Ring
Norman Fischer is a poet, essayist, and Soto Zen Buddhist priest who has written and published steadily since the 1970’s. Recent poetry titles include Nature, There Was A Clattering As… , The Museum ofCapitalism, and Selected Poems 1980-2013. His latest Buddhist title is When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflectionsfrom a Life in Zen. He lives in Muir Beach, CA with his wife Kathie, also a Zen priest. Poet Lew Ellingham's Memorial Birthday Party Event recorded February 27, 2022
A Special Zoom Event - Three in 2022: Poets’ Prose Susan Gevirtz, Jeanne Heuving and Eleni Stecopoulos read from new works, and discuss their turn to prose and its relationship to poetry.
Introduced by Ghazal Mosadeq Event recorded January 2, 2022
L-R: Susan Gevirtz, Jeanne Heuving and Eleni Stecopoulos
Ghazal Mosadeq is a poet, translator, editor and publisher of Pamenar Press, a multicultural experimental press. She has had her poetry and criticism published both in English and Persian in venues such as Poetry Wales, Plumwood Mountain, WD40, Revista de poesía, ensayo y crítica, Blackbox Manifold, Changes Review, Boiler House & Litmus Press.
Susan Gevirtz’s recent books of poetry include Hotel abc (Nightboat) and Aerodrome Orion & Starry Messenger (Kelsey Street). Her critical books are Narrative’s Journey: The Fiction and Film Writing of Dorothy Richardson (Peter Lang) and Coming Events (Collected Writings), (Nightboat). A book (untitled) is forthcoming from Pamenar Press. She is based in San Francisco.
Jeanne Heuving’s recent book, Mood Indigo (selva oscura), is poetry and prose as is her forthcoming Brilliant Corners (Chax). Recent scholarly publications include The Transmutation of Love and Avant-Garde Poetics (Modern and Contemporary Poetics, Alabama), and her edited volume, Nathaniel Mackey, Destination Out: Essays on His Work (Contemporary North American Poetry, Iowa). She is the 2022 Judith E. Wilson Fellow in Poetry at Cambridge University.
Eleni Stecopoulos is the author of Dreaming in the Fault Zone: A Poetics of Healing, a collection of essays & poems forthcoming from Nightboat Books in 2022. Her other books are Visceral Poetics (2016), a hybrid work of criticism & memoir, & Armies of Compassion (2010), a poetry collection.
Recent writing appears or is forthcoming in Insomnia (University of Sussex), Second Stutter, Pamenar Online Magazine, DATABLEED, & [φρμκ]. Dmitry Samarov In Person at The Green Arcade Event recorded Dec 2, 2021
Dmitry Samarov was born in Moscow, USSR in 1970. He immigrated to the US with his family in 1978. He got in trouble in 1st grade for doodling on his Lenin Red Star pin and hasn't stopped doodling since. After a false start at Parsons School of Design in New York, he graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1993. Upon graduation he promptly began driving a cab—first in Boston, then after a time, in Chicago. Dmitry will talk about and read from his two recent books Samarov's OldStyle and All Hack. He will be interrogated by Ben Terrall, producer of the cult 'zine Namaste Motherfu**er.
ClickHEREfor audio recording. Hilton Obenzinger Reads From His Latest Collection Event recorded November 4, 2021
Witness 2017-2020 chronicles four years of troubles, shootings, wildfires, racial reckoning, planetary murder, plague, monumental lies, crazy delusions, me-too, an uprising for justice, and more. But a failed far-right insurrection had to be the capstone of these terrible times, and the nation is not done yet. What was once unfamiliar and strange ("flatten the curve") has become common, even banal, demanding a poem. Language has to keep up, and Hilton Obenzinger presents a powerful testimony.
Hilton Obenzinger writes poetry, fiction, history, and criticism. His books include This Passoveror the Next I Will Never be in Jerusalem, which received the American Book Award. His autobiographical novel Busy Dying recounts, among other things, his participation in the student revolt at Columbia University in 1968. Recent works include How We Write: The Varieties ofWriting Experience and Treyf Pesach [Unholy Passover]. Born in Brooklyn, he graduated Columbia University in 1969, taught nursery and elementary school, ran an offset press at a community print shop in San Francisco's Mission District, worked as a commercial writer for business and industry, and taught writing, literature and American Studies at Stanford University. He is currently Associate Director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford. Rebecca Solnit in Conversation with Adam Hochschild ORWELL'S ROSES Event recorded October 19, 2021
ABOUT ORWELL'S ROSES, from the publisher:
Sparked by her unexpected encounter with the surviving roses he planted in 1936, Solnit’s account of this understudied aspect of Orwell’s life explores his writing and his actions—from going deep into the coal mines of England, fighting in the Spanish Civil War, critiquing Stalin when much of the international left still supported him (and then critiquing that left), to his analysis of the relationship between lies and authoritarianism.
Through Solnit’s celebrated ability to draw unexpected connections, readers encounter the photographer Tina Modotti’s roses and her Stalinism, Stalin’s obsession with forcing lemons to grow in impossibly cold conditions, Orwell’s slave-owning ancestors in Jamaica, Jamaica Kincaid’s critique of colonialism and imperialism in the flower garden, and the brutal rose industry in Colombia that supplies the American market.
The book draws to a close with a rereading of Nineteen Eighty-Four that completes her portrait of a more hopeful Orwell, as well as a reflection on pleasure, beauty, and joy as acts of resistance. Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Amy Sonnie and James Tracy
Reading and In Conversation emcee, Patrick Marks Event recorded September 10, 2021
Cosponsored by The Poetry Center and The Green Arcade
Authors’ books available at our online shop.
Check under category Roxanne, Amy and James BUY NOW:
American Geography
Books signed by Sandra Phillips can be ordered from The Green Arcade’s Online Shop
Orwell's Roses Autographed by the author, Rebecca Solnit
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Cinderella Liberator Autographed by the author, Rebecca Solnit
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The Green Arcade
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