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Generation Women: Litquake Edition
October 19, 2022 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Doors 6:30
Show 7:30
For the San Francisco debut of Generation Women, a live multigenerational storytelling series, we’ve invited one woman or non-binary performer in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, and 70s+ to share an original true story on the theme of BODIES—their own, the bodies of others, bodies wished for, and bodies gone. Founded by author Georgia Clark in New York City in 2017, the mission of Generation Women is to amplify underheard voices and create space for intergenerational connection and community. Featuring Janet Cheatham Bell, Alka Joshi, JiaJing Liu, Lauren Parker, Caroline Paul, and Bonnie Tsui. Hosted by San Francisco Chronicle books editor Samantha Schoech.
Janet Cheatham Bell is an author, recovering academic, and publishing entrepreneur. She self-published her first collection of Black quotations in 1986. It was so popular that by 2002, she had nine books of quotations on the market. She is also the author of two memoirs, including 2007’s The Time and Place That Gave Me Life, and two essay collections. She is the mother of comedian/provocateur W. Kamau Bell.
Born in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, Alka Joshi has lived in the U.S. since the age of nine. She has a BA from Stanford University and an MFA from California College of the Arts. She ran her own advertising and PR agency for 30 years. National bestseller The Henna Artist was her first novel, followed in 2021 by The Secret Keeper of Jaipur. She is now working on the third book of the trilogy and a screen adaption of The Henna Artist.
JiaJing Liu is a writer, poet, and translator. Her writings in English and Chinese have appeared in Hmm Daily, The Awl, As/Us, LEAP, and the anthology Love Is the Drug & Other Dark Poems. She can be relied on to tell funny stories about her travels in China, sing love songs in French, have strong opinions about contemporary art, and never refuse a good drink or a good book.
Lauren Parker is a writer and visual artist in Oakland, California. She has written for The Toast, The Racket, Xtra Magazine, Catapult, Oh Reader, and Autostraddle. She’s the winner of the Summer of Love essay contest in The Daily Californian, the Vachel Lindsay poetry prize, and is author of the forthcoming collection We Are Now the Thing in the Woods.
According to her Wikipedia page, Caroline Paul is a famous memoirist, who was born on July 29, 1963, in the United States. She lives in San Francisco with her partner Wendy McNaughton and is best known for her 1998 memoir, Fighting Fire, and for her 2006 historical novel East Wind, Rain. She published her third work, Lost Cat, in 2013. Caroline Paul’s zodiac sign is Leo. She can often be found surfing and doing other outdoorsy things.
Samantha Schoech (pronounced “Shay”) is the founding director of Independent Bookstore Day and the books editor at the San Francisco Chronicle. Her fiction and essays have appeared in The Sun, Seventeen, The Gettysburg Review, Glimmer Train, Travel & Leisure, The New York Times, and many other publications. She’s the co-editor of two humor anthologies, including The Bigger the Better, The Tighter the Sweater, about women and their bodies. Her husband co-owns Green Apple Books, which makes her a San Francisco treasure by proxy.
Bonnie Tsui is a longtime contributor to The New York Times and the author of Why We Swim, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a TIME magazine and NPR Best Book of 2020; it is being translated into nine languages. Her first children’s book, Sarah and the Big Wave, about the first woman to surf Northern California’s Mavericks, was published last year. Her work has been recognized and supported by Harvard University, the National Press Foundation, and the Mesa Refuge.
