Book Group Expo 2006 presents And The West is History: Tales of Struggle and Renewal in California with moderator Jim Foster and panelists Susann Cokal, M. Allen Cunningham and James Dalessandro.
Part salon, part marketplace, and part marvelous party, Book Group Expo brings together a wide variety of book lovers, and authors under one roof. The Expo is an opportunity for the thousands of serious readers and book group members from throughout the Bay Area to experience a unique interactive program built around reading and discussing literature.
Bio
Susann Cokal
Susann Cokal is the author of Mirabilis, the story of a wet nurse in fourteenth-century France. Her second novel, Breath and Bones, follows an artist’s model from 1880’s Denmark to the Wild West. She lives in Richmond, VA and loves visiting book groups.
M. Allen Cunningham
M. Allen Cunningham's novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow, is set in the long-vanished coal-mining town of Nortonville, California in the 19th century. The book was selected as a #1 BookSense pick and has been cited by the Salt Lake Tribune as “one of the best books of the West.”
James Dalessandro
James Dalessandro is dedicated to writing San Francisco and Bay Area stories: His novel, 1906, has had a long run atop Bay Area bestseller lists. He has recently completed a documentary film, The Damnedest, Finest Ruins, about the great disaster, featuring Peter Coyote as narrator.
Jim Foster
Jim Foster's Conversations on the Coast, now in its fifth year, features one-on-one interviews with America's best-known authors. Jim's approach is similar to Studs Terkel--he makes his guests comfortable, and lets them talk about their work. Writers rave about Jim's style, his preparation, and his insight.
I found Dalessandro especially interesting because his accusations of corruption and mismanagement among Victorian-era San Francisco politicians challenge some of our preconceived notions of the 1906 earthquake and its aftermath.