Past Sense: How the Past Informs the Present with authors James D. Houston, Eric Martin and Sandy Tolan. Jim Foster moderates.
book group expo is the first event of its kind that delivers a two day salon experience designed especially for book lovers.
Book group members and avid readers have a chance to meet some of their favorite authors, discover a literary treasure or three that they've never heard of before, and meet and connect with people in other book groups - or start a new one.
Bio
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.
James D. Houston
James D. Houston is the author of eight novels of which Bird Of Another Heaven is the most recent. Among his nonfiction works is Farewell To Manzanar, co-authored with his wife Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston. He is a winner of two American Book Awards and the Humanities Prize.
Eric Martin
Eric Martin is a novelist whose most recent work is The Virgin's Guide to Mexico. Raised in Maine, he was educated in Austin, Durham, Barcelona and Quito. He has worked on vineyards, beer trucks, tobacco fields, and in homeless shelters. The recent recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, he is the author of the novels Luck, and Winners, which was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. He lives in San Francisco.
Sandy Tolan
Sandy Tolan is co-founder of Homelands Productions. Since 1982, he has produced dozens of documentaries for National Public Radio and Public Radio International. Much of his focus has been on land, water, natural resources and indigenous affairs in the US, Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean, Central Europe, the Middle East and South Asia. His programs have won numerous awards, including three from the Overseas Press Club, the DuPont-Columbia Silver Baton, three Robert F. Kennedy awards for reporting on the disadvantaged, a Harry Chapin World Hunger Year award, and a United Nations Gold Medal award. He has written for The New York Times Magazine, Audubon, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times Magazine and dozens of other publications. He was a 1993 Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. Since 2000 he has been teaching at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, where he directs the International Reporting Project.
Sandy is the author of The Lemon Tree: An Arab, A Jew, and the Heart of the Middle East (Bloomsbury, 2006), based on his award-winning documentary for NPR's Fresh Air about a Palestinian man and a Jewish woman whose families lived in the same house before and after the founding of Israel. The book was Booklist's "Editor's Choice" for best adult non-fiction book of the year. His first book, Me and Hank (Free Press, 2000), is an exploration of heroes and race relations in America through the experience of baseball slugger Hank Aaron.