Events

The San Francisco International Tea Festival brings the world of artisan teas and tea culture to the Bay Area. Experience the elegance of a traditional Chinese Gongfu Ceremony and a Chanoyu, Japanese Tea Ceremony with visiting tea master Masahiro Takada. Attend classes by tea experts while you sip your way around the world. Vendors will offer samples of whole-leaf single estate teas from most of the countries of origin, exotic chai blends and some of the finest new flavored blends and ready-to-drink infusions. Several writers about tea will be participating in the festival events, including Norwood Pratt, Roy Fong, Frank H. Murphy and Babette Donaldson.

At the festival enjoy a preview of the film:
The Meaning Of Tea

Meet the Authors of the Companion Book:

Please join author and editor Phil Cousineau, filmmaker Scott Chamberlin Hoyt, and world-renowned tea authority Norwood Pratt for an authors' reception for The Meaning of Tea: A Tea-Inspired Journey at Book Passage in the Ferry Building at 1:00 p.m.

Phil Cousineau edited and compiled The Meaning of Tea book from more than 50 of his and Scott Hoyt's interviews with tea pickers and plantation owners, street sellers, traders and teapot makers and tea scholars spanning eight countries. It is a celebration of the history, rituals, spirituality and simple pure enjoyment of tea.

"America's tea sage," Norwood Pratt, who is featured in The Meaning of Tea book and film, is possibly the world's most widely read authority on tea. His award-winning books are James Norwood Pratt's New Tea Lover's Treasury and James Norwood Pratt's Tea Dictionary.

Meet the authors, taste some world-class tea, and experience the deeper meaning of tea! This reception is part of the first annual San Francisco International Tea Festival. Scott Hoyt will be showing clips from his award winning film, also called The Meaning of Tea, at 3:30 pm on the Ferry Building's Second Floor.

Hit the refresh button. Learn how the meditative arts can support the writing life. Brief periods of guided meditation alternate with written exercises designed to expand creativity, reduce internal noise, and breathe new life into your story, characters, and craft. Catherine Flaxman is a writer and story consultant, and has sold two screenplays and received two artists’ grants from the Marin Arts Council. She’s a licensed psychotherapist and seminar leader, with a background in the creative and contemplative arts.

Richard Mason presents his novel History of a Pleasure Seeker ($25.95). Piet Barol has an instinctive appreciation for pleasure and a gift for finding it. Piet’s father is an austere administrator at Holland’s oldest university. His mother, a singing teacher, has died—but not before giving him a thorough grounding in the arts of charm. Piet applies for a job as tutor to the troubled son of Europe’s leading hotelier: a child who refuses to leave his family’s mansion on Amsterdam’s grandest canal. As the young man enters this glittering world, he learns its secrets—and soon, quietly, steadily, finds his life transformed as he in turn transforms the lives of those around him.

This practical “How to” workshop will give you the tools you need to get your writing published in magazines, newspapers, and other media. We’ll look at writer’s guidelines from various publications, as well as where to send your work and how to get editors to read your submissions (and accept them!). We discuss sending query letters instead of completed pieces, writing cover letters that work, formatting your piece for submission, and more. “Laura was terrific—organized and original, a generous and talented teacher. This is one of the best classes I’ve taken.”

This event is canceled. We will look forward to a future event with the author.

Shakti Gawain discusses Living in the Light ($14.95). With her trademark insight and accessibility, personal growth pioneer Gawain highlights the transformative power of bringing the light of awareness to every aspect of the self—intuitive wisdom and rationality, power and vulnerability, peacemaker and warrior.

in conversation with Peter Robinson
Karen Kondazian talks about her novel The Whip ($15.00). This work is inspired by the true story of Charlotte “Charley” Parkhurst (1812-1879) who lived most of her life as a man. As a young woman in Rhode Island, her husband was lynched and her baby killed. Dressed as a man, she went to California to track down the murderer. Peter Robinson is the head of the San Francisco Literary Society.