 All right, it's two o'clock. Let's jump in so we can get on with our celebration today. So welcome, you're all here for the 40th annual Northern California Book Awards, our second year in virtual land. Hopefully next year you'll join us at the correct auditorium in person for a wonderful event. And my name's Anisa. I'm from the San Francisco Public Library and I'm just going to give some brief announcements. This is Summer Stride, so please sign up for your summer reading. I think I know a couple books you could check out to get your 20 hours and get that iconic tote bag. We want to welcome you to the unceded land of the Ohlone Tribal people and acknowledge the many Romutish Ohlone Tribal groups and families as the rightful stewards in the lands on which we reside in the Bay Area. Our library is committed to uplifting the names of these lands and community members and we do this in many ways. We have a book list, a reading list, a resource list, and we host events and we encourage you all to learn more about first person culture and land rights. Some reading campaigns we have over the summer. Our friends at the Chronicle, Peter Hartloft and Heather Knight have created a total SF book club. Our second book will be the end of the Golden Gate, Writers on Loving and Sometimes Leaving San Francisco and they'll be talking to Daniel Handler and Gary Kamaya. So come check that out. Our July, August on the same page, which is a five monthly read in which we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book. We'll be celebrating Jacqueline Woodson and her book, Red at the Bone. Jacqueline Woodson will be in the Ritual Library August 12th, discussing her youth and children's authorship, writing, and books. So come check that out. This Tuesday we have Rock and Roll Night with Jonathan Taplan and Grail Markets. We'll be talking about Taplan's book, The Magic Years out on Hay Day. On Wednesday we have an amazing panel of artists and residents from the COVID Command Center. I am really looking forward to hearing about the work they've done. So come check that out as well. All right. And without further ado, I would like to turn it over to Joyce Jenkins, Chair of the Northern California Book Reviewer, Reviews and Editor of Poetry Flash. All right. Joyce, welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Anissa. Welcome to the 40th annual Northern California Book Awards. I'm Joyce Jenkins, as Anissa told you, and I'm Chair of Northern California Book Reviewers, a volunteer association of reviewers, book media hosts, review editors, librarians, and bookseller colleagues. These awards celebrate books published in 2020. What a year by authors based in Northern California and are presented by Poetry Flash with the amazing San Francisco Public Library and community partners Penn West Mechanics Institute Library and Women's National Book Association, San Francisco Chapter. Each year we come together over books. We read and discuss and fret over them, seeking the best from hundreds of titles by authors all over Northern California. This year for the first time, our translation awards are statewide and now celebrate the work of literary translators from all of California. I don't need to tell you what a challenge the last 16 months have been. Imagine what a disappointment it would have been to find that your long awaited publication date had landed in the middle of a pandemic. But we all kept going together and found in these books what we needed to guide us through our cultural, political, and personal changes. Today, we gratefully celebrate all of these exceptional authors who have helped us through. The names of active NCBR members who served on the committees and selected the books are posted with gratitude on the NCBA page at poetryflash.org. The comments you are hearing today were written by NCBR members. The Northern California book reviewers cherish and cultivate diversity and equity. We believe we are stronger together and always better when we're learning. If you are a book reviewer or editor of a book review and would like to join us, contact me through poetry flash. Let's draw a bigger circle together. Let's begin the program with children's literature, then translation, nonfiction. Next, the groundbreaking award to Tango Eisen Martin, poetry fiction, and then the Kodi Award to Juan Felipe Herrera. Thanks to City Lights Books for the NCBA online bookshop at bookshop.org slash lis slash Northern hyphen California hyphen book hyphen awards hyphen 2021. You'll find the program order, online bookshop and program notes at poetryflash.org and the link in the chat box. The nominees in children's literature, younger readers are The Good Song, Alexandria Giudino, illustrated by Penelope Doolagon. Set in Hawaii and inspired by musician Israel is Kavi Vo Olaiz Medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World. This is the story of a little boy whose grandfather holds him on the day he is born and tells him that the world is singing a good song in the drumbeats of the waves, the chance of the wind and the sound of the rain, plunking down like ukulele notes. In this beautifully illustrated, joyful touching story, young children will find reassurance and security and an understanding of gentle healing powers of nature. You matter by Christian Robinson. How big or little do you have to be to matter? The answer Christian Robinson tells children in you matter is that you don't have to be as big as the earth or as small as an ant. Just by existing you matter. Robinson, who worked for Sesame Street and Pixar Animation Studios, both wrote and illustrated this book for younger readers. The result is a nearly perfect match between words and images that combine and create a deeply reassuring message for children and adults. A book for Escar Gull, Daschka Slater, illustrated by Sidney Hansen. Going to the library is quite the adventure when traveling with our narrator and self-declared daring snail hero. Escar Gull is the story of a French snail bored of eating salad on a quest to find new French recipes from a French cookbook and to try them. He got the book from a library. The author draws the reader into the book with direct questions. The child becomes part of the narrative and in the process learns to dream big, embrace adventure and creatively solve problems when you find yourself on the menu. The award for Children's Literature, Younger Readers goes to a book for Escar Gull, Daschka Slater, illustrated by Sidney Hansen. Daschka, are you here? Can you accept your award? I am here. Sorry, I had to figure out how to do all of this. Daschka Slater. There I am. I was so completely shocked and surprised. Are you here? Can you hear me? We can hear you, Daschka. You are on. Awesome. Well, I am truly stunned. I did bring Escar Gull to the ceremony. I am such a fan of Alex Giordino and Christian Robinson that I was actually just sitting here being prepared to unmute herself. I am unmuted. Yay. Okay. Yay. So, I really am truly stunned because I'm such a fan of Alex Giordino and Christian Robinson that I was really just prepared to applaud them. But thank you so much. This book was indeed born in a bookstore, Escar Gull as a character was born in my very first bookstore appearance as a children's book writer as I was trying to figure out something to do with children besides read my book, which only took six minutes. It was a book for very young children. So, I found a puppet and that was a snail and Escar Gull came to life. He and I feel so much love and gratitude for this Northern California book community and so much gratitude that we have all managed to survive what has been a really challenging year for all of us. It's no fun to have a book come out in 2020, but this during a pandemic, but this takes the sting off a little bit. I want to just say that this book is a tribute to books and to bookstores and to libraries and you know other things I love like French cooking and the power of writing your own story. One of the great things has been watching kids get excited about writing and illustrating their own stories, which is a good thing to do during a pandemic. I just want to very briefly say in addition to all my gratitude to NCBA and this wonderful community of book people that we have in Northern California, thanks to Sydney Hansen who created the most adorable Escar Gull character ever to my editor Joy Peskin, my agent Erin Murphy, my publicist Mary Van Aken, all the community at FSG who puts books out into the world and to my husband Cliff who has to put up with me walking around the house murmuring in a French accent and to my mom who set me up on this path of being a writer at the very, very start. So thank you all. Thank you, Dashka. Congratulations for the nominees in children's literature middle grade are Orphan, 11, Jennifer Choldenko. When 11 year old Lucy can no longer tolerate abuse at the home for friendless children, she escapes with three other orphans. Their lucky encounters along the road result in potential would like, I'm sorry, I'm being distracted by being concerned that I'm not unmuted, but let me start again. When 11 year old Lucy can no longer tolerate abuse at the home for friendless children, she escapes with three other orphans. Their lucky encounters along the road result in potential apprenticeships with Sachi's Circus Spectacular where they create a new family. Set in 1939, this story relates the adventures of destitute children whose freedom from tyrannical matrons and unethical human experimentation takes precedence over meals and a roof over their heads. There's a glossary of historical circus terms at the end. The lonely heart of Maybell Lane, Kate O'Shaughnessy. Maybell is an 11 year old girl with a stunning singing voice whose lack of self-confidence and panic attacks make it impossible for her to sing on a stage, but when she finds out that the father she's never known is judging a singing contest, Maybell sets in motion a daring plan to enter the contest and win it. O'Shaughnessy definitely tackles a range of subjects from abuse to mental health, from grief to estranged families and even class structure. Land of the Cranes, Aida Salazar. Petita loves her cozy casita in East LA where she lives with mommy and poppy. Down the street from Teo, Juan, Teya, Raquel and Tina with the bouncy golden yellow satin quince dress and then one day Poppy does not pick her up from aftercare. They learn he has been deported. Aida Salazar asks readers to bear witness to Bettina's difficult story, one shared by countless migrant children in their families. The verse combines with a bucket of line art to tell a sadly realistic tale with respect, beauty, humor and love. The award for middle grade is Land of the Cranes, Aida Salazar. Aida Salazar are you here? I am. Do you see, do you hear me? I'm here. Do you hear me? Hello everyone. Congratulations. Thank you so much. I'm so shocked. Oh gosh, well and I'm humbled. Thank you so much for this this incredible honor. I'd love to thank first and foremost the the committee. I know that this is not easy and I know that you probably escaped into books this past year and I appreciate your work and really appreciate this honor. You know I wrote this book during a time when the Trump administration was coming after sanctuary cities and and states and if you remember the there was a time when in Oakland Libby Shaff, the mayor, alerted the community that there were going to be raids and and despite her warning which she later was was reprimanded for, they rounded up 300 undocumented immigrants. And so our communities were terrified. I am formally undocumented. I was born in Mexico and brought to the United States when I was a little girl and I was raised undocumented for most of my life, my childhood. And so this this community that I write of and for and and pay witness for is mine and it's my experience in some ways. I've never been in detention but I don't have to go very far to know cousins and aunts and uncles who have who have had this experience. So this book is dedicated to that struggle to the absurdity of caging children especially in this day and age which despite the change in administration continues to persist. And so right now I think we have about 15,000 children incarcerated. And so the story this story of Benita, this nine-year-old girl, is a testament to that that barbarity and and the hope that people take action and and not turn away and and and make a change and get those babies free. So I just want to thank my my agent Marietta Zachar, my editor Nick Thomas, my publisher Scholastic, who believed in the story from the start. It's not an easy story and and it took a lot of courage to publish it. And I'd like to thank my family, my mother and father especially Marissa Venzalasad and Fidenzalasad, who have struggled like so many undocumented immigrants to live a life of dignity and and respect. So thank you again. I'm so honored. Thank you, thank you, thank you. The nominees in children's literature, young adult, are historical YA novel takes 14 characters, all miss a teenagers from San Francisco's Japan town coming of age during World War Two and weaves them into a narrative tapestry as the characters become both united and divided by their experiences in interment camps. By turns sassy, gut wrenching and surprisingly funny, the novel stays true to its historical context. Cheese prose is crisp and her characters vividly rendered with authorial impartiality. This is beautiful, provocative, unflinching historical fiction. Dark and deepest red, Anna Marie Macklemore. This reimagined version of Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes ingeniously blends the fairy tale with an actual historical event in Medieval Strasburg and connects them by using characters living parallel lives in different eras. The dance obsession they experience evolves into a conceit for why we must acknowledge history or be condemned to repeat it. Diversity and prejudice are examined through elegant prose that also conveys how an act of defiance can transcend time. The mermaid, the witch in the sea, Maggie Takuta Hall. This debut is a love story, a fantasy adventure, a semi-mystical swashbuckler, and perhaps above all a dissertation on fluidity. Florian, born Flora, sales on the pirate ship that's taking Lady Evelyn Nasegawa to her arranged marriage in the floating islands. Amid an ocean of concealments and betrayals, mermaid trafficking and human enslavement, they fall in love. This is a rich, clever story about how identities are forged, rendered in by a writer with a poet's eye for metaphor. The award for children's literature young adult goes to the mermaid, the witch in the sea, Maggie Takuta Hall. Maggie, are you in the house? Congratulations. Really, congratulations. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Great! Well, thank you so much. This feels like such a beautiful and lovely full circle moment for me because probably a decade ago I was on the committee to select for this award as a bookseller, so it feels so nice to be on the other side now. I'm so grateful. So thank you to NCBA, thank you to the SFPL, and to City Lights for being here as well, and to Candlewick Press who published the mermaid, the witch in the sea. I want to particularly thank my agent Jennifer Laufferin who's amazing and perfect and mercenary and has always had my best interests in mind even when I turned in this book that I said is too weird to sell but will you read it anyway? And, um, oh, I see, start my video. Have I just been talking and you can just hear my disembodied voice this whole time because that feels perfect. Please go ahead, you're fine. So thank you to my agent Jennifer, I thank you to my editor at Candlewick, Karen Lotz, and to her assistant Lydia Abel and to Jamie Tan who's been my amazing and perfect publicist this entire time. This book is written for a particular kid who is now a 22-year-old woman who just graduated from Smith College. I met her when I was a bookseller at BookSync. I started this book when I was a bookseller at BookSync and she got to read it with a copy that I purchased from BookSync. So this feels just like a really beautiful full circle moment for me. I am really grateful for this award and for having this kind of odd story I wrote about things like hallucinogenic mermaid's blood and like lying pirates and witches who tell stories to create their magic. And so thank you very much. I'm so grateful and I'm so honored and thank you to Anna Marie and to Tracy whose books are both exquisite and also why I didn't bother writing a speech because I was so sure one of them would win. So thank you so much. Careful. I think we're having a yes. Okay, sorry. Please go ahead. I'm well done, but thank you so much for the award. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Maggie. Much appreciated and just it's a beautiful book. Congratulations. Thank you. There was just a kaleidoscope of book covers that suddenly appeared on my screen and I said, oh no, that's what was going on there. But we're fine now. NCBR member Sharon Coleman will present the California Translation Awards. Sharon, are you out there? Sharon Coleman, NCBR member. Next up. Sharon, are you in the house? Sharon Coleman in the house. I am in the house. Hello. Proceed. There you see me. Okay, translation. The nominees for the California Translation and Poetry Award are Pla Hills Plagiarisms Volume 1 by Ulam May Gonzalez de Leon, translated from the Spanish by Terry Arrett, John Johnson, and Nancy J Morales. The poetry of Ulam May Gonzalez de Leon, who was born in Uruguay, is immediately and uniquely engaging. She believes that everything has already been said, so therefore everything is plagiarism. But of course, everything is also creation because it has been transformed. The translators have not only done a wonderful job of recreating the twists and turns of the poetic language, resulting in its smoothly flowing verse, but they also did a super-pollutive job recreating the visual look of the poetry, adding to the melody and artistry of the work. Our next nominee is Etude, a Rilke Recital by Rainier Maria Rilke, translated from the German by Art Beck. Etude, a Rilke Recital, is a perfect title for Art Beck's rich new collection of Rilke translations. Since it comes out of his decades-long engagement with understanding Rilke from the inside out, beginning in the late 1970s when he first began to explore, scrutinize and translate, as he says in his introduction, to internalize the poems the way a pianist's fingers say absorb the spontaneity of the score through long repetitive practice. Our next nominee is My Village, selected poems 1972 to 2014 by Wuxian, translated from the Chinese by John Balcom. This bilingual collection introduces a celebrated Taiwanese poet and environmental activist who documents the transformation of his rural community and the face of the encroaching industrial economy. After university, Wuxian returned to his family farm to cultivate the land and write in the native soil literary tradition. He writes with stark honesty that poetry can do nothing against the loss of traditional Taiwanese culture, land and fauna. John Balcom has translated these poems with care and accuracy, capturing tones and expressions wholeheartedly. And the California Translation and Poetry Award goes to Plajios, plagiarism, Ula Lume, Gonzalez de Leon, translated by Terry Errett, John Johnson and Nancy J Morales. I'm hoping the translators, one of the translators, are here to accept and to speak. I am here. I'm Terry Errett and I hope everyone can hear me. I'm sure you'll let me know if there's a problem. I want to thank the Northern California book reviewers for this great honor and especially for holding a place in your awards categories for literary translation in both prose and poetry. And thanks also to Sixteen Rivers Press for making it possible for us to publish Plajios plagiarisms. In 2014 Nancy Morales, John Johnson and I began working as a team to translate the poetry of Ula Lume, Gonzalez de Leon. About this project, John has written, quote, Ula Lume's poetry reminds us over and over again that we live in a world of others, among the words of others, and that we are all participants in the act of meaning making, which is above all a pleasure. About the importance of translation Nancy has written, living in the U.S. a country with a diverse and international population, but operating under a monolinguistic and monocultural paradigm. It is necessary and it is vital that we experience poetry from other countries. John Nancy and I are keenly aware that this three-volume project to translate the collected published poems of Gonzalez de Leon will offer to many English readers their very first experience of her work. It is a humbling responsibility and a challenging one because in the words of Octavio Paz, Ula Lume's poems are diaphanous, a geometry of air, but if we try to touch them they disintegrate. While this characterization is an accurate one, Gonzalez de Leon's poems resonate so deeply. Our goal is to bring these poems into English equivalents that retain the original complexity and delicacy of her language. I will close with a short poem from volume one of Plagio's plagiarisms to give you all a taste of Gonzalez de Leon's work. The poem is called Forgery, the wind knots and unties reflections, birds and clouds, a garden trembling with broken light, a reflection of never that I forge, stopped, motionless, and alone I revise trembling with time. Thank you all. Welcome back and next we're going to prose. So the nominees for the California Translation Improse Awards are Heaven and Earth by Paolo Giordano, translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel. Paolo Giordano's novel begins as 14-year-old Teresa is on her summer visit to her grandmother's in a small town in Puglia. When Teresa is 17, she and Bern fall in love and consummate their relationship. However, this is only the beginning of an epic journey which will link them forever in both joy and tragedy. Secrets are uncovered, details of the past are revealed, Anne Milano Appel's translation and all its 400 pages and multiple characters never misses a beat and keeps the readers fully engrossed. Surrender by Ray Lorega, translated from the Spanish by Carolina de Robertis. Part allegory, part dystopian nightmare, Ray Lorega's novel narrates one man's futile search for a separate peace under a totalitarian regime. A descendant of Orwell's Winston Smith and Kafka's nameless protagonist, he endures his country's authoritarian winzies with stoicism and surface submission. The challenge for the translator Carolina de Robertis, which he handles with terrific aplomb, is to capture the subtle shifts in tone that signal his inner rebellion. People like me, he tells us, with no faith in the future, were always the enemy. Bezor and other unsettling stories by Guadalupe Netul, translated from the Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine. Odd and mysterious, even to themselves, the characters in Guadalupe Netul's stories struggle with their eccentricities and compulsions. Seeing our own defects in the person we share a life with is intolerable, she tells us. Netul's characters look and act normal most of the time, but what counts as normal is pure torment for them. Skillfully translated by Suzanne Jill Levine, the unsavory, obsessive, inner lives of the characters is subtly communicated and language that always seems appropriate to their surface column and inner torment. Savage Kiss by Roberto Saviano, translated from the Italian by Anthony Sugar. Savage Kiss details the decline and fall of Naples young gangsters. Having driven the older mob into the shadows, the new kids on the block take to the violence of their own chosen life. A life of cunning and endless suspicion with the ferocious enthusiasm. We've seen such mayhem before, but never with protagonists this young. These gangsters aren't one-dimensional killing machines. Their children often confused and frightened. The translation by Anthony Sugar skillfully navigates the abrupt changes in pace and tone at the heart of this novel. Nine Moons by Gabrielo Wiener, translated from the Spanish by Jessica Powell. Peruvian writer Gabriela Wiener is a later-day practitioner of new journalism. In Nine Moons, she might be a Spanish language hunter as Thompson, if Thompson were pregnant and had sworn off drugs. This is a funny book. From the unexpected conception, I promise not to come inside you. It's the first promise that gets broken. To the Keystone cops comedy of her arrival at Barcelona maternity. Artfully translated by Jessica Powell, we hear the narrator's irrepressible egoism. Her rye optimism as she navigates one of life's most challenging passages. And, dun-dun-dun-dum, California translation and prose award goes to Surrender. Ray Loreiga, translated from the Spanish by Carolina de Robertis. Hello. Go ahead. Okay, I'm here. Hello, everyone. I am absolutely stunned. Thank you all so much. First, I want to just bow down to my fellow finalists in this category, Anthony Sugar and Milano Appel. Jessica Powell, I am a huge fan of your work. Suzanne Jill Levine, Ditto, I'm such a fan. Not only of your work as a translator, but as a writer, your Manuel Puig biography, I have just swum through and nerded out so hard. And to all of the finalists that are gathered here today, congratulations being nominated. Having your book in the world is an honor and a gift to us all. Thank you so much for everything you do, for literary culture and for art and for voices. Thank you to the Northern California book reviewers. Indeed, for having an award in translation and for having two. As a person who is both a novelist and a literary translator, I just have such appreciation for the creation of space and recognition for literary translation and for the presence of international literature and international voices within our literary landscape and within our cultural conversations. Surrender is a novel that among other things is a surreal and dystopian portrait, but it's also a sort of an intimate inside consciousness portrait of what can happen within authoritarianism. And I think in these times that we are living through as we have an ongoing threat to our democracy where the temperature seems to move and rise and shift like the sort of frog in a pot situation, we do have a lot of power in our society right now and also are living through circumstances where authoritarianism is maybe less of an abstraction for those of us living in the United States than it has been in the past. And I believe in literature, I believe in stories and narratives as having the power to contribute to the shaping of our future. So I am so grateful, incredibly grateful for this support of this story and of one more refraction through the prism of these questions of how we can live with dignity and authenticity and power in times and in spaces where the government or institutions might seem rigged against us. And yet here we still are. We are still alive. We are still engaged. It is my birthday and I'm turning 46 today and I'm so grateful to be alive and on the planet with each of every and every one of you. I'm so glad that you are here and alive. Every single person who is at this ceremony is certainly somebody who is a lover of literature, whether you are a reader, a reviewer, a translator, a writer, a friend of a writer, whatever it may be. I know that you are here because you love literature, you love books, you care about art and word and stories and I just want to say how much that matters and how much I truly believe that we can weave the tapestry of our collective future together word by word, strand by strand. So thank you. I want to thank Ray Lorega who wrote this book and I want to thank Pilar Garcia Brown who is the editor at Hilton Mifflin Harcourt who acquired this book for believing in me to sensitively translate this very nuanced voice. She is, it was one of the first books she acquired. She is young in her career and I believe she is the future of publishing. So Pilar, if you are here, thank you for your brilliance. Thank you to my agent Victoria Sanders who believes in me all the time and has really battled for me to be able to break glass ceilings and be in the work. And I want to thank my wife Pamela Harris who I've been married to since before. It was legal in this country and I want to thank all of you. We continue. Congratulations. Thank you so much. This is so inspiring. NCBR member James LeCure will present the General Nonfiction Award. Are you in the house, Jim? Jim LeCure, are you in the house? Am I here? Now you, we can hear you. Please continue. Now we can hear you. All right. Can I, should I? Yes, please. Video too. There I am. Please proceed. Well, hi and that was a nice thing you said Carolina. Nice about, we do depend on books and all these things to change the world. All right. The nominees for general nonfiction are Everything She Touched. The Life of Ruth Asawa by Marilyn Chase. Ruth Asawa's iconic looped wire sculptures graced many museums, including the Guggenheim from a World War II childhood imprisoned in a Japanese American internment camp. Ruth had a life of difficulties but overcome with persistence. She found teachers such as Buckminster Fuller and Jean Varda. She found Native Americans weaving baskets out of string and applied what she'd learned to wire her quiet genacity paid off in world-renowned works, Six Children, and the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts, which I taught at. This book of her life is as beautifully made as her artwork. Fire and Paradise. An American tragedy. Alastair G and Danny Anguiano. Wednesday evening, November 7th, 2018. Fire whipped by 70 mile per hour winds and fueled by five years of little precipitation raged up Butte Canyon along the North Fork of the Feather River toward Paradise, California. Population 27,000 people. Eventually, inciterating most of the town so fast that few had time to fight back, 85 people died and thousands of homes were destroyed. More than 20,000 people were rendered homeless. This is an exciting work of intensely researched well-written journalism and, unfortunately, a warning that few may take. The Forest of California. A California Field Atlas by Obi Kaufman. The purpose of this handsome guide to California's forest, Obi Kaufman, tells us is to teach that the intrinsic value of biodiversity outweighs the capital value of its dismantlement. He warns that we are squandering the precious capital of our vast and unique woodlands. And he uses his beautiful watercolors, his journal notes, drafts, and charts to lead us to a deep appreciation of our silver, silver surroundings. At 600 plus pages, the book provides an exhaustively mapped encyclopedia of trees, plants, animals, birds, fish, butterflies, and insects. And it belongs in every coffee shop and library around the world, I think. Next, American Harvest. God, country, and farming in the heartland. Marie Mutsuki Mockit. Some readers might approach Mockit's American Harvest with trepidation. Not sure that they want to read about religion in our heartland. But while Mockit considers this topic deeply and carefully, that's not what the book isn't about. It's about healing the wounds that divide our rural areas from our coastal cities about helping us understand lives and beliefs differing markedly from our own. And a whole lot of stuff about harvesting. Great book. And last, Empire of Resentment. Populism's Toxic Embrace of Nationalism by Lawrence Rosenthal. For those amazed or horrified by the rise of billionaire Donald Trump, Lawrence Rosenthal, founder of UC Berkeley Center for Right-Wing Studies, presents a vivid picture of the marriage of populism with white nationalism. The progressives and conservatives have important common interests, a living wage, better distribution of wealth and power. Both sides have been tricked into playing a vicious game where the ultra-rich and powerful egg on hostilities raking in fortunes through unfettered business practices and lower taxes. All right. The General Nonfiction Award goes to this extremely beautiful book, which I certainly want to have autographed, American Harvest, Marie Motsuki Mockit. Are you on, Marie? We don't see Marie in the audience. Perhaps a different name. Otherwise, we don't see her. Oh, dear. Beautiful book. If we don't see Marie in the audience, we can certainly accept this award on her behalf. I believe that she's out there somewhere, but for some reason isn't showing up. Marie, are you there? Marie is... Perhaps Marie is signed on with a different name. If you are out there, put your name in chat so we can... Yeah. If you're out there, Marie, immediately put your name in chat. Give us a message. Oh, my. Thank you, Marie. Thank you for this amazing book. It really is very, very special, and I really hope people get a chance to read it. And, Marie, if you are in the chat room, immediately let us know, but otherwise we'll saunter on. Maybe I can say something? Well, very, very briefly, Jim. Why don't you say something briefly? I just want to say that I read this book thoroughly and I kept rereading it. And one of the things that appealed to me so much was that from the point of view of a city dweller and a non-religious person, the effort that Marie put in to understanding the people that she lived with and worked with for so long, such a big harvest season, and the effort she put into understanding religion really drew me into it. I have never ever read anything from my point of view looking at religion from my point of view. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jim. And thank you for accepting this beautiful book on behalf of American Harvest in Marie Metsuki Market. So, on to creative non-fiction, try to get lost. Essays on Travel in Place by Joan Frank. This is at once a collection of essays and a study in essays. Disparate as they are and lengthen subject, the pieces construct an ongoing conversation about time and place, our eagerness and resistance to travel, and the discoveries that come from that devotion and struggle. Probably has a few stories about luggage in there too. Mobile home. A memoir and essays. Megan Harlan. An original take on memoir. Mobile home approaches its subject from varying perspectives to give the reader a rich and enveloping experience of a life. In the first 17 years of her life, Harlan lived in 17 different homes, raging from a Los Angeles hotel to an elegant London hotel to trailers in the Alaskan tundra, Arabian desert and South American jungle. Her lively voice renders the complex, quirky, sometimes tragic family life that resulted. Synthesizing gravity. Selected prose. Kay Ryan. I laughed and laughed and laughed. Kay Ryan tells us in a short essay describing the moment she decided to be a writer. Ryan laughs because she has realized that regardless of talent or chances at success, poetry is what she likes and values the most. That simple choice and the existential comfort implies, powers the essays in this book. Literary reviews, aesthetic commentaries, and craft considerations. All written over 30 years. Ryan's criticism is on a continuum with her poetry. Rye, witty, intellectually rigorous, emotionally capacious. Recollections of my non-existence and memoir, Rebecca Solnit. It should surprise no one who has been reading Solnit to discover that her memoir is unlike any other. This is a book about how Solnit came to discover and live her distinct voice. Each of these stories is embedded in argument. Each argument fleshed out in narrative. She writes polemically without being polemical, lyrically while remaining political, historically while never nostalgic. She offers glimpses of how she has challenged her own long-standing, often unquestioned beliefs. She models how we might challenge our own. Scratched, a memoir of perfectionism, Elizabeth Talent. As a perfectionist, I leave a lot to be desired. Talent begins in this stunning memoir. The author discovers the joy of crafting fiction on a typewriter late nights in a bookstore in Santa Fe. Going on to write several well-received books that land her a teaching job at Stanford. After that, her past catches up with her, succumbing to the police state inside my head that is perfectionism. She does not publish another book for more than 20 years. Her prose style is like a sensitive instrument lowered into the depths. The words pulse with meaning at once emotional, intellectual, and lyric. The Creative Nonfiction Award goes to recollections of my non-existence, a memoir Rebecca Solnit. If you're playing this video, it's because I've won in Creative Nonfiction, for which I thank the judges, but also the book sellers. It's a special honor to be given an award by the people who've been taking care of my books so well for so many years, who've made my career and more than that made my intellectual life so much of which has been about going into the bookstores around the Bay Area and wandering for hours, reading books, standing up in the store when I was too poor to buy some of them, taking more of them home when I had more means, seeing what was out, talking to some of the wonderful booksellers about what was being made. And so I wish I could be with you, but before the awards were announced, I had a long-standing engagement to go camping with my great nieces who are four and seven, ages at which you can never break a promise to someone, not that people in their nineties or anywhere else are people you should break a promise to either. So I'm probably pitching a tent as this plays, if it plays at all. Anyway, thank you and I thought I'd read a few snippets, a couple of paragraphs. The beginning of the book I wrote, to be a young woman is to face your own annihilation in innumerable ways or to flee it or the knowledge of it or all these things at once. The death of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most political topic in the world, said Edgar Allan Poe, who must not have imagined it from the perspective of women who prefer to live. I was trying not to be the subject of someone else's poetry and not to be killed. I was trying to find a politics of my own with no maps, no guides, not much to go on. They might have been out there, but I hadn't located them yet. And of course, one of the places I would locate them was all our fantastic independent bookstores, which have been such a huge part of intellectual life in the city and the region. And for me, I know all you bookstores have suffered in the pandemic, but I also know that a lot of you have continued and have been also a crucial part of how we survive the Trump era of keeping independent and insurrectionary voices alive, alternative versions of putting forward books from small presses, books from writers who are not necessarily producing the mainstream bestsellers. It's a huge and noble task, a task in service of democracy and equality and imagination. If you're playing this video, it's not them yet. And of course, one of the places I would locate them was all our fantastic independent bookstores, which have been such a huge part of intellectual life in the city and the region. And for me, I know all you bookstores have suffered in the pandemic, but I also know that a lot of you have continued and have been also a crucial part of how we survive the Trump era of keeping independent and insurrectionary voices alive, alternative versions of putting forward books from small presses, books from writers who are not necessarily producing the mainstream bestsellers. It's a huge and noble task, a task in service of democracy and equality and imagination. If you're playing this video, it's because I thank you. Thank you, Anissa, for straightening out our video. And that was a wonderful message from Rebecca Solnit, who did want to join us today, but wasn't able to for reasons that she so eloquently explained. So now, the Northern California Book Reviewers Groundbreaker Award was created out of our increasing desire to honor writers whose innovation and pushback on our unseen boundaries challenged us to be better. Tango Eisen Martin is our brand new San Francisco poet laureate and co-founder and editor of Black Frater Press with the forthcoming collection, Blood on the Fog, Pocket Poet Series, City Lights. Here are some comments from NCBR member Jonah Raskin, who wrote a piece for a rag blog on Tango Eisen Martin for National Poetry Month. Tango Eisen Martin, the current San Francisco poet laureate, doesn't write about birds and flowers, but his poems do what all innovative poems do, engage with human consciousness and play with words and images. In his second book, Heaven is All Goodbyes, he writes in the poem, we may all refuse to die at the same time. They lynched his car, too. In I Almost Go Away, the speaker begins, sorry I'm late, dear, he confesses, I am a proletariat folding chair class victim. Tango's poems circle around the themes of power, powerlessness, and the potential for decolonization and resistance. In a recent phone conversation, he told me he prefers the word genocide to the phrase systematic racism, because systematic racism doesn't indict the ruling class, he added. There's an oppressor who lives in our heads. He also, he wants his audiences to ask, what deals do I make with the devil? Also he wants readers to recognize that they are protagonists who participate in the political process, whether they know it or not. Born in 1980, Eisen Martin is a child of the 60s. In 1968, it looked like a victory of the proletariat was possible, he told me. The late 1960s are a preoccupation of mine. The Martin and Eisen Martin comes from his black father and was passed down from the days of slavery. Tango derives from Josiah Tango Gaara, a commander of the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army who died in 1979. Arlene Eisen is his mother. In the spirit of Bob Kaufman, the San Francisco poet known as the Black Rambo, Tango's poems shock, deprogram, and recreate. Here to accept the award, I hope, is Tango Eisen Martin. Are you in the house, Tango? Are you in the house, Tango? You can please accept your award. I am. I'm in the house. I want to thank the Northern California book reviewers for finding me worthy of this honor and for all the work that you all do for this scrappy mecca of literary arts that is Northern California and congratulations to everyone else whose craft was noted today. Unfortunately, today is the day after a friend of mine's funeral who was murdered senselessly and I don't have the confidence or courage right now to offer a thesis or some kind of message. But I do have a poem that I hope you all will tolerate. Societies wander together like hopeful drops of a virus. Citizen testaments bent on offering me a nation of bread winners to hold me back like it's a brinks. I wrinkle the concrete sometimes like flesh. My Martin Luther King permanence turning away from podium into the reeds like God is the dangerous twin. Black August to the mountain top balcony on my bedroom floor, you know they steal you from the earth itself and suspend you in your broken neck from their foolish euphoria. From the loyalty oath of their great superstition. Loyalty oath of their agrarian reforms I return to my mother completely disrespected for peeling the heat off a purgatory they kill poets like me. Walk me away from my poems never to be heard from again in this final industrial complex of bloodlines picked over picked through a sport in spiritual death or you devil at least half made police become a pretty word I'm reading a lynch mob shoestrings like they were tea leaves teaching you how to ride about cities it's the 25th century in the mirror people tyranny against your chump change your chump to be mocked even with a gun in your car a cuba to needlework spell tune for the proletariat the relapse ministry talented people curled up in a fetal position next to a diamond dime just another service day in the theatrics of tea house fascism in a in a bouquet of surveillance cameras in the poverty of god new blue eyes corpses of water newly potted presidency or one big shiny coin if you ask an animated capitalism another non-literal voice killing his white freedom the deification of hyphens medicine bread and picture shows great protesters in la guests of our ink drop kicking roses in the graveyard dc link like a stone 20 and a half the pen advances despite cia guideposts despite non-african passing futures a metaphorical but not surreal day in a horn written life horn player improvising king like a radio prize fight featuring shongo himself a real hand sweeps the land of racism now I return to the ground now I make progress with the gun my mother in manual they put on music that evening a swinging tight body language for you to drink with fermented five dollar bills for your body language some applause my past stomach lining either a good thing or a bad thing like being psychic on the way to a lethal injection it'll sit you down with lady day lady day leading youth who surrendered their souls to africa too soon poverty thought floating in the cup of water she saved me accessing my stomach accessing the love of the american lynched coat sleeves wooden avalanche into the wrist our mother in manual avalanche into the sharp keys pain the deal you make with pain piano makes sense for them laying hands on the world gradually addressing the bender next on the streets of the north traveling sailing in pain repeating pain in the north 10 trigger fingers on that piano harmony will have me putting a hundred fights on every direction after the lady day leading on trees again recruiting the countryside itself saying lay your plan out on this lightning make your poems a corner pocket of men i've greeted the blues itself america may clean my dead body but will never include me there goes the poet killing without killing never mind this painting of your language may i be a meaningful lynching a cross passing good and dead by the afternoon thank you yes wow thank you tango isan martin ncbr groundbreaker award next is poetry an ncbr member susan terris will present the poetry award susan are you in the house susan terris are you in the house are you susan terris are you uh are you yes i'm here wonderful go ahead wonderful welcome so um we have i work with david rodrick and um we were a committee of two along with also yes with choice and um we had so much wonderful poetry this year that we ended up with six nominees rather than five so i'm going to start right now uh with indigo by ellen bass indigo presents the reader with an examination of many life cycles examining the past and attempting to imagine the possibilities ahead whether promising or dire love and loss may be the focus of the book but bass has a resilient way of finding joy among losses and heaping praise on things small and large to remind us what makes a life worthwhile yet she possesses a kind of balance that offers hope she ends her luminous book with a poem that insists you may have to break your heart but it isn't nothing to know even one moment alive the next book is piñata theory by alan chisaro alan chisaro's references video games rap artists clothing styles lend intimacy and personality to his meditations on life as a young latin x man in oakland the title poem imagines the speaker as metaphor we were made for beat downs a nod to the scrappiness of chisaro's own working class immigrant community while recognizing its vulnerability in a city more plutocratic every day the piñata is also a structural element in break the poet toggles between mexican and american influence in the struggle to make himself whole the next book spring and a thousand years unabridged by judith halebsky how would you describe contemporary american life to a master chinese poet from the eighth century this concept is central to judy halebsky's new book in which she welcomes li by aka li po into our world of dead malls streaming platforms divisive politics and ecological disasters whatever political or philosophical statements are to be found here are offset by moments of humor that is the true marvel of this book the next book bonfire opera by denucia lemaris sometimes the most compelling landscapes are the ones where worlds collide in these poems grief and love grapple in the same domain in a piece about feeding delicious morsel to worms in her compost she admits forgetting for a moment her own place on that menu the lines of her poems are always lush and musical one can select any page in the book at random and find a memorable and singular artistry these are poems that praise the impossible wild often sad or terrifying world finding still consolation and beauty in its wake the next book storage unit for the spirit house ma shine win ma shine win has channeled her south asian ancestry to produce this strange rich wondrous book it's primed with an epigraph by a south asian scholar explaining that gnats let me tell you this is not the this is not the insect this is nat s gnats are spirits holding power over particular localities which often build small shrines called spirit houses for offerings to their local nat that must be placated to avoid injury or disaster this is a totally unpredictable continuously surprising book of poems a book to be savored written like a spiritual roller coaster for surprise and poetic thrills and the last book since this is in alphabetical order is transformer by catelyn winter transformer is concerned with memory violence small everyday challenges as well as the large wilderness of trauma here the world is full of shouts slaps stairs a body splayed at the bottom and desperate words catelyn winter has crafted her words and lines so they radiate mastery of many poetic forms and supple language whether the topic is personal or surreal whether violent or deceivingly gentle she insists on raw truth telling this book takes the reader on challenging paths yet these paths widen and encompass us in a way that promises light and transformation ahead so with applause for me and also from david rodrick and i know from joice for all six of these people i would like to announce the winner the poetry award goes to denusha lemaris bonfire opera congratulation denusha very very happy for you i'm sure you're there and are you ready to talk to us now i am i am can you hear me we can hear you now we have to see you okay my video is on on my end sorry i'm just taking a breath who there you are oh now you can see me yes okay wow i can see you um and i'm just so grateful to all the judges and to the northern california book reviewers and i'm looking at that book and i'm also having you know let the cover there and having that full circle moment as the girl i was that was just hoping to grow up and be a writer um someday and here we are um so i just want to say how thrilled i am to be here among this group of finalists who are all such fine poets i've been reading all of your poems and just so impressed at all the different voices that we have in this group and it's a true honor so thank you to the northern california book reviewers thank you judges for supporting writers and books for now i believe it is 40 years i think this is year 40 which is a big deal and i've been saying recently that poets and poetry have raised me have carried me through the impossible or the unlikely in my own life have brought me people to love places to go and a way to navigate grief and pleasure but it's also been for me a practice in trust trust that poems land where they're meant to with those who are meant to read them trust that when we dedicate ourselves to poetry that life and poetry somehow open for us in a way that is inexplicable somehow it does so i trust in poetry and in the people who love poetry those are my people so i'm grateful for all of you right now for all my fellow poets and readers of poetry and lovers of poetry grateful to be in your presence to be fed by your work and to know that your work feeds others and for those who write i always like to say there's room there's room for you there's room for your voice there's a place for it even in all the madness of the world even in all the suffering and chaos and especially in all of that there's a place for you and for your voice and it just might address someone else's solitude and make them feel a little less alone in the world so thank you for honoring each other for honoring poems and as i see it we're all writing one one big poem together so thank you thank you thank you so much congratulations thank you now take a deep breath fiction fiction is up next tell me senora by ann harlemann kate is an archaeologist in recent widow still grieving the loss of her husband in italy for several months of residency in genoa she devotes her research to a 16th century painter kate becomes involved in a risky plan to help a small group of rest refugees wounded but amazingly strong cosavar women and she takes as her lover the much younger man tutoring her an italian unfailingly both feminine and feminist this is the story of a strong smart woman seeking to reconstruct herself after decades of selfless caretaking the prince of mournful thoughts and other stories caroline kim to say that the unifying thread of caroline kim's exquisite collection of stories is the korean diaspora would be true though that characterization gives short shrift to the complexity of the characters and their voices of narration in stories set in ancient korea korean war korea today and the future kim's stories weave the perspectives of a teenage girl an old man a depressed married wife and mother and a king into a masterpiece of an arc that radiates unique yet universal loss a registry of my passage upon the earth daniel mason two of these stories highlight 19th century women a celebrated balloonist flying above paris and a single mother attempting to save her asthmatic son from london's industrial pollution throughout mason ranges widely in time and space from the rainforest of brazil the docks of regency england to the battlefields of the american civil war to apartments in contemporary san francisco mason's rhetorical moves are as varied as his protagonists in settings these stories are themselves an aesthetic miracle of found material in which his erudition shimmers with insight and deep feeling only the river and rave in this compact taunt contemplative novel two austrian jewish doctors flee europe with their children peppa and carl during world war two they travel first to the rainforest of nicaragua where they spend several years vaccinating the locals against yellow fever then the family abruptly moves to new york city where the parents set up a practice in the portorecan section of the Bronx years later later peppa's grown new york reared children return each for very different reasons to nicaragua in the midst of the sandinista revolution and become involved with ghosts from their mother's past the son of good fortune the son of good fortune leslie tenorio it takes a writer of certain talent to bring our famous city of the dead to life tenorio is that writer as he sets this modern day hero's journey in colma san francisco's own necropolis he brings the elements of a classic tale authentically to our time and place star crossed lovers a strong and fierce mother the elemental struggle between human beings and their collective struggle with an indifferent or hostile universe the 2021 ncba fiction award goes to a registry of my pat might a registry of my passage upon the earth daniel mason are you here daniel yes wonderful thank you so much hi thanks thank you joice i see what the other the other nominees have been experiencing where they get zoomed in and amazing after 16 months of this i still can't quite figure out where my unmute button is but but it looks like i'm here thank you so much joice for such a lovely description of the the book and i also just wanted to start by thanking the judges and the ncbr the independent booksellers in the bay area the san francisco public library and in virtual and in real life where we would be and i thank my agent christy fletcher and my publisher little brown my editor asia mucneck as well as the editors of the literary journals where these stories first appeared harpers and the atlantic and particularly the bay areas own zoa trip all story and the editor of which michael ray i first met in a now long lost bookstore on market street about about 20 years ago so it's such a strange genre that the acceptance speech that may or may not be read i've also never been given a prize over over zoom and i guess for all the attendant advantages i can recognize like not having to brave downtown traffic or squeeze past others and i all are worried about tripping as i as i went to the stage or about an incipient tremor that all crops up with public speaking for all this i'm sad not to be able to to walk through the library and to see friends and to meet other other writers it is particularly meaningful to be awarded this prize for this book for everything i've written this is the most northern californian so my background right now um our thimbleberries on the top of skyline boulevard which are amazingly lush despite the heat because they sit just at the edge of the coastal fog i also should say i love the double meaning of background here we're always talking about our backgrounds zoom backgrounds with my background there's also california and having been born here and lived here uh almost all of my life and this shows up in a number of the stories so one of the stories the title story registry my pastures of the earth was written back in around 2003 2004 um at a number of places um among them multiple libraries in san francisco including the the main branch of the of the downtown library where the event would be held um the story of the mother taking care of her asthmatic child in in london the choice mentioned is based on the northern californian fires um the paradise fire um talked about in one of the other nominees um for today's book um back in 2018 um which tells the story of a mother trying to protect her son from the worsening air and then a another story tells the story of a world war two refugee living in the inner sunset who repeatedly tries and fails to to find identity as an american through his repeated participation in civil war re-enactments and researching this last one sent me deep into the san francisco my childhood uh with the russian grocery stores of the inner richman the the redwood leaf strewn backyards and the bicentennial celebrations that filled golden gate park it's always amazing to turn one's writing to a world that one thinks that one knows and what emerged was a state um a community a space that was both more extraordinary and more fragile than the one that i'd imagined so it's truly an honor to receive this to receive this prize especially among such amazing other nominees and and i thank you everybody thank you thank you so much daniel mason now we are here with the fred cody award the northern california book awards formerly the babras were co-founded by the late fred cody legendary berkeley bookseller and reviewer in 1981 40 years ago his ulterior motive he wanted to talk books over lunch the award in his name is gone to an amazing array of our most crucial icons from alice walker adrien riche aliyang and maxine honk Kingston to laurence furlingetti ishmael read daniel elsberg and more i am thrilled and honored to present the fred cody award for lifetime achievement and service to wan felipe herrera during the last 50 years wan felipe herrera has dedicated his life to poetry community art and teaching with over 30 books in various genres his new work of poetry is every day we get more illegal carmen hemenna smith wrote every book he writes becomes his best book and this collection is no exception he brings unity and vulnerability to this wide-ranging and prophetic volume deeply important to california letters and to american letters he's the first latinx us poet laureate serving 20 serving between 2015 and 2017 and he served as california poet laureate he is a champion for his students for us for those who love poetry and creativity and the human spirit there is no one like him he's a brilliant poly stylist his wit is off the charts soaring into places we can only hope to follow son of farm workers he lives with his wife the poet margarita robles in fresno his kudos include the national book critic circle award mugenheim la times robert kersh award latino hall of fame award push cart prize uc la chancellor's medal and uc riverside lifetime achievement award oh my gosh what took us so long my favorite of his honors the wan felipe herrera elementary school is scheduled to open in fresno next fall 2022 and this fall one of his inspiration poems would be placed in the capsule of the nasa lucy a robotic spacecraft wow please take us with you wan felipe herrera are you in the house wan wan felipe herrera are you here yes yes i'm here wonderful welcome uh well thank you so much i'm trying to get it together again jeez every 10 seconds i get it together attempt to thank you so much you know i really appreciate uh this great recognition the uh the fred codie lifetime achievement and service award i really appreciate the san francisco public library poetry flash uh that used to be my bible when i used to uh be in the bay area that's the first thing i used to get wherever i was on the street and uh run either to uh north beach and get an expresso and open up that that beautiful poetry flash and read about books and poets and reviews reviews by kessler and and you know certain things going on with peoples that i really enjoyed and the reviews and the books so so i want to thank you joys for all the work you have done for poetry flash and for all of us writers in california and throughout the nation and beyond carrying that that poetry flash bible and being so inspired and not feeling so alone and enjoying it you know and writing on the margins of it uh thanks again and once again thank you to the library and also gracias to uh to uh to city lights uh that has been uh so generous uh to me and uh elaine castenberger who has done such great editing uh with every book we've done and especially this this last one every day we get more illegal uh i sent i think i sent in a 130 page book and elaine really you know she she doesn't mess around and she found the poems that really uh work together and uh so gracias elaine which is which is gracias and thank you to stacey lewis who also sent the book out everywhere uh and to get reviews and to get to the peoples as far as she could send them send the book and it really hit home in many places and gracias again stacey and uh thank you to all the winners such incredible books i i i've been writing all the titles i mean they're i'm sure the titles are printed already on a on a list i just couldn't help it and so i haven't i have the titles here so i won't forget and uh which always has to be everyone i know i miss somebody all of a sudden uh talking about this little booklet of mine uh oh kendra yes uh kendra marcus uh my uh my book agent my dear friend for also working hard on my behalf she says you say yes to everything that's not me and she she she she works really hard and really works out agreements that i wouldn't have even thought about so once again muchas gracias kendra and you know the bay area san francisco i i've lived in san francisco and i've been in san francisco since the 50s off and on and with my mother and my tia leila and my tio fernando my tio beto my tia alvina my aunts and uncles who had a beautiful life of of their own uh laundry workers uh and radio makers my my tio beto my uncle beto uh mexico mexico tessen pioneer my tia alvina uh hereson and hereson hereson and what is it hereson and 20th hereson and 20th uh victorian where i stayed also in fourth grade and learned all about jazz from my from my cousin tito who blasted out blasted it throughout the house so thelonious monk and cal jader and and um mongo santa maria and horris silver and on uh were kind of programmed to use an odd word into my cells brain cells since i was in fourth grade going to brian telemetry uh more than anything else thank you for being so kind uh to me and to all of us writers and scribblers inking spill ink spillers uh at all genres at all levels and the library such a beautiful place a place where i always found my home because i was always living in tiny apartments so i really appreciate everything we have done and thank you fred cody and memory and cody family and cody's bookstore and all the bookstore city lights bookstore uh the used bookstores remember the used bookstores uh i used to live in those bookstores as a middle schooler and uh you know i used to go through all the magazines and joke books so i could learn how to tell a joke let's see um you know i forgot i forgot the jokes from not from the from the early 60s something about being bald and which which is a man uh looking like a bubblegum balloon you know it's not that funny right now but when i i read it it was really funny and uh blessings to the al young family al young was such a great writer and one of our poets and so many poets they have passed on and on you know francisco alarcón karen brody and on so muchas gracias queridos amigos y amigas los queremos todos a ustedes con nuestros poemas nuestros libros nuestras novelas y muchas gracias aporte flash a la biblioteca de san francisco city lights a todos los escritores con mucho amor i love all of you muchas gracias por this beautiful award thank you thank you so much for joining us today and just thank you for all of your work and and and the richness of your life it's wonderful that you share with us and as we share ours with you but thank you thank you joice always so now i want to remind you that um you may purchase these amazing books that we've talked about from the ncba online bookshop at bookshop.org slash list slash northern hyphen california hyphen book hyphen awards hyphen 2021 sales will benefit city lights books that link and ncbr mini reviews of these books are also at poetry flash.org be generous support these authors and independent bookstores go to your public library especially the wonderful and amazing san francisco public library library thanks for joining us thank you everybody and thank you for all that library love we love you more than you love us i know i know it's to be true but thank you all the same we love when everyone's spread in the library love joice and poetry flash and northern california book reviewers we thank you for joining us for the 40th annual northern california book awards number 41 in the corrett auditorium we'll see you there goodbye everybody much love