 The San Francisco Public Library would like to acknowledge that we occupy the unceded and ancestral homeland of the Ramya Tush Aloni peoples who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco Peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, and relatives of the Ramya Tush community. And let's give a big shout out to the city of Oakland who just returned five acres of land and that's going to be stewarded by the Sigourte Land Trust, a powerhouse of women led land rights movement folks. So amazing to the city of Oakland. I also want to thank our partners on this event for making this happen in person. We've been doing it online now for I think three years. So it's so great to be in community together in one room. And I also want to thank Medicine for Nightmares for being our bookseller today. Don't make Medicine for Nightmares carry their books home. Buy some books, buy some books. And without further ado I would like to introduce Joyce Jenkins who is the editor and publisher of Poetry Flash and she will be introducing the 41st annual Northern California Book Awards. Thank you everyone. Hello. We haven't been able to do this for more than three years. It is almost, I'm almost in shock. So thank you so much for joining us today. This is a real experiment, but we can do it. I just want to make a quick note, housekeeping note, to in case you are called up to the podium, do not place anything on this laptop, otherwise you will stop. The program, try not to. It would be really hard for me to explain. So don't do that. And I just am so grateful that you're here. So thank you, Anissa, for those kind words. And as she said, welcome to the 41st annual Northern California Book Awards. As you've heard, I'm Joyce, Poetry Flash, chair of the Northern California Book Reviewers, a volunteer association of reviewers, review editors, and others who write about books. This ceremony celebrates books published in 2021 by Northern California authors and California translators. These awards are presented by Poetry Flash with the world-class 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 or come together to butt heads over books. We read and discuss and fret over them, seeking the best from hundreds of titles, finding in these books what we need to guide us through our cultural, political, and personal sea changes. Today we gratefully celebrate all of these exceptional authors who helped us through. Every single book is our heartfelt recommendation to you, every single nominee. We want to celebrate you all. The Northern California Book Awards celebrate diversity. We believe we are stronger together and better when we are learning together. If you are a book reviewer and would like to join us, contact us. Let's draw a bigger circle together. The Northern California Book Reviewers who selected these books are listed with gratitude at the back of your program. The comments who hear today were written by NCBR committee members and are also posted on the NCBA page at poetryflash.org. Medicine for Nightmares is a new bookstore on 24th Street with superhuman panache. They have brought these exciting books to us on display in the lobby. Please be generous and pick one up. Support independent bookselling. The City Lights Northern California Book Awards 2022 online store can be found at bookshop.org slash shop slash city lights books. In case you decide that you want to pick something up after you leave, you will find that link at poetryflash.org. The children's literature, younger readers, nominees are What Is Love? Mac Barnett, illustrated by Carson Ellis. Love is a word that children hear all the time, but it's not something they can see nor something they can hear. They probably know love is important. They certainly know that love is good. But what is it? Mac Barnett and illustrator Carson Ellis explore the concept of love in the beautiful and thought provoking book What Is Love? Home is In Between, Metali Perkins, illustrated by Lavanya Nedu. Is home a place or is home a feeling? A young child moves from a Bengal village to a town in the US. There are things in her new home that are familiar. Her mom's cooking, her native language, but those comforts evaporate the moment she steps outside. For any child who has moved across the world or even across town, this story will help work through the discomfort of missing old experiences, embracing new ones and finding comfort in both. Out of the blue, how animals evolved from prehistoric seas, Elizabeth Shrieve, illustrated by friend Preston Gannon. Evolution is a topic that has been tackled countless times in children's books, but perhaps not with the same curiosity and beauty as in the gorgeously illustrated Out of the Blue. How could be a boring timeline becomes an action-packed story asking what's a poor fish to do when there is less oxygen in the oceans and more in the air evolve. The Children's Literature Younger Readers Award goes to Out of the Blue, Elizabeth Shrieve. Are you here, Elizabeth? Are you here, Elizabeth? Please come up to the podium and accept your award. Astonished. I don't have anything, any notes. Well, I haven't been thinking about it a little bit, maybe. I want to thank Northern California Book Awards and I want to thank my publisher, Candlewick Press and the amazing artist, friend Preston Gannon, for bringing this book to life. And I want to thank you especially for putting the children's book writers first because we have an especially hard time sitting still. This book took root here in San Francisco at the California Academy of Sciences where a few of my scientist friends helped me get my arms around a topic, a giant topic, the fabulous history of life beginning in the ocean three and a half billion years ago and evolving and transitioning over time in the ocean and also on to land. So it's a topic that kind of took hold of me and I ended up writing curriculum and doing videos and writing more books, three of which are coming out in the next couple of years. So it's one thing to kind of know a little bit of science, but then a writer has to figure out how to start a book. So I started with the question. I posed three animals, a hippo, a dolphin and a shark, and said which two are the closest relatives because a child might, you know, think, yeah, you know what they think. And the answer starts with the smallest creature the world has ever known and ends with the biggest. It's a story from out of the blue. And so in that way I set the story up and could unfold and reveal the answer as we go through time. And I fought to have that timeline in that book and that's real popular with teachers. So this little book has also brought me here to this wonderful forest of writers and books that I so revere. I really want to give a shout out to the children's writers among us. Our books are spare, but each word is a seed that fosters attention and curiosity and connection and empathy, spirit of adventure, for instance, living on Mars or getting stuck in a really horrible bank robbery, and also comfort and solace of love and connection to family and community. Children need books. They need all kinds of books. And with those books we can help to grow the next forest of readers and writers and thinkers and creators and citizens of planet earth. Thank you so much for this great honor. Thank you. The nominees in middle grade are the Lion of Mars, Jennifer L. Holm, 11-year-old Bell's family is a group of adults, kids, and a cat all living communally in a settlement on Mars. What Bell thinks is a meteorite or alien ship falls nearby and the children steal a rover to see what happened. They don't know that an accident had killed one of their crew members, casting a shadow over friendship with other settlements. There is gentle humor, love, and innocence in this well-told story of the desire for connection even on Mars. Pee for disaster, Amy Lucido. Hannah, her grandma Mimi, and her parents have a warm, joyous family life filled with recipes in the smell of baking. When her best friend has a bat mitzvah, complete with dancing in a first kiss, Hannah decides that she wants one too. And though grandma Mimi is Jewish, Hannah's parents say they aren't. The result, in bright and engaging dialogue, is a thoughtful exploration for the young who are what is God and what it is to be Jewish. The Samosa Rebellion, Shanti Sikoran. On the imagined island of Mariposa, immigrants have a life rich with community and family. But there is a cloud over the island, an anti-immigrant nationalism, a movement at the highest levels of government. The one-sided nation suffers from racism, classism, and issues of xenophobia that parallel our contemporary national issues. Mookie and his middle school pals help bring change in hope to their country in this passionate novel. The award for middle grade goes to the Samosa Rebellion, Shanti Sikoran. And Shanti Sikoran is ill. Suddenly it just happened and her family is here to accept for her. Please come up. Lovely to see you. Congratulations. Thanks a lot. So this is really not my comfort zone, so I apologize. So as she said, I am the husband of Shanti Sikoran and I'm here to accept this award and she gave me a little speech that I should read. Just in case that she won it, which didn't seem entirely plausible, but great, this is wonderful, wonderful, and she's very excited. So from Shanti, this is an incredible honor. This book would not have existed without my two beautiful boys, Avi and Ash, who listened to this nearly, who listened to its newly written chapters as their bedtime stories every night, who told me that the story was fire and to keep writing it. The writing would not have been possible either without my husband, Spencer Dutton, who gave me the time and space and peace I needed. I didn't add that bit, she put that in. I dedicated the Samosa Rebellion to my parents who came to the US from India in 1965, knowing hardly anybody and knowing that they were leaving their homes and families very, very far away. One thing I learned whilst writing this book, it's a brave thing to move across a border or an ocean, to start a new life in a new country, but it's an even braver thing to claim that country as home. Another thing I learned that countries aren't made of cities and states, but of friends and neighbors, of people who will patronize an immigrant's family's small business, or stand up for what they know is right, who will say no when they need to. It's a very brave thing to stand up. It's a very brave thing to be seen. Thank you. Thank you so much. Okay, the young adult nominees. Getting in a little deeper. Luck of the Titanic, Stacy Lee. Vivid depictions of lush shipboard settings in period fashions, as well as compelling relationship dynamics, constitute this fresh perspective about one of the world's most tragic disasters. The event's historical integrity is preserved while informing us of the prevalent discrimination against Asians and many other minorities during this era. Fictional characters and actual personages intermingle in a deftly balanced story, whose conflicts and plot twists never cease to surprise. It's a beautiful book. The Mirror Season. Anna-Marie Macklemore. One shard of mirrored glass gets into Sheila's eye, and her entire world transforms. And all this is because she is haunted by the memory of a boy she barely knows. The nonlinear storyline of this reimagining of the Snow Queen uses strong symbolism and eloquent prose to depict heart-rending trauma and the efficacy of healing. The girls I've been test sharp. For five years, Nora has acted like a normal teenager, but that's about to change. The day after Wes, her ex, finds her kissing their mutual friend, Iris, and they all meet at a bank to deposit money from a fundraiser. If that wasn't awkward enough, they find themselves held hostage by armed bank robbers. As the situation escalates, Nora realizes she needs to draw upon her past skills as protege to a con artist, her mother. With a plot that stands the bank heist trope on its head, this book is daring and bold, yet heartwarming. A true crime for a young adult. The Young Adult Award goes to Anna-Marie Macklemore. Anna-Marie Macklemore tried but could not join us today, but she sent us a video. When Anna first came to this country, the most valuable thing she carried with her was something only she could see. The rest was worth almost nothing. The varnished tin of her favorite necklace, the cloth full of the rose hips she seated, and then ate like hard candies. The shoes she wore nearly to dust, getting to the house she would be paid to clean and eventually cook in. Even her best dress, moths hanging in constellations of perfectly round holes that mirrored the desert stars they flew beneath. Years later, when there had been a wedding ring, a new stove in a house of her own, a fine dress. The most valuable thing my great-grandmother ever owned was still her way of knowing what bread or sweet would love in the heart of anyone she met. She could soothe love sickness with poverones de naranja, sweet as orange blossoms. She calmed frightened dreams with lesmugas, sugar white as far off stars. It was a gift my great-grandmother had ever since she was a little girl, and when she died, she passed it to me, even though I was too small to remember her face. I think of my visa one and now, just for a second, because the first parking spot I find in the hospital lot is up against a rose bush. The hearty, scrub-like kind she ate rose hips off of. Then I'm back to thinking about the boy, slumped in my mother's car. I don't know his name or where he lives, or how to get him home, or why he was even at the party tonight. I heard he was visiting from Lancaster, but I also heard Bakersfield and Elie Nevada. So at this point, he might as well be from the surface of the moon, because no one really knows. I could check his pockets, but I'm counting on the hospital to do that for me. Besides, nothing good ever came from a brown girl being seen taking a wallet off a white guy. This is Anna Marie Macklemore, author of The Mirror Season. Though I'm sad not to be there in person with you today, I'm grateful to get a chance to say thank you for reading The Mirror Season and giving it a place in your hearts and among the wonderful books nominated for this year's awards. Thank you to the Northern California Book Awards committees, the Northern California Book Reviewers, Poetry Flash, and everyone who makes this event possible. I wrote The Mirror Season from a place of questions. Questions about one of my favorite fairy tales growing up. How did the Snow Queen come to be so at home among ice and frost, and why do we cast her so readily as a villain instead of wondering what her story is? Questions about my own cultural traditions. What about baking and pannelse holds so much magic? And how can kneading dough and shaping conscious help us heal our own hearts? Questions about life as a sexual assault survivor. How do you go forward when something has happened that has irrevocably broken your life into before and after? I wrote this book for my fellow survivors and the people who support them. I wrote this book hoping it could be one more voice reminding my fellow survivors that there is a forward. We might not know what it looks like yet, but it's there and it's waiting for us. We'll discuss this. The NCBR Groundbreaker Award goes to Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems. Michael McClure, edited with an introduction by Garrett Capels, City Lights. Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems, Michael McClure's final book, was composed during the last years of his life and readied for publication by editor Garrett Capels before McClure's death. Mule Kick Blues is a definitive statement by one of the most significant American poets of the 20th century. Poetry Flash said, the world seems filled by madness in the meanwhile, but the passing of Michael McClure at 87 in May 2020 merits the consideration of poets. McClure was an everything man, a star spanning the history of the era that made us. Dramatist, novelist, songwriter, actor, theorist, performance artist, art critic, organizer, intellectual, and rock and roll performer, few did as much to inaugurate in advance the alternative culture ethos of the 1950s and 1960s as it became the broadly accepted, even dominant popular culture. McClure was a trailblazer and now his final gift to us is Mule Kick Blues thanks to Garrett Capels and City Lights. Here to accept the award are Garrett Capels, I hope you're here, and Amy Evans McClure. Could you come up? Thanks Joyce and Amy is here and says hello. I asked myself what would Michael do? So I wrote a little poem and then I'm going to read a poem of his. This is called Acceptance Speech. On behalf of Michael McClure, Amy Evans McClure and City Lights Books, I'm pleased to accept this award from Mule Kick Blues and Last Poems as Michael's friend and editor. Being an editor, a poetry editor, is an exhilarating drag. You routinely kill yourself to get the job done, a moment of shining triumph when the book returns from the printer, another when you lay it on the author, if the author is alive, then you lay it aside because you have another book to take care of. If you're lucky people enjoy it and often enough you don't know if they did enjoy this thing, you're mostly worried over. You don't do it for awards, you do it because the world needs culture and doesn't know what poetry is. The award forces a backward glance you're too superstitious to take for fear it'll all disappear, you're a deice. Looking back I went a little crazy with this book. I made the cover image, I made a book trailer, I made a poster, two posters actually. One a deluxe silk screen, one cheapo one for the trade. I wrote an intro that was way too personal, no regrets. Michael had just died and this was a way of dealing with it. I did it for both of us. I felt Michael was taken for granted that his breakthroughs were no longer apparent or even obscured by his own success getting them over. He'd been so famous so long and famed Giveth and Taketh away, like the world knows what he was about. Bullfucking shit. The world ain't caught up past 68 or 9. Michael in 1982, Michael 2005, Michael 2020 ain't in fathom yet. I'm giving the world its future Alice Notley told me and that's what she means. Michael is still there. I'll turn 40 on October 20, the bartender just said, Michael's birthday, he'd have been 90. The world is not yet caught up. The world is not yet caught up. The world is not yet caught up. Michael's in your future. He's also your history. Some real poet shit. And I just wanted to read one of the several poems in the section, Mule Kick Blues, which is the title sequence of this book. And this one is called 40 Songs. I'm standing on the river of night with 40 songs. Here's the river of night with 40 songs. I'm standing on the river of night with 40 songs. I'll be stepping in the boat before too long. Stepping in the boat with all these songs, white hair hanging in my beard like moss. Everything I see is movies in a dream. Look at bubbles flowing around the rocks in the stream. I'll be stepping in the boat before too long. Deer make noise as they walk over old dead leaves. I'll be stepping in the boat before too long. Deer make noise as they walk over old dead leaves. Voices in the head like Alibaba and the thieves. When you get home, when you get home, sit down with your back against a tree. See pictures go by like movies in a dream. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Michael. It's wonderful to see those pictures. NCBR member Sharon Coleman will present the California Translation Awards. Sharon? Where are you, Sharon? Please come up. Thank you, everybody, for making it out here on this beautiful Sunday afternoon. Okay, so we have California Translation in poetry and in fiction, and these are translators from all of California, not just the Northern realm. The nominees for the California Translation in poetry award are the New World Written, Selected Poems by Maria Baranda, edited and partially translated from the Spanish by Paul Hoover. And with translations by Hoover and nine other translators, including Forrest Gander, Leticia Hernandez-Linares, the New World Written brings together work from 1989 to 2015 by celebrated Mexican poet, Maria Baranda. The translators evoke a consistency of voice across 12 volumes of Baranda's poetry, hypnotic and dense with invention. Hoover's introduction places the writing within the larger history of Spanish language poetry, including that of Sir Juana Inés de la Cruz. The next nominee is The All-Seeing Eye, collected poems by Shing Kin, translated from the Chinese by John Balcom. Born in mainland China in 1930, Shing Kin has lived the life of an exile in Taiwan since 1948. Greatly influenced by surrealism, his poems reference Max Jacob and the painter Juan Miro. Kin writes a poetry of enigmatic leaps and disassociation, where the violence of war and the colonialism find a response. Translated by John Malcom, the English versions of these prose poems set Kin in the wider context of ongoing global surrealism. And the next nominee, The Blinding Star, selected poems by Blanca Varela, translated from the Spanish by Lisa Allen Ortiz and Sarah Danielle Riviera. This meticulously curated bilingual collection brings Blanca Varela, one of Peru's most celebrated poets to English-speaking readers. Known as one of La Generación de Siguenta, the generation of the 1950s, Varela developed a poetic steeped in surreal imagery that emanates from the body and that shifts from the most intimate sensations, appetites and desires to fundamental questions of existence. Lisa Allen Ortiz and Sarah Danielle Riviera's translation is exact and elegant, true in tone and meaning of all that the original unleashes. And the winner of this year's California Translation in Poetry Award goes to The Blinding Star, selected poems by Blanca Varela. Is there one of the translators here? Thank you. Hi, you guys. Am I supposed to say anything? Oh, it says, do not place anything here. I was just going to say what a great group of readers this is, but I myself accepted perhaps because I didn't read that. But what an honor it is to get this award. I've never had anything like this happen to me ever. And from you guys who I've admired for so long. Thank you, Poetry Flash and Bay Area Book of Viewers. Translation is reading, a close and ardent kind of reading. Translation is a kind of reading done folded in thirds and upside down and in a hall of mirrors. Translation, if you haven't tried it, is very weird. And the Peruvian poet, Blanca Varela, writes the weirdest, wildest, most alive poems I've ever read. Her poems are feminist and furious and have eyes and teeth and claws and an untameable deep water heart. If I were alone with Varela's poems, I might have drowned or been scratched to death. But Sara Daniel Rivera was with me. Sara and I translated these poems together. I wish you were here with me now. But we've always worked together apart. Sara lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and I live in Santa Cruz. But even at such a distance, we worked closely with our four eyes and our four ears, focused together on Varela's wily dream muscle poems. Collaboration is the most powerful force in the world and the effort Sara and I made together resulted in translations that were much better than the sum of anything we could do on our own. Thank you, Sara. And thank you to Tolson Books, so vibrant and generous, a small press that they said yes to printing the original poems alongside the translations and Sara and I are so happy for that. And thank you, most of all, to Vicente de Cislo and Maria da Carmen Guese and all of Blanca Varela's heirs who took a risk in picking a Northern California poet to translate their mother and grandmother's work. Thank you to the Northern California Book Reviewers for celebrating that audacity and recognizing Blanca Varela's fierce brilliance. I'll let Blanca Varela have the last word here in translation. Pain between two walls is no longer pain. Let's put the day and night between us. I'll let you nights and separates us. So much forgetting is rediscovering, evasion, spinning. An invisible star leaves its orbit. An orbit that was or is memory. On the shaded side memory grows and devours itself. Its brilliance is closed and empty like a broken cabinet where something flashed and then withered. The surprising touch of one's own hand. The otherness of me. This exists. Unexplored place of intimate flesh. Another earth inside the earth. The body's solitude unfolded in the dark. Thank you so much. Okay, now we are shifting to the prose and the nominees for the California translation prose award are Antonio by Beatrice Bracher translated from the Portuguese by Adam Morris. Her outstanding novel, Antonio Beatrice Bracher tells the story of the remarkable Kremps family of Brazil. Brilliant, enlightened, sophisticated and multi-talented. The family is swept up in the 1960s and 70s movements for social change and personal freedom as well as tragedies of Greek proportions. Adam Morris's skilled translation provides just the right touches to steep the novel in a Brazilian atmosphere while making the prose and dialogue accessible and contemporary. The next nominee is I Was Never the First Lady by Wendy Herrera. Herrera translated from the Spanish by Achi Obejas. Wendy Herrera takes the reader on an engrossing journey through the eyes of her protagonist Cuban artist Nadia Huera whose mother left Cuba and abandoned her husband and 10-year-old daughter. Nadia discovers that her mother has moved to Russia. When she finds her mother, she is incoherent and failing health. Nadia decides to bring her back to Cuba with her unfinished book about Fidel Castro's closest confidant which Nadia decides to finish. Translator Achi Obejas originally from Cuba masterfully transfers the epic story into English. And the next nominee is Battles in the Desert by José Emilio Pacheco translated from the Spanish by Catherine Silver. This Mexican literature classic has a potent distilled narrative style and is a moving coming-of-age story set against a backdrop of social class tension, the repressive political landscape in Mexico, and expanding globalization. Catherine Silver's stunning new translation expertly conveys the English sprinkled throughout the original film stars, cars, mass market products and the Mexican context of preserving inventive phonetic new spellings capturing the encroaching role of English in Mexican culture. And the winner for this year's California Translation and Pros Award goes to Antonio by Beatrice Bracher and translator Adam Morris. Thank you. Well, thank you Sharon and to all of you for being here. It's been quite a while since I translated this book so it's really gratifying and in some ways remarkable to see it recognized today and I really appreciate it and I know that Beatrice will really appreciate it as well when I tell her tomorrow. So the book, as you might have heard just now, is about the rise and fall of a family in Brazil and it's told through three voices and I'd just like to leave you with one of those voices. This is Isabelle who is in the hospital speaking to her grandson. I'm tired Benjamin. I'm not in pain it's just this sickness. Maybe that's what it's already taken from me, I don't know. It's a tiredness that isn't bad just strange. After the rains your father came home tired. He came from the favela where he'd gone to live. I had a friend who lived there he took pity on me. After the flood he brought me tail drenched and sick. We went straight to the hospital he was burning with fever. You clung to him. The last friend your father ever had listening to the story of his final deeds. He knew that Teo was dying his story already sounded like it was passing into legend. We listened and couldn't recognize the skinny Teo who lay dying in the ICU. The friend says Teo was a hulk carrying children and furniture across the water in his arms. In those arms the entire whole world. The water was like a fire it was just as dangerous and strong as a fire tongues that licked inside and knocked everything over. He came and went from the shacks and saved a lot of people. His face and body were covered in mud not even a fireman gets that dirty from the ashes of a burning building. And even after that he didn't sleep. He worked day and night to rebuild his house without stopping to rest day and night working and getting food for the kids. You asked him to tell us more to reanimate that nearly pulseless corpse that you wished you could still recognize. And he went on talking about the furniture floating around the falling walls roof tiles flying a small child crying on top of a table that had become a raft. After that he went away and looked at each other. Do you remember Benjamin? I realized that you were with me. We both knew that the tail who had done all of that was not my son and not your father. That saintly effort was undertaken by 300 350 Teodoros but none of them was ours. Our Teodoros frail and tired was dying. I don't want to talk anymore Benjamin. Today the poor thing is me. A sick dog, a run over cat a bird that's flown into the glass dirty and poor my bed sores stink my voice already sounds like a horse toad. Don't start telling me how much you love me Benjamin. It's not the time for that. Nonsense. Go now. I want to sleep. Thank you very much. Thank you. Adam Morris. Congratulations. NCBR member James LeCure will present the General Nonfiction Award. Jim? Thanks to Joyce and all you members. The nominees for General Nonfiction are Chesla Miwosh A California Life by Cynthia L. Haven. Not choose California. It was given to me. Miwosh. Concept of California is like his life compounded of dichotomies. Throughout this book we see Miwosh be set by the contradictions that inform his poetry good and evil, life and death, beauty and ugliness, body and soul and always becoming and becoming. This is a rich book filled with anecdotes of his life. We see Miwosh as both the only Nobel laureate in the humanities that you see Berkeley and as the eternal Polish poet alive in Warsaw. The next. The Premonition A Pandemic Story by Michael Lewis Michael Lewis brings to life some of those who could see the next pandemic coming from Laura Glass a 13 year old girl whose high school science project predicted the rapid spread of airborne pathogens to Dr. Charity Dean Health Officer of Santa Barbara County who understood the first signs of a deadly communicable disease the struggle of a few determined people willing to risk their careers to save lives by taking arms against the spread of a pandemic. That's the subject of this book. This is Your Mind on Plants by Michael Pollan. Pollan writes three of three drugs caffeine from tea and coffee perhaps the world's most widely spread addiction opium from poppies from which for centuries the world's most effective medicines were derived and mescaline from cactuses the peyote the wachuma, the san pedro and several others which offers a psychedelic expansion of the creative mind. It has long been a central factor in Native American religious practices. These plants properly used help us immensely and Pollan is always worth reading. Orwell's Roses Rebecca Solnit Rebecca Solnit's biographical essay on George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair if you don't know begins with roses and swings through the coal mines written into the hapless struggle against roses against Franco's fascism in 1930's Spain. Life is a struggle for most people but we go on fighting because we hope for peace for roses. If many people want to make a better world why isn't it better Solnit asks questions sometimes she tenders her answer This is a beautiful book not one to skim but thoughtfully written multi-layered with ideas building on ideas by the light of burning dreams the triumphs and tragedies of the second American revolution by David Talbot and Margaret Talbot civil rights black power, gay pride the American Indian movement to inform workers women's lib all fueled by injustice and the resistance of young people opposed to the draft and to the war in Vietnam coalesced to create a furious blaze of rebellion in the late 60's and early 70's the Talbot's brother and sister catch the souls of the main characters at critical moments If you want to know what happened you made it happen It's a great book The general nonfiction award goes to by the light of burning dreams David Talbot and Margaret Talbot I'd like to say this book made me cry David Talbot unfortunately is sick and I will accept in his place Thank you Jim Okay Our next up is Creative Nonfiction NCBR member Joy Lanzendorfer will present the Creative Nonfiction Award Alright, the creative nonfiction nominees Her Honor My Life on the Bench What Works, What's Broken and How to Change It by LaDoris Hazard Cordell Her Honor is both an engrossing memoir of the first African American woman to serve as a trial judge on the Superior Court of Northern California and an incisive look into our judicial system where it succeeds, where it fails and what can be done to make it live up to it's promise A talented storyteller Cordell uses high stakes real life cases, warmth humor and the ability to view her personal journey to show us what really happens inside the courtroom and how it affects us all Loving Before Loving A Marriage in Black and White by Joan Steina Lester This is a memoir about love and activism justice and personal fulfillment in the midst of the civil rights women and LGBTQ movements In 1962 a young camp counselor and activist married a young black man who was the camp music counselor interracial marriage was illegal or dangerously controversial almost everywhere. Lester interweaves a personal account of the social justice movements of our time with the story of a woman who finally learns to fight for her own voice Model Citizen Joshua Moore calls his riveting memoir a love letter to his young daughter and it is. Yet Moore throws a harsh light on his experiences as a husband, father, son, writer and an addict Doctors tell him he won't survive his 40s so why struggle to stay sober if it's only for a few years His story is in turns insane and funny and painful Moore gives us no definitive answers, no need some nations what he does offer is an unblinkered and self-aware account of a damaged life and an implicit trust in the power of writing The last nomad coming of age in the Somali desert, Sugri Sayid Saal Sugri Sayid Saal's memoir is about her childhood growing up in the Somali desert All of my ancestors on both sides of my family were nomads she writes While only one of her siblings picked for this role she's taken out of school and transformed into a nomad becoming the last in her family to learn these ancient traditions. Finally her family is forced to flee as refugees, first to Kenya and then to Canada. The last nomad is an engrossing coming of age story about resilience and what it means to call a place home. The Night Lake A young priest maps the topography of grief Liz Tichner In the Night Lake Liz Tichner takes on one of the most difficult subjects, the loss of a child. As a recently ordained priest, Tichner is living in a church camp in Lake Tahoe when her five week old baby suddenly stops breathing and is rushed to emergency care soon after he's pronounced dead. Tichner's grief is the recent loss of her mother, an alcoholic who died by suicide the year before. This is a meditation on what it means to experience profound loss, live with heart break and in the end find hope again. And the creative nonfiction award goes to Model Citizen by Joshua Moore Joshua Moore is in Seattle scouting locations and he has sent us a video. California Book Award How are you? It's nice to see everybody from afar and if you're listening to this I guess I must have won so that's pretty cool Model Citizen I mean is any nonfiction project is near and dear to my heart I always kind of believe especially as a memoirist that a memoir is basically kind of cutting out your heart and it becomes this kind of conch shell and if we do our job right as memoirists the audience has the opportunity to hold our conch shell up and they can hear our heart beat and they can hear our heart beat because we're in this together authors and readers you know to say thanks to some people obviously I want to start with my girls my wife Leota generous, thoughtful patient and of course there would be no nonfiction world for me without my daughter Ava Antoinette that book Model Citizen is a love letter to her if you've read the book you might be thinking to yourself Josh do you know what a love letter is because I don't think they're supposed to have this many felonies but I would argue that that's what makes it a real love letter nothing is airbrushed, nothing is varnished it's the warts and all truth about our time together on the planet I want to thank independent booksellers all booksellers really you guys are the original algorithms the role you play in curating the role you play in you know establishing this vibrant community that we all get to play in as authors and readers is an absolute joy and is an absolute treasure at the bottom of my heart not for this award I think that's cool too but just for the role that you play in our community you value and dig words the way that I value and dig words and we're in all of this together you know Model Citizen has kind of an interesting path to publication I published a memoir in 2016 called Sirens and I got an email after the book came out from a senior editor at FSG Durham and Daphne said I don't know what your next book is about but if you could do another memoir I'd love to do it together and of course I said to her Daphne I've done so many stunningly stupid things in my life we could write 10 memoirs together and so we wrote the book you know and it wouldn't have happened without her reaching out to me I wasn't expecting to write another memoir so thanks for Daphne thanks for Kenai thanks for her enthusiasm for the project and she really helped me elevate the work so thanks to my people thanks to you, the booksellers thanks to the readers and of course thanks to FSG and MCD and my editor Daphne and lastly as I'm signing off I want to say one thing because it's so important to me I'm sure that there are a bunch of writers in this room and this is my fingerprint and I really believe that our nations are as unique as our fingerprints and we should all live up to the standard of telling the stories that only we can tell that's how we stand out in a cluttered marketplace so I put everything into this model citizen project thanks for reading thanks for responding positively thanks for responding negatively I don't care I just so thankful that you're reading the work keep fighting the good fight Northern California Book Award very very very much thank you Joshua the NCBI recognition award for an extraordinary book or project outside of our usual categories goes to Zizava a San Francisco Journal of Arts and Letters Laura Kogan editor and Oscar Villalon managing editor we present this award in particular and grateful recognition of Zizava's continued celebration of West Coast poets and writers Laura Kogan and Oscar Villalon took on an already legendary bay area literary magazine burnished it with keen editing and created an icon we had planned to honor Zizava before the announcement but the journal has taken on even more of a gleam as the 2022 literary magazine prize winner recipient as the Whiting Award judges proclaimed masterfully edited and sharply cerebral out of a rich history rooted in San Francisco a world class magazine has emerged Venus on the half shell as the editors say Zizava offers a meaningful consideration of the most urgent ethical concerns of our time topics ranging from resistance the border art to the environment labor and technology they say that they create and they do substantial space for poetry not fiction interviews fiction and art from an array of voices resulting in a lively thoughtful conversation we celebrate the last word in the dictionary Zizava a tropical beetle are you here Laura or Oscar and both or both hi everyone thank you so much we are so grateful to the Northern California Book Awards for this recognition as some of you may know Zizava is a non-profit and we're a pretty small organization so this kind of recognition and visibility really helps us and I just want to say how continually inspired I am and I think we are by the incredible depth and diversity of talent and amongst the writers and translators in this region and that just makes it all the more important that we have robust local organizations doing the work of lifting up those voices recognizing them supporting them nurturing them and celebrating them organizations like the Northern California Book Awards like our wonderful public library and we hope that Zizava is contributing value to that work as well we know that the path to writing finishing and then publishing a book can be long it can be lonely it can be circuitous and we hope that through publication in the journal and through the various programs we offer we can offer something real and tangible by way of support to writers as they go on that journey so we're just delighted to be part of this wonderful community and so grateful for the support and recognition from our peers who we esteem so highly thank you so much I echoing everything that Laura said is that specifically we want to thank the Northern California book reviewers for this recognition thank you to Bochi Flash and to the public library and all the great organizations such as the Mechanics the Women's National Book Association Penn West for just making the Northern California Book Award happen I've hosted this a couple of times this is my first time receiving anything so that's kind of nice thank you as Joyce was saying yes we did get the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize early this year which is a very nice prize and we're grateful for it it's lovely that people far from your community appreciate the work you do but it is especially heartening to be recognized by those who are part of your community by those who follow the journal more closely for years and not for decades and feel in some way that they have a stake in Zizava's very existence in the end the journal is only worthy of this recognition because of all the fine work done by Laura and myself and of course our other staff members Laura Howard and the assistance we receive from all of our contributing editors and most importantly the work that we get to publish sent to us by so many brilliant poets artists translators and writers some of whom are here in this room right now many many of whom call the Bay Area in California their home and of course there is no Zizava without the support of all of our subscribers and our donors and all the booksellers who carry us on their bookshelves all of those people can rightly share in our delight and in our pride in receiving this recognition award thank you. Thank you so much now the nominees for the poetry award are special interest in this tenderness Derrick Austin if ever something was needed in our contemporary world it is tenderness in this aptly named book the poet treats the facts of his life with the compassion we all deserve through personal journey myth and the refreshed perspective that travel brings Derrick Austin captures the briefest and most characteristic of tender moments in love and friendship Austin's art manifests an ache it also heals beautifully wrought minutely observed and profoundly honest these are poems to which a reader will return a symmetry Ari Banias Ari Banias throws his readers off balance deliberately a symmetry is the thing and its opposite balance on the one hand in balance on the other poem by poem he presents thrilling indictments of contemporary on-way at times a regular at times a collector of urban detris he melds the contrasting sophistications of Baudelaire and Franco-Hera as a connoisseur of post-colonial landscapes he is perfectly positioned to witness the contemporary world's apocalypse by attrition clear-sided unflinching Banias offers poetry that is a true measure of his diminished age yellow rain made her vang with its masterful juxtaposition of collage devastating and damning documents of U.S. betrayal of the Hmong people at the end of the Vietnam War and its language that butterflies into elegy for those gone and truth for those who survive this powerful poetry history, ology should be taught in every poetry and humanities class the word epic is often abused while partaking of its history and its lyricism yellow rain is a new model for that genre West portal Benjamin Guciardi poet Benjamin Guciardi loves the neighborhood called West portal actually there are two such neighborhoods one in the western part of San Francisco and one that leads to the afterlife wandering both he engages their denizens searching for connection, direction and meaning in life Guciardi offers new answers for the difficulties of contemporary life except perhaps the simplest compassion and understanding re-queening Amanda Moore this collection starts with a poem called opening the hive and uses the workings of the literal hive as a kind of model universe a way to explore motherhood and childhood marriage and family togetherness and isolation how each of these things often involves putting aside the self like a queen bee this remarkable book reminds us that like bees we are an endangered species but that our connections to ourselves to each other and to the planet must be a devotional enterprise and if the woods carry you Aaron Rodoni creating a landscape woven from fairy tales, myths and even lullabies this collection places us on the precipice of both motherhood and childhood overlooking the hypnotic beauties of the world around us and also its blood drenched cruelties and dangers this is about survival how do we live the birth love in the face of these challenges the speaker in the first poem speculates that maybe like me the only God you can conceive is a kind of weakfulness this magnificent book is magical, lyrical and full of wakefulness the poetry award goes to Yellow Rain Maider Vang is in Fresno and couldn't join us today so she is accepting by video Hi everyone, I'm so sorry I couldn't be there with you all in person to celebrate thank you to the Northern California Book Awards for selecting my book Yellow Rain as the winner I'm incredibly honored to be recognized in my home state of California so thank you so so very much congratulations also to all of the poetry finalists honored to be recognized alongside all of you in your amazing books congratulations I want to thank my publisher Gray Wolf Press to Fiona McCray and my editors Jeff Schatz and Chance Erlin thank you so much for taking a chance on this book and giving this issue and this topic a home and a place to be read and shared and learned about the Catholic sphere thank you to my partner Anthony Cote who has been extremely supportive throughout the whole process of when I was writing this book and last but not least to my family especially to my parents thank you so much for supporting me and encouraging me to never stop writing and to keep writing and thanks again to all of you I'm so grateful for this I'm going to close here this is a poem from my book and it's just an excerpt actually from a longer poem the poem is broken down into four sections and I will read the fourth section of the poem Manifesto of a Drump for as long as a saula can flee I have been brooding in my sleep moving through a century of leaves a voice out of scrying a river shifting my ears some early mornings are left for listening to water tones wilting the banks of a primeval lake but the lake has been lacquered into the stars mirroring its clotted hand down to mine what does it take to raise an answer from the grave quantify stillness of doubt through unmarked bodies becoming ciphers for loss I gather sharpness of my burn beyond agony for an answer it is not to know the shape of what happened but to know it happened it happened here I make my light to gaze the trail then sing this rain threadbare into storm if love is the sacrament of digging then here I hold my found into fire thank you all again so so very much now for fiction my year abroad Chang Ray Lee this novel is a gorgeous riveting freak show that somehow manages to inject genuine edge of seat drama into a deeply character driven narrative intellectual gravitas into the absurd and humor into the tragic tiller boardman a college dropout and newly back from a bizarre trip to Asia is locked down with Val, his much older lover who is under witness protection and her savant son Lee turns that premise into a psychedelically colorful odyssey placing an eerie and misunderstood monster nymph or demigod on every island of tiller's memory the thousand crimes of Ming Su, Tom Lin Tom Lin has executed a tour de force Ming Su, a Chinese orphan raised by a white crime boss to be a hired killer embarks on a quest through the Old West in search of his beloved wife, Eda first though he must wreak vengeance on her father her former fiance and the other men responsible for destroying life together and condemning him to servitude on the Central Pacific Railroad Lin juxtaposes an evocative lyricism and magical realism with an unflinching gaze at the brutal violence that permeates Ming Su's life and the landscape he travels the confession of Copeland Kane, Keenan Norse the first person voice of Copeland Kane grabs the reader on page one and thankfully doesn't let go he's recruited by a private school where he enrolls even as his parents face the bull dosing of their housing project when Copeland participates in a protest rally against police violence his life falls apart and he attracts star is literally on the run the frame of the novel is an interview with Copeland's journalist friend which expands the novel's thematic reach to include how the media portrays Copeland not as a victim but as a perpetrator Shwet Claire Oshetsky with humor and intense tenderness Oshetsky in her debut novel wonderfully blurs the line between surrealism magic realism and realism inviting the reader to walk the tenuous border uncertain whether the newborn is a human baby or as tiny the mother claims an owl baby with brute honesty the author captures the anger the exhaustion of the mother artist the conflict feels real and at the same time fairy tale like Shwet haunts because it's original it's in between the genres in worlds it's playful and heartbreaking and it's magnificent the archer Shruti Swami with a rena resonance not soon forgotten the archer explores questions of motherhood identity in the exhausting struggles against cultural restraint that are the lot of the woman artist the novel follows Vidya through childhood and young womanhood in 1960s and 70s Bombay evoking the place time and its unquestioned misogyny so concretely it's hard to believe Swami herself did not come of age at that time and in that city she navigates fluid shifts in time and Vidya's point of view with confidence a master of her own talent the award for fiction goes to the confession of Copeland Kane Keenan Norris and are you here yes you're here you're here I'm so glad welcome to the stage I am shocked and humbled by the you know the roster of finalists that my novel was you know privileged to be one amongst yeah I just want to first of all and you can tell that I'm shocked because all the people I'm going to thank here they're shocked too because they're not here right they'll be shocked first of all my publisher named Press and editor Chris Heiser who certainly helped me a great deal with you know with structuring this book bringing it together my writing group including our middle grade winner today Shanti Sakran so we got two winners from the from the writing group but Laila D.V. Joel Tomfor Muthoni Kiari my writing group my partner Dwayne Fulwiley and so many other people also want to give a particular shout out to the Kalahulu Writers Workshop and all African Diaspora Writers Workshop that helped me to really gain confidence in this book so on behalf of all those folks and on behalf of Copeland Cain himself right the fugitive, the ghost, the rabbit the radiated, remediated medicated, incarcerated the child who fell out of color people time and into America thank you okay the Northern California Book Awards were co-founded by the late Fred Cody legendary Berkeley seller and reviewer in 1981 pre Jurassic Times his ulterior motive he wanted to talk books over lunch the award in his name has gone to an amazing array of our most crucial icons from Audrey and Rich, Al Young Maxine Hong Kingston to Lawrence for Lingeddy Ishmael Reed, Daniel Ellsberg and more I am thrilled and honored to present the Fred Cody Award for Lifetime Achievement and Service to Isabel Ayende though as she later tells us she hasn't received a Lifetime Achievement Award maybe it means that she hasn't often been so embraced so recognized in this Bay Area her home perhaps this moment writes that in balance in some hometown way Isabel Ayende the world's most widely read Spanish language author has lived in Northern California thousands of miles from her birth place in Lima, Peru and later from Santiago, Chile for so many decades it's no longer appropriate to call her an exile in the wake of the overthrow of the legally elected government of Salvador Ayende a cousin by General Pinochet on September 11th 1973 49 years ago today she fled the country first to Venezuela and then to the US her first novel appeared in print in 1982 and in English as the House of the Spirits a global bestseller it was translated into more than 40 languages since then Ayende has written and published five works of nonfiction and nearly two dozen novels her recent memoir The Soul of a Woman begins when I say that I was a feminist I am not exaggerating this year her novel Violeta appeared the story of a woman who lives to 100 and who witnesses the crisis the crises of the 20th century in addition to her work as a writer Ayende devotes her time to human rights causes in 1996 following the death of her daughter Paula Friess she established a foundation in her honor which has awarded grants to more than 100 non-profits on behalf of women and girls a long time resident of Marin County Ayende has enjoyed a literary connection to many local literary beacons such as Book Passage and many others besides receiving awards for her work from nations around the world Chile Mexico, France, Germany Italy and the US in 2014 she accepted the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Barack Obama I don't think I would be a writer if I had stayed in Chile Ayende said a citizen of the world she has embraced and extended the boundaries of magical realism and has reached millions of readers who turn to her work to explore history and ideas to enjoy her vivacity and wit her passionate resilient language Isabelle Ayende could not have been sweeter and kinder and more generous when she learned about this award it was really heartwarming really lovely she is however traveling and she is accepting by video I am truly, truly honored and very grateful to receive this lifetime achievement award the first one that I get in my very long life I'm 80 years old and finally someone is recognizing my lifetime achievements which are not that many but I've been writing for 40 years and this is my life this is all I do I don't have another life except writing I write in an attic in my house in my little house and I spend there most of my my day sometimes part of the night too and the stories just keep coming keep coming and I feel that for as long as I have memory and a capacity to pay attention to focus to research I will be writing I don't imagine myself retiring so maybe if I keep on writing I can get another lifetime achievement in the future and I feel that in this job of writing there's good luck it's essential people have talent and discipline and they work very hard and they don't get the kind of recognition that I have so I have to admit that I was born very lucky as my grandmother said when I was born so thank you again for this wonderful award and I hope to live up to your expectations in the future as well, thank you so thank you enough for joining us today thank you so very much each and every one of you you can purchase many and perhaps dare I say all of these amazing books they're in the lobby here in the lobby from medicine for nightmares bookstore and gallery on 24th street the NCBA nominating statements and book summaries in the program are also posted on poetryflash.org be generous support these authors and independent bookstores thanks to the San Francisco Public Library and everyone who worked their hearts out on this thank you so much for joining us today see you next year