 So, we're live on YouTube. And everyone else can mute. I'm muting you. And I am going to start the webinar. We're live. Welcome. We'll get started in just a moment. Well, we let some folks fill up the room. I just put a link in the chat box. And that is a link to library news and tonight's presenters. And if any resources and books come up tonight as our speakers speak, I will also add those to the list. Shall we do it? Welcome everyone. Thank you for joining us tonight. We are so honored to be the host of tonight's. Welcome everyone. We have 121 issue of Zizava, the family issue. And to host these amazing readers. We want to welcome you to an acknowledged that. We are on the occupied and unseated ancestral homeland. Of the raw mutish aloney. Tribal people. Who are the original inhabitants of San Francisco peninsula. And as uninvited guests, we affirm their sovereign rights as first per persons. And wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders, relatives, and the raw mutish community. And that link that I put in the chat box has a great reading list. And websites that you can find out about our Bay Area, raw mutish community community and land rights. All right. Thank you for joining us tonight. We have a lot of great events tomorrow at noon. We partner with the museum of African diaspora to bring. Wally. Who is a noble laureate author playwright. And he has not had a book out in 50 years and he does now. And it's called the land from the happiest people on earth. So this is definitely one not to miss tomorrow at noon. Join us for your lunch. Stick around. And I'm going to be talking to the director. Who is going to be presenting his poems along with photos from his son and who contends with epilepsy. And you know, it's really personal, personal presentation. So come check that out. Friday at 2pm. We are celebrating. I see that says 12. It's not, it's two, 2pm. We're going to be talking about the land book week event in a connection with our jail and reentry services department. And we're going to be talking about censorship in prisons. And we are celebrating Viva. We have authors. Amazing authors. We have an in-person event. 6pm, October 12th in the Latino. Community rooms, the lower level of the main library. Come on down October 12th. We're going to be talking about the land book. We're going to be talking about the land book. We're going to be talking about the land book. We're going to be masked up. It's going to be safe. And we'll gather. We'll literally gather. We have Barbara Jane Reyes and friends coming for a Filipino American history month. Poetry. We have an insane panel of nine. Filipino American authors. So that is going to be an extravaganza of amazing humans. Check that out. October 9th, 5pm. We're going to be talking about the land book. We have so many great authors. And we are on the same page in which we celebrate. The works of many, many great authors. And we encourage all of San Francisco to read the same book at the same time. And September, October, we've been celebrating the undocumented American written by Carla Cornejo. Villanvin, and she will be in conversation with Jonathan Blitzer on October 26th at 6pm. And coming up in November and February, we continue our partnership with SF Chronicle Total SF. We'll be featuring Bonnie Sweet and Why We Swim, November 17th, and this will be held in the Coret Auditorium. So we are back to a few in-person events. It's exciting. So come on down, check it out, sfpl.org slash events for the full lineup of everything. And we have a lot, trust me. All right, and again, for tonight, again, like I said, I'm so honored and sfpl is still honored to be hosting Zizava, long time, long time fan. Zizava is the award-winning literary magazine founded in San Francisco in 1985. And since then, it's become one of the country's premier journals. It's a beloved fixture in the Bay Area. And tonight's event is hosted by Oscar Villalon, Zizava's managing editor. His writing has been published in several publications, including Freeman's, Zacallo, The Believer, LidHub, and more. And he lives here in San Francisco. All right, Oscar, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to you. Please unmute. Yes, yes, thank you so much. And thank you, everyone who came out tonight to check us out. It's greatly appreciated. You know, it means a lot for us to have folks come out and support our contributors in our operation here. I am indeed, I'm Oscar Villalon, I'm the managing editor of Zizava, a little bit about us, in case you don't know about us. We started out in 1985 in San Francisco and we've been here ever since. So we're 35 years of publishing from the city. Our focus was primarily on West Coast writers and authors and, excuse me, West Coast writers, poets, and artists. But over the years, meaning since about 2010 or so, Laura Cogan, who's the editor, and I have kind of expanded upon that and brought in a bunch of folks from other parts of the country too, other parts of the world, you know, to contribute to our pages for one simple reason. I think it just makes for a better reading experience and I think our readers greatly enjoy it. Tonight we have four folks from you, for you, excuse me, from our newest issue, issue 121, which is themed on family, hence its title, The Family Issue. We'll be bringing them up one at a time to read for you. The first one being Bethany Ball. Bethany is the author of the novels, What to Do About the Solomons, which was a Nerd Times editor's choice and most recently The Pessimists to be published by Grove Atlantic on October 12th, very, very soon. Her work has appeared in the common, the American Literary Review, Lithub, and her story, The Why, appears in the Family Issue, issue 121. Please welcome Bethany Ball. Thank you, Oscar. So I'm just gonna jump in. The story is called The Why and it takes place in the Detroit YMCA. Back then Yale sat behind the front desk counter in the resident section of The Why, and I sat beside him. Regi worked maintenance and had the gray cast and steady hands of a true alcoholic. He was always on time and reliable. Robert was a resident and lived on the sixth floor. He had a sweetness in his face, looked always as though he knew a secret or a good joke and wore his white afro in a cloud around his head. Joseph stood on the farthest end of the desk with a newspaper in his hand and searched for horses to bet on. He was handsome enough that I sometimes flirted with him though he was missing his front teeth. He had lost his mind in the GM plant and his entire retirement with it and he liked to go to the racetrack in Hazel Park. Sometimes he'd pay me $20 to drive him there. Annie, we'd find sometimes in the dumpster searching for cans, enough of them and she could get a bag of dope. I watched her with wariness and sympathy but she never had much use for me. Milton managed the service desk and liked to fuck the female residents upstairs including Annie. Matt was the Christian social worker term manager. Heather had just had a baby a few months before. I was there when the baby was born but she gave it up for adoption soon after. She had a pretty face and blonde hair she wore in a curtain down to her tailbone. She was cross-eyed and mean spirited and antagonized everyone and had been fired more times that I can count. She worked for Milton in the service desk area and rumor was she fucked him too. Grace Church on Davis and offered free lunch three times a week. They rotated meals with the soup kitchen on Holburn. After lunch I'd watch folks filter in through the heavy glass doors. They brought in their cups of coffee and bright red apples and paper plates of lasagna and meatloaf and mac and cheese and sometimes someone would leave me an apple. I'd pretend to throw it away but I'd dump it in my bag for later. The desk where Yale and I sat faced a lobby and it was a fortress of green four mica that separated the staff from the residents. Though I'd lost count how many residents were also staff. Big Mike sat on one of the vinyl sofas with his headphones on. He wore them to drown out the voices in his head. Big Mike worked off first one shoe and then the other until the stench filled the room. Yale stood up and shouted at Big Mike to put his shoes back on. I jumped in my seat. Big Mike sat up surprised and put them back on right away. A few minutes passed and then Big Mike groaned and pushed himself off the couch. He lurched up to the counter and I handed him his key room 724. He put his airphones back on and lumbered over to the elevator. Reggie who knew everything about everyone at the Y had told me that Big Mike had come from the Iowa Iowa cornfields to play football at Michigan and had had some kind of a breakdown. His people had never come for him. The elevator was slow and shitty, barely hanging on by a wire the way everything around here felt. It came to a stop with a sick thunk and rattled open. Matt the social worker stepped out as Big Mike lumbered in. I rifled through a pile of scrap paper each one with a tiny cut out head of a child glued neatly in the corner thanks to Yale and handed Matt his messages and he headed into his office without a word. When I saw I'd forgotten to give him one of the messages call home regarding mom. I threw it in the trash. I'll tell him later. He was always getting messages about his mother. The snow stopped a heavy blanket of white covered the cars parked out front. The weather front moved out and the clouds lowered and the temperature outside rose. I took my pack lunch to the resident lounge where I ate my peanut butter sandwich at one of the tables. When I was done, I bought coffee mixed with the hot cocoa from the vending machine and carried it back to the desk. Yale was packing it up to go, neatly putting away an ornate pair of silver scissors like the kind old ladies had in their sewing kits as well as glue sticks and newspaper mailers into a briefcase. I pulled out the incident reports so that I could pretend to be alphabetizing if Matt walked by. But really I couldn't wait to get back to my book. I was reading Justine by Lawrence Darrell at the time. I loved the winding, dirty Dusty Alexandria and the ragged inhabitants and the poetry. I set the book down with its spine facing up. When I heard the door behind me unlock and open, Reggie sat down in the chair beside me. What's new, I asked. Yale left? Yeah, I said just now. Did you hear what happened, Reggie said? He went too far this time and pasted dolls heads all over Matt's mail. You get in trouble? No, Reggie said, of course not. Reggie went to work changing out the garbage bags. Give me your can, he said. He had new trash bags shoved into his belt to line the cans and he worked with an efficient elegance until he had three neat trash bundles lined at our feet. I bent down to help him with the fourth, but he stopped me. I got it, he said. Across the desk, big Mike was in his usual spot half dozing. Robert and his big winter parka sat across from him and watched out the window. Robert would stare out that big front window and then glance back at me every few minutes. Sometimes he'd come up to the counter and stand close by, opening and shutting his mouth like he was about to speak. I got the sense he wanted to tell me something. That night after my shift ended, I drove my old Chevette down through the unclouded roads to a room in a house in Hamtramac. I shared with six roommates. Some were ex-students, some were dropouts like me and some were waitresses. One guy was in a band and another was a cable guy. I kept to myself. I dropped out of school because one day nearly a year ago during the summer session, I thought I was being followed by a flock of crows. They followed me from tree to tree as I went to class and walked out about campus. At night, they would caw and caw outside my dorm room window. One morning, not long after, I woke up and I couldn't get out of bed. Outside the window, the crows cawed and scrambled. Everybody thought I had the flu, but I knew better. One crow perched on my window and peered at me in a friendly, curious way. Finally, the resident advisor took me to the hospital and the hospital called my parents. My mother walked into my room with her lips drawn tight in a furious line. She wasn't paying for any kind of therapy, she said. And I always ruined her summer vacation. The nurse who brought my mom in stood with her mouth hanging open and then she disappeared. After my mom left, the staff softened toward me. Sharing the room with me was a Chinese girl with bulimia. My parents are far away, she told me. Together, we watched British shows on PBS, on the TV that overhung our beds. She left before me, I guess she was cured. And later she sent flowers. I'd been diagnosed depressed, which they said was situational, but they thought I needed to take some time off from school, adjust to my meds and my new reality. My mother begged me to stay in school. She said she wouldn't help me financially if I left and that I wasn't welcome back home. I needed to finish things I started, she said. I needed grit. But after I got out of the hospital, I dropped out officially and took a job at the Y. I liked it, I was happy there, I felt at home. I loved the residents, they liked me. They left me little gifts of candy and apples and let me read and piece most days. I was reasonably good at what I did. Handing out keys, taking rent and giving them four quarters for a dollar. I kept the piece, I put out fires and in exchange, they let me be. And that's all I'm going to read from that. Thank you. Well, thank you, Bethany. That was lovely. Bethany Ball, again, the story is called The Why It's In The Newest Tissue of Azizovah. Our next reader is a poet and we actually accepted his work a while ago. And I don't know what happened because of the logistics of trying to put out a journal. That's how we kept holding on to him, holding on to him. But as it turned out, happily, we found the perfect place to run it in, in the family issue. And that person is Andrew Navarro. Andrew is a history teacher and he's also a poet. He lives in Southern California, where he works, excuse me, he lives in Southern California where he works and his writing has appeared or his forthcoming in Michigan Quarterly Review, Air Light, Carve, and of course, in Azizovah. We please welcome Andrew Navarro. Cool, thank you so much, Oscar. So first, I would like to just thank you, Oscar, and Azizovah for putting together the issue. And thank you for the San Francisco Public Library for putting together this reading and just hosting us. I should say, it's a pleasure to be here with you all. So the pieces I'm going to read, I'm going to read four poems, three of which appear in the issue of Azizovah, the family issue, and all of which are from a larger body of work where I pair my poetry with images from the Mexican Revolution. And they each deal with family in their own way from modern marital issues to, you know, the myth and ancestry. So hope you enjoy them. Depression. Like balding, there's little we can do to stop apostasy. If history is to teach us anything, I'd suggest skipping the late 20th century, which faults too heavily the communists in Nicaragua, poisoning the culinary commodities of the world. But who really cares? When beneath every gelatinous puddle of memory, isn't the truth, but the minutiae we often associate with it. Objects to lie. Like the time you spilled the cup of chocolate onto the thighs of Jessica from Home Room. What you said you can never remember. Only the mound, sorry, only the mound of used paper napkins. You look at yourself now angry, clearly by the face you are making in the mirror as your wife expresses concern about how distant you've become. There's nowhere to escape. She's driving. And you're too little the adventurer to jettison and too much a coward to speak out when she asks for the fourth time, what exactly is wrong? But that's the thing. What exactly is wrong is difficult to say. It is where we find ourselves in this car, both daughters asleep in the back as we inch forward through time, toward the mall, where our girls were screamed as they sit on the lap of a bearded impostor for a picture. It is exactly where all humanity at some point has found itself grappling with the inadequacy of words. The next poem was titled, The Conquest. Hearing there were poets among the Spanish army. The poets of Monctisuma's court issued a challenge. In secret, these poets met, exchanging manuscripts and codices. The Spanish at first questioned the Aztec lack of form and meter, but admired the native bending of words. The Aztec critiqued the Spaniard imagination and use of metaphor, but professed an interest in the subject of rhyme. In time, both grew to admire the other until news of such meeting reached Cortez, who ordered the poets killed and their work destroyed. Accounts from the friars describe the event as follows. The men and lone woman and their company refused to say a single word as the swords were brought down upon them. To the surprise of those who witnessed the execution, plumed feathers sprung forth from their wounds as their bodies dissolved to froth and mud. Legends speaks of only a single parchment, poems filled with words that could only be read by those who speak the language of the dead. Of course, my history teacher always doubted this to be true. And this is the final piece that comes in the fall issue, Zizwa, and then just one more right after this one. And this poem is titled, Dear Jorge, you could be promised two things in Samora, bullets and strawberries, headline the news article I read, local farmer killed, it said. At first we didn't know how it happened that Friday morning, but learned more with every panic to phone call. And though the accounts at times conflicted, there were a few consistent pieces to the story of how you died. Driving your truck filled with strawberries, you were killed on a road outside Samora, Mexico. Your death made you the third uncle, all in the business of strawberries. It was a crash at first, second a stray bullet to the chest from a shootout. But in the end, your mind was blown apart by a gunman on a motorcycle rode up beside your truck. The gunman's arm was adorned with black tattoos, but all killers were the same in the stories one heard. Senora Lopez's son was cut to pieces when her family couldn't pay his ransom in the same town where you lived. The mayor wasn't safe and died as well. They ran a picture of your body taken right in the spot where you died crumpled across the seats of your truck like a jacket left on the ground. Your body was dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt. They blurred what was left of your face. My siblings and I were shocked, but that was Mexico. Mom said to us during dinner, call to the image of you laying over the black cushion seats of your truck surrounded by blood-colored glass. And then my final poem is titled, The First Writer in My Family. A little, not warning, but there's some accents in this poem that I still have yet to work out. And I do not think I'll be able to work out. So just an apologies now if the French accent or the Austrian does not come through. And if you are from those parts or ancestry of French and Austrian, I apologize. But the poem goes on. The First Writer in My Family. Some claim dementia and others' imagination, but all conceded that my great grandfather's aberrations toward the end of his life only matched his threadbare sweaters and tattered caps. If you were inclined to spectacle, then shadowing Jimmy, as he was known, would have been a good course of action. With preternatural fashion, my great grandfather changed upon crossing the threshold of particular rooms. As Monsieur Lucas, he riveted cafes with his rambunctious and explosive displays. Oui, oui, excusez-moi, Monsieur. Another sandwich, s'il vous plaît. Boris Hans, a drunk Austrian who frequented the bars in constant search of his friend. Fernando Gonzalez, have you seen him? My good friend Fernando. A suspicious man, he would hand copies of his manuscripts over balconies exposing the pages to the thrashing of wind. Some considered him a genius, but his granddaughter never understood why he was held in such esteem by anyone. His granddaughter, my mother, hated him. She would explain shortly after his death. He'd spent most of his days in the closet, arguing with each jacket and coat. The few months of the year he was ever home. At night, she said, all I remember him doing in the dark alone was yelling into the mirror, angry and weeping. Thank you. Nope, I'm back. Thank you, Andrew, so much. That was absolutely lovely. I just want to give people a sense of how the poems appear in the new issue. So you see from this, they're just opposed against some public domain that we checked, public domain images. What is this? There we go. I think the fact is quite lovely. I think we're all, and maybe even start with Sebald, but we're certainly living under his shadow. These many years later. Thank you again, Andrew, so much. Our next two readers, before I introduce them, it's very interesting that this realizes is that the stories sort of inform each other as one is about an aid donor and the other is about essentially a sperm donor. But they're both very interesting takes though on what it means to be a biological parent and how one would navigate that sort of relationship. So I thought perhaps we would begin then with the story that maybe is a little more, I think, perhaps crushing, if I may say so. And that would be Robin Rahm's story. And by the way, they're both very funny, but funny stories can still hurt you. Let me tell you. Robin is the author of three books that most recently edited Double-Bind Women on Ambition, Her Story Collection, The Motherguarding was a finalist for the Pendulous State Prize. And her memoir, The Mercy Papers, was named the best book of the year by the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Entertainment Weekly. She lives in Portland, Oregon. And we've had the pleasure and the privilege of publishing on more than once. But her most recent piece for us appears in this, The Family Issue, and it's called Radical Empathy. Please welcome Robin. You're almost there, Robin. Still almost there. Sorry, sorry. The whole thing went black for a minute, and now it's fine. Can you hear me? You are good. Okay. Okay, great. Thanks for having me. I, these Zoom things always make me feel like happy to see people and sort of sad that I can't actually see people. So it's very, I don't know, what's the word for that? When you melancholy, I don't know, all the words. So I think I'm just gonna start with it, just like in the third page of the story or something like that. And all you really need to know is that a young woman has gone to a film lot to meet with an actress who wants to interview her before using a broker to use her eggs. What made you offer your eggs? Marla asked. I mean, I know you answered that in your beautiful essay, but I feel like I'd rather hear it from you. It's a big deal, a lot of medication, shot, surgery. What prompted you to be so generous? Eliza had to answer, Alisa had to answer this question a number of times. In the interview with the broker in the conversation with the counselor that screened her in the donor info essay, she had written about her aunt Serena, who couldn't have kids. What she hadn't said was that eggs from a girl like her went for a lot. With the, oh, she's from an Ivy League school. With the $50,000, they promised her she could take an internship when she graduated and not worry about accruing even more debt. She didn't wanna be a doctor, a corporate lawyer, a software developer. She wanted to be a book editor. Her student loans, she worried would dog her to her grave, but with a little lubricating cash, she could at least afford to worry less. It hadn't occurred to her to do it at first. She'd shown Lena the ad from the broker in the Brown Daily Herald in order to market ISO Ivy League eggs. It was so absurd, Ivy League eggs. People were so stupid with their misplaced ambitions and class-steep narcissism. The eggs didn't have tiny little CVs. They didn't row crew, didn't project natural charisma. Lena's brother, Paul, worked at a bar in Northampton and showed no signs of being the least bit curious or ambitious. He barely got through high school and he had the same genes to pay double for such an egg, but Lena didn't smile. Lena believed that the world would continue to be all fucked up until each person stripped themselves of ego, of preconception and began to mother one another, offering the kind of unconditional love so many had never received. She talked about this frequently, boldly, never worrying about how she sounded and somehow she never sounded sanctimonious or irritatingly earnest. Lena with her disorderly long blonde curls, her intense dark eyes, her square shoulders and precise enunciation. She wore flowing pants, perfectly faded cotton jackets. She came from the Upper West Side. Her mother came from some kind of old money and her father worked for a hedge fund. Lena didn't try to hide this, but she had a different way about her than most of the prep school kids who spent their time partying and vacationing on Martha's Vineyard. She was so smart, she could slice through any idea, even the most stubbornly academic, revealing its urgency and heart. She had disdain for the kind of easy irony so many of their classmates relied upon. Just a way to be defensive to shield the heart. What was the point of that? She had a boyfriend, Raj Singh, that visited every week from Yale. He dreamed of bringing portable medical devices to war ravaged countries. The two of them, Lena and Raj, would open their hearts and never turn away. They were dogged, their goodness, a kind of brawn, a kind of ruggedness that's shown in their eyes and through their skin that made them magnetic and a little bit terrifying. Or maybe it was simply because they were beautiful, talented and rich. The way the ad presents it is very first world, Lena acquiesced, but the actual problem is deeper, it's real. Imagine if you wanted to see, to hear, to taste, but you couldn't. It's the same yearning, an elemental human desire. Lena had a hickey on her neck and Elisa kept looking at its red-tinged border. Proximity to Lena felt invigorating like a cosmic tailwind as though Elisa became more beautiful, more honest, more intelligent and altruistic just by sitting next to her on the bed. So she told Marla, that's the movie star, it was an act of radical empathy, the longing for children elemental like the desire for sight. Amazing said Marla. You're so young really to understand that. Marla folded her hands together. She had strangely stubby fingers, nails polished clear. I've wanted a baby for a long time, Marla said. Zach and I both, but it's been tough. I thought it would be okay, my mom had me at 42, but it's not working out. I didn't picture having to go this route, but when I saw your profile, I felt better about it. And now that I've actually met you, while you're an old soul, aren't you Elisa? Beautiful too, a bonus. It felt like being kissed. The assistant came into the room, her earrings catching that bold LA light. It's two o'clock, she said. Thank you so much for meeting me, Marla said. It might sound cheesy to say it, but motherhood is the role I was born for. I just have to tell you that, Elisa. I have a feeling you already knew. Lena administered the shots twice a day, wiping Elisa's belly with alcohol swabs and plunging the needle into the spot near her belly button. At the end of the treatment, she took a bus to Boston and they took the eggs out, 37 eggs, put her up in a nice hotel where she slept and slept, and then she went back to school, finished her big modernism term paper, took exams and planned her final semester. The money helped. She signed a lease on an apartment in Harlem with two friends, and once there, spent the summer applying for internships and entry level jobs. She bought some interview clothes, shoes made of supple leather that molded to her feet. She procured a summer internship with a literary agent, an elderly woman who rolled her own cigarettes, ate sardines and hated all of her clients. And then in the fall, landed an entry level assistant publicist job at one of the most esteemed publishing houses in the country. The assistants from the various departments all went once a week to happy hour at a bar in Union Square, and Elisa would spend too much money on Sangria and whatever slider or oyster everyone else ordered. And at night, she would sit on her bed, on the sheets she bought at a discount store, tiny lightning bolts across them, and she would feel overwhelmed with it that she had so easily, so simply gotten the life that she had wanted. Even the boy, Ben Rose, that friend of Raj Singh that Lena had introduced her to back in Providence, the boy she'd taken a walk with at midnight and kissed under a cherry tree so pink it looked like a party favor. He'd moved to Harlem also to start medical school at Mount Sinai. And the two of them spent every available hour watching Fellini films, going to publishing or med school parties, and of course, in bed. Winter came and the city went from golden to white, and Ben asked Elisa if she'd move in with him. She hadn't seen this coming. She felt an uncharacteristic breaking in her chest, almost like heartbreak, except that what followed felt like a rush. She had put her hands on this newly, oh, she had put her hands on his newly shaved face, his nose bumpy and honest and nodded, honest looking. That winter she spent a little more of the money on a deposit and moved her lounge chair, her mattress, her many, many books. And she and Ben set up a little home with a terrarium and cinder block bookcases to the ceiling and a little dining room table that they found at a consignment shop near the medical school. Her mother would have been so proud of her if she had lived to see it. She'd always wanted to live in New York, imagined herself at museums, talking about books with sophisticated friends, in outdoor bistros, trains rumbling underfoot. Sometimes when life looked exactly like this fantasy of itself, when Elisa ate muscles with her boss at the French place on the corner and he told her that she would get the promotion, she could feel her mother and her jaw tasting the muscles too. And she would lose track of the conversation and she would see her, her mother with her pale waxy skin, the ears that stuck out too far, never quite covered up by the elaborate hairstyles she favored. Her mother who had put a ghost's hand on Elisa's hand there in the crowded places and make the world go still. Then one Friday, one Friday afternoon she was at the store buying things to cook for dinner when she saw the cover of Us Weekly on the Rack. Marla Miles and Zach Brifton welcome baby girl Carson. She put the groceries on the conveyor belt and stared. Marla and Zach, sunglasses and perfect skin. You couldn't see the baby burritoed up and held to Marla's chest, exclusive photos inside. She took the magazine and dropped it beside the food. Elisa read the entire article without breathing in front of the grocery store in the freezing cold. Then she sat down hard on a bench. There was one picture of the baby. She had dark hair, a mild scowl and a heart-shaped face. She hadn't thought this far ahead, which now seems strange, but she hadn't because how could she? She had given them the gift of a baby or had at least contributed something of herself to the baby in exchange for rent. And now this part of her would live a rarefied life in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, a life she hadn't thought to imagine, nannies and infinity pools and friends whose parents were in the industry. Carson could have any horse her heart desired, gorgeous hand-tooled saddles, every area boot. Lena had moved to Los Angeles for med school. Elisa didn't hear from her much anymore. The actress had the baby she texted. Three days later, Lena wrote back, that's great for her. She stuck a thumbs up sign next to it. Elisa threw away the magazine. Thanks. Thank you so much, Robin. So lovely to hear you read that story. Amongst its many other pleasures is when it has sort of almost a noir flavor as well, as in just in the sense that the past never stays in the past, does it? It is always there as for folks who read the story, its entirety will soon learn. Thank you so much, Robin. Before I bring on our last but not our least, certainly not our least of readers for tonight, I just want to quickly want to talk a little bit more about the new issue and I'm holding it up here. As you can see, it has a bevy of wonderful people in it, not only just our contributors here tonight, but folks like Victoria Riddell, Margaret Wilkerson Sexton, Andrew Mangan and others. Also too, and this may be of interest to you, depending on how you feel about the man, but an in-depth interview with Jonathan Franzen, where our contributor, Paul Wilner, a long-time journalist here in the Bay Area, but also a fine poet talked to Franzen at his home near Santa Cruz about his work, about his upcoming novel, and about the idea of the family novel. I'm really, really pleased to have it in here, not just because it delves into the mind of Franzen, but rather I think it's a rather revealing interview, and it's one where there's a lot of back and forth, the sort of thing I don't think you see a lot in too many interviews of these sorts. So well worth your time in checking that out. And also to say one more thing too, next month, October, of course, in San Francisco, there's gonna be a ton of events because of Lequake, our big literary festival that kicks off every October, and we'll be doing a few things as well, but our big event in terms for Zizavaga is concerned, will be October 23rd at Doggird Books at 8 p.m., with a reading with some contributors from current past and recent issues. So if you come out that night, and I believe it's still gonna be in person, I hope it's still gonna be in person, but you have to wear a mask. But even if you wear a mask, God only knows what's gonna happen in a month or now. But anyway, sitting that aside, assuming everything is okay, and we don't go full Mega Man, the folks who will be there will be D.A. Powell, Mark and Wilkerson-Suckston, Vanessa Waugh, well, Jonathan Escaffery will be there, and one more, of course, because I can't remember anything anymore, but it's gonna be a lot of fun. So please, please come and check that out. It's always a good time. And just to see people again in person will also be wonderful, which reminds me to say quickly to you, Robin, hopefully Zizavaga will take our traveling show up to Portland. Again, it's been a while because of COVID, but when we do, I hope sometime next year, maybe around the Portland Book Festival, it'll be nice to say hi and to see you again. Okay, so our final reader for the night is Mark Lobowski. Mark is a, I hope I get this right, he is a Jones lecturer down at Stanford. He is also, oh boy, let me hold on one second. Here I go. He's also a former Wallace Stegner fellow at Stanford. I get that confused on how you, I think you have to be a Stegner first, then you get to be a Jones. But Mark will tell us. He's also the host and curator of the Stanford Storytelling Project podcast called Off the Page. And I hope Mark talks a little bit about that, which spotlights the work of Stanford writers. And in the family issue, we published his story, Wool, which as I talked about before, rather I think it goes rather nicely with Robbins. So will you please welcome Mark Lobowski. Thank you, Oscar. You know, actually, funnily enough, that podcast has somewhat mysteriously disappeared from the internet recently. I'm trying to investigate that. They're like the most recent, like the five last episodes we did are on SoundCloud, but they're like 25 to 30 others that have disappeared. And I'm trying to figure out what happened to them. So thank you, Oscar, and Anissa for organizing this and for inviting me to read with my fellow contributors. I really enjoyed listening to these pieces. This piece that I'm gonna read the beginning of the story, which is about a sperm donor, although in the opening few pages, you don't technically learn that, but you see that there's this guy who seems to have this special connection to the daughter of this couple that he's visiting. And it sort of subsequently becomes clear that he is her biological father. So I'm just gonna read the first few pages of the story called WoL. Martin exits I-89 before he needs to and progresses town by town. He keeps pulling over to eyeball a fiery spruce or an outcropping of Micah, admire quaint ends with ivy wreathed around their vacancy signs and crumbling breweries offering hard apple cider tastings. He's eager to reach Tunbridge, but knows anticipation is the greatest pleasure. He stops to buy a mason jar of corn whiskey from a sweet old man on a porch, thinking how happy he'll be once he reaches Lola and Dot's barn. Then realizing his spirits are at that point where they're in danger of toppling over into confusion or sadness, he drinks two beers in a gloomy pub. The people here are not part of the world of ivied ends and apple cider tastings. Their leathery and anonymous faces raised mutely to the TV and Martin feels comfortable among them, alone and unseen. Somewhere Diana Ross sings, I'm gonna make you love me. It's nearly midnight by the time he arrives. He pries himself free of the car, walks through a hedge and ends up on grass nibbled to a crew cut. He shivers in his jeans and Wonder Woman T-shirt. This is his third time up to the barn in the 13 months Lola and Dot have lived here, his first without Eli. Martin, a beam of light bounces up and Dot's voice, nervy and excitable, the voice of a mom who still holds her 12 year old's hand while crossing an intersection, finds him. I miss the exit. He wraps her up and finds he doesn't wanna let go. Then it was miles before I could turn around, miles and miles on the lonely road. She disentangles, Ginger's asleep. On a Friday, her bedtime's still 10. I see, he puts his hands on his hips. You look swell, I'm checking the girls. Well, Ginger's asleep and it wouldn't hurt to show an interest in the animals. I feel instantly at peace, he says to Dot's back as they round the barn. This is like coming to a spa for me, getting away from the noise and dirt and chaos of the city, breathing country air. Jesus, what's wrong with his voice? Why does it sound so plummy? It was like this when he first came to New York, trying so hard to mask his Kentucky drawl that people thought he was British. It's not a spa for me, Dot says. I have a thousand things to do every day, but I love it, you know? The whole day gets used up. She unlatches the flaky set of doors and they step into the part of the 1919 Sears robot barn that's still a barn. A chorus of bleeds and moans abruptly dies down and the roaming flashlight picks out aggrieved and amused faces, turning from what might be private conversations. Joe, Matilda, Titania, Galadriel, Ginger got to name them all. Two, Martin doesn't know which they are, have been shorn, their heads lumpy and desolate atop naked throats. Don't they look sad, he says? The Angoras, yeah, it was time. Wait till you see the house. Dot completes an inspection of the alcove, then pivots, expecting Martin to follow. The four goats gaze at him, like they're waiting for this intruder to offer them something. One of the shaven relents and ambles forward to nudge him with her forehead. Martin scratches the back of her neck, touches the dry nubs on her head where her horns were locked off in infancy. Her rectangular eyes meet his own with equanimity. Titania's headed for auction tomorrow, Dot says. This is Titania, I've got here. No, that's Matilda. Titania's one of the Nubians. White nose, pancake ears. Ah, yes. Why droopy ears shrouding a rabid face? She looks all right to me. She's a peach, Dot says. That's why I can sell her for more than I paid last year. Then we get the floors refinished. Dot always has a plan. Standing in muck boots and army navy surplus jacket, chunky black bangs over a lightly pockmarked face, she makes Martin feel languid and spoiled in his campy t-shirt. When Lola first introduced Martin to Dot 15 years ago, they shared a formal, slightly embarrassed, mutual regard. Martin admired her risk compassion, her way of enlarging whomever she was speaking to via the particular intensity of her concentration. Also the tattoos of sea anemones and roses crawling up her arms and down her cleavage. Dot, for her part, had been cowed by Martin's longstanding friendship with Lola, whose moods she was still trying to interpret. During their brief early breakup, Lola had sat for hours on Martin's fire escape in the hideous, brilly nightgown inherited from her hated mother, smoking like a junkie in recovery, enumerating all of Dot's microscopic flaws. She was insecure about her grammar. She under tipped. She made fun of the acting in Lola's beloved Ozu films. Martin defended Dot. She's the only person you've ever dated who gets up before noon and goes to a job every day, plus those lips, that ass. The ass is hidden by the coat, but Dot still has full lips, which she gnaws to perpetual dryness and when on occasion she smiles, it can feel thrilling because Dot appears to ration out her joy. Now she clicks off the flashlight, signaling to Martin it's time. How is she? He asks as they leave the barn. She's fine, Dot says. The same as always, only more so. She's been getting more online tutoring students which is great. She looks at him. Wait, who are we talking about? Ginger, Martin says. Oh, she's good. As he nears the illuminated kitchen door, she says, you're stuck. They return to his car. Dot grabs his suitcase. He grabs the corn whiskey and assortment of Ronafelt tea bags he's collected from hotels and airport club lounges. Espresso beans coated in chocolate and cannabis, these he pockets. And for Ginger, a small purple digital camera. Right before they enter the house, Dot adds. I mean, she's 12, what can I say? Her main mission in life is to make me feel sad all the time. Then she unleashes a burst of laughter. I can hardly wait for the teenage years. Where the hell have you been? He greets him when he enters the hot, bright kitchen. Lola and Sadie bear down. Sadie's nails clacking on the tiled floor. Lola medusa hair wearing sneakers. And yes, it's true, the same ancient nightgown dotted with pastel blue figs. The kitchen suggests a losing battle with the forces of chaos. Books, mail and notepads are stacked up on the table. Mugs and dishes line the counter that borders three quarters of the room. Sweaters and scarves in festive shades dangle from wire hangers attached to cabinets, exposed beams and pipes. Two deep sinks hold knotted masses of wool soaking in cloudy water. On the stove, a cauldron bubbles. Wrong exit, wrong exit, Martin pleads as Sadie invades his crotch. Where's Eli, Lola asks. She hugs him, not noticing the gifts she crushes against his chest. Have you been checking this, dot says? Lowering the flame under the cauldron. It shouldn't be boiling. There's a deadline for some kind of fellowship or grant approaching, Martin says. Some kind of starving artist pesos. This was within the realm of truth. Eli was always deciding at the last minute that he was good enough to apply for such things. Still, Martin hopes Lola will call him on his lie. Will drag the truth into the light just as she once took him by the hand and dragged him down Avenue B back when he was newly arrived, 27, but barely out of the closet. Instead, she inspects his offerings. She'll go nuts, she says, rubbing her thumb over the camera's face. It's a shame you're so late. Are you starving? I'll stop there. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mark. That was lovely. Well, folks, that's it. Let me just, first of all, thank everyone who came out to attend. Also, I believe this will be recorded. So it'll be available later, but we appreciate the fact that you're with us here now. I just wanted to, again, thank all of our readers, Mark, Robin, Andrew and Bethany. By the way, I wanted to add this about Bethany. Her book is coming out October 12th and you should know the New York Times said it's one of the 20 books to read this fall. So there you go. You cannot disobey the New York Times, as we know. That's not permitted. So pre-order that, PSA, by the way, please pre-order all your books for the fall. Here tell, there's a shortage of paper shortage out there and things, if you don't get them now and or you don't claim one now, you're probably not gonna get it later. So, you know, if ever there was a reason to just go ahead and pre-order and help out some folks, and really not really helping them, you're also helping yourself out. It's not like you're getting nothing for goodness sakes. You're getting a wonderful book. You know, now is the time to do that. And one more thing, my memory finally kicked in. Our fifth reader is the wonderful Gabriela Garcia. She'll be joining us too on October 23rd. So, thank you everyone. And thank you so much, the San Francisco Public Library. Honestly, what would the city be without you? Not a very good one. Oh, thank you, Oscar. That's very sweet. So I did throw in the links for everything as was going on. And friends, I will throw this down one more time and you can share this on YouTube, like Oscar said. And all the links that they mentioned and links to Zizba, links to our speakers are all in there. And we wanna thank you all tonight and authors. Congratulations on everything you do and for sharing it with the library community. All right, friends, have a wonderful evening until we see you again. Bye. Thank you. Oh, we're no longer on the air.