Each week, we offer a roundup of the best literary events in the city. All events are free and open to the public, unless otherwise noted. Want to submit an upcoming event for consideration? Go here.
Nicole Daedone (Slow Sex: The Art and Craft of the Female Orgasm)
Tuesday, July 26th, 6 pm, at Book Passage SF (1 Ferry Building)
Daedone, founder of the SOMA collective OneTaste, is committed to helping women achieve better orgasms through a practice known as orgasmic meditation, or OM. She recently hosted a pop-up space on Sutter St. to promote her new book on the subject, from which she'll read on Tuesday at Book Passage. Though the pop-up shuttered on July 18th, potential converts are encouraged to pick up the book or stop into OneTaste's regular digs at 1080 Folsom St.
Howard Markel (An Anatomy of Addiction: Sigmund Freud, William Halsted, and the Miracle Drug Cocaine)
Tuesday, July 26th, 7 pm, at Books Inc. Opera Plaza (601 Van Ness Ave.)
Acclaimed medical historian Markel, whose When Germs Travel examined six major U.S. epidemics in the 20th century, turns to a smaller focus in this study of Freud and his contemporary, pioneering surgeon William Halsted. Both men became interested in cocaine use in the 1880s, but struggled with addiction even as they made their breakthroughs in psychoanalysis and operating-room sterility. The drug eventually cost them both relationships, time, and health, but their cases reveal important changes in society's understanding of addiction.
Emma Straub (Other People We Married)
Thursday, July 28th, 7:30 pm, at The Booksmith (1644 Haight St.)
Straub, daughter of horror writer Peter Straub, is a bookseller-turned-fiction-writer who's earned raves for Other People We Married, her first collection of stories. Many of the tales in the book examine native New Yorkers (like Straub herself) who venture out of the city and learn about themselves in the process. Want to know what you should follow up her book with? Just ask-- her day job is making book recommendations to customers at BookCourt in Brooklyn.
Christopher Moore and Ian Corson (The Griff: A Graphic Novel)
Friday, July 29th, 7:30 pm, at The Booksmith (1644 Haight St.)
Comic novelist and perennial bestseller Moore (Lamb, Fluke, The Stupidest Angel) has teamed up with Corson, a screenwriter and director, for his first foray into the realm of comics. Illustrated by Jennyson Rosero, The Griff is the story of an alien apocalypse and the group of survivors who hope to save the human race before it's too late. Their enemies? A group of alien-bred dragons who resemble the mythological griffin.
