Speaking Memory: Remarkable Hidden Histories and Stories You Won't Forget (San Francisco Ferry Building Store)

Presented with Litquake • Featuring Carole Bumpus, Donna DiGiuseppe, Meredith May, Deborah Tobola, and Fran Quittel (Moderator)

Celebrate National Reading Group Month with four renowned authors who will discuss their sources and inspiration for their new releases

Part culinary memoir and part travelogue, Searching For Family and Traditions at the French Table reveals French families at their best and at their own dinner tables. It is an intimate peek inside their homes and lives, a collection of traditional French recipes (cuisine pauvre or peasant foods), and accounts of families forced from their communities during the German occupation of WWII in the Alsace and Lorraine, only to continue to struggle for survival after finally making their way home. A retired family therapist, Carole Bumpus began writing about food and travel when she stumbled upon the amazing stories of women and war in France. She has traveled extensively throughout France and Italy, where she has interviewed more than seventy-five families to date for her food and travel blogs. Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table is the first volume in her series, Savoring the Olde Ways. She is also author of an historical novel A Cup of Redemption and her unique companion cookbook, Recipes for Redemption: A Companion Cookbook to A Cup of Redemption.

Lady in Ermine: The Story of a Woman Who Painted the Renaissance reveals the captivating story of Italian Renaissance painter Sofonisba Anguissola, who embodies the struggle of women throughout the ages. Donna DiGiuseppe’s book vividly immerses the reader in the sixteenth century world of the Renaissance figures Anguissola paints, her ambitions, life story, and legacy. DiGiuseppe studied at U.C. Berkeley, including a year in Venice at Ca’ Foscari, focusing on the northern Italian Renaissance. Dividing her time between San Francisco and Abruzzo, Italy, Donna has been a practicing lawyer in San Francisco who returned to her first love of history. She lectures frequently on her favorite subject, artist Sofonisba Anguissola.

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees reveals the compelling life lessons Meredith May learned beginning in her grandfather’s Big Sur beeyard. Part family history, part beekeeping odyssey, The Honey Bus is a rich and lyrical story of a girl who discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes in the secret world of bees. May spent sixteen years at the San Francisco Chronicle, where her narrative reporting won the PEN USA Literary Award for Journalism and was shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize. She is co-author of I, Who Did Not Die, about a child soldier who risked his life to rescue a wounded enemy fighter during the Iran-Iraq War. She is a fifth-generation beekeeper and lives in San Francisco, where she keeps several hives in a community garden.

Hummingbird in Underworld Teaching in a Men’s Prison, A Memoir takes readers on an unforgettable literary journey that alternates between tales of creating drama in prison and Deborah Tobola’s own story. As she created a groundbreaking theatre program, Tobola engaged prisoners isolated from the outside world in the arts and helps them discover their own unique, powerful voices. Tobola is a poet, playwright and co-author of a children’s book. Her work has earned four Pushcart Prize nominations, three Academy of American Poets awards and a Children’s Choice Book Award. Tobola earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona, and began teaching creative writing and theatre in prison in 1992. She is founding artistic director of Poetic Justice Project, the country’s first theatre company created for formerly incarcerated people.

Fran Quittel (Moderator) is an accomplished non-fiction author whose grassroots efforts successfully restored $270 million to 10,000 bank depositors by adding an amendment to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Her delightful children’s book, The Central Park Lost Mitten Party celebrates the rich history and beautiful architecture of America’s first urban public park.

Location: 

1 Ferry Building
San Francisco, CA 94111
Searching for Family and Traditions at the French Table, Book One (Champagne, Alsace, Lorraine, and Paris Regions): Savoring the Olde Ways Series: Boo By Carole Bumpus Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781631525490
Availability: On Our Shelves Now - Click Title for More Details
Published: She Writes Press - August 27th, 2019

The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees By Meredith May Cover Image
$24.99
Email or call for price
ISBN: 9780778307785
Published: Park Row - April 2nd, 2019

Hummingbird in Underworld: Teaching in a Men's Prison, a Memoir By Deborah Tobola Cover Image
$16.95
ISBN: 9781631525056
Availability: On Our Shelves Now - Click Title for More Details
Published: She Writes Press - July 23rd, 2019